CHAPTER 37

Ruth

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THERE’S NOWHERE I’D RATHER be than in this tent with Josh. It’s our second night camping with his family in a place called Anza Borrego Springs. Usually the wildflowers come in March, but there’s a late July bloom of sand verbena and desert sunflowers. The fields are blanketed with purple and yellow. I can smell them through the open mesh windows. It’s already hot, even though the grey light of dawn has just started to brighten with sunrise.

When summer is over I’m starting college. I’m enrolled in Cal State Long Beach. They have a great film program. I’ve got an off-campus apartment lined up, pre-paid with scholarships and student loans. It’s all official. I want to be excited. I’ve been looking forward to college since junior high, but all my dreams and plans wither in the face of teenage love. I don’t want to go.

I haven’t said anything. Neither has he. We’ve both been pretending the end isn’t coming, because he’s enrolled in an east coast college in Boston. There’s a reason high school sweethearts is a term that everyone knows. Nobody forgets their first love, no matter how irrational it is to call it love, it’s what it feels like, as undeniable and unforgettable as the first brush of color on the stark white pages of life.

He’s still asleep next to me, the front of his body warm against my back. I have yet to move from under the weight of his arm resting on my hip. I used to practice this feeling, laying a rolled blanket over my side. The real thing is better.

We’ve unzipped and re-zipped our sleeping bags to make it one single bed. Thankfully his parents have their own tent, which they’ve placed some distance away, so I’m hoping all they hear is the hum of our conversations at night.

As he stirs, fighting with the heat for a few more minutes of sleep, I try to think why I like him, why my heart keeps screaming at me that it’s love. When I met him, I don’t remember finding him what others would consider especially attractive, but his features have become affectionately familiar to me. His frizzy curls, which seemed oddly paired with his Asian eyes, have become cute, the way tousled morning hair can be endearing. Even his slightly pudgy belly is comfortable and adorable to me under cotton pajama shirts and sweatpants.

But his looks are, honestly, the last thing on my list of reasons I think I love him.

He sees me. I’ve never been noticed by a boy before. He’s the first to patiently wait while I shed my cocoon of shyness, and he actually enjoys the person I am beneath it all. I’m comfortable around him, as comfortable as I am when I’m alone. There’s no effort, no anxiety. That’s what truly makes me love him. That I can be me, and he likes me just the way I am. What if I never find that again? How can I let that go?

“Hey,” he says, stretching his arms above his head. His eyes squint into tight wrinkles as he yawns.

“I don’t want to go,” I say, sitting up in our sleeping bag.

He rolls to the side and slides his arms around my waist, kissing the bare skin of my hip.

“You’re the only girl in Southern California who wants to keep camping.”

I laugh, because that’s probably true. I’m not like most girls. I pick flip-flops over heels, pajamas over the club scene. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

I sigh. “I mean, away, to Long Beach.”

He breathes warm against my thigh, and I feel lost in his silence.

“Me either,” he says.

I sit there for a while, staring at the green canvas of our tent until he pulls me back to my pillow. He puts his face close to mine, so our cheeks are touching. Is it just the feel of first love or is this it, this so-close feeling that makes it hard to breathe without each other?

“What if we didn’t go?” he says. “We could just tell our parents to get screwed. Mine will kick me out, but I can get a job. We can get a place together.”

I shake my head, just enough that he can feel my answer against his cheek.

“No. You need to go to school. I don’t want them to hate me.”

“So come with me,” he says, propping up on his elbow.

It’s not a solution, so I shrug it off. “I can’t. Everything is set up for Long Beach.”

“Well, it’s either I go with you or you go with me. Or, I guess we just talk on the phone a lot.”

I don’t like any of his options, but if I have to choose the most feasible, Boston doesn’t sound half bad. My mom has always said follow your dreams, follow your heart. What if my heart is moving to Boston? She’ll understand. It would mean giving up scholarships and grant money, but what good will any of that do me if I’m miserable?

So I decide in that wildflower moment in the middle of Anza Borrego to let go of my future and make a new one.

“I’ll come with you,” I say, my lips a tight-lipped smile afraid to let the joy out.

“What about your—”

“I don’t care,” I interrupt.

His brow is a pinched in disbelief, but he’s smiling. “Okay.”

“Okay.” I seal our decision with the word, before panic quickly levels the little city of excitement I’ve been building in my head. “Unless you don’t want me to.”

“No. I do. I’ve been going crazy over it.”

“So we’re doing this?”

“We’re doing this.” He scoops my face up in his large musician hands and kisses me.

I pull away, thinking of cracks in our plan. “Aren’t you staying in the dorms? I can’t stay there.”

“We’ll find a place. We’re adults, right? They’re sending us into the real world. Who says we can’t figure it out together?”

I return to the kiss with deeper breaths, but the seal of our mouths keeps fighting with my smiling lips. He gives up trying to kiss me sweetly and resorts to quick happy pecks from cheek to ear to forehead, until I release the rush of laughter I’ve been holding inside.

We love each other, layers deeper than teenage obsession.

I never want to leave this tent, this tiny room where I gave into to the youthful foolishness I’ve been warned about. That reckless love that old married people tsk-tsk at because “we’re too young to know anything about life and happiness and true passion”.

But then what is this feeling? What is this, if not the bud of our future opening in the desert sun?