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I think I know exactly what Em means, but seeing the effect Hazel has had on my sister—making her more fun-loving, giving her social confidence that only now, in hindsight, can I really attribute to Hazel—I don’t consider this oddness a bad thing.
Turning with a dish towel in her hand, she shrugs. “I tend to be too chatty, too silly, too exuberant, too random, too eager.” She spreads her hands. “Too Hazel-y.” She is all of these things, but it’s actually why I like her. She’s entirely her own person. I reach for her wrist when she moves to leave the kitchen. “Where are we going mini-golfing?”
I listen to them speak and marvel over how they seem to communicate in half sentences, finishing thoughts with a nod, an expression, a dramatic hand gesture.
“I realize that finding the perfect person isn’t going to be easy for me because I’m a lot to take,” she says, “but I’m not going to change just so that I’m more datable.”
She doesn’t meet my eyes but a flush of color deepens along the tops of her cheeks. “You’re my person,” she says. “Thanks for sticking up for me tonight.” She gives these vulnerable words so freely it makes fondness clench at something in my chest. Taking her hand, I bring it to my mouth and press a quick kiss to the backs of her knuckles. “I like being your person.”
“But was I right?” She’s breathless, hair wild and face flushed and how has nobody seen how crazy and fucking amazing she is? I decide right there to make sure somebody does. “Yeah, Haze. You were.”
and nothing—I mean nothing—scares me more than the idea of us dating and him deciding that I’m too wild, too weird, too chaotic. Too much.
I am nothing if not a decent icebreaker.
“I know I’m like Pig-Pen in Charlie Brown, and I have chaos around me, but it’s like he doesn’t even care. He doesn’t need me to change or pretend to be someone else. He’s my person. He’s my best friend.”
A tiny voice reminds me that Josh didn’t bother to blow smoke up my butt and tell me what a lovely place I had. He never lies, or fakes enthusiasm. He just accepts me.
We’re different now. She’s not just a new friend, she’s my best friend. The woman I love. We could have lingering talks over coffee or on a shared pillow, long into the night. She could bring her entire farm of animals, and I would be fine, I think. We could make a home of it.
But does it? Does it make sense that I put my vases in the oven when it’s not in use, so that my parrot doesn’t knock them over? These are the things other people might question—but not Josh. He has never, not once, asked me to be someone I’m not.
