It is harvest season and the seventh year of our friendship. After this year, they say that our friendship will last the rest of our lives; they say that we will never lose one another.
Across the road from the farmhouse, grapes are ripening on their vines. Heavy plums thud into the hot bent grass of the backyard. The last of the blackberries melt in the sun.
Eden and I booked the farmhouse through Airbnb for a week. We’re celebrating our friendship since she’s moving to Boston next month to live with her boyfriend, but I’m trying to forget that last part. We’ve been living together in a small Western town thronged with sage brush and sparse pines, and this is the first time we’ve left the high desert in months. It’s striking how green everything turns only a few hours away; on our drive down, I hung my head out the window like a dog and moaned at all the willows. The valley farmhouse itself is so beautiful—white panels, peeling teal window panes, rose vines clambering up the front porch, a walnut tree with a rope swing, mountains folding on all sides—that we both scream when we drive up and realize it’s ours.
Now, we sit under the gazebo in the backyard and discuss the rules of the game. I came up with it while we were packing, and Eden agrees that it’s a good game for our week.
Every night, we have to say one thing about ourselves that the other person does not know. If you say something that she already knows, then you have to drink. You have to keep going until you finally say something she doesn’t know. Seven secrets; one for each night. It’ll be hard because we’ve barely left each other since we met our freshman year of college in North Carolina. We were both on the rowing team, and after graduation we moved West for seasonal jobs in wilderness therapy. At this point in our friendship, I just can’t picture what I don’t know about Eden; it’s like trying to picture aliens. I know the universe is large enough that other intelligent life exists out there, but what does that life look like? Is it oxygen based? Does it have multiple heads?
You start, Eden says, her red hair coming loose in her bun. She’s sitting at the end of the gazebo, the sun on her face. She pinches her glass stem with two wiry fingers. It’s your game.
I once won—
A Lord of the Rings trivia contest in fourth grade. She smiles faintly.
I drink. When I was seven, I ate—
Caterpillars from your mother’s garden. You were pretending to be a cannibalistic caterpillar.
I drink. I try to think of something boring about myself that I would have never told her. The grey squirrels chatter and run along the limbs of the walnut tree.
I know how to crochet, I say.
Get out of here, she says.
My grandmother taught me. I used to make scarves all the time. Lots of colors, very uneven.
You’re kidding, she says, leaning closer. I’ve never seen you craft anything.
Like I said, they were very uneven scarves.
She lifts her glass at me. Okay, well done. That didn’t take very long.
Thank you, thank you, I say, proud. What do you think of the wine?
She sticks her nose deep in the glass and then takes a long sip. Eden is better at nuances than I am. She also drinks a lot more wine. I’m still working in wilderness therapy, but she’s now an engineer for a company that designs pumps, tanks, and processing equipment for wineries. They send her free wine in boxes. I mostly love her job because I get to watch her draw neat, clean lines, circles inside circles.
White pear, she says. Peach. Just hints of orange blossom and lemon. A soft, soft finish.
I drink again. I can’t taste any of that.
Anyone can taste wine, she says. It’s just a matter of paying attention. Of intentionally making the wine memorable.
Sure, sure, I say. It’s your turn.
All right, she says. She sticks her chin on her palm. Hmm. I used to play the violin.
Who do you think I am? I ask. Your new boyfriend?
She drinks. I’m allergic to certain types of sunscreen.
Oh please. All the times I saw her carry that little prescription tube around to regattas while other girls were spraying themselves down with cheap aerosol cans, how often she asked me to do her back, how thick and creamy her sunscreen was, how it left purple-white smudges on her skin no matter how hard I rubbed. How familiar her shoulders are to me, those sharp taut muscles, flexed and wiry, so near to the bone. We were always in the same boat, always bow pair; she was a port and I was a starboard. Our coach said that we were perfect mirrors of the other. To this day, when she moves, I find my body rising in response.
This is hard! She drinks.
You can do it. It can be anything.
She thinks for a minute. I don’t know, she says. I’m drawing blanks.
