The Canoe Club used to be a place I had only walked past, that my parents had only gone to on anniversaries, that Dartmouth students take their grandparents to when they’re in town. But now it feels like mine forever.
The sidewalk in front of it is mine forever.
The turn we took to Stuart’s house is mine.
His driveway is mine.
I’ll start from the beginning.
When I walked in, Stuart was wiping down the lacquered wooden bar with a white rag in front of rows and rows of bottles that stood in the interior of a giant, hollow canoe hung on the wall. He was wearing a black button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. When he noticed me, he came around the bar and gave me a hug. I remember how long he held me, and the way my fingertips felt on the muscles near his spine. I had never been this close to another human, in that way, at least. Never contemplated someone else’s bones.
I set my backpack on the leather seat next to me, one seat over from a middle-aged woman who was reading a book, drinking a pint of dark beer under the green-shaded hanging lights, the only other customer at the bar.
“How was your day?” Stuart asked.
“Fine,” I said, trying not to let my teeth chatter with nerves, or maybe it was just cold—why did every place have to keep the AC set to freezing? I watched his hands, twisting a glass under a streaming tap of water, and shaking it dry, adding it to a stack. “How was yours?”
“Just doing this,” he said, glancing at me, shaking dry another glass. “And trying to write.”
“Are you on a deadline?” I asked, catching his eyes again as he began to slice up one of a long row of limes and toss the wedges into plastic bins.
“Always,” he said, giving me a little smile, which filled me with relief for some reason. “What are you working on? Finals?”
“Almost,” I said. “Preparing.”
“Must be hard when the weather’s this nice,” he said.
“It doesn’t make much difference to me,” I said, pretending to play with my coaster.
“No more parties?”
“Ha! No. Ross’s was my first and last.” Remember, I told myself. You don’t have to be a robot. “Probably.”
Stuart finished, wiping his hands on his apron. “What about graduation? I went so crazy the night before mine, I almost overslept. I had to run to the stadium with nothing on under my robe but my boxers because I didn’t have time to get dressed!”
“Well.” I swallowed. “That’s definitely not an option—I have to wear more than underwear under my robe—”
We both blushed. Stuart looked at my sweatshirt.
“—because I’m giving a speech,” I finished.
“That’s right,” he said, shaking his head slowly.
“What?” I asked, looking at him.
“Nothing,” he said, and kept his black eyes on mine. “That’s so cool.”
Those words coming out of his mouth, out of his body under his clothes, he might as well have written them on my skin again.
The middle-aged woman cleared her throat. “Could I bother you for another, Stu?”
“Oh! Yes. Of course.” As he refilled the woman’s glass, Stuart said, “What a day for you to come in, Sammie, because this is also—well, this is Mariana Oliva.”
“Hello,” I said, and we shook hands across the seats. The woman had gray streaks in her long brown hair, and laugh lines on her copper-colored skin.
Stuart gestured toward her as she took a sip. “She’s one of my idols.”
“Oh, do you teach at Dartmouth?”
“No, I live in Mexico City,” Mariana said. “I’m just here to do a little reading later this week.”
Stuart kept looking back and forth between me and the writer. “Her book Under the Bridge is probably one of my favorites of all time.”
“Thank you,” Mariana said, lifting her glass to Stuart. “You’re kind.”
Stuart and Mariana got deep into a conversation about first-person narration versus third person, and I felt like what I guess sports fans must feel like when they watch their favorite team play, but the sport they played would change every few minutes, and the ball would change, and the arena.
Mariana and Stuart had something to say about everything under the sun.
On Shakespeare: “He was not one man. A group of sexually confused friends, trying to one up one another.”
On small dogs: “Little rats. Little neurotic rats.”
On the moon landing: “I believe it happened. Then again, I also believe in astrology, so take that with a grain of salt.”
On novels as a dying art: “Novels reflect a country’s consciousness. If we say they are dying, then we admit failure. It depends on if you’re ready to do that.”
“I’m not,” Stuart said.
“Me neither,” she said, and they shook hands.
They included me, and I spoke up when I could, but mostly I listened. “What do you think, Sammie?” Stuart would ask.
And eventually I just had to tell them that most of the time, I didn’t know. “I’m sort of a sponge,” I said, and could feel my mouth get dry. “I have a few strong opinions, but they might change. I just want to find out everything I can.”
Mariana reached over and took my hand. “That’s wise,” she said, and squeezed. “Very wise for a girl your age.”
I could sense Stuart smiling at me, and we looked at each other, his eyes running up and down my face.
Mariana continued, sipping her beer. “I would love to be your age again. I would have spent so much less time chasing men, so much more time absorbing.”
Stuart coughed a little, and I could feel my cheeks getting hot.
“Oh!” Mariana laughed, looking between us. “I’m sorry. No, love is a beautiful thing. Don’t ever avoid it. And I regret nothing. But my work is my love now.” She turned to me. “What do you want to study?”
