Introduction
The sun always shines in Wayside.
Or at least that’s what the faded sign sitting snugly outside of the town’s entrance says. That lie grabs hold of people as they drive in, slithering into the exhaust pipes in their cars, slipping through cracked windows, hitching rides on coattails and wheels of bikes until, ultimately, that lie settles deep into the victim’s heart, leaving them almost disappointed when the sky is polluted with dark clouds half of the time.
In reality, smoke clogs the airways and the sea blows in storms the same way as in any other small, seaside American town.
The people that live here are much the same way: as stubborn as a cloud of pollution, as contently displeased as a windy storm coming in from the ocean, and as proud to live near fresh fish and seafood as the rays of sunlight that shine brightly like a beacon when they do. Old traditions and uneducated beliefs plague this town, influencing the newcomers from the West, passing down through generations like a precious vase.
Wayside is a small, sea-side town with small, sea-side people.
My parents grew up in Wayside, met in the town’s tiny college, and fell in enough love to condemn a child to grow up here. And their parents grew up here and their parents probably grew up here, and I picture, as the family tree climbs higher, reaching towards wispy white clouds, you’ll find that our relatives crawled straight out of the ocean, emerged out of small, muddy forests and started a new species of Wayside people.
College in three months and the quiet desire to be different from everyone else loom over my life like a thick storm cloud, always clouding the skies when I look up. And as I lay on the beach all summer, trying to tan, letting life come to me and praying it never will, I can’t help but think I’m melting into the sand beneath me. Can’t help seeing myself dropping out of college before I even go, dissolving into the sand and reemerging as a perfect Wayside citizen: quietly displeased, never bold enough or passionate enough to make a change.
And so, as summer grows shorter and the rest of my life nearer, I stay on top of the sand and wait for the storm to clear.
…
The sun was shining the Tuesday that Delilah picked me up in her blue, scratched up car. Its brakes weren’t always reliable and the windshield wipers didn’t work no matter how hard you begged, but a silver shimmer sat underneath the blue, chipped paint that almost made her car feel luxurious.
Slipping into the passenger’s seat, her wide, sparkling grin met my gaze. A scar sat peacefully on her lip from an accident as a kid and her bottom teeth were slanted like handwriting, but like her car, there was a gleam, a shimmer to her grin that made it the most beautiful smile you’d ever seen.
Her smile was sunlight in a cloud-tormented town.
“How are you, Elise?” she wondered, my name fitting better in her lips than mine.
“I’m good,” I said simply. She started the car. It didn’t catch the first time, the engine complaining and then starting at the second go. She stayed smiling the whole time, taking the car out of park and starting to roll peacefully down the poorly paved roads, windows down, always. “How are you?”
She nodded, her naturally curly blonde hair bouncing with the movement of her head, with the flow of the wind. “I’m good.”
For being my closest friend in this crooked, sunburnt town, Delilah and I didn’t talk much. We didn’t know everything about one another, but we agreed about the important things: that we’d leave Wayside and never look back when we were ready, that windows-down drives were better than sleeping, sometimes silent conversations are the best ones, and that the sea is more beautiful at night when the moon shines playfully on the tips of gentle waves and loves them all like sisters.
We arrived at the Smoothie Shack: a simple, Hawaiian-themed smoothie shop nestled snugly on the beach, always attracting swarms of teenagers like rays of sun on hot summer days. The line today brought us out of the shop and we stood with our toes in the sand. Leis and painted images of pineapples swarmed our vision as we finally ordered our smoothies made with canned fruit, branded with the lie of freshness.
We ordered our typical strawberry banana smoothies and sat near the water, watching as the waves lapped up and sprinted towards our feet, only to retreat quickly. Running a hand through her long, curly hair and letting her green eyes shimmer in the brightly reflected sun rays, she said, “I went cliff diving with one of my friends the other day and swear I almost died.”
“Glad you didn’t,” I said with an apprehensive smile, touching her tanned shoulder lightly. “And of course you went cliff diving. I don’t know how you do things like that. I couldn’t do it.”
We were quiet for a long time, listening to a seagull cry. “Couldn’t do what?”
I laughed, picturing my wobbly feet at the edge of a cliff. “Jump.” We fell quiet once again. “I just know I’d get to the edge and chicken out.”
Her laughter fell like a waterfall onto the sand beneath us. “I’m sure you could do it. You can do more than you think.”
She was more confident in my bravery and ambition than even the sun was. I laid on my back, planting my smoothie into a small hole in the sand. As I looked up at the blue sky, I wondered if somewhere, some traveler’s heart felt a little lighter, inexplicably joyful because the sign was right for once and the sun shone lovingly down on our small seaside town.
A single cloud appeared and I realized Delilah was more confident in me than I was.
…
The parking lot in front of us ended at a rocky cliff that ran quickly down to the sea. Looking out over it, I watched as the moon-kissed waves crashed against the jagged rocks, creating another few sharp points, constantly molding and bending and loving the earth. The few trees hardy enough to hang in with the slope and the salt water waved gently in the wind. And Delilah’s thin hand planted itself on the top of her car as she crawled up to sit next to me.
