Catch the Light, page 28
I step into the hall and pull open the front door, and the swoosh of cold air from outside makes me shiver.
“Hi,” Jesse says.
“Hi,” I say.
He steps inside and takes off his beanie, ruffling his hand over his hair. He looks nervous.
“Can we talk?” he asks.
I try to answer, but I feel like my jaw is glued shut. All I can do is swallow and nod.
Suddenly, another pair of headlights swoops over the wall.
“Fuck!” Bea yelps. “Mom.” And she runs into the hallway.
Bea looks at Jesse and whispers, “Hide.”
And I pull him by the hand, into the closet under the stairs.
I hear Mom burst into the kitchen. “I decided not to go,” she says, and beside me, Jesse’s whole body tenses.
“What?” Hannah asks, her voice a little shrill.
“Just kidding,” Mom says, walking right past the closet as she heads for the stairs. “Forgot my wallet.”
Relief comes in a rush, and right on its heels is the realization that I’m in a dark closet with Jesse Keller. It’s pitch black and I can hear his breathing and feel the cold canvas of his jacket underneath my fingers. I want to pull him to me, to bury my face in his coat, to breathe and breathe and breathe him in. But I hold myself awkwardly apart. Because if I get any closer I know I won’t survive him telling me it’s over again.
And then, suddenly, he’s leaning his forehead down onto mine.
“Marigold,” he whispers.
I feel like I can’t breathe.
Above us, Mom’s feet clomp back down the stairs. “Okay, bye, girls! Love you!” she says.
And then the kitchen door shuts and she drives away. But Jesse and I don’t move. We stay there for what feels like forever, awkwardly folded against each other.
“Should we just leave them in there?” Bea asks, right outside the door.
Her voice shocks us out of our stupor. Jesse pulls back as I open the door to where Hannah and Bea stand, about a foot away, watching us like creeps.
“Thanks,” he says to Bea, who is grinning up at him, seconds away from saying something embarrassing.
“We’re going upstairs for a minute,” I say, pulling Jesse by his jacket.
Hannah crosses her arms, giving him a cold, hard, you-hurt-my-little-sister stare. “We’ll be down here if you need us,” she says.
* * *
• • •
Jesse and I are still two charged particles; the time apart hasn’t changed a thing. Squashed together in the closet, the air vibrated between us, but now, up in my room, we move in big, nervous circles.
I feel tender from last night, not sure what’s coming next. I have to keep reminding myself of how much it hurt so I don’t throw myself at him again.
Finally, Jesse stops pacing and sits down on the bed. He pulls the photographs out of his pocket.
“Did you really mean all of this?” he says.
“Yeah,” I say, trying not to think about how many times I used the word love.
He pulls the photographs out of the sleeve, shuffling through them one at a time. “These are really good,” he says. “Really, really good.”
“Thanks,” I say, my face warming.
I risk coming a little closer then, and Jesse reaches out and grabs my hand, pulling me all the way in. He’s still wearing his jacket and his hair is sticking up on end and he smells like winter.
“I want to understand,” he says, looking up at me.
“I want you to,” I say, reaching out and touching one of his curls.
He lies back on the bed and looks up at the ceiling like he’s watching the night sky.
“Start at the beginning.”
So I do. I lie down next to him and I tell him everything. I tell him about forgetting my dad and fucking up with college and not being able to let go of Bennett. I tell him about how confused I’ve been, how lost, and he traces his fingers over the back of my wrist and makes me forget how scary this is.
When I’m done, when every secret is laid out between us, he turns his head to look at me.
“I think I’m in love with you,” he says.
I’m stunned, watching his eyes open and close, his thick eyelashes sweeping down to his cheek.
“I think I’m in love with you too,” I whisper.
“Don’t lie to me again,” he says, his face suddenly serious.
“I won’t,” I promise, reaching down and looping my pinkie through his.
And then he pulls me toward him, so our faces are just a breath apart. I can feel the zipper of his jacket, cold against my neck. He reaches out and traces his fingers over my cheekbones, my nose, the outline of my lips.
“Yep,” he says, whispering it through the tiny sliver of air between us, “I love you.”
I reach up to touch the scar under his eye. “I love you too,” I say.
And then we are kissing and the only word I can think to describe it is perfect, the way his lips press against mine, soft at first, like I’m something precious, then faster and more frantic.
He keeps saying these little half phrases: I need and I want and You are so—
And I’m twisting my fingers in his hair, trying to pull him closer.
Then Hannah calls up the stairs. “Time to go!”
We break apart, breathless.
“Tomorrow,” he says, pressing one last kiss to my lips before rising unsteadily from the bed.
“Tomorrow,” I say, following behind him, all the way down to the front door.
* * *
• • •
When Mom comes home, we are asleep in a heap on the couch. My head is on Hannah’s stomach and Bea’s feet are in my hair. I hear Mom set down her keys and pull off her boots and tiptoe into the living room, stopping in the doorway, trying to be quiet. I keep my eyes closed, but I can tell she’s watching us. She comes closer, her feet almost silent on the rug, and then I feel her lean down to press a kiss to the top of my head. For one second, my face is in the curve of her neck, right under her throat, the place where her heartbeat surfaces. I blink my eyes open then, to the blur of her skin up close in the dark.
