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i. i just want to tell you it takes everything in me not to call you
April memorizes phone numbers.
Ever since she learned all of her lines as Mary in the kindergarten nativity play in 48 hours, she’s been aware of her own exceptional memory, so it’s not surprising that that skill translates to phone numbers.
She isn’t allowed a cell phone until she turns 12, so she writes down phone numbers in a little pink notebook she keeps in a drawer in her desk. Her grandparents’ numbers, her aunts and uncles’, her Daddy’s work and cell phone, the chaperones for every field trip. She loves her notebook, loves having records of how to contact everyone important in her life, but there’s almost no need for it; she remembers every last digit.
She doesn’t have too many numbers of her classmates - she’s not really at the friendship stage where she talks on the phone with anyone from school. They would probably all talk about the mall and cartoons and boys and other things April couldn’t care less about.
But, slowly, this changes.
In fourth grade English, they are told to use the buddy system to go through the vocab words each week. April thinks it’s mostly to make people actually pay attention, which isn’t a bad idea, but one she should personally be exempt from. The last thing she needs is someone weighing her down.
She glances around the classroom as people begin to pair off. Maybe there is an odd number of students. Maybe if she stays in the corner, Mrs. Johnson won’t notice her. Maybe-
“Hey, wanna partner up?”
April blinks up at the face of Sterling Wesley, standing at her desk, with a smile and a nervous bounce in her step. April kind of knows Sterling, her family goes to the same church as the April’s, and Sterling is one of the few classmates of hers who isn’t completely vapid. But they’ve never really been friends; Sterling has a twin sister, a built-in buddy for the buddy system already.
Which is why April asks, “don’t you have, like, a ready made partner?”
She glances over at where Blair is sitting with her feet up on the desk, like the concept of rules does not exist.
Sterling follows April’s gaze to her sister.
“Oh yeah, but Blair is like - I mean Blair is the best person in the world, but she doesn’t, um -” Sterling lowers her voice to a whisper. “She doesn’t care as much about this kind of stuff as me, and I kind of want - I was - I just notice how you always have smart things to say in class and use big words and stuff, so it would be pretty cool to have you as my partner for this.”
April feels her face go a little warm, she’s always been a sucker for people saying she’s smart - it creates a flush of pride that she never feels when she hears her parents' friends saying how she’s such a pretty young woman. Anyone can be pretty. Being smart is special.
And when it comes from Sterling, someone who April actually respects, her voice lowered and eyes intent, it just means a little more.
“Okay,” she says, not at her most eloquent. “Yes, let’s be partners.”
Sterling’s grin is electric. April tries not to think about it too much.
After the third week of having Sterling as her vocabulary partner, April finds herself sitting with her at lunch, finds herself catching eye contact with her during class when something funny happens, finds their conversations in class straying above and beyond vocabulary words. It’s nice.
“Here,” Sterling says out of the blue during a discussion of tenses.
April looks up from her meticulous notes to see Sterling handing her a folded piece of paper.
“What’s this?”
“My phone number.”
“Why?”
Sterling smiles, a sloppy bright thing.
“So you can call me, dummy.”
“Why?” April asks again. Nice well-liked girls like Sterling Wesley don’t give guarded overachiever girls like April their phone numbers.
“It would be nice to talk outside of school,” Sterling says with a shrug. “Like, last night we were watching an episode of Dancing with the Stars and Bill Nye got eliminated and I was like I wonder what April would think about this because you’re smart and you do dancing stuff so could probably beat Bill Nye. Anyway I just wish I’d had your number to talk about it.”
April feels herself grinning at Sterling, warm and flattered.
“Well I couldn’t miss your thoughts on which of the stars danced best, could I?”
So she writes her own number down for Sterling, takes the little piece of paper with Sterling’s number in it, and carefully puts it in the pocket of her shirt next to her heart.
When she gets home that afternoon, she diligently transcribes Sterling’s number in her notebook, noting each of the ten digits. By the time it’s written down, it’s already a lock in April’s brain.