“Economics and public policy. Then law school,” I said, and sat up straighter.
“Good. But don’t put yourself in a box. Study everything.”
“Like what?” I said, and I almost wanted to bring out my notepad, to write everything down.
Soon the three of us got into talking about politics, and then living wage conditions, which as you know I have a fair amount to say about, and when the three of us looked up, Stuart’s manager had his hand on Stuart’s back, telling him his shift was over.
Stuart counted his drawer and cleaned up the bar.
Mariana said good-bye to me with a kiss on both cheeks and told Stuart she’d see him at the reading.
Finally, he came out of the bathroom in just a T-shirt, his button-down shirt slung over his shoulder, wearing his sunglasses.
“Ready?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. My hands were twitchy and my stride was strong and my thoughts were chatty as we walked out into the setting sun, and that is how I hope I will remember Stuart forever, as he was last night, his skin almost orange in the sunset, the rays again reflected in his lenses.
I hope the rest of my life is like this, I remember thinking. Just hanging out with famous writers, having conversations about books and politics.
“I want to be a writer like Mariana,” he said after some silence.
The sun had gone behind the trees then. We paused in the middle of a tiny side street, his street.
“I bet you will be,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s not… whatever. I lose focus. I have trouble… finishing things. I just want to be a writer who writes all the time, who writes these full, rich, deep stories. Not little flashes in the pan.”
“You’ll get there,” I told him, and touched his arm in what I hoped was an encouraging way.
“I better,” he said. Up until this point, he’d been hopeful—longing, yes, but hopeful. Now he sounded tense.
“What do you mean?”
He held up his hands. “I gave up everything to do this. I didn’t go to college. I can live at my parents’ place now, sure, but not for long. I have to succeed. Like, what we were talking about last time we hung out. My own definition of success. I just want to finish.”
We kept walking until we reached an old cream-yellow house with white trim.
“Yeah.” I touched the place between my ribs, near my sternum. “It’s like, here. This constant pressure coming from inside, not outside.”
“I can sense that in you,” Stuart said. “You’ve got this drive. It’s so nice to be around.”
“It’s nice to be around you, too,” I said, quiet and soft. So unlike myself. Because it was the kind of thing I’d never said before. And that would have been enough for me, for him to say he liked my ambition.
“So, what are you doing right now?” Stuart glanced behind him at his parents’ house, folding his sunglasses in his hand. “You want to come inside?”
“I want to,” I said. I looked at my phone. My mom had texted me, asking if she should pick me up at the Canoe Club on her way home from work. “But I can’t. I’m sorry. I want to…”
“Of course,” he said, and got closer to me, looking at me with his black eyes kind of sleepy.
He put his hands on my waist, pressing through my sweatshirt. “Is this okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, but I’ve never…” I didn’t know how to phrase it. So I just said it. “I don’t really know how to do this.”
Stuart smiled. “Do you want to try?”
In answer, I lifted my lips to his, where they stayed, and his lips moved a little, soft at first, and then more solid, unlike any touch I’d ever had. I felt his tongue, so I opened my mouth a little. Humans have been doing this for centuries, I remember thinking, and then not thinking at all, because his mouth was warm and wet and tasted like limes.
Then it was like someone dumped warm water on me, slowly, and it made me want to hold him tighter. I brushed my hands down his arms, then up again, across his shoulders, to his face.
I wanted to keep going.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I let go. He let go.
“Bye,” I said, and tried to keep my mouth closed because my breaths were coming heavy.
“Bye,” he said, and closed his mouth, too, like he wanted to say something else but couldn’t.
I walked back to the Canoe Club, got in the car with Mom, and pretended like everything was normal.
But I can’t stop thinking about it. I didn’t know I wanted such a feeling until it happened. I just made out with Stuart Shah. I just made out with Stuart Shah.
I feel I am a different person than I was twelve hours ago, like my hard, cracked skin is falling off to a new layer of pink raw skin, like I am making the transformation. Like Mrs. Whatsit in A Wrinkle in Time, when she left Earth through different dimensions, for a purple-gray planet with two moons. She was a bundle of rags and boots on Earth, and on the new planet, she became a brilliant creature with a powerful body and wings, almost beyond description. I’m still wearing my clogs and sweatshirt, still smelling the night on it, but I look different. I am different.
I know how love works, Future Sam, I read about it in National Geographic. It’s a firing of neurons and a release of dopamine, what neuroscientists call “attachment chemicals,” and this combined with the evolutionary imperative to reproduce creates a conditioned pattern of behavior. You seek out your love object for the same reason you seek out another piece of candy: because you want those sweet feelings again.
But no one ever told me how easy it would be, how good it would be. I mean, they did, they tried, Shakespeare tried, the Beatles tried, but I still didn’t know it would be like this.