Epilogue
It’s the day after New Year’s and I’m in the darkroom with Jesse. We’ve turned off the music so we can hear the heavy silence of the falling snow.
Today the darkroom feels serious. Today we’re working.
There are a few fumbling kisses in between hanging up our prints and reloading the enlarger, but mostly we’re in a steady rhythm: developer, stop bath, fixer, sustained quiet, predictable increments of time.
On the light table is a sheet of negatives, cliffs and ocean and slanted light, all of it in reverse. I choose one and slide it into the negative carrier, click it into the top of the enlarger. I’m impatient so I don’t make a test strip; I guess at the time, shining the light on the paper for lucky number eleven seconds. And then I plunge the paper into the developer.
I lift the tray up and down at the corner, agitating the chemicals and making waves. I watch an image emerge: a blurry beach from above, covered in driftwood.
And my dad’s not there.
He’s not reading Shakespeare.
All I can see in the air is light and dust.
But somewhere in my mind I feel him start to emerge. I imagine what it would be like if he were. I can almost smell the Earl Grey tea, I can almost hear the turn of the pages.
Acknowledgments
Thank you:
First, to my family. Mom, for your relentless support of my every dream, no matter how weird or impossible. To my brother, Chris, for helping me build a strong foundation. To Phil: you have been cheering me on since the day we met and I feel like the luckiest person to be your daughter. And to my sisters, who were the inspiration for this book. Sarah, so much of my thinking about loss and memory is grounded in your art and the many meandering conversations we’ve had throughout the years. Ann, since we were small you’ve been my best friend and fiercest defender and I will look up to you until the end of time.
To my boys, Andrew and Angelo. You pick up the slack when I need it, you make me laugh, and you fill me up with love.
To the Lerner family book club for helping me remember where I come from. To my grandmothers: Grandma Jean for never giving up hope that I’d become a novelist and Grandma Mary for teaching me how to sparkle. To my uncle Jim for helping to keep Dad alive for me. And to my aunt Betsy, the real-life Aunt El: you are just as magical as I made you out to be.
To Nancy Portilla and all of the teachers at Sunshine, and everyone else who took care of my child during all of those hours I spent writing this book.
To my chosen family, Erin, Lee, Marisa, and Shelby: You help me remember who I wanted to be when I was young and wild. There are no greater friends in all the world than the four of you. To Hannah Barr DiChiara and KC Bull, thank you for helping me on the journey of motherhood and YA fiction. And to Amy Weber, Olivia Wiley, and Chelsey Norton: thank you for being there when I survived this story the first time.
To my many mentors, especially Mary Gordon, who was the first person to make me feel like I was really a writer. To Mary Firman, my high school English teacher who invited me out for tea. To Anna Richert, who reminded me that there is art everywhere, even in the day-to-day grind of teaching. To Moraima Machado and Elizabeth Coles, who taught me how to come back to myself, and to Becca Coleman for teaching me how to sit still.
To Sarah Simon, who has taught me so much about writing. And to my many other creative partners over the years, Sam Berman (who showed me the I love U-nicorns trick), Claire Plumb, Hannah Weiss, Lily Rachles, Jasmyn Wong, DB Leonard, and many, many others.
To my Small Works family, for your support and kindness. I could not have made it through the pandemic year without you.
To the readers who helped me shape this book, Amy Spalding and Kate Spencer: your guidance helped me make the story of Marigold come to life. To Dani Moran, thank you for all of your excellent feedback.
To my agents, Melanie Castillo and Taylor Haggerty, and to the entire team at Root Literary: thank you for seeing me and believing in me and finding a way to get this book out into the world.
To my editor, Kelsey Murphy. You are a true artist! Your gentle prodding and steady guidance has made this book bloom into something that is so much better than I could have imagined.
To the Philomel team who has worked so hard to make this book come to light: Cheryl Eissing, Jill Santopolo, Ken Wright, Monique Sterling, Ellice Lee, Talia Benamy, and Liza Kaplan.
To Kristie Radwilowicz for the beautiful cover you created and to everyone at PYR: Theresa Evangelista, Deborah Kaplan, Christina Colangelo, Emily Romero, Kara Brammer, Shanta Newlin, Elyse Marshall, Lizzie Goodell, Felicity Vallence, Shannon Spann, James Akinaka, Alex Garber, Carmela Iaria, Trevor Ingerson, Summer Ogata, Rachel Wease, Felicia Frazier, Debra Polansky, Rachel Jacobs, Gerard Mancini, Elise Poston, Jayne Ziemba, Krista Ahlberg, Marinda Valenti, Sarah Mondello, Amanda Cranney, Pete Facente, Jocelyn Schmidt, Robyn Bender, and Jen Loja.
And finally, to my readers. I haven’t met you yet, but I’m already in love. Thank you thank you thank you.
About the Author
Kate Sweeney was born in Athens, Georgia, and has since lived many places, including Los Angeles, New York City, and Salt Lake City. She began writing when she was sixteen. Her father--a novelist and screenwriter--had died five years prior, and in writing she found a way of bringing his voice back to her ears.
For the past ten years she has resided in the Bay Area, where she spends her time making music with her band, Magic Magic Roses, teaching literacy, and working with her husband at the family art-framing business.
You can follow Kate on Twitter @ksweeneywrites
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Kate Sweeney, Catch the Light
