The Forever Bridge by T. Greenwood Page A

without asking because she wasn’t home and couldn’t say no and they’d wind up wrestling on the living room floor until neither one of them could remember how it started. When their hearts pounded with the effort and despite the brawl, there was this untamed happiness. Pause: the grassy smell of his hair, the soft worn corduroys he wore torn at the knee, the smell of dinner and hungry stomachs. Back when her daddy was still a hero, instead of half a man, before the glossy stumps of his knees made her cheeks flush and her stomach turn, when he used to carry them, one under each strong arm, as though they were footballs instead of kids. Pause. When their mother would shake her head, but smile, smile, smile. Back when she could ride her bike across that stupid bridge without thinking about anything but getting home. When home was a place she actually wanted to be. Pause. Just linger for a few minutes longer in this suspended place.
    But there’s no pause in real life. There’s also no rewind. And there’s definitely no delete. There’s just now running on and on, and you can’t ever stop it, no matter what you do.
    Besides, she’s not allowed to go that way anymore, by either her father or her mother. And so she takes the long way home, or what used to be home, and arrives at the house breathless, her legs trembling.

N essa wakes up and for a few scattered, fractured moments, she has no idea where she is. She struggles to recollect all the places she has slept, all the beds she has shared, all of the floors and couches she has crashed on. Then she remembers Mica and rolls toward him, recalling the certain slant of his bed, the depth and breadth of it. But instead of a body, the hot hollow of his back or the soft skin of his stomach, she is greeted by something wet. Has he just taken a shower? Disoriented, now rising to the surface of consciousness like a diver ascending, she realizes the dampness is dew on grass.
    When she opens her eyes, the first thing she sees is the silvery shimmery filament of a spider’s web. She blinks and blinks, trying to focus, to make sense, and then her eyes adjust, bringing the images into sharp relief. The bright red of her sleeping bag, a large willow tree making a canopy of branches and leaves around her, sun struggling through the green. She pulls her arm out of the sleeping bag and stares at the face of her grandfather’s watch. It is enormous on her tiny wrist, like a cartoon watch. It is almost nine o’clock. She cannot believe she was able to sleep so late, especially outside. Especially curled up in a sleeping bag under a tree.
    When she hears the sound of tires crushing gravel in the distance, she starts and struggles to get out of the sleeping bag. Her instinct is to run. Her instinct is always to run. But she is stuck, a fat caterpillar inside this bloodred cocoon, and so instead of trying to escape she burrows deeper, clutching the hard round pouch of her stomach, and feels the baby stir, just the small flutters she started to feel months ago. Like an insect’s wings beating against her insides.
    Inside the closed sleeping bag, she can smell herself, the impossible funk of her own flesh. She remembers the last shower she had at Mica’s, the day before she left. She recalls the delicious heat of the water, the way it massaged her aching shoulders and back. She remembers the clean minty scent of the shampoo, working it into her dreads, and then rinsing them clean. She remembers the steam filling her chest, as though even her insides were getting clean. But she also remembers the dirty grout between the cracked tiles, the filthy washcloth draped over the faucet, the missing COLD handle. And she remembers the pubic hair, the black hair curled on the sliver of soap. That comma, causing her to pause for a moment, to hold her breath.
    She is blonde. So is Mica. And yet.
    The whole summer had been a series of and yets . Speculations, silent accusations, explanations. Until this