I: Definite Articles
Bare feet tangled under the covers, the familiar warmth of your arch pressed to my calf.
“Can I be sappy for a second?” you ask casually, thumb traipsing my clavicle as you wait for my nod. “I saw this thing online. A man referring to his partner as the woman he loves. Isn’t that so powerful?”
And it was, your rare offering of certainty amidst the chaos. I smile up at you, nuzzling my chin into the crook of your shoulder. “I like that.”
II: Life Study
“Can you turn your head to the right?” you murmur, twisting the mechanical pencil as you shift the notebook on your knees. I oblige. “Perfect.”
Your firm gaze alternates between the bare-bones sketch in your fingers and the uncovered body before you. You’ve never looked at me quite like that, like one of your life drawing models. Today I am a disposable torso, a hipbone, a back: drained of your attraction. I’m conscious of the cold air on my shoulder and try not to fidget, impatient.
But then you sigh in satisfaction, and the page is begrudgingly flipped my way, oozing with a softness you rarely offer me. Attentive lines pouring with three years of your cautious hand on my thigh, kisses on the cheek, muffled fumblings of our blanket. My body, romanticized by your gaze.
“Your drawings always make me look prettier than I am,” I laugh, bashfully eyeing your tender pencil marks. And you just quietly shake your head, insisting that the outline needs to be re-traced in pen.
III: Chinese Satellite
A few weeks later, a camping trip with high school friends to a beachy part of our hometown we’ve never seen. Another reminder that we’re fake Kiwis, both of us buried in overseas college applications as we begin to confront the dissolution of our shared life.
It’s a few days of chaos as ten teenagers fight to wrangle their tents, barbecue vegetarian-appropriate dinners, and drink mildly corrosive soju. But somewhere amidst the trail walks and half-cooked tofu, we find time for a night walk. Alone. Finally. I’m overcome by the curvature of the sand dunes beneath our bare feet, my constant cold muffled by the hoodie you begrudgingly ceded an hour or two ago.
“Honestly, this is probably my favorite song,” I say, repositioning my earbud as I turn my phone screen towards you, aglow with Phoebe Bridgers’ apocalyptic cover art. I can still picture your sigh, the groan as you prepare for another four minutes of the “whining” you’ve always hated.
“I mean, you have to admit…it’s kind of a slog,” you retort, gazing into the dark abyss in front of us. I turn my back, a petulant attempt to avoid the argument we clearly sense.
“For God’s sake,” I mutter.
IV: New Year’s Eve
Your phone’s gentle glow from your side of our twin-bed, sleeping bag twisted around your waist as you fidget on your back. It’s long past midnight now, an hour or two after I stopped shaking from the year’s unknown.
“Shit, sorry,” I whisper in the dark, adjusting the hoodie in my arms as it brushes against your shoulder. “I’ve developed this terrible habit of falling asleep with something in my hands.”
And there’s a rustling as your lips move to my ear, something of an attempt to avoid waking the three friends lying in sleep around us.
“Well, I’m here,” you mutter, quietly placing your phone on the bedside table. “Just hold my arm.”
I fight the blush, wriggling deeper into my sleeping bag.
V: Portugal the Man
You’re drunk. Or headed that way, at least.
A too well-lit house party, shitty beer in plastic cups purchased by one of our freshly minted adults. This is the implicitly understood last gathering, the final post-graduation act before accepting the inevitable “transition to adulthood” or whatever. We ran out of cranberry juice three hours ago; my throat is parched.
I’m draped across your lap, feigning embarrassment as you fumble for my inner thigh and tease my hair into a bun. Humiliatingly partial to your drunken tenderness, as always.
And soon enough, I’m driving you home, my glitchy car speakers butchering the garblings of whichever indie white man you’ve decided matches tonight’s vibe. You reach for my hand as I pull onto your street, lips grazing mine with a surprising caution.
“Two days until the roadtrip, right?” you ask, raising your eyebrows with your typical uncertainty. Probably the last night where I was endeared by your poor memory, too high on your unexpected affection to take offense.
“Three days,” I chuckle, gently patting your hand. “I’ll pick you up at nine.”
VI: Daybreak
My shirt reaches my knees as I stand out of bed, bleary eyes squinting at your silhouette against the sky. It’s surprisingly cold for January, and I curse your insistence on a sunrise wake-up as I clutch a sweater to my chest and stumble outside.
“Look at that!” you point, smiling as you identify the way the horizon presses into the island’s rolling hills. And I nod for your benefit, making a poor show of feigning excitement by yawning at your shoulder. Never quite as entranced as you’d like, I think cynically, as I ignore the familiar dread rising in my gut.
“I think Im’a go back to sleep,” I mutter, leaving you alone to watch the sun ascend on what I knew even then would be our last anniversary.
VII: Maungawhau
A season or two later, Auckland was splayed below us as the clouds threaten to explode above. My hand clutches a chilled drink from the store you’ve worked at since March, legs dangling over a city that from this angle feels more limitless than it has since I learned to drive. This short walk up the volcano has become my ritual this year, and today it offers a necessary break from trying to squeeze winter coats and duvets into a few squashed suitcases. The coats are so heavy — I’m still struggling to believe that winters in the Northeast are cold enough to warrant so much gear.
Beside me, you mindlessly nod along to the garblings in your earbuds and take in the view. Between you finishing up at work and me soaking up my new relationship, we haven’t seen each other in a while, but life’s been impressively normal as we posture as the adults we thought we’d be by now. I can already feel us shifting gears, gradually disposing of the idealism we could only really cling onto at seventeen.
I often think about how no adult ever quite gets that feeling back. That tension from the precipice as the world slowly opens up to you, leaving you with no choice but to trust yourself and finally surrender that lingering summer. Alone.
Gabby Styris is freezing in this Northeast winter.