Nina LaCour - We Are Okay

He seemed so worried, so nervous. All of my relief slipped away, and concern replaced it.

“Okay, Gramps,” I said. “Whatever it is, I’m glad that you have her.”

He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and carefully unfolded it. He patted his forehead, his upper lip. I had never seen him so worked up about anything.

“Really,” I said. “Don’t worry about what I think. I just want you to be happy.”

“Sailor,” he said. “If I didn’t have her, I would be lost.”

I wasn’t enough of a companion. I wasn’t any kind of anchor. I felt the blow of it but I swallowed the hurt and said, “I’m sure she feels the same for you.”

He studied my face. It felt like he was looking through me to something else. He nodded, slowly.

“It’s true. Maybe even more so,” he said. “I need her and she needs me. Boy, does she need me.”

Maybe he was going to say more, but the doorbell rang, the card game was about to begin, so I got up and went down to open the gate. Usually I would clear the kitchen when they came, but I was afraid that something was wrong with Gramps. I wanted to know that he was back to himself. I finished drying the dishes on the rack as they poured their first drinks and started to play. Then I left for a while but couldn’t stop worrying, so I went back to make myself tea.

As the water heated up, I saw Jones take Gramps’s bottle, pour a little more into his glass.

Gramps eyed the glass, then eyed Jones.

“What’s that for?”

“You were empty.”

Jones glanced at the other two. Freeman was shuffling more times than necessary, but Bo met Jones’s eyes.

“No need to hurry me up,” Gramps said. “I’m getting there fine on my own.” His voice was low, almost a growl.

Bo shook his head. Something was a shame, but I didn’t know what.

Jones cleared his throat. He swallowed.

“It’s just a drink, Delaney,” he finally said.

Gramps looked up at Jones, his eyes fierce, for the entire time that Freeman dealt the cards. The other guys picked up their hands, putting what they received in order, but Gramps just stared, daring Jones to look back.

I didn’t know what was happening, but I wanted it to end.

“Gramps?” I said.

He jerked toward me as though he’d forgotten I was there.

“I was wondering . . . ,” I said, not knowing where my sentence would end. “Maybe . . . Will you drive me to school tomorrow? I might feel like sleeping in.”

“Sure, Sailor,” he said.

He turned back to the table. He picked up his cards. Everyone was quiet, no heckling, not a single joke.

“I’ll bet five,” Gramps said.

Jones folded.

I went back into my room with the tea and tried to forget.

Mabel and I texted for hours. We didn’t make plans to sneak out and meet. We didn’t even talk. Hearing the other’s voice would have been bright and dangerous, so instead we tapped out messages.

What were we thinking?

I don’t know.

Did you like it?

Yes.

Me too.

We texted about a song we liked and some random YouTube videos, about a poem we read in English that day, and what we would do if we were faced with the end of the world. We texted about Mabel’s uncle and his husband, who lived on three acres in New Mexico, and how we would make our way there, build a tepee, and dig a well and grow our food and make the most of what time we had left.

The end of the world never sounded so good.

I know!

I kind of want it to happen. Is that bad?

We could do all that stuff even without the apocalypse.

Good point.

So it’s a plan?

Yes.

It was almost two a.m. by the time we said good night. I smiled into my pillow, closed my eyes, wished for the feeling to last. I saw our futures unfolding, all pink clouds and cacti and bright sun and forever.

And then I got up and went to the kitchen for water. I filled the glass and gulped it down, then headed toward the bathroom. The door to Gramps’s room was ajar. Light was shining through the narrow space. I walked softly past it and then I heard something rustle and turned back. Gramps was at his desk, his brass lamp burning, his pen moving furiously across his paper. I was quiet, but I could tell—I could have called his name and he wouldn’t have looked up. I could have banged the pots and pans together.

He was writing his love letters , I told myself, but it didn’t look like love.

He finished a page and cast it aside, started a next one. He was hunched forward and furious. I turned toward the bathroom and locked the door behind me.

He was only writing love letters, I thought.

Only love letters. Love letters.

IN THE STILLNESSof this unfamiliar living room, another memory surfaces.

A couple nights after graduation, we all met on Ocean Beach. Everyone was acting wild, like it was the end of everything. Like we’d never see one another again, and maybe, in some cases, that was true.

I found Mabel and joined her on a blanket just in time to hear the punch line of a joke I already knew. I smiled while everybody laughed, and she looked so beautiful in the bonfire glow.

We all looked so beautiful.

I could say the night felt magical, but that would be embellishment. That would be romanticization. What it actually felt like was life. We weren’t thinking of what would happen next. No one talked about the way the summer was supposed to unfold or the places we’d find ourselves in the fall. It was as if we had made a pact to be in the moment, or like being in the moment was the only way to be. Telling jokes, telling secrets. Ben had his guitar and for a while he played and we just listened as the fire sparked and the waves crashed and subsided. I felt something on my hand. Mabel’s finger, tracing my knuckles. She slipped her thumb under my palm. I could have kissed her, but I didn’t.

Now, her hand on mine after so long apart, here in Tommy’s house and nowhere close to sleep, I wonder what might have changed if I had. If one of us had made the fact of us common knowledge, we would have become something to be discussed and decided upon. Maybe there would have been no Jacob. Maybe her photograph would be on my bulletin board. Maybe we wouldn’t be here now, and I would be in California in her parents’ orange-walled living room, sipping hot chocolate by the Christmas tree.

But probably not. Because even though it was only a couple months later that Gramps left me, when I tried to call back that night it no longer felt like life.

When I think of all of us then, I see how we were in danger. Not because of the drinking or the sex or the hour of the night. But because we were so innocent and we didn’t even know it. There’s no way of getting it back. The confidence. The easy laughter. The sensation of having left home only for a little while. Of having a home to return to.

We were innocent enough to think that our lives were what we thought they were, that if we pieced all of the facts about ourselves together they’d form an image that made sense—that looked like us when we looked in the mirror, that looked like our living rooms and our kitchens and the people who raised us—instead of revealing all the things we didn’t know.

Mabel lets go of my hand and kicks back the covers. She sits up, so I do the same.

“I guess I’m not ready to fall asleep yet,” she says.