Gray - By Pete Wentz Page 0,9

she can’t pull us apart. She moans softly as I move my hand up Her back. I feel her soft skin run through my calloused fingers. It’s so warm. I push Her against the frame of the door. Our tongues move in unison, giving pieces of ourselves to each other (imagine the possibilities of shared DNA). This could probably go further, right here on the street, but I don’t let it. I pull away. We stare at each other, Her big eyes just happy slits, lips curled around Her teeth in some blissed-out grin. Neither of us cares that we’re not wearing our coats.

I say something stupid like “That was nice,” and she answers with something like “Yeah.” Then we head back into the party, this time with Her hand in mine. No one is aware of what happened down on the street, that magical transference, that melding of spirit and body, but I have the proof right here in my hand, and I’m not letting go. I have a girlfriend now, with big, beautiful eyes and a neck like a swan’s, perfection in a hoodie. And she’s not letting go either.

• • •

Later—much later—she would tell me that she came to the bar that night hoping I would be there. When she saw me, she ditched Her roommate and stood right in front of me at the jukebox. She laughed when she told me all this, rolled right over in bed to shove it in my face. She had set the trap and I had snared my leg in it. Tried to chew it off. To be honest, none of it really bothered me all that much.

5

We are holding hands. We are having sex. We are each becoming the other. She wears my shirts. I wear Her. We are spending late nights sitting in booths, watching the wind whip down the street. Blow, wind, blow, we are safe and sound. We are holding each other in bed, I am stroking Her hair, she is falling asleep on my chest. We are buying each other used books at Quimby’s (I am The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights and Country Music, 1970, featuring DeFord Bailey, the singing shoeshine boy; and John Wesley Ryles; and Charley Pride, “the first Negroe Country star.” She is a tattered Glory & Praise song-book, with its Penitential Rites and such lines like “For love is stronger than death, stronger even than hell”—I underlined that bit). We are way symbolic. We are driving to the edge of the city and talking in vague-yet-resolute certainties about our dreams and our futures. We are leaving things in the medicine cabinet. We are falling in love.

This is the good part, the beginning, when everything is new and exciting, when every avenue is clear, every shop open, even though there is a parade in town. Life is endless, limitless. I haven’t even thought about taking my medication in months; she is every pill I need. I am going in hard, I am putting it all on the table. I am casting off pieces of my past without hesitation. I am becoming who she wants me to be, even though she doesn’t want me to do it. I am giving up the late nights; I am keeping my eyes forward on the street. I am saying good night to insomnia, saying good morning to the sun. I am everything I hated.

And what’s more, I am writing new songs—better songs, the best I’ve ever made. “I love the way you have with words,” she says, looking over my shoulder, but somehow replying “Thanks” after something like that just doesn’t seem like thanks enough. I want to give each word a bit of vindication. But I don’t, because each line is about Her, even if she doesn’t know it yet. There is no magic formula, no deep well from which this flows. I am pouring my love for her into spiral-bound notebooks.

I could throw modesty Her way, but modesty never looked too good on either of us. So, I just nod my head absently. My pen was a life raft in the middle of the ocean, it was the only place I could ever be free. Grammar and punctuation were just someone else’s ownership of my words, so I raged against them, blew through borders, made them mine. I would keep all my secrets inside parentheses. I would hold my breath before every period.

Now I’m writing Saturday-night words. I’m not dying with the words on