Wandering the forest around my own house, I have always secretly hoped to see him break through the trees like the deer, invisible and hidden until they are suddenly right in front of you, sleek and beautiful, staring straight into your eyes.
“You don’t have a shirt on,” I say. I am trying not to look. Not at his smooth, hard chest. Not at the chiseled bone and muscle under the glowing sun-browned skin of his shoulders. I am trying not to imagine licking the sweat out of the well of his collarbone.
“That never bothered you before.”
I don’t know what this is. I don’t know if he’s trying to make a joke. I can’t tell if the movement in his lips is an attempt at a smile, or if it’s irritation. I don’t know what I’m doing here, why I agreed to do this. And where the hell is Ivy?
“Wait,” I say. “I have to go get something from my car.”
“Your car?”
“Something for the picnic. Here,” I say, pushing the picnic basket toward him with my foot.
“Wait,” he says. “I don’t understand.” I feel his eyes on my back as I run away.
I find my way through an old doorway, into a black room that smells of soil and secrets. I stand there trying to catch my breath, in the shadowed corner, where no one can find me. This is what caves feel like. This is where bats live. This is where dark things are born. It is where things go to die.
When I emerge, it feels like a new world. I don’t know how long I was in there, but now the trees are rustling with their evening conversations, the sky has darkened, and I can hear the waves rolling the rocks around on the other side of the trees. The breeze off the water smells of seaweed.
Somehow I know to peek around the corner before making my presence known. Somehow I know I’m not welcome. I am a watcher now. A witness. I have done my job. Ivy has found her way out of the shadows.
She stands before him, cocktail party ready, while he’s in nothing but running shorts. The breeze changes direction and I catch a whiff of his sweat and musk, and for a moment I think I know how animals feel.
The moon is half-full. Ivy is half-lit.
They are electricity, frozen. They are energy, bottled up, ready to explode.
“You invited my girlfriend to your party,” he says. I can’t decipher the meaning of his voice. Anger and passion have the same tone.
“I thought you would come.”
“This isn’t how to do this.”
“How am I supposed to do this? I tried emailing, I tried calling, but you changed your address and number. God, I sound like I’m crazy.”
This is what makes him step toward her. This is what softens him. “You’re not crazy.” He lifts her chin gently with his hand so her eyes meet his. I can almost feel the warmth of his touch on my own face. I can almost see his eyes staring into mine, seeing all the things no one else ever does. We are the only two people in the world, and this is our cloud, high above it all, and I am safe, and nothing can touch us here.
I don’t know why, but I start crying. Something about this tenderness releases me.
“I feel crazy,” Ivy says. “You’re the only one who’s ever made me feel sane.” For some reason, I think of Daddy, of being hunched over in the garden with him, weeding. Those are the moments he was always most likely to go off about his Buddhist stuff, and I would never really listen to his words, but the sound of his voice would soothe me. I remember his words now, something about how it’s not people and experiences that create pleasure and suffering, it’s our responses to them. No one can make us feel anything.
I hear bats. I hear the sounds the night makes. I hear Daddy’s voice telling us “All beings are responsible for their own actions.”
But what about feelings? What are we supposed to do about feelings? Who’s responsible for those?
“I see you,” Ash says.
“Yes,” Ivy says, breathless.
“No one else does,” Ash says.
“You’re the only one.”
Ivy steps forward, putting her face only inches from Ash’s, and I am struck by how brave she is. Her want is brave because it makes her vulnerable. It gives him the power to hurt her, but she does it anyway.
She has put herself in front of an audience for most of her life, has faced ridicule and gossip since she was a little kid, and she keeps doing it, keeps putting herself out there, over and over again, and the world keeps beating her up. Her want, her need, bare and naked, for all the world to see.
“How are we supposed to do this?” she says softly. The trees rustle with her breath. “We’re doing this, right? I’m here now. Ash, tell me we’re doing this.”
And then I can’t watch any more. My skin feels wrong and the electricity is catching. I am behind a stone wall but I am also somewhere between them, sandwiched between his sweaty chest and the thin layer of expensive fabric covering hers. I am somewhere between their lips, no longer talking, breathing each other in. They are not kissing, not yet, but it is only a matter of time. And then they will not need me. Then I will be irrelevant.
I close my eyes and find my way back into the cave. It is a place for underground creatures that don’t need light. The silence is heavy with fear and disappointment. I wait. I know Ivy is coming.
Her shadow blocks the pale light coming in from the doorway and for a moment there is total darkness, and I do not feel the floor, and I do not feel my skin, and I am floating in space between here and not here, and now the only thing that’s real is Ivy’s body against mine, pushing me into the wall. And I’m suspended in the split second during which I return to my body, and a memory’s created in this place where time sits still: a scene like in a show, soft music playing, a game played in middle school, minutes spent in a dark closet on a dare, with a boy who was one hundred percent gay. We were supposed to be kissing, or whatever almost-teenagers are supposed to do together in dark closets, but instead we talked about our pets. He had a dog named Peanut and I had a cat named Gotami, and it was safe and warm and the definition of innocence, and I want to go back there, I want to live there forever, but that place does not exist, and I can never, ever go there again.
Cold, wet stone with mysterious slimes and textures. Ivy’s hands grabbing my shoulders. Her pelvis pressed against mine, her hot breath against my lips. I can’t even hear what she’s saying. Something about Ash. Something about this being a disaster. I am consumed by the darkness erasing the distance between our bodies. She is shaking me. She wants to make me feel what she feels. My mouth is full of the almost taste of her.
“Shhhhh,” I say. It is white noise. It is the sound babies hear in the womb.
I have power in this darkness. In here, Ivy needs me.