She heads downstairs after, restless. Her mom is watching some daytime soap opera, barely noticing April behind her. April heads to the kitchen, grabbing an apple, eye catching on the phone resting on the counter.
She recites Sterling’s number in her head, wondering what Sterling’s doing right now. If she’s also getting a post-school snack, if she’s watching silly dancing reality shows, if she’s doing the same homework April is. Her hand twitches toward the phone to call her. Even though that’s stupid, she just talked to Sterling 30 minutes ago. But still, she wonders.
So she grabs the phone, dials the first nine numbers from memory. She spares a glance back at her mother in the living room and swallows, struck by a memory of two years ago: April’s mom, with this very phone, tucked between her neck and shoulder, scowl painting her features.
“I’m so sorry, Judy,” she’d been saying, unaware April was watching, “between you and me, April isn’t the best at making friends. I think she just got too attached to Adele and didn’t - she’s not good at boundaries yet, doesn’t know when she’s being overbearing, but I’ll - I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
And April had shrunk away, had let the shame burn her throat, but didn’t let her mother see her cry.
Now, April’s finger hovers over dialing the final digit of Sterling’s phone number. She squeezes her eyes shut.
Overbearing. A present tense, active verb.
She puts the phone back. She will not overbear. Not with Sterling. She can't lose her when they've barely even gotten started.
ii. i wish i could run to you
As promised, April gets a cell phone on her 12th birthday. It’s the newest iPhone, rose gold and shiny, presented with a wide grin by her father at her party to oohs and aahs from her classmates. It’s shiny and perfect and beautiful.
She spends the afternoon of her birthday downloading apps on it, curating an instagram account, full and warm from cake and spring sunlight and attention.
Later, when everyone goes home, April settles in her room and takes out her notebook, begins the process of transferring each number to her phone, transforming carefully drawn pencil digits into shiny digital numbers.
About halfway through, she hears something downstairs, a harsh thunk of a chair hitting the ground, the chilling sound of her father raising his voice.
April makes herself breathe through it. This is just what happens. This is what happens when parents have had long days of throwing birthday parties and cooking and planning. Things just get out of hand.
Her mother’s voice join’s her dad’s and April uses her shiny new phone to turn on some music, mindless pop to drown out another argument.
She used to - a couple years ago, whenever April’s parents would fight, she would sneak the phone out of her dad’s office, shut the door to her bedroom, and dial Sterling’s number. Sterling would always answer, sounding so excited that April had called, and would talk her ear off about whatever show the Wesleys had watched, what trouble Blair had gotten into, how their quest to get their parents to get a dog was moving along. It would make April forget, just for a few moments, that there was this scary ugly thing brewing in her house.
Now, though, now she can’t do that. Not anymore. She will not call someone who thinks so little of her.
As her luck would have it, the next number she flips to is Sterling’s. The old Wesley landline is crossed out, replaced with Sterling's cell phone she got last year when they were still - when it was different. The new phone number sticking in her brain just as fast as the old. April considers for a second not transferring the number to her phone, letting it die with their friendship. But it would be no use, those ten numbers as permanent in her memory as the Republican presidents and periodic table of elements.
So she puts Sterling’s name and number in her phone, creates a whole contact for her, not like she deserves it.
The sound of a dish breaking filters up to April’s room. It’s a bad one tonight. On her birthday. April wants to cry. But she doesn’t. Crying would mean that this is real, that it affects her.
She just needs a distraction. She looks at the bold Sterling Wesley glaring up at her from her phone. On its own accord, her index finger makes its way toward the call button. It would be easy, so easy, to let Sterling’s laugh and her stories and the way she actually listens distract April, to lull her back into a world where she doesn’t have to live every second aware of any problem that might come up and how she could fix it.
But that was Sterling. That was Sterling before she firmly placed herself on the ever growing list of people who don’t really care about April, just pretend.
April quickly pulls her finger away from her phone. She will not fall into that trap again.
So she puts her new headphones into her new phone and tries to drown it all out.
iii. i bet sometimes you wonder about me
Sterling is acting weird.
