Meet Me by the Lake

There were about 50 people there.

I grabbed some soda since mom was watching me, but most people were drinking from a bunch of twelve packs that someone else had brought, me and her included. I was at a picnic table with some friends, drumming my hooves on its surface, talking and eating at the park by the lake. The sun hadn’t really gone down yet, but some guys who didn’t care had already started flicking a lighter so they could set some fireworks off by the banks. One of them warded his friend into falling into the water using the fire. They laughed and I looked to see if she was laughing too, but I don’t think she saw it happen. I tuned back in to the conversation I was having before about music and what everyone was doing for the weekend. I lied and told them I still only listened to punk. Someone went by in a bathing suit, and dove in, and then so did someone else, and then another one. I asked her if she wanted to go in, but she didn’t feel like it and shook her head. Our friends didn’t feel like it either. Just then, the fireworks went off. I watched her eyes light up when she turned to watch them. Down by the water’s edge little sparks went off, and the while the air crackled and we sat there, I could smell outdoor grills getting fired up and hear the breeze coming through the grass and the leaves and an ice cream truck going by, and I could see the sun setting above the trees in the middle of a sky full of clouds that looked like orange and red pillows and blankets, and I could see a rainbow. For the first time in my life I realized that it all meant something to me, something close to my heart, and I would have cried if it didn't sooth me so much. It was like I suddenly understood beauty, and it made sense to me why people would go through the trouble of writing poetry or painting pictures or hiking. I could feel the world, and I could feel summer, and when I took it all in, I could feel her too.

My friends were all looking at me. I think one of them asked me a question when I was zoning out. I stared back at them plainly, not really feeling like my mind was there, and they probably thought I had been smoking or something before I came here. Before anyone could say anything else, two voices started shouting behind my head, and a fight broke out a little way away from us. I turned to check it out and did my best to get my head back, chugging down almost all of what was left in the can in my grasp. Friends started getting ready to come over and pull apart the brawling pair, but before they could, the two stood back and then started laughing and slapping each other on the back instead of the head. They picked up their drinks and started moving off to the parking lot and I turned back to my friends. They said something about heading to the waterpark on Sunday, and seeing that new movie about ballet or something tomorrow and I agreed without really listening to what they were saying at all. I had put my sights back on what she was doing next to me. The talking dragged on and I did my best to participate, but my head was still in a weird place where talking wouldn’t pan out well for me, and I was thinking ahead to the rest of the night, and whether I was actually going to follow through with the thing I promised myself I’d do. I said yes to myself again, but then I thought I might need a plan, and started thinking of one.  I looked up to the rainbow again that no one else had noticed. It wasn’t her, but one of my friends at the table asked me if I’d seen the rose gardens in the city this year, and I said no.

There were about 30 people there.

Someone had tossed one or two waterproof floodlights or something into the lake near the shore, so the water shined and each ripple came up like a little beam of light of its own, with some fish streaking around underneath, between some tree roots and rocks. It was a lot more inviting than pitch black water, and most people had gone in, me and her included. I was sitting with my arms and head resting on some rocks by the shore, where the ground didn’t really come up slowly like it usually did, but stayed pretty deep until the rocks jutted up. I was watching the reflections from the lights in the water kind of slide across the undersides of the trees, casting these bright patterns all over the place, like it was, like, secure like a room, but still open like the outside. The sun went down a while ago, and some people set up lanterns and a mosquito torch or two, but the lights from the lake were the main sources of light, and the whole place glowed this soft bluish kind of color. It was a good color, it made me feel excited and chilled out at the same time, like I could dance in it or just hang out, which I was doing right now. The water felt as good as it looked, too; refreshing, and the perfect degree of cold. It made me feel clean and brand new, inside and outside, when I went under it. Most of the people there were splashing each other, or swimming under in the lit up water, or had each other up on their shoulders, and were talking or drinking or throwing balls around. Someone called my name, and I looked up to see someone waving me over. I dipped under the water and pushed off the rocks to get over to them. It wasn’t unlike flying when the water was lit up like it was. I could’ve seen details if I had goggles on, but the movement, the cool rush was there, and I could still see the shapes of legs and rocks and fish while I made way through. I came out right next to the ones who called to me, and pushed my wet hair back so I could see and talk to them.

