Teagan

When you pulled the metal chair out and sat beside me in fifth grade, keeping the bully from taking my lunch, and you stayed there watching the room until the bell rang. That was the whole pivot. I had spent four years becoming invisible behind the water fountain, but after that afternoon I simply stopped looking anywhere else, my life folding itself neatly into the space just over your left shoulder. We grew through the long asphalt summers and the damp autumns of the middle years, always moving in a pair that everyone else seemed to understand better than we did. Sometimes, when the truck was idling in the gravel lot or we were sitting on the hood of your rusted-out Ford watching power lines hum, you would say something sideways. A small, floating sentence about what it would look like if we stopped pretending we were just two kids who happened to share a table. My throat would go dry as limestone. I looked down at my sneakers, tracing the frayed lace, because the idea that you could want someone as flat and quiet as me was a mistake I was terrified of making out loud. And you would wait. Just for a second, the air between us thinned out, and you would give me that level, unreadable stare—the look of a man trying to read an inscription worn smooth by rain, wondering if the stone was simply blank or if he just didn't know the language. While you looked, I was tearing myself to pieces for not having the courage to touch your sleeve. I loved you with a dull, heavy permanence that needed no words. Now the organ inside the church has settled into a low, vibrating hum that gets behind the teeth. You take my hand, your palm rough against mine, and give it a hard, grounding squeeze before the heavy oak doors start to swing outward on iron hinges. The music rolls over us, thick and formal, and you take that sharp, hitching breath people take right before they walk into deep water. I give you a small, level nod toward the front, toward the white lace where Amber is.