I could say I was tired because I didn’t get to sleep last night, or that I wanted to get out of the garage, or the house—where Eric was once again entertaining the same girl. I could say that I was bored, or lonely even, and that I just wanted to be around someone. Even if it meant being in the same darkened room not speaking or even acknowledging each other. But like I said, they’d just be excuses because the truth? The truth is that I’d waited up all night, almost on the edge of impatience, anxious for the loud music to sound so I had a reason to knock on the door. See, I had it all planned. Music would play, I’d get mad, then come marching over here hoping for the same outcome as yesterday. I’d yell, she’d offer me her bed, and the rest didn’t really matter.

When the music started, I smiled… then I panicked. Because I had no idea why I was smiling.

I listened as the song ended, then started again, all while I stood in the garage fucking around with the engine and trying to convince myself that whatever curiosity I had about her… that’s all it was: curiosity. And by the third replay that curiosity was enough to have me dropping my tools and walking over to her house. I was nervous, to be honest, because unlike yesterday, I wasn’t running on exhaustion or annoyance. Though, I wouldn’t tell her that.

She opened the door, looking worse than she did the day before, but that’s not what caught me by surprise. It was the fact that she wasn’t surprised.

I span some bullshit about not being able to sleep but before I could finish, she’d already offered me her bed. I told her I thought she was a hooker, and then a stripper… which got the reaction any sane person would expect. What can I say? It’d been a long time since I’d had a one-on-one conversation with an attractive girl. Not that I was trying to impress her, but I wasn’t trying to unimpress her either. That’s not even a word. Heidi—she would’ve called me out on that in the most patronizing way. Riley, though—she’d probably laugh at me, call me an idiot, but do it in a way that had me laughing with her. Maybe. Or maybe she’d throw something at me. Either way, I’d take it.

And now I was comparing them like it somehow mattered. It didn’t. But it mattered that Riley liked me, at least enough to tolerate me, because as strange as it seems, I enjoy the semi-darkness and the silence we share. But most of all, I enjoy the unspoken understanding between us, the one that says “Hey, we’re fucked up. One gets drunk. One gets mad. And we don’t even care why or how we got to be like that but it doesn’t matter. We don’t want to know. Let’s just be fucked up together but apart.”

So.

Maybe I’ve thought about her way too much.

Maybe I haven’t stopped thinking about her since I wrote her that stupid note.

And, maybe, going by the way she keeps looking at me from whatever she’s scribbling in her notebook, she’s thought about me, too.

*     *     *

I don’t know how long I’ve been lying here watching her. An hour, maybe two.

She has this routine, I’ve worked out, where she takes a sip of her God-awful wine, looks up, and then smiles. After a moment, she’ll scribble something down, tear out the page, fold it, then place it in one of the many jars that line her wall. She does this a few times before looking over at me. There’s no smile when she does. It’s the opposite. And just like the reasons of our fucked-up-ness, I don’t want to know why. The longer I watch, the less she smiles, the less she writes, the more she drinks, and the more she looks over at me. After a while, there are no more smiles, no more writing, just silent tears streaming down her face—tears that reflect the sunlight.

Everything in me stills—everything but my fingers itching to reach out and touch her.

Fuck.

It’s selfish—I know—but I don’t want to speak. I don’t want to ask. At least not yet. Because I know what will happen if I do. She’ll tell me the truth and will want the same from me. I’ll give it to her. Floodgates open. Snowball effect. And the next thing we know we’re in deep. Too deep.

I don’t want deep.

I want the horizon.

I want the calm.

She downs the rest of the wine between breaks of her sobbing, gripping the bottle to her chest. She doesn’t even care that I see it. Maybe because she’s seen me at my worst and left it alone, she expects the same from me.

She falls asleep, or passes out, which in her case could be either. Her body lays still, curled in a ball, her breaths shallow, and maybe it’s messed up for me to feel grateful that she’s out. Not because I don’t have to deal with it, but because I have a feeling this is her way of searching and finding the same thing I’m looking for: The Calm.

Quietly, I get out of her bed, grab the blanket by her feet and place it over her. She exhales loudly, almost like a sigh and I stare at her sleeping form, just for a moment.

I try to remember the color of her eyes, and the only thing I can come up with is sad.

Her eyes are the color of sadness.

My gaze catches on the notebook placed next to her head, and even though it might be wrong, I still find myself giving in to the curiosity and reading the words that caused her tears to fall.

If I told you to jump, would you ask how high? Or would you just jump? If there were no reason behind it, would you still take the leap? What if I told you that at the end, there would be nothing? What if you made a splash on the world and lived in an eternal state of floating? Would you make waves? What if you couldn’t float? What if air lost the battle, and you lost the war? Would you want to know what was on the other side? Would you care? Or would you just jump… because I was the one who asked you?