Just start spitting things out.
I wanted to be a fireman once, she says. I loved pre-algebra so much that I would stay up past my bedtime solving for x. Um.
I nod. She drinks and drinks.
You’re going too big, I say. Think of a smaller memory that even you don’t think about. A story.
Okay, she says. Um. We used to vacation in the mountains. Before my parents divorced. We had a little cabin that we used to go to for weeks in the summer and it sat on a ridge. Salamanders lived under the rocks there, black and shiny and fast, and my brother and I used to pick up the rocks to look at them. One time, I accidently dropped a rock on a salamander with a speckled tail. I was so scared that I had killed it. But when my brother and I picked up the rock again, the salamander was gone. It was so fast that I didn’t see it escape.
I clap my hands. Incredible! I say. See, I had no idea that salamander existed. We’re learning things about each other.
Aren’t we amazing, she says, smiling, her chipped canine showing. Learning things. After all this time.
We stay up late. When the bugs get bad, we go inside and lay on the squishy floral rugs that match the floral couches. We play card games—Egyptian Rat Screw, Spit, Gin, poker—and every game is intense and evenly matched, like it always is when we play each other. We get too competitive. We shout and slap the floor. We drink through two bottles of Eden’s free wine. She’s the one that makes us go to bed at last. She takes the master room. I take the one with the stained-glass windows facing east. I go to sleep trying to think of things that would have happened to me before Eden.
The days and nights blur in smooth succession. It’s like we’re living in a poem and the thick green almost makes it feel like we’re back home. We whip up blackberry pancakes and French press coffee. We walk in the rustling forest among saddler oaks and sugar pines and pick bowls of plums in the backyard. We trap a huge black spider under a coffee mug that we’re both too scared to move. We drive up to the famous marble caves riddling the rolling mountains, but the mouth of the caves are blocked by thick iron gates.
I don’t see a sign anywhere, Eden says, peering through the bars. I wonder why they’re closed.
I try to shake the bars. They don’t even rattle. We go on a hike instead through a sunny meadow with browning, crisping wildflowers up to our waists and see the widest spruce in the West.
In the nights, in the gazebo, we drink wine. I learn that Eden’s brother tricked her into believing their house had a basement and that she used to sketch the interior of her church during Mass. I learn that she once slept over at the aquarium with her seventh-grade class and woke up at three in the morning to go watch the gliding white sharks alone.
I tell Eden that I used to collect empty coquina shells in jars and that my five-year-old-self thought I could see dinosaurs if I climbed onto my roof. I tell her about my first crush, Elijah Kim, a skinny boy who could run faster than anybody. I tell her how I promised myself in fifth grade that I would name my first-born child after him.
So dramatic, Eden says, laughing. Your first-born!
What! I say, laughing too. I had to do something to commemorate my first crush.
That has got to be the weirdest thing, she says. Naming your kid after a crush!
Hey, I say. You never know. Maybe you’ll name your first child Christopher.
Oh shut up, she says, pushing my shoulder.
Christopher is Eden’s new boyfriend. He’s nice. He’s shorter than the both of us and he treats her well. He’s quiet. He watches Eden with big eyes when she walks away from him. When we hang out, I sometimes forget he’s there. Eden says he talks a lot when I’m not around; she says he’s shy. He transferred to their company’s East Coast branch a few months ago, and she spends every other night with him on the phone, the door to her room carefully closed. I didn’t expect Eden to want to move across the country to be with him so quickly. But I understand. I know that, eventually, romantic partners must come before friendship.
In the farmhouse, I sleep with my windows open. The dark air is wet and cool and rests on my covers. Throughout the nights, I hear the tread of feet, like someone is taking soft slow steps into my room, but I know it’s only a dream.
It is our fifth evening. We spent the day at an empty beach, running in and out of the cold water, reading on the long stretch of sand. The salt is still on my skin, my hair tangled. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy. It’s hot enough that we stay in our bathing suits. We go out to the gazebo and open a Moscato. Eden says it tastes of rose and tangerine. The sun is setting behind the long grass of the cow pasture and the blackberry thorns are outlined in gold.
