Part Three.

One night that summer, we were sitting on his couch, shooting the shit. We had both had a few beers, but nothing too exciting. We had been flirting, touching, you know, all the things two people do when there is a spark in the air. We were sitting on the couch and his arm was around me. His sister and her boyfriend, who he lived with, had already gone to bed. We joked that this might be inappropriate, since he was my best friend’s brother. We joked, but we kept pushing the envelope farther; my head on his shoulder, his hand on my knee. Then I looked up and he kissed me and I couldn’t stop myself. I kissed him back. It was probably wrong, but it felt right, so we kept going until I pushed him off of me even though I wanted nothing more than to feel the weight of his body on top of mine. We joked. He smiled and reached out and again, I couldn’t stop myself. He said all the things I wanted to hear, all the things a man will say to a woman just because he wants her. I knew I shouldn’t, but I believed them.
That night we didn’t do anything we weren’t supposed to do. I mean, we didn’t do that. I felt like we deserved more than a drunk roll in the hay after a game of ladder ball. That night wasn’t the night for that. I also felt like I owed my best friend more than a half assed excuse about why I was still there in the morning and why I was wearing her brother’s clothes.
He told me everything I wanted to hear. He told me that he had wanted this since we met, that I was brilliant, and beautiful, and all those wonderful adjectives. He told me about his problems and he wouldn’t let my hand go. I hovered over him and stroked his forehead and he wouldn’t let my hand go. He told me if he was going to fall in love with someone, they had the right to know all of this. So I listened to his secrets. There, in the dark, all those feelings he isn’t supposed to have bubbled up and I listened to all the hurt and sadness that came out. Those secrets aren’t mine to tell, but, now I have them, too. That night I listened to his heart beat with my head on his chest and was overwhelmed with how real all this was. This was a man I wanted to fall in love with, someone who I could be with, who seemed like he felt the same about me. I let myself be happy. For those brief hours between sunset and sunrise, with our foreheads touching and my hand in his, I let myself be happy.

My best friend believes in love. She believes in the fairy tale, happily ever after, the real deal. She is confident that if you don’t settle, if you keep looking and keep hoping, you’ll find your happy ending. I told her I’m too cynical for that and I’ll probably settle for someone I know isn’t the one. I’d been replaced and taken advantage of and deceived too many time before, I explained to her. She told me to never give up. What I didn’t tell her is that I found the person that I want to spend the rest of my life with. That I think I’ve found my one and only, the person who makes me whole. The problem is that he’s her brother. He’s damaged. He isn’t sure that he is ready. There are a lot of problems with the situation and still I carry on. I don’t know if she believes in fighting for love, I just know that she believes in waiting for it. So I tell her I am waiting and I don’t tell her anything else.
When I think about that kind of love, I think about the girl who sent him care packages. She loved him. She still loves him. Sometimes I’d find myself looking at pictures of them. It felt wrong, like I was spying, or cheating the game. But I looked anyway. Mostly, it felt like a kick in the stomach, so I don’t know why I’d look week after week. It was like she was defending their past by laying it out so easily for me, or any other girl, to find. Like she was trying to show everyone that they were happy once by leaving up pictures of their smiling faces together. I knew they had been happy. I also knew that they thought about staying together forever and that she loved him more than anything. But, he ended all of that. She had believed that her search for her one and only was over and that it was only a matter of time before there was a ring on her finger. She just had to wait a little longer, patiently stand beside him as he sorted through everything that was stalling him. Then he tore the rug out from under her.
I think she still hangs on, maybe through those pictures. But I suppose she has every right to. She was the one who waited for him, who prayed for his safety. I just hoped. But what good is wishful thinking next to love and prayer?

If there is something certain about the Central Valley in summertime it is the heat. “But it’s a dry heat!” people will say in defense of the weather. Dry it is. The air becomes so arid that one can taste the dust being blown off acres of farmland, drying out crops and grass and weeds alike. One step out the door and sweat starts to bead at the temples. A few steps more and it begins to drip. The only part of summer here that is conducive to romance may be the evenings. Once the sun begins to set, the Delta Breeze comes drifting in, drawing people outside for walks, for barbeques, to leisurely lie in the grass and watch the sky turn.
My job that summer required me to walk outside in the late afternoon for hours when the rays of the sun were at their strongest. My tolerance of the heat grew with every freckle that appeared on my neck, shoulders, and back. Therein lays my favorite part of summertime: the freckles splattered all over my body. There was not a part of me left unmarked. From my fingers to my toes, I was covered and I loved it. Every day there would be more. Maybe they were a metaphor for something I didn’t quite understand, because as soon as I returned to that foggy home of mine, they would fade away. Come winter, there would only be hint of what was.
That summer in the Central Valley was also filled with smoke. It poured in from the thousands of wildfires that burned and consumed everything that surrounded the valley. The fires themselves were not new; residents had become accustomed to the red flag warnings put out every morning. But that summer the smoke was thicker, the fires burning closer and more ferociously than ever before. Hardly anyone could breathe outside, let alone work, without a wet rag tied over their mouth and nose. It hung in the air like a fog even when the temperatures climbed well over 100 degrees. It was all bad. At sunset, the sky itself looked as if it was on fire. Magnificent as it was, it was a bad sign of more fires to come. The smoke sat for weeks until the Delta Breeze came back and washed it away, relieving all, calling the residents outside again to play.