Marching season is out, but the competition is only heating up.
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Section leader applications for the next marching band season at Halston University are officially open, and percussionist Bay Rodriguez wants the role.
Bay's only competition is Ca...
noun. an eponymous cymbal, producing a short, sharp, explosive sound.
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WE PART BY LESS THAN an inch, breathing into each other. "Go on a date with me."
Bay shakes her head, lips pressed together, hands still wrapped around me. "I'd be the worst girlfriend. The more I'd love you, the more I'd punish you for making me feel that way."
"What?"
Bay inhales deeply. The motion makes her shoulders rise and fall, her eyelids drooping shut like she's ready to sleep. But when her eyes land on mine, she looks wide awake. "Do you know why I really started to hate you?"
She already told me; I had what she didn't have growing up. She resented my family's money, was threatened by my talent and sociability. "Haves and have-nots."
"It's not that," she whispers, shocking me. What else is there? "Do you remember when we kissed at Toby's party?" I nod my head, so close to her that my nose brushes across hers at the motion. "I don't usually feel anything when I kiss people, when I fuck them, when I vanish the next morning, but I felt something for you."
My heart leaps hearing that. Yes, yes, yes.
"It was huge and it was terrifying, and I knew I had to push you away for good. I'm not a good person, and I lashed out. Eight-year-old shit. Playground tactics. I'm cowardly and selfish. That's me. That's why I started this rivalry."
I'm not buying it. Bay tries to slip out of my grip, sliding sideways against the bed frame, but I plant both hands on the wooden railing.
"You think I don't know you by now?" I argue.
I think of all the random philosophical concepts, -isms and tangents she's been throwing at me each time we broach a vulnerable topic, whether it's my vulnerability or hers.
"I know that you want to turn your emotions into concepts and your life into abstractions and, fucking obviously, you lash out at people that threaten that detachment. You're the last person I'd ever put on a pedestal, so don't worry about me falling from the wrong height. I see you. And I still want you."
"Why?"
Because I love you. "Because you're vulnerable when you feel safe enough to be," I insist. I've seen it. There's softness and kindness and generosity in her. "You wouldn't hurt me. Not if I loved you right."
I believe this wholeheartedly. She showed me art museums from a different lens, she kept the birthday card. She forgave her mother. She took the freshmen under her wing, she stayed up with me, unpacking little hurts from my childhood, sharing the same from hers. Instead of attacking my wounds, she caressed them, comforted me. She's bared a piece of her heart for me, telling me all her origins and history. I would have never pegged Bay to do something like that.
