“It's you for me, too,” he pledged.
“Why didn't you ever say anything?” I asked.
He sighed and laid on his back, crossing his arms behind his head to stare at the ceiling with me. “Because I thought you hated me, that you just saw me as some annoying little brother. Because Rory has always been in love with you and you don't do that to your brother. I automatically just knew you were off limits.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“What about me?”
“How long have you loved me?”
“Since before I even knew what it was,” he answered nonchalantly.
“I want to be with you.” I sat up, resolute. My heart was full of Bobby and there wasn't room for anyone else. It became all too clear to me how I had acted towards him all these years, trying to convince myself that the wrong brother wasn't the right one. How I mocked him to keep him at a safe distance. How I teased him about his girlfriends to protect my own heart. And now we finally said the things we needed to say and I was allowing myself to feel the high of being madly enamored with someone. I wanted to keep that feeling. To feel my skin quiver like a plucked string when he touched me. To almost feel sick when he was in the room because the love was too potent.
On this night, we had released something powerful. Something dangerous. And once freed, we could not put it back.
He sat up and kissed my shoulder. I turned to see the saddest look I'd ever seen in his eyes. “We can't do that to Rory.”
I knew he was right, but I pretended to be brave. How could we step out tomorrow in front of hundreds of family and friends and tell them that not only was I canceling this wedding, but was doing so because we were in love? My parents would lose their minds over this. The Lightlys would be so disappointed in their son. We were raised better than this. We came from reputable, proud families. Families with expectations. That level of scandal made me sick to my stomach just thinking of it.
Bobby rested his forehead against my shoulder, as if pained to deliver the next news. “I haven't told my parents yet, but, I'm leaving school again. I'm going to do some traveling.”
“What?” I said, turning to face him. “You already took time from school. What about your future?”
“It's out there, no matter what,” he replied. “College isn't for me. Well, at least not now it isn't. I want to see the world. I want to study it. I'll make a living. I've always managed to make things work.”
“You've managed because of your parents. It's different out there.”
“I know it is. Which is why I want to see it. I thought you wanted to see the world.”
“I do. I just want to do it the right way.”
“The right way . . .” he snickered.
I shook my head. “Don't leave me here, Bobby. I don't think I can do this without you.”
“I'm always going to be here for you. Always.” He ran his hands through my hair and mussed it up the way he always liked to do to annoy me, but this time it was gentler. “We'll always be in each other's lives.”
I rested my head on his shoulder as we sat side by side, still nude, our bodies gleaming in the humid attic.
“Lil, I don't know how to do the right thing. I feel like convincing you to be with me is selfish. I was never going to tell you. I was going to live with this pain alone and I feel like now I've included you in it. I was just going to come up here and numb my sorrows. And then you were there. And you looked so beautiful in that nightgown. Like an angel who came to take the pain away.”
“Did I? Make the pain stop?”
“For a while. As long as we're up here. But it won't last because when you leave here you're someone else's love.”
“I can't do this.”
“My brother is a good guy. He'll take care of you. He'll give you a great life. That's the only comfort I can take in this.”
“Please. Let's just go. I'll travel with you.”
“Are you willing to wake up Rory right now and tell him that? Our parents? And that's not even including the people out in the cabins, all our cousins and our friends . . .”
I sighed, collapsing my head between my knees.
“You'll have a good life. You will.” Bobby tucked a wisp of my dark hair behind my ear. “You love him.”
“Not like you. Never like you,” I said.
Bobby kissed the top of my head and I turned to meet his lips. Our first encounter did nothing to sate the hunger we had for each other as I climbed on top of him and we explored each other's bodies again.
As the navy sky started to pale to shades of violet, I knew I had to leave. Bobby slept peacefully beside me and I watched each breath, each flutter of his eyes, each time he moved his lips when he murmured subtly in his sleep. I tried to ingrain the picture in my mind of the time when my life had reached perfection, albeit briefly. I couldn't wake up Bobby to say goodbye because it would mean tears and protests, and it would hurt too much. I would see Bobby again, back out in the world, where I was someone else's love.
Bobby said in the lake that he had hoped his happiest moment was ahead of him. Well, that moment was right here for me, in this attic as he whispered he loved me against my lips. If I could have grabbed that moment and held onto it and kept time from pulling me away, moving me forward, I would have latched on and never let go. I would have lived in that moment eternally.
But it was already tomorrow. And I had made promises and Bobby had loyalties and the world makes other plans for you. I wept silently as I kissed him on the cheek, I grabbed my white nightgown, stained red where I used it to clean the evidence of my virtue, and slid it on. There was a small, faded mirror on the wall behind the couch, and I caught a glimpse of myself. So young at the time, but I already felt like my life had been laid out for me; plans that could not be changed.
I looked at the deep red stain on the belly of the white gown that would never wash out, just like the memory of this night would always leave its mark.
And then I left to prepare for my wedding.
Summer 1957
Bobby kissing me, seven years after that first time, felt just as apocalyptic. Earth-shattering, enlightening, frightening, hopeful, alpha, omega, death, life—it all erupted from the forbidden union of our lips. My heart jolted like it had been stunned with an electrical current.
I knew I had made vows to Rory. I knew this was wrong. And yet, I was sick of being miserable doing the right thing. I picked the right boy. I was the loyal wife. I woke up every morning and cleaned, ran errands, and cooked. I fed the insatiable beast of Rory's insecurity by not pursuing a career and waiting for a pregnancy that never came. And what had it gotten me but an empty marriage and a life that was nothing like the one I saw for myself that night I swam with Bobby under the moonlight. I had become an accessory to Rory's ambitions. We had things: a nice house, cars, good clothes, money. But they were nothing. They were just things. Things could be disposed of, people couldn't. I had gotten it backwards. I had disposed of the love of my life for the promise of a life full of stuff but void of experiences.
This was right. For me. For Bobby. We deserved this. We had suffered long enough. That bullet missed his skull so he could return to me, and I wasn't going to miss this opportunity like I so foolishly had as a naive 20-year-old.
I kissed Bobby back, our lips ferociously linking as he stumbled back towards the house, towards the light. Bobby lifted me off the ground as I wrapped my legs around his hips, one shoe falling to the grass as the other one dangled.
Bobby tripped over the porch steps, easing the fall by planting onto them as I stayed mounted on, against his strong grip. My knees banged the hard wood edges of the stairs but the adrenaline rendered me immune to the pain.