Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [2]
“See, you keep your hand flat and your fingers back.”
I stood close to him by the stall and he reached into his pocket.
“Let him take it, he won’t bite. Like this …” Toby sniffed, lowered his velvet head, then looked up expecting more.
“You try.” In the darkness, John had stepped behind me. “Go on, keep your fingers back.”
“I’ll just feed him a carrot.” The carrot, for some reason, seemed safe.
“Here,” he said, opening my hand and placing a sugar cube there. “Don’t be scared.” And with the back of my hand resting in his palm, the horse kissed mine and the sugar was gone.
Our hands broke. But his touch stayed with me as we fed the horses the rest of our stash. It was with me when we left the barn and walked out into the ring. And when I climbed onto the split rail fence, John hopped up beside me.
The moon was full, and we were quiet, watching the sky.
“It’s a blue moon tonight,” I said. “I heard it on the radio.”
“Oh yeah?” He crooned, “Without a dream in my heart, without a love of—”
“What is a blue moon?” I wondered aloud.
“It’s when there are two full moons in one month. Not as rare as an eclipse, but definitely rare.” Because of his time in Outward Bound and a NOLS stint in Kenya, along with his innate curiosity, he knew so much about the natural world that I didn’t.
“So it’s got nothing to do with being blue?”
He shook his head, smiling.
“But it seems special, like a stronger moon.”
“Maybe it is,” he said, looking into my eyes.
“Look.” I pointed. “It is brighter. Everything is silver—the leaves, the barn, the stones, the horses, the road, everything.” I shifted my weight on the fence. Everything.
Again we were quiet—the shyness that came from knowing each other well in one way, as we had for ten years, and then the knowledge deepening. We had been friends in high school, housemates in college, but now—walking home together these past few weeks, practicing the kiss in rehearsals, falling in love through the imaginary circumstances of the theater (a professional hazard for actors: Is it real? Or is it the play?)—attraction had become undeniable. We sat for a while under the stars and felt no need to speak. But then he did.
“Can I do this for real?”
He didn’t wait for an answer; he leaned in. Only our lips touched. It was gentle, hands-free, exquisite. I opened my eyes for a second, not believing that what I’d dreamed of was happening, and saw, by the lines at his eyes, that he was smiling. I held on to the fence, woozy. A world had opened.
“I’ve been waiting to do that for a long time,” he said, looking not at me, but at the sky. He was still smiling, and I remember thinking then that he looked proud. For the past week and a half, we had kissed in rehearsals, but in my mind, we were the characters, Mag and Joe, teenagers from Ireland about to be married because she was pregnant. At least I had tried to believe that. But this kiss was different. This kiss was ours.
“I guess that wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said finally, tucking one of his ankles behind the fence rail.
No. It’s right. Again. Don’t stop, I thought. Then my mind went to the actor I’d been with for almost three years, who was kind and good and could make me laugh, even in a rough patch, and to John’s girlfriend from Brown, whom I liked and admired. Reality. People would be hurt. Or did he mean it wasn’t supposed to happen because we were friends and should remain so? It occurred to me only later that he was testing the waters.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he took my hand and said he wanted to show me something. I followed him into the woods, twigs snapping under our feet. The sky had grown brighter, and light danced through the thicket of elms onto the rocks and the river. Sound rushed, loud and exhilarating.