I cock my head.
“Finally meeting each other.”
“Yes,” I say.
“I only wish it wasn’t so late. So close to when you’ll leave, I mean.”
I don’t want to think about leaving for college. But now the thought is here, all around me, the heaviness of it, the way it pulls me under. I want to lose myself in Violet, but she’s right across the table, not in a faraway place I can only reach in daydreams.
I feel panic rising, and I need to turn away from it.
“I got your rose,” I say.
Surprise flashes across her face.
“How did you know about that?”
It feels so long ago now, even though it’s only been a couple days. I call it all back: the way it felt to hang out with Mark that first night, how I discovered a new way friendship could feel. The song “Umbrella,” my icy glass, the relief on Mark’s face when I asked him to be my friend.
“I did go back to Shelbie’s house that night. I was just too late. And Lehna told me that you had brought me a flower.”
“But, still…?”
“And June told me that you had left to see the sea lions, so Mark and I went to track you down. We thought we could catch you. We went to the pier and we walked all over, but no one was there. But then, there was a rose.”
“Amazing,” she says. “Talk about putting things out into the world.”
“I’m sorry about that night.”
She shrugs.
“Things happen,” she says. But she sounds hurt, so I go on.
“I wanted to meet you so badly. And I got so nervous.”
“What happens when you get nervous?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I want to know everything I can about you. I’ve been waiting and wondering for so long.”
I try to think of a good answer, one worthy of so much patience. But all I can think of is the truth.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess I run away.”
She locks eyes with me. A smile tugs at her mouth.
“I hope you aren’t nervous now,” she says.
* * *
Back outside, the fog is coming in and it feels less like summer.
“What now?” I ask her.
“I have to go to work.”
I pull out my phone. It’s almost seven.
“Your work starts now?”
“Yeah. Shelbie’s mom got me a job with this woman she knows. She’s divorced, has two kids, lives in a huge Pac Heights house. I go over after her kids finish dinner to help her do stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Organize her receipts, place online orders, that kind of thing. She does a lot of shopping.”
“I could walk with you?” I offer.
She smiles.
“I’d like that,” she says.
She takes off her scarf. It glitters in the lowering sun. When she puts it back on, she wraps it in this elaborate way that covers most of her hair and sticks out, messily, on one side. She looks elegant and fearless.
“This way,” she says, and leads us up a couple blocks before turning right on Fillmore.
“What are you going to do with all the paintings?” I ask her.
“I’ll hang them up, of course! I have this tiny studio with bare walls.”
“They aren’t even very good.”
“Oh, please.”
“No, really. I thought they were okay before. But seeing them on the table like that, and then listening to Audra and Brad—”
“Fuck Audra and Brad. I’ve never encountered such ridiculous humans.”
I laugh without thinking. Without meaning to. It comes out loud and sudden enough to make the people around us on the sidewalk glance in my direction. It feels so good, and Violet’s so joyful, and I find myself wishing I could keep this moment forever—never go home, never back to school, never have to think about Lehna or worry about the future—just stay on this posh street with this brilliant, ravishing girl.
“Here’s the thing about art, though,” she says. “This may be an unpopular opinion, but it’s what I came to believe after traveling for years with incredible artists who risk their lives to perform for audiences who don’t care about who they are seeing, only that they are seeing a good show. True art is about creation. What’s left after the creating is over is secondary. I checked your Instagram on my phone all the time when we were on the road. I saw the circus scenes and the stars. And yes, they were skillful, and the colors were amazing. But I loved them because they proved you were thinking of me.”
She stops mid-block and grabs my hand.
“I didn’t buy them because they were paintings, even though they are beautiful paintings,” she says. “I bought them because, like Lars with his spray paint, you’ve been writing me love letters.”
And then she is kissing me, right here on the sidewalk on a foggy summer night. Violet is kissing me, and everything is perfect. The kiss doesn’t end. We are not two girls on a polite first date, bestowing a customary goodnight peck.
No.
We are kissing like girls who have ached for each other for years. Who never even spoke but somehow exchanged I love yous anyway. Who pored over photographs and gazed into computer screens and dreamed, over and over again, of this moment.
A clap begins; a whoop follows. More cheers, more applause.
“Happy Pride!” a voice yells, and then more voices join in.
If it were up to us, we’d keep kissing forever. But eventually, we have to let go. The strangers are kind; they don’t stick around to make us self-conscious when it’s over.