I go first in our game. I tell Eden that I had a childhood neighbor named Mr. Cake. He was a painter and he painted my bedroom trim a pale lavender. He died a few years ago, but since I haven’t been back to our neighborhood, it’s easy to pretend that he’s still alive.
Your turn, I say.
She sticks her tongue out. She got burnt today across her cheekbones. Let’s see, let’s see, she says.
It gets harder every day, I say.
Oh, she says. I’ve got one. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. You remember Shawn?
Shawn, I repeat. I rack my brains. The name sounds faintly familiar. Shawn.
He ran for student body president in college, she prompts. He was from my hometown.
Oh! I say. Yes! You were friends with him freshman year.
I dated him for a few summers, Eden says.
What? I say.
We dated, she says. For a few summers.
What? I put down my glass.
She cocks her head. She looks at me. She says it again. Shawn and I dated. She says it very matter-of-factly. As if telling me that she’s allergic to most types of sunblock.
In college? I ask.
Yes, she says.
No, I say. You didn’t.
She is worried now. Crease between her eyebrows. But we did, she says.
My mouth is dry. You didn’t date anyone in college, I say. We’ve talked about this. Christopher is your first boyfriend in six years. You haven’t dated anyone since high school.
Well, not officially, she says. Shawn and I weren’t official. It was during the summers only. It wasn’t important.
You’re kidding, I say. I’m blinking at her. Eden. You dated for multiple summers?
We always stopped when we got back to campus, she says. A slight defensiveness colors her voice. She grips the stem of her glass. It didn’t continue during the school year.
Why have you been hiding this?
I haven’t been hiding it.
Why did you not tell me before? Why did you never mention it?
It wasn’t important, she says again. It was casual.
We’ve been playing this game all week, and it took you this long to think of Shawn?
I wasn’t thinking about him! she says. Her hands are rising in front of her face.
Were you ever planning on telling me?
It’s not like that, Kinsley, she says. I didn’t tell anyone. Maybe one or two friends from home.
What! I say. And not me!
Because it didn’t matter!
Tell me, I say. More.
What is there to tell? she asks. It was a casual thing. He was nice. I don’t know what you want me to say.
Did you sleep with him?
Well, she says, turning red. Yeah.
Oh my god.
Are you mad? she asks.
I’m not mad, I say. My voice is strained and unconvincing. I’m not mad, I say again. She is staring at me. Like I’m overreacting. Maybe I am. I feel wild. I need to get it together. There are tears in her eyes. There are tears in mine.
Please, I’m so sorry, don’t be mad, she says.
How could I ever be mad at you? I say. I put my hand over hers because I want to believe it as much as she does. Her hand is cold. I stand. I swallow. The world is swaying. I’ve drunk enough.
Oh wow, I say and stretch. It’s getting dark! I’ll make us tea.
She is silent. She doesn’t try to stop the topic from sliding away. Instead, she rises to help me pick up our plates and glasses. She is relieved that I’ve stopped asking her questions.
Do you want to play cards tonight? she asks, following me into the kitchen.
I bite my tongue, hard. I will the world to stop swaying. Here, find footing that I understand.
Sure, I say. I turn. I smile at her. Why not?
Later, away from her, in my room, I am furious. I grind my knuckle against my forehead and take deep breaths. I remember Shawn only in a blurry way. I look him up on Facebook. Oh pale limpid broad-shouldered politician boy. I met him once. Maybe twice. No more than that. He was faceless enough in her life for me to disregard. He was tall and had a wide white smile. I deemed him unimportant. I never saw them alone together. They didn’t even hang out with groups. I saw her wave to him on campus as we were walking to class together. I saw him look at her over his shoulder, wave back. Casually. As if she was no one to him.
I could kill him now if he was standing in front of me. I would tear him to soft chunky pieces. I would start with his politician eyes. I can’t tell if I’m being unreasonable. I kick the nightstand.
