Okay, so it isn’t the easiest thing in the world climbing up a bunch of wooden planks nailed into a tree with a girl in my other arm. I’m able to grab rungs with the hand under her legs, but mostly I’m pulling with my free hand since she’s holding on so tight with both of hers. But it is something I’d do a million times over again to see the look on her face once she’s sitting up there.
I sit down next to Rebecca and squeeze my legs under the balcony railing to dangle beside hers. “I remember this being bigger.”
“Feels exactly the same to me.” She takes a deep breath, smiling as she lets it out, and turns to give me a once-over. “You’re the one who’s gotten bigger.”
“Thirteen-year-old me would have had a hard time carrying you up here.”
She nods. “Thirteen-year-old me wouldn’t have needed you to.”
Shit. “Sorry, that was a stupid thing to say.”
She shakes her head. “It’s okay. I’m just...thank you for doing this for me. It feels really good.” She laughs a little. “All I’m missing is the rain.”
“And the petrichor?”
She turns a beaming smile my way. “You remember that?”
I duck my head. “Pretty memorable day.”
“Hmmm,” she says, her smile softening.
“You know that was my first kiss.”
She laughs a little. “Um, yeah.”
I angle my head at her, my mouth curled up on one side. “That obvious, huh?”
She bobs her head in a slow, exaggerated nod. “Oh yeah.”
“Like you’d kissed a ton of guys before me.” My smile falters. “Wait, had you? Who? And don’t say what’s-his-name from up the street, the kid with the faux hawk, because—”
More laughter bubbles up from her, infectious and giddy. “Are you kidding? No. Never. Uh-uh. No way.”
“Okay then who?”
Biting the side of her thumbnail, she angles her head at me.
“I knew I was your first kiss too.”
“You knew it, huh?”
“Well.” I shrug. “You did kiss me first.”
“Only because if I hadn’t you would have left again before we got the chance.” The tiniest hint of bitterness creeps into her voice and we both feel it.
“Yeah.” I nod. “Probably. Took me a few more years to realize waiting on the things I want isn’t a great life choice.”
She turns to look out at the night sky and then behind her into the tree house. “We still have one blank wall up here. You were going to come back with a sketch for us to paint, but you never did.”
I don’t bother looking back with her. I know every inch of that tree house and have drawn it more times than I’ll ever admit. “I tried,” I tell her. “I’m still trying.”
Rebecca wraps an arm around herself.
“Did I hurt you? Climbing up?”
She shakes her head, and I can see effort behind the motion when she lowers her arm. “I just never thought I’d be up here again.”
“Yeah, but you’re glad, right? Petrichor and everything?”
Her mouth pulls to the side, but it’s not really a smile. Slowly, her arm creeps back up around her middle. “I don’t get to be just glad about anything anymore. Am I happy sitting in my tree house again? Yes. Am I also thinking about the fact that I can’t swing my legs back and forth or jump up and trace the mural of the moon in the top corner behind me? Or that I can’t get rope burn from shimmying down the knot ladder in the back later?”
I glance at her legs, still beside my swaying ones. I hadn’t even realized I was moving them.
“It’s not just this, now,” she adds. “It’s all the time. Every new thing I figure out how to do again. It’s always chased by the thought that I shouldn’t have to adapt to anything, that before, everything was easy. I could just decide and move, do anything.” She glances over at me. “Kiss my friend just because I wanted to.”
“In case I didn’t make it clear the other day by the pool, you can still do that.” I was hoping that line would make her smile but it doesn’t.
Her hands move up to tangle in her thick curls. “I have to overthink everything, all the time. Like will my wheelchair fit through that door? Is there a step to get into that store? Does that restaurant have an accessible bathroom or do I have to not drink for hours? When was the last time I did a weight shift? Does my head hurt because I have a headache or is it autonomic dysreflexia starting to cause my body to overreact because I can’t feel something that’s hurting me?” She cuts off only to suck in a breath. “Only I can’t ever let myself think too much because this is my life, this wheelchair, this body, forever. And thinking about never moving my legs again, never walking or dancing or feeling or any of it ever again is a spiral, and it’s deep and dark and I end up falling forever.”
