The Only One

Gillian Goodman

If I ran, I could have caught him before he left. I knew he must have been sitting by the door, long arms draped over the back of his chair. I should go kiss him goodbye, I thought. We are two people who are dating, and people who are dating kiss each other goodbye. I remained frozen in the hallway, eyes wide and alert to any possible dangers. My fingernails dug crescent moons into my palm, and I bit down on my bottom lip. Gillian, you are too old for this shit. I stood like that, not moving or breathing, for years, watching glaciers creep past me mockingly. Only when I heard the door around the corner swing open and close did I unclench my fists, knowing he was safely on his way home and that the situation was out of my hands.

I once confided in my friend at summer camp, on one of those nights where your secrets tumble out like copper coins from an old purse, “It’s like if everyone you knew loved reading math textbooks, cover to cover. And that’s, like, the normal thing to do. Except that you have zero interest in math

textbooks. In fact, they kind of make you nervous and uncomfortable. That’s how I feel about kissing boys.” And it was true: I loved the chase, loved the electric feeling of two timid hands brushing on a banister or under a table. But once mutual feelings were acknowledged and further physical engagement was expected, I lost interest. I became frozen, unresponsive, and try as I might I could never kiss them goodbye. I left a parade of puppy-hearted boys in my wake, unkissed and empty handed.

I never wanted to be a heartbreaker and hated it when my parents playfully teased me about it. I desperately wanted to understand my aversion. It didn’t make sense. Spenser was beautiful, with high cheekbones and strong hands, and I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. In fact, he treated me like a bird, stroking my hair and speaking softly. He would tell me about his favorite playwrights and we would sing duets, and life was easy with him. But I still couldn’t kiss him.

One night, while waiting for my parents to pick me up from singing practice, I confessed my sins to another member of our all-girl group. I told her how I didn’t understand why I was so unhappy, and how I desperately wanted to be able to kiss him like it was nothing, like I knew I should. I let a great wealth of pent-up confusion and angst pour over her as we began to walk to our respective rides. She stopped me when we were about twenty yards from the cars and looked at me timidly. She said, very slowly, that maybe I would feel better if I went on a date with her instead. I felt like someone had punched me in the chest, and I burst out “YES!” without thinking. We both stood, stunned in the cold by our own bravery, as two matching grins spread over our faces. I can’t remember a thing about the ride back, except that by the time I got home, my face ached from smiling.

She was a year older than me, tall for her age and pale, with dark eyes and dilated pupils. She was a dancer, with long arms and legs that she held carefully, like fine china. Freckles settled gently on her round cheeks, and I always thought they made her look younger than she was. Her hair was pink when I met her. It was blue by the fall. It was black when I kissed her first, and cropped close to her head by the time we broke up.

I was entranced by her from the moment I met her. She seemed impossibly beautiful, and too regal to live in this time of smog and cars and politicians. Her hands were always cool, and I used to play with her rings as an excuse to feel her fingers. I had never thought of her as anything other than the cool, older girl, the beautiful one who had it all together. But now it made sense. It wasn’t my fault that things never worked out with Spenser or Jordan or Joe or Brett! It was the perfect scenario; I had a beautiful girlfriend and a cleansed conscience. It was hard telling Spenser, the two of us perched on a windowsill during a break between classes, but I had to do it. I couldn’t pretend that her touch didn’t send shivers down my spine in a way his never did. I was doing him a service, really.

We were in love with being in love, Julia and I. We wrote each other poems and sent mixtapes and had dreamy dress-up movie nights where our legs touched under the blankets. Neither of us had had a girlfriend before, and we were in love with our stereotypes as well. Her hair was buzzed and I wore high heels, and we both had jean jackets with protest pins. We sang together in an all- girls folk group, and we would close our eyes and sing and sway, and nothing made us happier.

Even though she was older and taller and about to go to college, I was bolder and louder and I kissed her first. She had a softness to her, in the lines of her hips and tone of her voice and the feel of her touch. She was kind, and mild mannered, but she laughed at all my rude jokes. I remember I gave her cheap plastic handcuffs one Valentine’s Day, and she laughed her musical laugh like it was the cleverest prank ever pulled. She called everyone dude, and never minded that she was a few decades too late. It all seemed so easy, we almost felt cheated. We never got to play the brave heroes battling a wave of bigotry with the strength of our love. After a brief weekend of fallout from friends who hadn’t seen it coming, everyone accepted us without question. We were sweet and shy and easy to swallow, and no one made any fuss.

I loved her parents: her wild-haired Brazilian mother, who chirped with delight when she discovered my voracious appetite. “Julia is so picky,” she would coo in her soft accent, “perhaps your good habits will rub off on her.” I would run to hug her father when he got home from work, and learned to recognize the sound of his heavy footsteps. He was tall and soft spoken, just like Julia, and watching them together was like some beautiful movie-musical. They let me stay in their golden wooden house that summer, and always let Julia and me sleep in the same room. Whether they were confused or conflicted or content, I’ll never know, but they never once offered me a guest bed. They had no cause for worry: it took me a full hour of whispered forehead-to-forehead conversation to work up the nerve to kiss her for the first time, and it never went too much farther than that. She was timid and I never wanted anything more.

I don’t think I’ll ever know if I was drunk on summertime and the freckles on her lips, or if I really loved her. She was my best friend, and sometimes in the dark of her bedroom I trailed kisses on her neck and told her about my dreams. I think it was more for her, but she was never forthcoming about things like that. All I know is in the fall, after I helped her pack and kissed her goodbye, she went to college and I stayed behind. And after a few months of late night phone calls and drunk I miss you texts and weekly check-ins, I forgot the shape of her nose. Did she have three earrings on the left, or right? Would she love the new Tamora Pierce book, or think it a betrayal of the original series? And then, gradually, traitorously, my fickle teenage heart began to search for another chase. I called her late one night and we promised to stay in touch, and I told people it was mutual. I still call her sometimes. She’s growing her hair out now and has it bleached a peachy-blond. She dropped out of college and is living a life of poetry and mystery in the city, and still calls everyone dude. I have since become a big supporter of the “kissing boys” phenomenon; they’re no longer math textbooks to me. I read Cosmo and wink at waiters, and she has come out to all her friends, and we have grown apart. But there are still nights when I want her to call me and read me stories until I fall asleep. I’ve never found anyone as soft as her, and I miss her, some days.