In the six years that we’ve known each other, Eden hasn’t been with anyone. Dated, slept with, kissed—nothing. No one. I must have hooked up with a thousand boys in college. Dated a handful. I had gotten the impression she didn’t quite understand how dating culture worked, because she never tried to give me advice—other than having extremely firm opinions about who was good enough for me. I saw guys that she tolerated, but never any guys that she approved of. Which made sense. I didn’t approve of most of them either.
I was always curious about her lack of interest in romance. A part of me admired how strong-willed she was, how high her standards were, how nobody ever caught her eye. She wouldn’t even point out people she found attractive. She was silent when our team laughed and traded dating stories. So, I would ask, as casually as I could, when Eden and I were alone. Anyone on your radar? Any guys? Any girls? I was careful the first time that I asked. I was unsure about her sexual orientation. Nah, she said, shrugging. I’m straight. And there’s no one.
It was always versions of that answer—and I asked! So many times!—until she met Christopher eight months ago. I shattered a wine glass when she mentioned—over the olive and chanterelle pizza we were eating in our apartment—that she thought she liked someone at work. She brought the subject up on her own. A freckled Irish guy. A year younger than us. Assistant in the sales department. She said she got the feeling that he liked her even more than she liked him. On the night of their first date, I watched her climb into his car from the window of her room. She was wearing light jeans, a striped sweater, my silver leaf earrings. She was laughing.
It’s been fascinating to watch Eden express feelings for someone. She does it in a nearly embarrassed way. Every time she mentions Christopher, it’s like she’s trying to feel out if I truly want to hear about him. Which I always do. It is a fresh experience for our friendship to have her come to me with stories and questions about a boyfriend. It’s been exciting to watch her like someone.
But no, these, these thoughts are wrong. Eden, celibate, aloof, too logical and uninterested to fall for any dumb kid at our school—that is an untrue version of our world. His name is Shawn. She saw him in the summers. I try to think. She mentioned him to me a few times. Offhandedly. It was only a couple of times. His name jitters in her voice in my mind. They would go for runs together in the summer. I try to picture it. So she’s slipping on her favorite neon tank top, green tunnels of dogwoods laced with trails of hot pavement, their feet pounding together, they’re both sweaty and she’s looking at him sideways, wanting. I think they went to a museum once. Dark hallways, they follow each other through winding World War II exhibits, spotlights falling on model aircrafts as his hand reaches for her waist and she is turning towards him as the sound of a radio transmission crackles overhead. I can hear her, mentioning the museum visit as we sit outside the dining hall in the fall of our sophomore year, like it was nothing, like she had nothing else better to do.
They slept together. She used the word ‘dated.’
How did I not know this about her?
The ferocity of my hurt disturbs me. I am on the bed, staring at the wooden ceiling and the beams are staving into my chest and I’m being nailed into the farmhouse. I rushed upstairs after we finished our card game; we only played one round of Egyptian Rat Screw. I said I was tired. She said, of course, of course and she cleaned up the cards, smoothly sliding them into their deck, and I could feel her watching me as I left.
I must not have paid enough attention. To the way that she said his name.
For multiple summers. She’s thinking about him as the school year passes and she’s wanting to be with him as the cold falls away and the heat climbs and the pollen scatters lemon-yellow from the trees and the cicadas begin to whir in the kudzo and I’m still with her, waking in the dawn and falling asleep in the seat next to her on long bus rides from far lakes in the night and she’s not telling me. He is a whole season to her; he owns a breadth of time where she isn’t with me and he is with her alone in humid rooms shadowed by longleaf pines and he owns the cycling time in which she’s thinking about him and I do not know. I want to run across the hallway now, where she’s laying out her pajamas and ask and ask—which summers exactly, tell me, tell me, what did he do, what was he like, for you to want him to be so close to you? But I will cry if I do. If I run to her now, the feelings that are pulsing inside of my throat will explode and nothing will be able to return.
Why did they not date during the school year? Was it his idea? How could he not try to fall at her feet?