I swallow, unsure of what to say, to do.
“It’s just really hard sometimes, even when I want to be happy...” Her voice breaks and something inside me does too. “I don’t get to choose anymore.” A moment passes and with a sigh, she frees her hands from her hair. “I swear I never say stuff like this out loud.”
But she did with me. That has to mean something. “Why not?”
She tries to smile but doesn’t quite make it. “Because it makes people feel bad. It makes me feel bad.”
I turn that over in my mind. “Wanting things to be easier for someone isn’t the same as feeling bad.”
“Isn’t it?” Her eyes bore into mine. “You can’t change my life so how does it help you to know any of this?”
I stare back almost frowning. “It’s not about me. Knowing how you feel does help me though.” And before she can scoff at that, I shift my foot until it’s tucked behind hers so that it’s not just my leg swaying anymore, it’s ours together.
Her chin quivers just once before she can look away.
“Hey, hey.” My voice stays gentle, but she keeps her face hidden from me even as I lean out. “You can always tell me when it’s hard and I’ll understand.” There’s another long pause and I hope she hears me, really hears me. “’Cause I know, you know?” I shake my head. “I mean I can’t know what it’s like, but I know that feeling, not getting to choose? I know that.”
She dips her head, not facing me but not fully hiding away anymore either. “I know you do.”
I wait until her gaze slowly meets mine. “You were the only happy part of my childhood. Leaving each time? That was awful. I was scared that she’d start using again, scared the wrong guy would end up in our lives, scared that I’d never get to come back here or that if I did, you’d have moved on.”
Rebecca’s eyes have gone wide. This isn’t new information...so why is she looking at me like it is?
“You always acted like you were glad when she came back,” she says softly.
“Yeah, I was. ’Cause she always came back clean. But I never wanted to go with her. I wanted her to stay with me.” I look away. It feels cowardly but I can’t stare at her face when I add, “So I could stay with you.”
The air shifts around us, shrinks somehow, and my skin feels like it’s constricting too, forcing me to move and twitch. Did she really not know? Hadn’t I told her in every way I could?
She doesn’t say anything, but I feel her beside me, moving slowly, closer until her head drops onto my shoulder. “You could, you know. This time you could make your own choice.”
I focus on that slight weight, the feel and scent of her. I’ve been doing that in my mind for days now, imagining finding my mom and telling her that I’m not going back with her. Building a life of my own here and knowing that the next time I kiss Rebecca, neither of us has to let go.
But that fantasy future keeps colliding with the reality I’m still trapped in. Because I already know what happens when I make the wrong choices. I don’t even have to call up the memory of finding my mom on the floor, slumped over in a dried-up pile of sick with that needle still stuck in her skin. My mind serves it up on an endless damning loop.
And even if I could choose a different future, or find a way to change it, I’m not the only one who has to choose.
“Will you?” I say, brushing the hair back from her face.
She pulls away then and her gaze trails back to mine before turning soft, almost sad. “I want to.” Her lip quivers just once, drawing my gaze and with it the sudden awareness that we’re closer than we were in the pool the other day. I can feel her breath, warm and almost sweet on my skin. I’d barely have to move to kiss her. And this time I could wrap my arms around her and pull her against me, feel her chest rise and fall with mine. I could taste her and...
“Would you really choose to stay?”
Her breath catches as I move that fraction of an inch toward her. “Would you?” she asks.
“If I could choose any moment, it would be this one.” My fingers slide up her arm and revel in the tiny goose bumps I’m leaving in my wake. If I kiss her now, it has to be different. I have to find a way and she does too. My hand brushes over her bare shoulder to the underside of her jaw and I know I’m lost when she pulls her lower lip into her mouth before lifting her hand to trace my ring. I’m already tasting her in my mind when her words push harder than any shove.
“She came for you once when you weren’t here. And I made her leave without you.”