It was some people I met at a camp last summer, and she was with them, with some people she knew from work that she wanted me to meet. She must have been talking with them while I was dozing out by the rocks. One of them said it wasn’t like me to be off in a corner during a party, and I told them I was just tired, but then I got kind of worried that they might have been talking about me. We all traded plans for the summer; me and her had the same ones, along with our other close friends. The other people there were talking up parties and get-togethers that I probably would have been more interested in hearing about if this were any other night. I’d also probably be a lot more active in the party tonight, too. While we were chatting someone found a place to plug in a sound system and started playing music at full volume so everyone there could hear. I couldn’t really hear the words beyond some alcohol brands being mentioned, but I could understand the bass perfectly. I mean I heard it, and it hit me somewhere in my chest, like when your heart flutters when you’re scared or pumped up. I never really listened to, or liked r&b before, but I think I appreciated it, or at least, when I broke away from the conversation and started heading back to my friends, and she was with me, it kind of made sense to me, with a bass line that beat in my heart and with a melody that made my eyes water with something that didn’t feel like tears and my skin feel cold and warm at the same time, when I heard the voice come back, more clearly, talking about a person close to them now. I looked down to the lake swirling around me, and could see all of the colors, brought out by the light, swimming around me. I moved through the water with her while the music played and I felt like I was flying again.

There were about 10 people there.

Only a few people besides me and my friends were left. The two guys who had brought the floodlights into the water were still swimming in the lake, or I guessed they were the guys who brought the lights, because nobody else had taken them yet. Whoever brought the sound system had gone and taken it with them, and the lakeside park had become much more quiet than earlier, but you could still hear everyone there talking. We dried off a while ago, and were talking with our towels over our shoulders, hanging out under trees a little way back from the lake. A booming sound came in from the air, and we looked up and saw the holiday fireworks from the next county over going off above the treetops on the other side of the lake. One of my friends got some watermelons and lemonade in a jug and cups from her car and brought it over, so we drank it and watched the show. They sparkled white, red, blue, green, gold, in big bangs or arrows that shot up and fizzled out and rained down. The warmth took hold of me again, and I remembered then how good sweat clinging to your clothes felt after a long, cold winter and rainy spring. Sunscreen and bugspray still hung in the air from when people were putting it on earlier, and the smell of the chemicals almost seemed like old friends I had forgotten until now. A bunch of fireworks went of all at the same time, filling up the whole sky with lights, and I smiled to myself. I thought of theme parks and the beach and places that I would go with my parents when I was a kid and I felt a familiarity, or some déjà vu or whatever you call it of the first time my mom brought me to see fireworks, and then when I learned to swim, when I learned to ride a bike, and then when I went on my first rollercoaster; it made me think of watermelons and snowcones all that stuff and it made me feel good, like I fit there in the moment, or I’d been there before, and then I felt like an idiot for being so sappy, even in my own head. Summer hit me again while me and my friends got comfortable watching the fireworks go off and sparkle in the night sky, casting colors on the trees and her eyes while she watched them.

More people left after the show was over, and me and my friends moved up to the bank to talk some more. Normally I could come up with stuff to say to my friends, and they really are the most important thing in the world to me, but I was still just kind of observing them tonight instead of participating. I knew that they noticed, because I’m usually pretty loud, but I wasn’t ready to do anything about it. A breeze came in over the lake and cooled me off, shaking the trees so that the leaves all started shaking and sighing. I started paying attention to the crickets and frogs too and then noticed that it was all still noisy and lively without a lot of people here. I looked back to my friends and started watching all of the patterns from the floodlights tracing over them. We talked about our summer jobs for a while, then our parents, and then about how excited we were for our plans. I started tuning out again until we saw a flash in the distance and heard what sounded like thunder. One last firework, at least ten minutes after the show ended, went off, with all of the colors in it at once. Each colored strand stretched far out over the trees in the distance, shimmering and crackling until they all dropped out of view behind the silhouettes of the trees and branches. One of my friends suggested that they must have forgot to set that one off. I smiled to myself again and took another sip of the lemonade.

