Our legs dangle over the separate world of plants and bugs and earth and birds below us. It looks to me less like nothingness, and more like otherness. Down-belowness. A mystery, not a void.
We’re bundled up, sipping our hot cocoa. The stillness is something powerful. We link our arms because we can’t hold hands in these mittens. I love this place because Matt brings me here, but I doubt I’ll ever love it the way he does.
“You wanted to know more about my mom?” he says. “She’s the one who showed me this place.” Matt’s hot cocoa–plus kicks in and the switch flips.
“I figured. She sounds really cool.”
“I never thought of it that way, but yeah. I see it now.” He sips his cocoa and the next breath he releases fogs extra hard from the warmth.
“My mom knew I was gay,” he says. “She just said ‘I know, honey. I love you.’”
“You’re lucky. I could never tell my mom about us.”
“Well, she was dying and all. It wasn’t in her interest to get upset about it.”
“Stop,” I say. “You don’t really think of it like that, right?”
He shrugs. Throws a pebble into the abyss and watches it fall. “She stopped caring about real-world things.”
“Dying puts things into perspective, or something?”
“My mom used to say, ‘Someday the world will know who you are and they’ll love you.’ I think that’s why I came out, to try to hold on to that piece of her, that promised me things would be okay.”
“Even though it’s supposed to be not that big a deal in the world right now, there’s still no way I can tell my parents,” I say. “My sister was going to help me.”
He glances at me. “It’s cool that she knew.”
I nod.
“That’s huge, really.”
“She’s cool about it. At least, she used to be?”
“Used to be?” he echoes.
But I can’t tell him all about the dreams, or how real they feel. “She can’t be cool now that she’s dead, right?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “At least they both died knowing.” He throws another pebble, watches it fall.
I nod. The losses are so very different and yet so much the same. “We’ll always have that.” I say it more for his benefit than mine, but it’s true. It’s something to hold on to.
“Can we make out now?” he says.
“Not at the edge.”
He cups a hand behind my neck. “Live a little.”
The way he kisses is as good as a tumble. There are still rocks beneath my butt, and grass in my clenched fist, but sure enough I am falling.