Matt takes me back to the state park, to the cliffside. We hike, we shout into the void of the air, we laugh, we huddle together in the chill winter air and sip cocoa from the thermoses Matt prepared. We’re goofy.
For the first time, being here, what surrounds us feels like an absence more than a fullness. We are breathless and elevated, but also disconnected, somehow, from the landscape. From each other.
I don’t miss ultra-drunk Matt, but I want more of the closeness we had last night, with him in my arms whispering to me about his heart. At the same time I want to fly free, like we do sometimes, to be epic and beautiful and pretend everything is perfect.
“You told me a little about your mom, and about starting the club with Janna.”
“I did?” he says.
It’s weird that he doesn’t remember. It’s like that night doesn’t even exist for anyone but me, like one of my dreams. Maybe it was all in my head.
“I’d like to know more about her.”
“I don’t like to talk about it,” he says, which doesn’t feel true to me. Sometimes, in the night, he whispers things. But in retrospect, I guess, it’s only when he’s been drinking. Thinking on that casts all our hammock nights in a different light, even the times when he seemed fine all along.
“You also said no one would ever accept us.”
“I don’t feel accepted,” he says.
“I don’t understand.” The image of him, always surrounded by adoring crowds, is all I can picture.
“I don’t want you to understand,” he says. “I want to protect you.”
“You don’t have to protect me.”
“Yeah,” he says. “You’re already so sad. I don’t want you to have to deal with anything more. Look at those birds.” He points. “What kind do you think they are? Their ancestors were dinosaurs, you know.”
“Then they must be pterodactyls,” I answer, which leads to a long riff on our favorite dinosaurs.
“We were talking for a minute,” I say, trying to bring it back to that tender place we touched briefly.
“No,” he says. “From now on today we only talk about things that fly. Hot-air balloons. Bats. Flying squirrels.”
“Airplanes?”
“Too obvious.”
“Starships?”
“Better.”
“But less real.”
“Says who? You’re the Star Trek fan among us.”
I enjoy who we are when we’re like this, goofy and free and shooting the shit. Truly. And yet, the craving in my bones hasn’t gone away. “Tell me something real.”
“Kermit, you’re bringing us down,” Matt answers. “You tell me something outlandish.”
The sky, the trees, the clouds, the air, the rocks, the grass, the fog of our breath. So many things around us scream their truth. How can we be embedded in the midst of nature and still somehow be floating?
“I don’t know if what we have is real if you have to be drunk to talk about stuff.”
“I only said that stuff because I was drunk,” he says. “That doesn’t make it real. There’s a difference.”
“So tell me something real.”
Matt looks out over the treetops. “I don’t want to get heavy right now,” he says. “I want to get out of my head, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
He pulls the tarp out of his backpack. “Then let’s be epic,” he says. “Let’s be beautiful.”
We cliff jump for the better part of an hour. And somewhere between the sky and the ground, I forget to care about anything.