Not that April makes a habit of noticing how Sterling Wesley is acting, but she is acting weird.
Maybe it’s just because this weekend is the first time they’ve spent just the two of them in over five years, or maybe it’s just that growing older and going through a break up is something that changes a person, even a person like Sterling.
But April can’t help but think that it’s more than that. That it’s something about her.
Sterling kept looking at her. Like, when she thought April wasn’t noticing. April would bend down to get a fallen piece of wood, or brush a bit of sawdust off her shoulder and Sterling would watch her.
Not like how Sterling watches everything, her stupid big blinky eyes trying to take in every detail since they were kids, but something different this time. Like she was curious about April, like she wanted to dissect her, to uncover her, or even…
April swallows. She’s currently driving home from the Wesley house, hands sweaty on the steering wheel, willing herself to stop her current train of thought. Sterling couldn’t have been watching her like that. She’s Sterling. She’s the poster child for heterosexuality, she got a boyfriend at eleven years old, she had a collage she made of Ryan Gosling on the wall of her bedroom, she had pre-marital heterosexual sex a few weeks ago.
That is not the kind of behavior from someone who would admire another girls’ arms as she worked a miter saw. Definitely not April’s arms.
April pulls into her driveway, turns off the car. She doesn’t want to go in yet. Doesn’t want to spend another second inside her house, with her mother’s anxiety and the ghost of her father around every corner.
So she stays. She ponders, her mind swinging back to Sterling.
Sterling is straight. She must be. Just a straight person who maybe looks at April’s arms. April has great arms, objectively. Maybe Sterling was just admiring that. While also biting her lip a little. While also bringing up every gay part of the bible without a hint of judgement in voice, more of a nervous curiosity, a bubbling excitement. Rambling, but somehow firm in her beliefs. Her beliefs that just happened to be that people can love and have sex with whoever they want.
Maybe she knows.
The thought hits April like a jolt, a nausea that makes her want to turn the car back on and drive to a place where no one knows who she is.
She closes her eyes, breathes in.
Sterling doesn’t know. Sterling is just sweet, despite her more backstabbing tendencies. Sterling is just from a family that probably didn’t go to DC and protest DOMA being overthrown. Sterling is just curious and - loathe as April is to admit it - smart enough to interpret the Bible beyond hatred. And she can appreciate a good arm. On April.
April lets out a frustrated groan, leans her head against the steering wheel. The horn blares. April jumps back, only to jump again when her phone dings with a text message. Christ, she is off her game today.
The text, of course, is from Sterling.
We killed it today. So fun to work with you!!!!!!!
What the fuck?
April has half a mind to call Sterling up, to demand actual answers over vague praise and a thousand exclamation points. To ask her point blank what she’s playing at, what she wants from April, why she looked at her like that.
But of course she can’t do that. Can’t reveal that she cares. Can’t reveal that she has a small part of her that has longed for Sterling to look at her just like how she did today, but she had stuffed that thought so deep down that it would never see the light of day. But now it threatens to come back. And ruin everything. That just won’t do.
She puts her phone inside her pocket and walks into her house.
iv. each time you reach out there’s no reply
It’s an eight hour drive from Atlanta to Fort Meyers.
The streets are empty and rainy, people still inside with their families the day after Christmas. And here April is, trapped inside a moving car with her own family, fleeing the only place she’s called home.
Her phone buzzes. April doesn’t dare look at it. Her phone buzzes again. She puts it on Do Not Disturb.
She doesn’t look at it until she's in her new sterile bedroom in what is apparently her new house in her new city, where her family can hide and pretend they’re “normal.”
April looks down at her phone and feels a combination of warmth and devastation rise in her chest.
It’s an eight hour drive from Atlanta to Fort Meyers and April has gotten twenty-seven texts from Sterling Wesley.
It shouldn’t make her want to cry but it does.
She holds it in. She’s good at that. She shouldn’t even read them. But she’s never been as good at that. At ignoring Sterling.
So she listens to the sound of an unfamiliar place and her parents muffled arguing and reads the texts from the girl she lost her virginity to 48 hours ago.
