It's a Love Story

by Annabel Monaghan

“You’re making a really weird face and you’re wearing your bed.”

Louis smiles a smile that matches one that’s buried in my heart.

He’s just walking toward the boardwalk as if we’d previously agreed that I would follow him anywhere.

He laughs a little, a two on the Richter scale.

“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, Dan.” “Wow, did you borrow my dad’s joke book?”

I am drunk on bacon grease and cheese.

He’s casual about it, as if he doesn’t understand the enormity of having given a well-received nickname to a kid who needs it.

His voice echoes. Not for the first time, I think of him as Batman, but in his lair.

or the way his camera bag made him look slightly threatening, like he was armed.

Batman on Christmas morning.

Someone’s thought of everything.

It’s a kind thing to say.

His smile is wide and bright, like I’ve just shown him a photo of his favorite thing.

There’s steam coming out of the bag, and he lets it touch every part of his face.

I read it in college and highlighted the part where she wants to dig into his skin to get inside of him. Something about fertile loam underneath his hard gold exterior. I’d wondered about Toni Morrison, such a genius, letting herself get so romantic. I’d wondered if she’d ever fallen in love like that and then had to claw her way out.

He gives a giant tug, and we fall backward into the sand. All the little kids land in the hole.

I am so, so small playing this song that I made a hit.

Dan is softer at home.

I’m realizing what it is about this family that has me so rapt—it’s the way they say what they mean and just move on.

I can’t remember the last time I spent an entire day playing.

It’s the kind of love he grew up with, where the real and maybe not-so-nice thing is said, and then you come back together. The love creeps in in small ways, a hand placed on the back of your brother’s chair.

The mildly erotic love letter Dan wrote to his kindergarten teacher.

Through all of it, I clock the nearness of Dan. When I laugh, he leans in, not away. When he leans back in his chair, he places a hand on the back of mine. I try on the feeling, just for a second, of what it would be like to belong to him.

“That’s what I thought. Maybe deep down I’m people.”

There’s a difference between someone loving you and agreeing with every single thing you do.”

“The thing my dad still doesn’t totally get is that I’m not at all distracted, that when I find something that I think is interesting or true or beautiful, I’m hyper-focused.”

To prove me right, he locks his eyes on mine, and I have this flash of what it might feel like to be interesting or true or beautiful to Dan.

He smiles like he loves being the worst.

But you should leave your hair curly. It’s soft around your face.

You’ve got me all worked up over here.”

“Maybe it was you I was lusting after all that time.”

“I bought Eleanor Roosevelt’s childhood swimsuit in town, I’m all set,” I say, and Dan laughs. I have to stop that.

There is a miles-wide disconnect between how I know I look and how he’s looking at me.

Watercolor’s just about how much water you add—it’s simple and unruly, kind of like the forest.”

Dan is that dangerous kind of person who can make you believe in anything.

He’s in the process of dressing, but my brain registers him as undressing.

I wish I were responsible for all this rumpling.

I am warm from the beer and the candlelight and the feel of Dan’s knee against mine.

There’s something about the way he’s looking at me that makes me think an impossible thing: I am interesting and true and beautiful. I like this thought so much that I have to look away.

My smile is so tipsy wide that it could break my face.

I can’t help but think how I knew this would happen, my making him laugh actually moved him away.

Dan parts his lips, and I see colors behind my eyelids, a sherbet sunset, a deep blue ocean.

I have a point of view.

“I’m honored. That I was considered for the alternate outfit.”

We sit and watch the potato fields brighten in the sun.

It’s mesmerizing, the magic of a six-year-old girl.

He’s dangerous all right.

Except they don’t understand love, the small acts of care that pile up to make it huge.

“Butterflies on the Beach” should be a love song.

I marvel at the fact that I can be simultaneously wearing this bathing suit and feeling this sexy.