I will rip out his eyes.
I can imagine that she rejected him during the school year; her friends, our team, her school work—those were always the most important to her. She had a slight judgement toward people consumed by relationships, even people who had healthy relationships—I could sense it, even toward me, especially toward me, and there were times that I didn’t describe to her in detail, like how much I obsessively adored the Brazilian exchange student in my Biology class who sat next to me and passed me handwritten poems because I knew that she would not particularly want to hear. She was always happy for me when I was dating someone, but if I ever hung out with a guy during a time that the rowing team was doing something, I could sense the disapproval in her tone. Or the complete lack of understanding. As if my priorities were misplaced. As if she thought I was choosing a guy over my friends. As if I ever would.
Eden and Kinsley. Kinsley and Eden. They always said our names together, like that. Our captain told us our sophomore year that we were her favorite best friend pair. I had never gotten a compliment like that before. I had never had a friend like Eden before.
I want to call up all our old friends, our old teammates. Did you know? I want to go down the list, ask each and every one of them. Did you know? Did you?
I know she trusts me more than anyone. She doesn’t cry in front of other people, but I’ve seen her sob in the stairwell of our dorm after she lost her seat in a boat. I was the one she woke in the middle of the night when she had a hip injury and was in too much pain to sleep. I’ve held her hair as she’s vomited after eating too many fish tacos, I’ve walked her to the sports medicine clinic, I’ve brought her packs of ice to wrap around her lower back. I know she’s competitive enough to wear her body down to her bones to win, she can’t stand any sort of mess, she’s afraid of dogs but pretends she isn’t, she gets headaches easily, she keeps a dream journal even though she only dreams of mundane things like folding laundry, she smooths her hair when she’s nervous, she loves the crossword, she’s a fast driver, and she would rather die than be seen as weak. I know the fierce look in her eye when she’s hungry; I know how her shoulders set when she wants to argue. She takes her coffee black. She has her rules and she follows them.
She is secretive. I’ve always known this. In both acquaintances and friendships, she keeps the focus on the other person; she is subtle at sliding out of the spotlight. She is good at keeping conversations light, wry. Not a lot of people know that her dad died. Not a lot of people know that she doesn’t get along with her older brother anymore or that she used to steal gum from grocery stores when she was young. But I do. I didn’t think that she was secretive with me. Not like this.
Did I make her feel uncomfortable at some crucial point when she was seeing him? Was she afraid that I would judge her? The look of growing panic on her face tonight—as if my reaction had made her wish that she had never told me. It’s as if she truly thought dating Shawn—dating!—for summers wasn’t important, like she thought I would only smile and say, oh how interesting! Like Shawn is in a cardboard box that she stored away in the attic, to take out only when he applies. As if she can keep her life organized, separate, in control. That’s fine, I understand—but I want to be in all her boxes. I thought I already was. I thought she wanted me.
If I sleep, it’s not for long and then it’s dark and I wake with my phone on my chest and someone is pounding on the front door and the doorbell is ringing. I stumble down the stairs. I am blind in the anxious fuzzed dark and I don’t know where the light switches are. I open the door. If it’s a madman or a murderer, better to meet him head on.
Flashing blue and red lights. A slight woman standing on the bottom stair. A badge on her chest. My eyes flick to her hip. I can’t make out the holster.
Hey, I say. Grating, more like a cough than a word.
There’s a fire coming this way, the police officer says. You’re in a Level 3 Evacuation Zone. You need to leave immediately.
What? I say.
A warm yellow light comes on in the kitchen behind me. Eden is at my shoulder, standing so that we both fill the doorway.
There’s a fire coming over the hills, the officer repeats again, louder. The winds are pushing it. Take the east road out of the valley.
The east road, I say.
Yes, she says. Now. As quick as you can. And she turns and slams the door of her car behind her, siren blaring as she drives past us on the gravel road.
I look at Eden. She’s wearing our navy college sweatshirt, hood pulled up, hair tucked away. Fuck, she says. Let’s grab our stuff. Let’s go.