There were 2 people there.

It was me and her.

After everyone had gone, the two of us started pacing around the park, tossing a baseball someone left behind. We moved from the main area by the picnic tables to the lakeside, but then I remembered a path around the lake and we took it until we got to a low wooden pier that went out some ways over the water. Usually I saw birdwatchers out on it with binoculars and stuff, but tonight me and her took the long walk out to the end of it between the waving, whispering reeds and cat tails and over the rough rocks and smooth surface of the lake. I laid my towel down once we got there so we could sit down. The boardwalk didn’t have any railings, so the whole scene was open to us. The guys with the floodlights had taken them with them, though I’m not sure we would have seen them from where we were sitting, so the lake was dark, but quiet and gentle now. The only lights now were the park’s pole lights, which were back by the picnic tables, the little electric lantern I brought with us, and the moon. The little waves in the black water caught the moon, making their way across the surface as slow silver streaks that each made sounds that weren’t really splashes, but were close to splashes, when they reached the pier. Tall grass swayed when little currents blew through, and I could hear the trees doing the same all around me, and the leaves that faced the moon shined the same way that the water did, and I could see them moving, like it was a slow dance and they dressed up in moonlight for the date, and I could see it all happening in the reflection on the lake, too. I looked up. It was like someone spilled a bucket full of stars on it, or like someone had set off every firework in the world at once and frozen them in the sky. Every color was there, swirling around, hanging over the lake and seeing themselves in it. The moon looked brighter than ever, and I noticed that me and her were shining too, and I looked at us. I looked at us and saw that there was so much here, but then at the same time there was nothing happening. It was quiet. The wind stopped blowing. Just about everything. It had been almost dead quiet since we reached the end of the pier and neither of us said anything. I was in another place again, and I felt a deep connection to everything, like it was a home that I’d passed through a hundred times but never stopped to appreciate. I started thinking of other days again, and my mind was drifting in the silence, until…

“Hey”

She had turned and spoken to me, just me, and the daze and dream I had been in fell away and came into perspective. I had felt it before I came here, but now I understood how deep it cut.

“Hey,” I said.

“What’s wrong with you tonight?”

“Huh?” I frowned at her.

“You’re,” she made a gesture, “…off.”

I shook my head. “I’m fine, I don’t know what you mean.”

“No, Ah know you better than that. You’ve been strange all night, and Ah want to know what’s wrong.”

I looked back up. The moon looked closer than ever now, too, and I felt like it was pressuring me, waiting to see what I’d do next. Then I started to feel really, really dumb. If I had felt stupid before, it was nothing compared to this. I had no idea what I was doing out here with her, and all of the ideas that I thought were good before seemed like the most ridiculous plans in the world. Romance, to me, was one of the most uncool things ever, and here I was, on a lake under a full moon, a cliché I’d pulled from movies and had planned on tonight without really thinking ahead as to what I’d be able to do there. So I just kind of sat there really uncomfortably, with no lines, no moves, nothing, and I yelled at myself in my own head. I hated the past me so much.

“I… don’t know…. do you like me?” I almost slapped myself.

“Are ya serious? We’ve been best friends since we were kids, of course Ah like you, how could you ever think I don’t?”

“No, not… like, uh, hey, I love you.” FUCK.

That was it. Game over. I felt like just getting up and leaving right there, maybe changing schools. Maybe moving across the country. That seemed like the first good idea I’d had all night when she looked back at me.

“Ah… love you too? Ah’m sorry, Ah know we’re good enough friends to say that, but ya just caught me-“

All I could do was weakly shake my head.

Her expression changed from sort of confused to totally surprised. “Oh you… Oh, ya mean like…”

I nodded.

“Wow, uh…” she turned to look back over the water and there was a long pause. Super long. And it felt like someone was punching me in the throat as it dragged on. And my heart stopped when she started turning back.

