Why not orchestrate a surprise reunion of lovers at an old army fort? What could be more romantic?
I think of them on some Brazilian island that will soon be erased under rising sea levels, but for now is still a perfect place with umbrella drinks, a cool ocean breeze, pristine soft sand, and a horizon full of blue sky and smooth water. And now they’ll meet here, at these moss-covered ruins slowly being reclaimed by the earth, at dusk, after the sun has already slipped behind the mountains, when all the shadows across pockmarked concrete walls are even more sharp, the angles more weird, with all the tufts of grass and tiny ferns growing out of crumbling holes, the canopy of trees blocking the sky, the stairs covered with pine needles, the bats starting to stretch their wings and get ready for the night, the old gun turrets full of rusty, mysterious metal that was too heavy to remove, the cigarette butts and graffiti all over the place, the occasional used condom or hypodermic needle buried in a corner.
What is wrong with me?
During the day, people come here for picnics. When we were kids, Ash and I would climb all over it, like a big concrete maze full of dark rooms with tiny, too-high windows, while Papa rattled off some facts about U.S. Army Coastal Artillery Corps at the turn of the twentieth century and top secret World War II operations. I tried to imagine soldiers in here but I couldn’t. The only thing I could imagine this place was good for was hide-and-seek with my best friend.
But now this. Waiting. With an actual picnic basket packed by Daddy, full of crackers and salami and fancy cheeses and fruit, and a handwritten note from Papa to give to Ash’s parents. “We’d love to see you both soon. Hope all is well!” it said. I crumpled up the note and threw it in the recycling.
I’m sitting on some kind of big metal stand. Maybe there used to be a cannon here. But now there’s just me.
“Fern?” says a voice in the shadows, and I jump. Ivy emerges from behind a corner, overdressed in a black sleeveless minidress. Her legs are long and flawless, and she makes even an old army fort seem glamourous. “What is this place?” She climbs crumbling stairs to meet me. “It looks like the set of a horror movie.”
I get the impression that under her perfect butterscotch skin, all her muscles and tendons are tying themselves in knots. “Do you have anything in there to take the edge off?” she says, eyeing the picnic basket.
“My parents don’t usually drink,” I say. “There’s nothing in the house.”
She looks confused. She does not live in a world where parents don’t keep alcohol in the house.
I don’t say, “Aren’t you supposed to be sober?”
“I was just kidding,” she says, her eyes darting around the structure, as if she might find a bottle hidden here.
Ivy sits down next to me, smooths her dress, pulls her phone out of her purse, and looks at it. “So he’s supposed to be here in, what? Fifteen minutes? Is he usually on time?” He’s supposed to be her soul mate, but she’s asking me if he’s the kind of person who’s usually on time.
“Yeah, I think so. Are you ready?”
She gets up and starts pacing. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands. I want to jump up and wrap my arms around her and hold her still. “Are you sure he’s coming? He confirmed it? It wasn’t like one of those ‘maybe I’ll stop by’ kind of things?”
“Yes, he’s coming.”
She moves around our strange little stage, touches the moss on the waist-high half-walls that surround us on three sides, inspects the metal bars that jut out in various places for no apparent reason, walks down a small flight of steps and peers into a dank and windowless pitch-black room, then comes back up and looks over the top of the wall, where you can barely make out a view of the water through trees that have grown tall and thick since this place was meant to be a lookout.
“Are you hungry?” I ask.
“I couldn’t possibly eat,” she says. But she walks over to me and opens the picnic basket anyway. Inside are Daddy’s little glass containers in their tidy arrangement, the linen napkins and bamboo napkin rings, the compostable cutlery and plates.
“This looks like something a sane person put together.”
“Um, thanks?”
“Do you think your family would adopt me?”
She looks at me and the raw hope on her face betrays the joke she was trying to make, and something about it strikes me as incredibly sad.
She takes a few steps back and I feel her inhale, feel my skin pull toward her, feel every molecule in my body want to be consumed by her, absorbed into her bloodstream.
Then footsteps on dried leaves. Ash’s low voice from behind a corner: “Hello?”
Wings flutter inside my chest. I close my eyes and when I open them, Ivy’s gone.
It’s just me, sitting here, on this broken old turret, facing Ash as he emerges from the shadows, shirtless and dripping with sweat.
I feel the weight of years of wanting. I feel all the miles between us. I feel Tami’s presence like some parasite inside him. And what am I? A memory? Someone he used to know that he will forget, someone fading away even as I sit here right in front of his eyes?
I stand up. I don’t know what to do with my hands. Everything inside my skin is gnarled and kinked.
“Ash,” I say. “It’s been a long time.”
“It’s good to see you,” he says, his voice so low, I can feel the vibrations of it in my chest, those same piercing dark eyes behind thick black lashes. He is the boy I imagined. He is the boy I’ve been following online while he’s been gone, living a life that doesn’t include me, growing into himself, growing into the world’s expectations.
He takes a tentative step forward. His lip twitches like he wants to smile but doesn’t remember how, or like he hasn’t decided if he wants to yet. He looks me in the eye, then looks away, then looks me in the eye again. I can’t tell if he’s genuinely nervous, or if this is all an act—the adorably bashful boy—calculated, showing me what he thinks I want to see.
We are out of practice. We have forgotten how to be friends.
We are just friends. We have only ever been just friends.
“What happened to you?” I say, and I’m not quite sure what I’m asking.
“I ran here.”
“Why?”
“I felt like it.”
Really? Do human beings really do these kinds of things? Just go through the world half-naked, expecting to stay safe?
Ash has been known to run through the trails across the island and then emerge sweat-drenched and blinking at various spots along the shore, where he’ll order a car on his phone to pick him up whenever he feels done. How strange to live like that, with no return plan, to trust your place in the world so completely that you know someone will be there to help you whenever you get too tired to make it home on your own.