Hey, hope you had a good xmas!!
🎄❤️🎄❤️🎄❤️🎄🎅
Mine was okay. Not that you asked or anything. But it was the first christmas since some stuff happened in my family so it was a little weird.
Very weird.
Extremely weird
I think my family expected me to be in a bad mood and I wasn’t exactly in a great mood but I kept smiling I think
Because, well, to be honest
Because you tell the truth at christmas
That's what that one guy in love actually says on the sign, remember? When he is trying to get with kiera knightly even tho she’s married to his best friend. So not a great example, but he says at christmas you tell the truth.
So my truth
My truth is that I kept smiling at christmas because I kept thinking about you
About the other night, specifically, you and me
It’s a good thought to have, you know? You. the way you are, the way you feel, the way you make me feel.
No one’s ever made me feel like that before, you know?
But anyway that’s my super embarrassing christmas truth feel free to share yours
Or not.
I know its a rare day when you text me back so
Either way hope you had a good day.
I was thinking if you wanted to come over again before school starts up you could
No presh
We could just just hang out wouldn’t have to do anything
Again no presh
Crazy that it’s still raining
Sometimes I wished I lived somewhere where it snowed like in movies
But I like where we live I guess
I don’t really know anymore tbh
I miss you April
April knows she should text back. Even something as simple as an I miss you, too , though the word “miss” seems like a poor way to describe the way her chest is aching at the thought of not seeing Sterling every day in school. Not seeing the way Sterling sets her brow when she was determined. Not seeing Sterling underneath her in the backseat of a car, staring up at April with more care and desire than April deserves.
Not seeing Sterling at all. Ever again.
April turns off her phone, waits till her house quiets, and cries herself to sleep.
Sterling keeps texting, of course. And then calling.
April goes and gets a new uniform for her new school and Sterling calls her.
April stocks the house full of grocery essentials and Sterling calls her.
April registers for classes for the second half of junior year and Sterling calls her.
Every time, April’s itches to pick up, to scream at her, please stop calling me, you’re making it worse, you’re making me hurt, please, please, I need you to stop. I need to you come here and rescue me and take me back to your house, back to your bedroom, where it’s safe and it’s good and I can breathe. Please.
She never does.
Sterling leaves voicemails, but April doesn’t listen, can’t listen. Can’t trust herself to hear Sterling’s voice and not lose herself in it.
So she goes about exploring parts of her new life. She starts school. It’s dreadfully boring, but she’s good at it, puts her name on every list for every extracurricular she can, anything to fill her days. She makes short lists of colleges, though her parents' declining financed don't suggest anything too prestige, studies for the SAT, auditions for the spring musical.
She doesn’t try to make friends, but doesn’t try to make enemies either, for the first time in her life satisfied with a lack of attention. Instead, she plans. She finds students struggling with math and offers to tutor them, saves the money from it in a manila envelope under her mattress. When her dad gives her a fifty to go shopping, she buys twenty dollars worth of items and puts the rest in the envelope. A future.
Months pass this way. There isn’t joy in it, but there is conviction. There is evidence, hope in a manila envelope, that maybe she won’t always be trapped like this.
Eventually, Sterling stops calling. April tries not to notice, tries not to miss her.
She gets a summer job at a camp in the swampiest part of Florida that has no cell service and pays in cash. She likes working with her hands, helping the kids, not thinking about Sterling, not thinking about going home to her family.
David, a lanky counselor in his early 20s who is always grinning, brings a twelve pack of Bud Light in from town, and doles it out the last night, all of them sitting around the campfire. It tastes disgusting, but April almost feels free, a fire warming her face, sitting and commiserating with people who only know her as someone who is good at crafts, not a damaged lesbian who is counting down the days she can leave her own family.
April barely has to force herself to swallow the warm beer, to laugh when the rest of the group laughs.
David suggests a game of truth or dare, and suddenly April is watching as the group eggs each other on, someone sticking their hand in the fire, or chugging their beer, or telling embarrassing stories. April hopes no one calls on her, doesn't want to have to lie in front of these people she’s grown to enjoy.