We can’t go, I say stupidly. We have one more day.
Kinsley, there’s a fire, she says. She’s already climbing the stairs.
A fire. Okay. Yes. That is bad. I try my best to remember where I’ve strewn all my belongings. Has it been years since we’ve arrived? The house is crooked, rambling, and I get lost in the corners—this phone charger, laptop on the couch, where is fire creeping now, is my wallet in the fruit bowl, is fire blowing at the door—
Hurry, hurry, Eden says. She has her backpack on, duffle bag in hand. She goes out the screen door and I see her through the window, a silhouette moving through the grass.
I’m coming, I say, even though I know it’s only the house that hears me. I’m coming, I’m coming.
She climbs in the driver’s seat. I throw in my bags. I might have left a jacket, all of my toiletries. We pull out of the driveway, the crunch of stone under tires, the farmhouse and the vineyards falling away. There is only one way to the east road, and it’s clear and quiet, not a car in sight. We are low enough in the valley that the wind isn’t strong yet. I look at the mountain ridges behind us, but I can’t see any smoke. I can’t see any flames. I am expecting more chaos. I don’t know what to make of the still darkness. I rub my eyes.
Here, Eden says. Can you pull up directions? She hands me her phone—she has unlimited data and I don’t. I type in her password and then, so quick, I open her contacts and I type in Shawn and I send his info to myself and then I delete the message on her phone and then I pull up the maps.
You’re straight on this road for a few miles, I say. Your next turn will be a right.
Thank you, she says.
I touch my phone softly. It’s face down on my thigh, as if she might see through it.
Hey, I say. Do you remember when I wanted to make the most of our vacation and chill another day in a Level 3 Zone?
It takes her a second to follow my words, her eyes sliding past me to a stop sign on the right. Then she laughs. A burst. She’s leaning on the steering wheel, laughing. I’m laughing too.
You’re crazy, she says. I can’t believe that was your first reaction! I was in too much shock to register what you were saying.
Clearly, I say, I was the one in shock.
It’s just so weird, she says, how fires come out of nowhere. It hasn’t even been that dry. It just rained last week.
I’m still not used to it, I say. I have too much Southern blood in me.
We were lucky last year, she says. We didn’t have to evacuate once.
I can just see her out of the corner of my eye. The dark has carved out old memories, shaken clumped soil loose on naked roots. Endless mist mornings on the lake when the sun rose cold orange, my shoulders following hers as our boat glided to the catch. Wet hair dripping down our sweatshirts in chilly classrooms. Peanut butter smoothies on the carpeted floor of our locker room, writing late papers in our library corner, apricot beer in the warm golden din of our crowded team house. Day after night, stroke after stroke through wind and water. I think of the very first time I saw her, standing with her long arms crossed next to an erg, her red hair braided down her back, looking at the large gym mirror as the rest of the novice team walked into our practice room. She was the first one at that first practice and I was the last, and now she flickers in between Eden and the unrecognizable, and I think I have to know her better than my own self.
Eden, I say. Why didn’t you tell me about Shawn?
She doesn’t flinch. The question doesn’t surprise her. She has been waiting for it.
Please, I say. If she ever tells me, it will be now, in this liminal dark.
There’s nothing much to tell, she says. She’s shrugging. I’m looking at her so closely, and it doesn’t seem like his name pains her. It doesn’t seem like I’m touching on a brutal or vulnerable history. Her words are gentle, slow. It’s as if she is trying not to hurt me.
What was he like?
Shawn?
Yes. Who else?
I was just checking, she says. Shawn. Well, he was very sure of himself. He was very motivated. Um. She coughs. We would go on runs together and he was faster than me, but I could run longer, so we pushed each other. We had this route that we liked to go on, that went onto this bike trail with a lot of trees.
She stops.
Okay, I say.
Halfway through our run, she says, there was this coffee shop that we liked. We would take our break there. I would get iced coffee, with only a little bit of cream. He would get iced coffee too, but after the first two times, I noticed that he always asked for a cup of water on the side, without ice. He would drink his water slowly after the coffee and so I started asking for a cup of water too. I didn’t want him to feel rushed. I wanted to make sure that he had enough time.
