HARVEST
“YOU KNOW HOW I’M LEFT-HANDED?” I ask Dani as we sit next to each other in her car outside my building. We made a deal—I would stay and work with her until the library closed, and she would give me a ride home every day.
Weeks have passed since unhomecoming, and each day we hug good-bye, letting it linger a few extra seconds, and then I stand on the top step and wave as I watch her leave, feeling like some vital part of me is slipping away. And then my whole life is stuck on pause, unable to move forward until I see her again.
Maybe it’s the deeper chill of the air today, something about all the fallen leaves staining the sidewalk with their last shreds of pigment, the bare branches trembling in the wind, that makes everything feel so urgent. These are our last moments together before Thanksgiving break, and if I have to wait five more days to tell her, I’m fairly certain I’ll lose my nerve, fairly certain something inside of me will die.
Or maybe it’s just because I need something to make sense, need something to feel good. Fall is supposed to be the harvest. A time to reap the fruits of the seeds we’ve sown. Which means I need to say something. I need to say it now, before my heart ruptures, before one more minute passes and the ripeness that is now turns to decay.
“Mm-hmm,” she hums, lowering the volume on the radio.
“Well, when I was little, I tried to teach myself to write with my right hand instead, because I wanted to do it the right way, you know. I didn’t want to be different. But it was so hard. Too hard. Impossible, actually. So then finally I broke down and accepted it: I’m left-handed.”
“Yeah,” she says, grinning. “I can totally picture it.”
“Well. Being with you is like that.”
She looks at me uncertainly and then asks, her voice soft, “Like what?”
“Like I’ve been living my whole life in this right-handed world, where everything felt slightly off, everything a little too difficult, out of sync in this way I could never really explain or understand.”
“Okay,” she says.
“And now—when I’m with you, I mean—everything feels right, easier. Like I’ve always been looking to the next thing, waiting to finally get to that place where I’m supposed to be, but when I’m with you, I feel like I’m already there. I’ve never had that before.” I dare myself to look up at her. “Do you—do you know what I’m talking about?”
I wanted her to know: I’m in. But now that it’s all out of my mouth, this interminable silence stretching out between us, all I want is to rewind and tell her “Happy Thanksgiving” and “See you Monday” and do our cute but counterfeit hug number, then get out of the car and wave to her from the top step like every other day. I grab on to the door handle, and as I’m about to make my escape—
“I think I do . . . ,” she begins, the corners of her mouth almost curving upward, but not quite. “But I just made my peace with the fact that we were only going to be friends.”
My mouth suddenly goes dry as a desert. I lick my lips. “Oh,” I manage. “Okay.” I’m about to sprint from the car when I feel her taking my left hand in her right, our fingers weaving together, and God, it’s like my hands never knew what they were made of, what they were made for, until now.
“It’s just that sometimes I get this strong Back off vibe from you, so I’ve been trying—not very successfully—to forget about it.”
“I don’t want you to forget about it,” I admit to her, and to myself, out loud, at last.
She doesn’t say anything. Instead she leans in slowly, closes her eyes, and presses her lips against mine. Her fingertips against my face, my cheek, send a trail of sparks along my skin. Our mouths fit together effortlessly, like our hands, missing puzzle pieces.
When we finally pull apart—forced only by the need to breathe—I look at her and it’s like I’ve known her my whole life, but then again, in this other way it’s like I’m looking at her for the first time. Maybe it’s because of the way she’s looking at me. Like I’m someone different than I was only minutes earlier.
I realize I’m right in the middle of one of those earth-shattering, life-altering, mind-melding, world-rocking moments you hear about that you think can’t possibly be real. I try to memorize it all—her face, the way her lips are parted, the sound of the wind, a siren faintly wailing somewhere blocks away, footsteps crunching through the leaves on the sidewalk—these things are the beginning of my life. My real life. Finally, starting now.
I don’t know how I make myself get out of the car, how I force myself to say good-bye. She waits until I’m inside before she pulls away. When I close the front door behind me, I stand there staring at the rows of mailboxes that line the entryway. I touch my lips. They’re pulsing. They’re alive. And so am I, for maybe the first time in my life.