“David, truth or dare?” A girl named Jenna asks, eyes alight. April thinks she has a big crush on him.
David grins around his beer bottle.
“Truth, but don’t go easy on me.”
“Do you liiiike anyone?”
“Hmm.” David purses his lips, shrugs a little. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
“Elaborate.”
“Sure, yeah, well, you know how I always volunteer to drive into town if we need anything? It’s not just because I’m a great guy. I am a great guy, but it’s mostly for…” He fiddles with his beer bottle, staring into the fire for a second, before looking around the circle. David has struck April as one of the most laid-back people she’s ever met, but there’s something in his face, something almost familiar. “It’s for Ethan. He works at the 7/11 and wears the hell out of the uniform, let me tell ya.”
He laughs a little. April holds her breath. She looks around. Jenny looks a little disappointed, a couple other counselors a bit shocked. The only sound is the crackle of the flames. David’s ever-present smile falters.
“Wow, David,” April hears herself saying before she’s aware of it, “and I thought you went to get us beer because we were special.”
David’s grin comes back.
“Nope, my motives were entirely shady.”
There are a couple of chuckles around the fire.
“In that case,” April says, eyes intent on David, “I will give you an itemized shopping list for specifically 7/11.”
“April, you’re far too kind.”
The laughter around the circle grows louder, David’s smile more confident. April feels some of the tension leave her shoulders.
“Truth or dare?” David asks her.
April doesn’t feel like lying, not tonight, not among these people.
“Dare.”
“I dare you to make me an itemized shopping list for specifically 7/11. I know you were joking, but girl, don’t tempt me.”
The campfire explodes with laughter. It warms April more than the fire or the beer.
After, when they all go back to their cabins, David falls into step beside April.
“Hey, thanks for that,” he tells her in a low, calm voice.
“For what?” she asks, smile ghosting her features.
He tries to nudge her shoulder with his, but he’s about a foot taller than her, so it feels more like a gentle full body shove.
“You know how people get,” he says quietly.
“People can be hateful,” April whispers back, feeling her heart beat fast.
“Less hateful and more just… a herd mentality, right? Like if someone is loud and shitty, they will all be loud and shitty because it’s easier than thinking for themselves. But sometimes” - he nudges her again - “sometimes someone is smart and supportive, then the whole group follows. I prefer that way.”
April feels herself blush a little, hopes the night sky hides it. She goes for a shrug.
“I just… I know it can be hard when people don’t have your back.”
David looks at her, appraising. April’s heart beats fast.
“Yeah,” he agrees softly, “it can.”
Then he digs in his pocket, pulls out a pen.
“Gimme your hand.”
April does, and David gently scrawls 10 digits on her palm, clear as day in the starlight.
“For if you ever need someone to have your back.”
When April gets back to her cabin, she turns on her phone for the first time since she’s gotten here. The lack of service is a relief, no notifications lighting up, no reminder of anyone outside this cabin. She creates a new contact for David, the number sticking in her head as she types it in her phone.
She smiles at it, at the first person since… the first person in a very long time to be in her corner. It makes her bold, makes her finger drift to the voicemail tab, makes her press her ear to the phone as she hears the voice of Sterling Wesley for the first time in six months.
It hurts. It hurts more than April thought it would, Sterling’s eager hope turning into worry turning into disappointment turning into rage turning into a kind of heartbreak that makes tears spring in April’s eyes.
April had been so busy with self-preservation over the last few months, with putting everything into surviving her parents, into not missing Sterling that it had never fully hit her, not until Sterling’s voice cracks over I’m not fucking okay, and the enormity of what she’s done to this girl slams April right in the chest.
It's all April’s fault. Every bit of Sterling’s sadness is due to April. April not telling her she was leaving, April never even texting her, April too much of a coward to do anything but kiss Sterling and hold her close and physically take what she could before leaving without a word.
