Part II

I hang on to the excitement long enough to imagine sand in soft sheets and hands held in the dark. And when I am able to let go of this and breathe in deeply again, the thoughts rasp hard in my throat. Harder than breath jagged and dry during long run on an ankle still physically pained. Two miles on that is nothing compared with run-away mind on emotion.
Did I really imagine that this cross-country venture would be a good idea? In that split-second of decision making before agreeing to visit, did it even cross my mind that it might not be such a good idea? No, and that’s why I ran with it, full steam ahead. For once, it felt right and I didn't even question it.
“Mars, I think you should come out here, really. I have this ticket you can use, let me get online and see if there are restrictions on it.” He had said it before I knew what he was saying, and as the metronome tick and tock of a tongue to teeth thought echoes across the miles, I listen to him think out loud about this wild idea.
I am sprawled on my couch, readied in shoes and tank top for a run on the beach before the sun goes down. A dusky circle around the water and back. I am planning on getting outside and enjoying the light before it is consumed by the night. But he has different ideas, this spontaneous, light-hearted boy on the other end of the line, and somehow, I’m becoming convinced that they might be good ones.
“Aw, I don’t know. I don’t want to use your ticket.”
“no, see, you could come out here as soon as you get done fishing with your dad, and it’s round-trip and, wait, when are you going fishing?”
His earnest consideration for my trip home jerks me back to reality, and I’m once again wondering what is happening, what has happened to me in the past couple of days.

When I met Jay it was Christmas, and we were at his parent’s house drinking his dad’s home-made wine. Mr. Latore had spent the past 20 minutes showing me each and every piece of his sprawling 20-year-old collection of holiday houses and stores, complete with running water and lights and singing angles. “See, and over here, over here, this is California. This is where Jay and his guys are at. See those homies?”
The elder Latore is funny and kind, eager to show off his landscape and happy to have friends and family around to do it for. Jay and I had talked in the corner about myspace, music, I don’t even remember what else. And later, at the bar, we sat together and talked about Long Beach, and music and travel and how it all fit together into our respective dreams and goals.
When we left the bar that night, I driving my boyfriend’s car, Jay riding along in his best friend’s back seat, I thought back to something Sean had said to me earlier.
“We’re going to meet my friend Jay tonight, I think you’ll like him.” He had said this walking up to Jay’s house in the suburbs.
It hadn’t meant anything to me then; of course I’d like him. I liked all of his friends. But when I met Jay I understood exactly how he had meant it.

In high school, and then college, and even afterwards, the guys I dated were free spirits. The kind of guy who my best friend Nate used to call “fun guys” in jealous condemnation of the drugs and sex and fun I shared with them. They were the kind of boys who got me to go to Alabama in the middle of a semester without telling my parents and without a driver’s license and without any money. The kind of boys who convinced me to pierce soft, feminine flesh because similarly located soft male flesh had been thusly outfitted. They were tattooed, or pierced, and constantly hitching up jeans or strumming imaginary bass riffs in odd moments of idle handedness. Baseball caps turned backwards or knit beanies scrunched down low capped dark, perfectly curled hair and flipped it out in adorable waves around the ears. I hadn’t met a guy exactly like this since the last Jay I had met. And I had liked him, too.
“So. What did you think,” Sean had asked as we walked to his car in the crisp dark.
“Um, yeah, I liked him. He’s exactly the kind of guy I used to date,” I say, honest to the end. “Why not?” I thought to myself. “I’m dating Sean, it’s not like me saying this guy is cool is gonna get weird.”
And it didn’t, not then. And it hasn’t, yet. But as the momentum of my decision to spend a week in Long Beach with this man I barely know catches up to me, I’m wondering just how weird it’s got the potential to get, and the excitment of days past has turned into some sort of knotted tangle in my stomach and legs and chest.