She was smiling, laughing actually, and I didn’t know whether to panic or try my luck at laughing along and pretending it was a joke, because I’d pretty much blown my chances at this point.

Instead I just sat there with a stupid look on my face.

“Really now?” she said.

I didn’t know what to say, and I think she realized that, because after she waited for me to say something, she went on.

“That’s what all this is?” she motioned to the scene around us, the trees, the moon, the towel, still smiling the whole time. “Was this for me?”

I still couldn’t tell what was happening, but I was beginning to think that she was mocking me. My mouth just kind of hung open for the first minute or two, until I got up the courage to speak.

“I mean…” I muttered and turned away. Tears started forming in my eyes.

“That’s-” she giggled again, “you set up a… date… for you and me, so that you could, ya know, ask me out? On another date?”

I hadn’t even thought of my plan tonight that way, but when she said that, I realized she was exactly right. And it sounded even stupider now. I looked back pathetically.

She stopped laughing and looked around her. She looked hard at it all, the trees, the stars, the lake, and as her eyes moved around the whole area, they slowly came full circle and ended up resting on me. She was still smiling, but, it wasn’t really a smile like something was funny anymore. It was soft, it was an understanding smile that I knew her for, and loved her for having, and she didn’t even break it when she opened her mouth to speak.

“You’re really not one Ah’d peg as the romantic type, you know. If someone had told me you’d be doing this earlier, Ah wouldn’t have believed ‘em for a second. But actually, now that we’re here… Ah can see it.”

I think she saw how miserable I probably looked and sucked her teeth. Then she scooted over and put an arm around me. My mouth clenched shut and my body tensed up, unsure, and I waited for her to keep going.

“You never think ahead, do you?”

I stayed quiet. She sighed in return and put her other arm around me and hugged. It was strong, and warm, and it felt like it was melting away that cold feeling I had around my heart. I almost sat there stunned, but it felt too good, so I pressed myself in instead. I could smell the forest, the sunny fields of her farm, I could hear ice cream trucks and waves on the sand and trees in the wind, and I could feel sunlight and cool water when I leaned into her.

“You know,” she said, “Ah’ve never been anywhere this nice on a date, not even one that Ah agreed to.” She broke away, just far enough to look me in the eyes. “You’re sweet. Ah don’t think you like anyone knowing it, but you are.”

All of the colors were in her eyes.

“You try hard and do things ya don’t like doing for people you love, because Ah know you worry about how they feel and what they think, even if ya feel self-conscious doin' it 'cause ya think it's goof-“

“Pfft, I was not 'self-conscious' tonight,” I said.

She huffed. “Whatever, can ya let me finish when Ah’m telling you that what ya do means something to me?”

“Uh, yeah, sorry.”

She opened her mouth to keep going, but then closed it. She rubbed her chin. “Ah forgot what Ah was gonna say next.”

We sat there in silence for a couple minutes, still in a halfway embrace. The only movement was the silver light gliding across the surface of the lake, and a bird that flew across the moon. The wind picked up again for a little while and the trees started whirling again. I decided to try my luck.

“Were you gonna, uh, say yes?”

“Was Ah gonna say ‘yes’?”

“Yeah, to, you know going… out with-“

“Oh,” she shrugged, “sure.”

And that was it. One word. I didn’t even feel it at first, but when it registered I could have laughed, or yelled, or cried, but the hug she still had me in was too good to sacrifice. So I settled with a simple response for a simple answer.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“I… you know, love you.”

She laughed again and kissed me.

It was a crush finally returning the feeling, a ridiculous success to a stupid, dumb plan, if you could even call it that, and prayers being answered all at once, but when we kissed there on the pier, I didn’t hear choirs signing, or doves chirping, I wasn’t bathed heavenly light, I didn’t understand the meaning of life or see my future ahead of me, but I could still feel, in my core, the barbecues and the sunsets, the water and the music, the cool lemonade, the grass and summer.

There were no fanfares, or parades, or flashing lights in the moment, but that was okay, because there were the trees and the cat tails and the rocks, there was the moon and the stars and the birds, there was the pier and the air and the lake.

And there was her and me.