She thinks she might throw up. She shakily gets out of her bed and out of her cabin, bracing herself on the edge of it and looking down at the wet grass, wondering if she’ll be sick on it. Before she knows what’s happening, her legs take her across the lawn to the mess hall, where an old phone hangs on the wall.
April doesn’t even know if it still works, but she picks it up and hears a dial tone. Her heart pounds in her throat as her fingers shakily dial ten digits she couldn’t forget even if she tried. And she’s tried.
Her finger hovers over the last number, playing out how this will go, thinking of Sterling’s curious Hello? on the other end, how it will morph into surprise or anger when she hears it’s April.
She wonders if Sterling will scream or cry or plead. She wonders if Sterling will listen.
No matter what Sterling does, April doesn’t have to wonder what she herself will do. She will hear Sterling’s voice on the line and every ounce of resolve she’s built up in six months will crumble. Sterling will say her name and April will find the nearest bus to Atlanta, no matter what that will cost her, no matter if Sterling doesn’t even want to see her. Sterling will say hello to her and April will break.
And April can’t break. Not what when she’s trying to put herself together.
So, carefully, painfully, she places the phone back on its receiver and goes back to her cabin.
She puts her phone up to hear ear again.
Hey, April, it’s me, uh Sterling…
April closes her eyes and lets herself imagine.
v. we made quite a mess babe, it’s probably better off this way
April graduates college summa cum laude. Valedictorian. She gives a speech. Of course she does. She’s April fucking Stevens.
When she was a kid, she thought it might be an Ivy League, thought she might be surrounded by friends and family. Thought that the two would be congruous.
But it’s University of Florida, and her parents are sitting in the audience and have no idea the kind of people who April is friends with.
They also don’t know that this is the last time they will see their daughter.
It’s a sunny day - it’s May in Florida, of course it is - and everyone is bright and joyous. The alumni speaker talks in clichés about exceeding one’s potential, about reaching for your dreams and not settling for less. It’s cheesy, but April sees his words in a job offer she got last month at the Capitol, a lease in DC with with her name on it, in the thousands of dollars in a bank account with only her name on it, what used to be a manila envelope grown into five years of savings from dozens of jobs.
After the ceremony, she shakes hands with the Dean, with her favorite professors, gets roped into a group picture with the rest of the nerds in student government.
She’s laughing a little, warmed by the praise and the sunlight, by the time she makes it back to her parents. Her mom gives her a hug, her arms thinner than before. April worries a little, but leans into it, wonders if this is the last time this will happen.
Her dad hugs her too. He smells like old beer. April doesn’t savor the moment.
“Good work, sweetheart,” he says roughly. “Made me damn proud.”
Ten years ago, even five years ago, when she knew what kind of man he’d become but somehow still sought his approval like a dry sponge desperate for water, this would have made her soar. Now, now that she’s seen him shrivel, now that she’s seen how he takes from everyone around him, now that she’s seen slurs fall out of his mouth like a second language, now that she knows she doesn’t have to live under his roof anymore - now, his pride just makes her sad.
“Are you coming home with us tonight?” he asks, “or sticking around with your pals?”
“I’m going home tonight,” she says. “But not - not with you.”
“What do you mean?”
Her dad’s voice is hard. The way April used to fear. April is glad she did this publicly, so his reactions have to be tempered.
“I got a job in DC. Signed a lease.”
“Well that’s great honey,” her mom coos, overly cheerful, though there is judgement laced in her tone, “can’t wait to come visit-”
“I don’t want you to come visit me,” she says. Calmly. Firmly. Her hand is shaking. “I am not going to give you my address. I’ve spent my whole life afraid of you. Both of you really. And I don’t want to do that anymore. You destroy each other every day, especially you, Dad. And I won’t let you destroy me. I’ve spent most of my life hiding who I am because of you, and I would like to not do that any more. Thank you for coming to my graduation. Thank you for feeding me and clothing me. But I think it’s time we say goodbye.”
John’s face is red, as it always gets before she explodes. April feels like she’s not here, like she’s watching a movie about someone brave enough to tell off her awful parents.
