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I stop off at a Target on the way back to Amelia. Zara knows all her favorite foods, and most of them are of the snack variety.
I stock up, and before I go back into the school to find her, I arrange them on the dashboard, spelling her name. It is, I believe, what Zara would want me to do.
I am not fair. I wanted Rhiannon to see me there. Even as I looked away, I wanted her to come right over and treat me just like Amelia would treat Zara after spending three days apart.
I know it’s never going to happen. And that knowledge is a flash of light I can’t quite see through.
Amelia is delighted by the dashboard display, and insists on taking me to dinner. I call home and tell my mother, who doesn’t seem to mind.
I can sense that Amelia realizes I’m only half here, but she’s going to let me be half elsewhere, because that’s where I need to be. Over dinner, she fills the silence with tales from her day, some real and some completely imaginary. She makes me guess which is which.
We’ve only been together for seven months. Still, considering the number of memories Zara’s collected, it feels like a long time.
This is what I want, I think.
And then I can’t help it. I add, This is what I can’t have.
“Can I ask you something?” I say to Amelia.
“Sure. What?”
“If I woke up in a different body every day—if you never knew what I was going to look like tomorrow—would you still love me?”
She doesn’t miss a beat, or even act like the question is strange. “Even if you were green and had a beard and a male appendage between your legs. Even if your eyebrows were orange and you had a mole covering your entire cheek and a nose that poked me in the eye every time I kissed you. Even if you weighed seven hundred pounds and had hair the size of a Doberman under your arms. Even then, I would love you.”
“Likewise,” I tell her.
It’s so easy to say, because it never has to be true.
Before we say goodbye, she kisses me with everything she has. And I try to kiss her back with everything I want.
This is the nice note, I can’t help thinking.
But just like a sound, as soon as the note hits the air, it begins to fade.
When I walk inside, Zara’s mother says to her, “You know, you can invite Amelia in.”
I tell her I know. Then I rush to my room, because it’s too much. So much happiness can only make me sad. I close the door and begin to sob. Rhiannon’s right. I know it. I can never have these things.
I don’t even check my email. Either way, I don’t want to know.
Amelia calls to say good night. I have to let it go to voicemail, have to compose myself into the most like Zara I can be, before I answer.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her when I call her back. “I was talking to Mom. She says you need to come by more often.”
“Is she referring to the bedroom window or the front door?”
“The front door.”
“Well, it looks like a little bird called progress is now sitting on our shoulder.”
I yawn, then apologize for it.
“No need to say you’re sorry, sleepyhead. Dream a little dream of me, okay?”
“I will.”
“I love you,” she says.
