The Words We Keep

My brain yawns awake in the dark. Micah’s eyes are already open.

“Best. Nap. Ever,” he says.

“Crap. What time is it?”

His hair sticks out at inexplicable angles as he rolls over to grab a cell phone off the floor.

“Nine-forty-five.”

“P.m.?”

I practically jump out of the bag.

Dad is going to kill you.

Micah stands up, still shaking off the sleep.

“Slow down.”

“Can’t. Got to leave. Now.”

I grab my keys and phone. No missed calls. No texts. Maybe Dad thinks I’m at study group. Or a track thing.

“Hey—” Micah grabs my wrist, pulls me close to him, so close that I can feel his heart beating through my own chest. “Slow. Down.”

For a second, I forget that I’m toast for being so late, and all the homework I have to do. I forget about everything but his body against mine, his hands holding me tight against him. And even though I know I should go, I don’t.

“ ‘I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart,’ ” he whispers into my ear, starting the first line of my favorite Sylvia Plath passage from The Bell Jar.

I finish it: “ ‘I am, I am, I am.’ ”

“You know what I think our friend Sylvia needed?” Micah asks.

“What’s that?”

“Some time screaming into the void.”

—

We walk to the beach from his house, and Micah’s hands lead me to the cliff, but I pull myself up this time. One foot in front of the other, until we reach the top.

And then he’s yelling at the sea.

Not words, just sound. Raw and guttural. Feral.

And I’m screaming, too.

And the ocean swallows our voices.

Takes them and rolls them like stones.

Smooths out their rough places.

And I’m laughing

and he’s laughing

and we’re wet and salty.

I can taste it on the air.

I can taste it on his skin, on the spot right above his collarbone, when he pulls me close on top of the cliff where he didn’t jump.

And for a minute

I forget

about the what-ifs,

about the monsters in my head

because there’s no room for them here

in this moment

with his hand around my waist, the one with the semicolon tattoo

that says he lived

he stayed

he’s here.

We both are

and we’re broken

and beautiful

and screaming into the wind.

And we’re so

high

high

high

that we’ll never come down.

And then we’re back on the sand and we’re running toward the ocean. Micah flings his shirt over his head and I’m shimmying out of my pants, and I don’t take a moment to even think about whether this is smart or stupid, because I know if I stop, the what-ifs will push out this euphoria, this mad rush of energy and hope and feeling.

Because suddenly I want to feel it all. The sand beneath my toes. The water on my skin. Micah on my skin.

All of it.

So I keep moving, kicking off my pants and laughing as Micah tries to pull his off while standing on one foot and ends up in the sand. And I’m taking off my shirt, and I stop short, before Micah can see the barely healed places on my stomach.

He’s bare except for his boxers. Bare and exposed and beautiful.

And I want to be, too.

I take off my shirt slowly.

I cross my arms in front of the little red and pink telltale marks on my skin, just above my underwear.

“When I get worried, I—”

Before I can finish, Micah puts his finger on my lips.

“You know that voice in your head—the one that tells you to apologize for existing? That says you’re not enough?”

I nod.

“It’s lying.” He leans in closer to me, his breath warm on my face. “You are enough. Right now. Just the way you are.”

He moves my arms and drops to his knees in the sand. His lips touch my stomach, each wound, each scar. My hands are in his hair and his hands are around my waist, pulling me into him as his lips graze each wounded piece of me.

And then he stands and presses his lips to mine, and if our first kiss was a gentle breeze, our second is a hurricane. He kisses me, hard and hungry, like we’re running out of time.

“Lily,” he whispers in a half moan that sends me over the edge, and I’m kissing him back just as urgently because suddenly it feels urgent, like I can’t get enough of him or enough oxygen or enough of this. For the first time ever, someone knows all my secrets and wants me with all my scars.

As we kiss, my hands explore him, the divots in his lower back, the tight corded muscles on his chest. My fingers run through his hair, tugging his mouth to mine. It’s warm and wet, and it fills me. He picks me up in one effortless move, and I wrap my legs around him as he carries me into the water.

I taste the ocean on his skin as I press my mouth to his shoulder, his neck, his jaw. He groans, low and guttural, when his lips find mine in the dark.

And for this moment—an ephemeral blip—I’m present.

Feeling the spray, tasting the salt, inhabiting the me that is here and now.

No glass. No monsters.

I’m alive.

I’m here.

I am.