“Goodbye?” He gets out through gritted teeth, “We’re your parents, April, you can’t just say goodbye.”
“I can, actually. It’s my right as an adult.”
“April.”
“What did you mean,” her mother interjects carefully, but with a familiar coldness, “what did you mean when you said you were hiding who you were?”
April had debated this internally. She realized she could do the whole cutting out her parents thing without actually coming out to them, despite what years of made-for-tv movies told her. She was firm in her decision, but now, now that she holds a diploma, now that she’s done it, the lightness in her body takes over.
“Oh, I mean that I’m very gay, mother. And you know how much he hates that,” she says, gesturing to her father, almost comically. “Honestly, how you both hate that, you’re just more quiet about it, Mom, but I’ve always been a very good listener.” She thinks she might be laughing. She has no idea what’s going on.
“What are you fucking talking about?” John growls.
“Women, dad. I like them. Romantically, sexually, the whole nine yards. Do you remember when you went to jail that time? Remember when Sterling Wesley hit you with a gun and cuffed you? Yeah, I was in love with her. What are the odds, right? Of all the girls in all the Conservative Christian neighborhoods, she was the one. I was obsessed with her, really. So obsessed with her that when I found out we were moving away, you know what I did?” - April can’t really believe any of this is coming out of her mouth, but it somehow is - “I walked three miles to her house in the pouring rain and proceeding to have earth shattering lesbian sex-”
“April.”
Her father’s face is almost purple now, hand coming up to clutch her robes, and she knows she should be scared, knows that he gets physical sometimes, and his face is angry and hard and so close to hers.
“Everything alright over here?” Someone asks, a concerned parent of another student. What a concept.
John drops April’s robes. April steps back, exhales.
“Peachy,” she tells the stranger. “Mom, Dad, I would say it’s been a pleasure, but... “
And then, like an absolute maniac, she gives them a wave and trounces off.
She thinks she might be shaking. She thinks she might pass out. She thinks she might fly. Everything is a haze of people and robes and loud voices and her telling her parents she had lesbian sex and that she never wants to see them again.
“What the fuck?” she says out loud to no one. “What the fuck was that?”
She’s still unsure of what’s really happening, just knows that she needs to celebrate somehow, to shout her freedom from the rooftops. She has friends scattered across this lawn, people that’s come to care for over the last four years, people she trusts, people she loves.
But her hand dives for the pocket of her pants under her robe, wanting to tell someone who knows first-hand how monumental this is, who saw what April was then, and could celebrate what April has become, how she finally did it. A giddiness rises in her, bubbles over; she’s sixteen again, conceding a debate outside school after hours.
We did it, she could say, we can finally be together - all obstacles gone.
The absurdity of that thought suddenly hits her in the chest. They can be together? April and someone she hasn’t seen in over five years, who she fucked and then ghosted, like an asshole? What does she think is going to happen? That she’ll call Sterling wherever she is and Sterling will drop everything to run to her like they are still stupid teenagers, like April hadn’t broken Sterling’s heart multiple times. April would be lucky if Sterling even answered the phone. She’d be lucky if Sterling even tangentially cared about her anymore.
No. Today is a good day. Today she is proud of who she is, of what she’s done. She will not let an old heartbreak ruin that.
She pockets her phone. None of that. She’s starting a new life today.
She goes off to find her friends, to live in this joy while she can. Still, her phone feels heavy in her pocket. Still, she wonders what Sterling would say. If she would be happy for her. April thinks she would.
And maybe right now, that’s enough.
That night, her last one before she moves into a new apartment, a new city, April dreams of Sterling. Not the ones that she's had with varying frequency over the last six years, when April's feeling frustrated or, frankly, horny, of Sterling's lips and hands in more places than physically possible.
No, this one is new. Simple. Sterling's brushing hair off of April's face, hand ghosting town her jawline, whispering, "you did it, we can try again, I'm so proud of you," over and over again.
April wakes up with an ache in her chest and tears in her eyes.
Then she gets in her car and drives away, windows down, music up, wondering if this is what freedom feels like.
vi. i bet this time of night you’re still up
April’s laughing when it happens.
