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She looks at me. “But you don’t believe that, do you? You wouldn’t have called me if you believed that.”
She looks down at our hands.
“This is weird,” she says.
“What?”
She squeezes once, then pulls her hand away. “This.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not like the other day. I mean, it’s a different hand. You’re different.”
“But I’m not.”
“You can’t say that. Yes, you’re the same person inside. But the outside matters, too.”
“You look the same, no matter what eyes I’m seeing you through. I feel the same.”
It’s true, but it doesn’t really address what she’s saying.
“You never get involved in the people’s lives? The ones you’re inhabiting.”
I shake my head.
“You try to leave the lives the way you found them.”
“Yeah.”
“But what about Justin? What made that so different?”
“You,” I say.
Just one word, and she finally understands. Just one word, and the door to the enormity is finally unlocked.
“That makes no sense,” she says.
And the only way to show her how it makes sense, the only way to make the enormity real, is for me to lean over and kiss her. Like last time, but not at all like last time. Not our first kiss, but also our first kiss. My lips feel different against hers, our bodies fit differently. And there is also something else that surrounds us, the black cloud as well as the enormity. I am not kissing her because I want to, and I am not kissing her because I need to—I am kissing her for a reason that transcends want and need, that feels elemental to our existence, a molecular component on which our universe will be built. It is not our first kiss, but it’s the first kiss where she knows me, and that makes it more of a first kiss than the first kiss ever was.
I find myself wishing that Kelsea could feel this, too. Maybe she does. It’s not enough. It’s not a solution. But it does lessen the weight for a moment.
Rhiannon is not smiling when we pull away from each other. There is none of the giddiness of the earlier kiss.
“This is definitely weird,” she says.
“Why?”
“Because you’re a girl? Because I still have a boyfriend? Because we’re talking about someone else’s suicide?”
“In your heart, does any of that matter?” In my heart, it doesn’t.
“Yes. It does.”
“Which part?”
“All of it. When I kiss you, I’m not actually kissing you, you know. You’re inside there somewhere. But I’m kissing the outside part. And right now, although I can feel you underneath, all I’m getting is the sadness. I’m kissing her, and I want to cry.”
“That’s not what I want,” I tell her.