Our car crests a hill. We are out of the valley and the wind is behind us. The trees are flattening, bowing. On instinct, I turn to look out the back window and I see it, finally, the fire on the ridge. Dark glowing animal fire, russet in the darkness.
Wow, I say.
Eden coughs again. She puts both hands on the steering wheel and straightens to stare at the road.
This fire, she says. Do you think everyone will be okay? Can you look it up? How big is it? How close is it to where we were staying? Do you think it will burn the farmhouse down? What’s its name?
I watch her. She is foreign to me again, unrecognizable.
Yes, I say. I’ll look it up.
It is late afternoon when we get to our apartment. The desert sun is hot and bright. Eden is groggy, but she instantly sits on the floor and pulls on her running shoes. It is her habit to run when she needs to right the world; she’s shaking off the drive, the tension of the fire, the sensation of an escape. I shower while she’s running, I read, I catalogue the items I left at the farmhouse—goat milk soap, a blank journal, underwear, bathing suit. In the evening, Eden comes back, wiping her face with the bottom half of her penny green neon tank and goes into her room to call Christopher. I pass by her closed door on my way out of the bathroom; I slow my steps. I hear only the low laugh of her voice.
I go into my room, on the opposite side of the apartment, and close my door. I step as far away as I can from the door. My thumbs are quick, pulling up the number. There is no time for hesitation.
I call Shawn.
If he answers—he will answer, he has to answer—I will tell him I’m making Eden a gift. A birthday present for her twenty-fifth. I will tell him that I’m looking for photos, good memories, good stories for a video. If he asks me who I am, I will tell him that I have loved her longer than he has known her name.
A shiver down my back. The violence that I felt yesterday towards him is replaced, desperate.
No. Forget the birthday present. I will say—listen, Shawn, I only have one or two questions for you. I wouldn’t be calling if there was another way. If I could take Eden and I back to the farmhouse, back to the gazebo, back to unburnt land for another day, I would. I would walk in ritual rings around the farmhouse until I understood; I would take up praying. I would ask the prophets, the cards, the stars, the squirrels throwing cracked walnut shells down from the canopy heavens, if Eden and I would ever leave one another.
But we can’t go back. We are very different, and she is moving to another coast for another person in less than a month. The night that I learned of you, before we played our game of cards, I watched her chop small red plums for us to eat. She was frowning, palming and twisting the sharp knife so quick until the one knife was many knives and I realized that the knives are her fingers and one silver touch of her would slice me open and pit me raw. Eden might be better at nuances than I am, but when it comes to the life around her, I really, really do pay attention. The hiss of the vineyard sprinklers coming on at night, the hot smell of chewed grass, a walnut tree gloaming, blackberries unripe and sour hidden in back fence brambles, the white pear in a riesling wine that she is lifting to her mouth. The curve in her voice when she no longer wants to talk about something.
So then, Shawn, tell me, what have I missed, what have I not understood, that I never imagined a world in which I would want her to come to me and speak of you? That I never thought I would dream of her standing at the threshold of my farmhouse room, her hair thrown into gold and rose from the shining firelight of the stained-glass window? What do you have to lose by confessing all the sensations of your summers? Tell me, tell me, what did you do that she wanted you so close to her?
The phone rings. It rings. It rings. It rings. It rings. It rings.
A click.
This is Shawn Bergan speaking.
His voice is crisp, professional. I can see him straightening a tie, raising eyebrows at himself in a mirror. He would be the type to answer an unknown number, just on the off chance it’s a job offer, a network connection, an opportunity.
Hello, I say. This is Kinsley.
Kinsley? he says. Kinsley. He leaves a blank, dubious space at the end of my name. A young voice, a bit more uncertain than I expected. He is waiting for me to fill the space in for him.
Kinsley, I say. I clench my hand around the phone. I am Eden’s friend.