She’s had a good day, let herself go home early, take a walk in Georgetown in the spring instead of another hour of endless emails. It’s something she’s only started doing recently, letting herself take breathing room, not giving into the urge she had in her early and mid-twenties to work herself into a coma.
(Her therapist had once said something about using her job to seek approval that she can’t get from her parents anymore, so, with that chilling thought, it was maybe time to scale back on the overtime.)
This evening, after her walk, she makes dinner while chatting on the phone with people she’s been meaning to catch up with. Candice shows April her baby (it’s not very cute, poor thing) on Facetime; Amir complains for an hour about field work while April takes almost as long to officer unsolicited practical solutions; David tells her in far too much detail about his latest sexual escapade.
The sun has long set, and April’s full and warm on her couch as David explains, “so they took me to this barn, right?”
“Please tell me there wasn't livestock there.”
“Just me, baby!”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” April argues, but she’s laughing, unable to stop herself.
Her phone, pressed up to her face, starts buzzing through April’s laughter.
“Oh, one sec, I’m getting another call, I swear to god if I have to see another picture of Candice’s ugly… oh my fucking god.”
“April?” David’s voice crackles through. “You good?”
April can’t even register that he said anything. She couldn’t even remember who she is talking to or what year it is or who the president is at the moment.
All her brain can comprehend is that her phone is lighting up with the name Sterling Wesley. Like April is in a dream. Like she is a scared traumatized teen again, heart clenching as she forced herself to ignore the call.
But she’s that kid anymore. April is thirty years old and the girl who was her first kiss fourteen years ago is calling her.
Then, as quickly as Sterling’s name appeared, it disappears.
“April?” David asks again, “you still there?”
“I, um” - April’s aware that her voice is shaking - “I, uh, Sterling Wesley just called me.”
“Bitch! ” David’s voice is loud and familiar, grounding. “Thee Sterling Wesley who you were in love with when you were but a youth? The one who gave you that dreamy little look in your eye when you used to talk about her? The one who you plowed and then you never talked to again?”
April knows she’s not in her right mind for the fact that she doesn’t question his use of the world plowed. Instead she just says hoarsely, “that’s the one.”
“Then why the fuck are you still talking to me? Girl, go talk to your childhood sweetheart.
“That’s a little generous, we were never… it never… she hung up anyway. It rang for like ten seconds, and then she… it stopped. She probably didn’t even - she probably just called me by accident.”
“Oh, so what? She still called you. It’s like, fate, or a sign from God or whatever.”
April looks down at her phone.
“You think?”
“April. Listen to me. Do you want to talk to her?”
“Sterling?”
“Who the fuck else?”
“Right, I…” April thinks back to years ago, to the first time she got a girlfriend, to the first time she didn’t go home for the holidays, to the first time she was honored for her work, to all the landmarks she’s hit over the last decade and change that she would have given anything to share with Sterling. She thinks of a timid kid, so afraid of being too much, of being overbearing, that she couldn't even call her friend and talk about their days.
But April is miles and decades and lives away from being that kid, each chain that held her back when she was a child, painstakingly removed over the last twenty years.
“Of course I want to talk to her. I’ve wanted to talk to her for twenty fucking years! I… David, I'm gonna have to call you back.”
“That's my girl! I’m so pr-”
April hangs up on him. Her heart is pounding against her ribs as she goes to her recent calls, sees Sterling Wesley lit up in red.
April’s finger lingers over it, breath catching. She closes her eyes, remembering how soft and warm Sterling's voice always was, remembering how that voice made her feel understood when she was young, made her feel bright and challenged and alive.
April presses the button.
She holds her breath as it rings, feeling so young, hope thrumming through her that this particular person still wants anything to do with her. After what feels like endless ringing there’s a noise on the line.
“Hello?”
Sterling’s voice is unmistakable and so achingly familiar.
“Hello,” April responds like an idiot. She thinks she might be shaking. But she also thinks she might be levitating. She lets out a joyous breath. “I believe you called me.”