You Between the Lines

by Katie Naymon

When I’m done, she turns to me with a grin. “You’re a poet, Leigh, don’t worry. Only a writer would describe this dank bathroom floor as prettily as pee-soaked tile.”

I know we barely know each other, but I’ve always wanted to. In high school, I harbored a crush on you, especially after our conversation at homecoming. You were the first person to look at me not like a disappointment, but like something worthy, which is why I was hopeful, at the time, that you had a crush on me, too.

This strange, horrific, beautiful thing has always lingered between us—in the nooks of my rib cage, the early wrinkles of his rare smile, the angles we made grasping for each other.

The one who kisses boys on the dank bus on the sixth grade DC trip, giving in to cracked-voice cheers and the first of many clammy hands to trace her outline against the one who shaves because a boy smirked at the tufts growing from her tight-crossed legs, a pre-teen unknowing, staring at the one squeezed into black polyester, pressed into the hungry groin of a boy swaying to Top 40, grateful to feel so small like the one who inhales root beer Chapstick off the lacrosse captain, takes off her shirt before he asks, lies about her music preferences to the one who can’t hold her liquor or feel guilty after dribbling peach vodka in a basement, letting needy blazer boys touch the one who says she just wants to be friends before they have the chance to say it first because the one who’s a gymnast, twisting in a ball pit, nursing scraped knees and just watching the decadence of being someone else is also the one who decides she is pretty with the lights on, with arms uncrossed and breath slow enough to catch.

And the only conclusion I have, after parsing through every word we’ve ever shared, is that I am irrevocably in love with you.

“I’m exhausted by this, by myself. I feel like I have no choice but to give in.” He pauses and takes a deep breath. “Leigh, I can hardly remember a time I wasn’t in love with you.”

You have always been the brightest thing in the room and I have never not wanted to be in your spotlight.”

“I want to be the last person to sign yours,” he murmurs, and I feel my cheeks flush. During the last semester of the program, he’s gotten into the habit of writing ridiculous, flirty things on my poems.

“Are you proposing?” I ask before he says a word. “Yes.” “Did we seriously both plan a proposal on the same night?” “Check your Perrin Review when you get a chance.” He laughs.