Page 16

Eight Years Before

was always scared that he would hurt Amber. The first time he’d kissed her, the day after Lee Franklin’s party, he’d held her face in his hands, felt that fragile jawbone, beating a pulse so strong. A hummingbird in a bear claw.

The night before, they’d talked while the party raged around them. She had a midnight curfew, so he’d walked her home, even though she had a bike and he had his mom’s car. He was in the street, wheeling her bike; she was on the curb and still he towered over her.

When they got to her house, he hadn’t known what to do. He wanted to kiss her but he didn’t dare press his luck. A light illuminated one of the rooms and suspected someone was waiting up for her.

“I’m working a bake sale tomorrow for the musical,”

Amber said, pausing before her front walk. “Come see me?”

He’d been so grateful for the invitation, the promise of continuation, he’d forgotten to ask where the bake sale was. The next day he had to suffer the indignity of asking Dean to ask Amber’s friend Alexa, though he knew this would mean Dean meowing at him for several more weeks.

The bake sale was at the park next to the rec center. A series of tables overflowing with brownies and cupcakes and Rice Krispies Treats run by the drama kids. He held back a minute and just watched Amber interact with the customers, smiling as she made change. Everyone who spoke to her smiled and laughed back, like they were sprinkled with a bit of her magic.

And then she saw him, standing behind the white oak tree, and she smiled at him. And with that, he was a goner.

She motioned for him to wait under the tree, which was just starting to turn an orangish color. An amber color. It felt like a sign. After a few minutes, she trotted over bearing a Rice Krispies Treat, and though didn’t like marshmallows, he’d swallowed it in two bites.

They talked for a bit, about this and that—he couldn’t remember the specifics—before she said she had to get back to work.

“Okay,”

he said, devastated, like he’d blown his opportunity.

But then Amber smiled once more and said, “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?”

When kissed her, he tasted marshmallows and marveled at the way his life had changed overnight. He felt the flutter of the vein in her cheek. Hummingbird, he thought. He circled her entire neck with his one hand, feeling the pulse hammer against him.

“You’re choking me a bit,” she said.

“Oh. God. I’m so sorry.”

He hadn’t realized what he had done. He was mortified once again by his bulk.

“It’s okay.”

She took her hand, put it up against his. It was half the size.

“I’m too big.”

“And I’m too small,”

she said. “If we ever have kids, they’ll be just right.” She blushed when she said that, looked away. felt magic again. But entwined with it, fear. That he might hurt her if he weren’t careful.

He carried that fear with him no matter how many times she told him: “You’re not going to hurt me.”

She said it that afternoon at the bake sale, and again a few weeks later when they were fooling around in the back of his mom’s car, where the ill fit of his XXL body and her petite one were not helped by the squished dimensions of the hatchback. And again when Amber announced she was ready to have sex and wanted them to do it after junior prom, felt that fear all over again. Never mind that he knew her family would disapprove, the physics of it scared him, the bulk of him, the slightness of her.

“I’m not as breakable as I look,”

she told him.

This he knew. She might have been a foot shorter and much, much lighter but in most ways that counted, Amber was tougher than him. She knew her mind. And when she decided something, she decided, and there was no arguing, only going along for the ride.

When she didn’t speak of having sex again, he half hoped she’d forget about it, half prayed that she wouldn’t. After the limo they’d rented with all her friends stopped outside her house and he’d pinned the corsage on her—an arrangement that along with the rented tux and their share of the limo cost a week’s wages—she’d whispered in his ear, “I don’t have to be home until morning.”

She opened her clutch purse and showed him the shiny foil condom wrappers inside. “I reserved us a hotel room.”

The dance felt like a month of Sundays, dragging on and on. did not remember a single thing about it. All he could think about was those condoms, that hotel room. They went to the after-party, holding hands. He had to hide his boner with a throw pillow.

It got late. He wondered if she’d changed her mind. It was okay if she had. He might even be relieved.

But then she whispered in his ear: “Ready to go?”

She had booked a room in the Red Lion Inn. It cost $150 a night. He tried to give her money but she said it was on her.

When they registered, he couldn’t bear to look at the clerk. He kept feeling like someone was going to catch him for something. But the guy just activated a key card and said that checkout was at eleven.

Inside the room, Amber flicked on the lamp. She had brought a bottle of sparkling cider and she poured it into the hotel glasses, which were nice, not plastic like the ones at the motels they stayed at on wrestling meets.

“Should we get undressed now?”

Amber asked after they toasted each other and forever love.

hesitated.

“Don’t you want to?”

So bad he was bursting with it. “I don’t want to crush you,”

he confessed.

Standing on tippy-toes, she reached up to wrap her arms around his neck. He bent his head down to meet her. “What if I like being crushed by you?”

she whispered, the soft sibilants in his ear doing crazy things to him.

She started to pull the straps off her shoulders.

“Wait,”

he said. The corsage he had bought her was a waterfall of flowers, amaranths the florist had recommended, unusual, and they would dry nicer than roses. “So your true love will have a keepsake,” she’d said.

He unpinned the corsage, his hands shaking. “I don’t want this to get messed up.”

She stood on her tippy-toes again and kissed him. tasted marshmallows, as he did every time he kissed her.

“I forever love you, Judd,” she said.

It wasn’t the first time they had said the words to each other. But it was the first time felt the weight of loving someone. Of being loved. It was bigger than anything in his life.

“I forever love you, too, Amber Crane,”

replied.