We were quiet for so long I forgot she was there. I melted right into the sound of the ocean and the slow beating of my heart.
But her voice, when it finally played in that empty parking lot like music, didn’t scare me at all. “Are you excited for college?”
“No,” I laughed. The moonlight caught my eye and I thought about the stagnant water that’s this town. How dynamic the rest of the world is. “But yes. But also no.”
“Yeah I think so too,” she laughed, the breeze pushing her hair off of her shoulders. A single strand caught onto the side of my face, the wind, like a soft kiss on my cheek, quickly whisking it away. The first ray of sunrise slipped loose from the horizon, lightening the deep black to a dark blue. The night had faded away like a moment in time.
“I think one day I want to travel to Paris,” I said after the sky had finally started to turn a light purple.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know what about it, I’ve just always wanted to.” I realized how dumb it sounded, through my chapped lips, as I pretended to know anything about the world. “I used to love this book about Paris in elementary school. I know it’s dumb, but it’s stuck in my mind.”
She was quiet so long I swore it was the next night already. “That’s not dumb at all, Elise. I’m sure Paris is beautiful and will be everything you dreamed.” The sun rays started to kiss the tips of waves harsher than the moon had. “Send me pictures next to the Eiffel tower.”
We giggled. The night faded, giving way to a sleepless day as we packed into her car and drove back silently, dreaming of Paris and college and one more day not having to think about either.
…
The sun shone lamely through my window as Catherine told me about her boyfriend, her excitement for college, and her lovely, fake family. The words poured from her lips like a faucet turned all the way on, because we needed it for our friendship to stay afloat. We needed the words and the noise and the lack of any silence.
“So,” she grinned her secretive little grin, the type you never trust. From constantly bringing up your smaller bra size in sixth grade to never forgetting to remind you how much better the college she’s going to is, Catherine’s smile has always been untrustable. “What boys are you interested in? You must see so many cute ones at work.”
My gaze fell down to my bare nails and, when I closed my eyes, I could see the ocean, blue like my nails weren’t. “None. Really. And no, not really.”
My mom’s heavy, constrictive breathing filled the room as she appeared in the doorway, holding a laundry basket overflowing with her shapewear and turtleneck dresses, snakes from Medusa’s head. “Yeah, Elise, when are you going to get a boyfriend? You’re going to regret getting to college without having your first boyfriend.” Her smile set in a sneer, revealing her one, crooked front tooth, a tinge of off-coloration where she had to have it filled.
I looked out the window. The sun was still high in the sky, and the world was still filled to the brim with possible boyfriends, fish clogging up the sea. But, as I looked out at the horizon, watching as it stretched into faded blues and greens, I didn’t think about boys at all, just late night drives, wind in my hair, how it feels to step foot in a city you’ve never been in before.
I wanted to tell her I wouldn’t regret it, to stand up to her for once, force my knees to not even shake, stand firm like an island. I could nearly see myself turning to Catherine, asking her to leave, to only come back when she found a way to fly without keeping everyone else on the ground. But my shoulders rose and fell and, after a while, my mom melted from my gaze, disappearing into the confines of her darkened bedroom.
Catherine went back to talking about the melody of her perfect life, her beautiful family portraits, the way her sleep was so fulfilling. I looked outside again, at that oil painting of incoherent shapes on the horizon. Something was calling me.
…
That last summer before college, I worked one shift a week at the drive-in movie theater in Wayside. My parents insisted I needed to save money for college, collect and hoard as much as I could. But melting into the sand was always better than my week turning into hours sitting at a stale cigarette-smelling ticket station.
Guys came in swarms, migrating towards the booth and making sure to lean over towards me, their eyes traveling down as they requested less tickets than the amount of people hiding in the back of their car. And I always sold them the tickets, smiling dumbly, a pushover.
The movies were always boring, playing four times before shifts switched. I started to wait for the moments that made me feel something, the songs that played at the right times, the one line said through tears that hit a nerve in my heart like a violin, the one camera shot that was a masterpiece. Sometimes I pictured making it out of this town, making a movie of my own. And I knew every song would fit beautifully, every shot gorgeous and humbling, every line the type to break your heart over and over again.
Driving home from work was always my favorite part. Leaving it all behind: my nametag, the ugly visor I had to wear, the smell of old popcorn. Whether the moon shone on my dashboard or the sun chased my car from behind, I always drove too fast, letting the windows fall down and the wind run its freeing fingers through my hair, under my tank top straps, across the sides of my face.
…
One day driving home from work, I saw a pride parade in one of the nearby towns. The event was filled with beautiful colors and joy. And one protestor, screaming into a microphone about how far from God the people in front of him were. No one seemed to mind, and no one let his hate spoil their joy, but the sunken feeling in my heart couldn’t seem to fade.
…
“So, girl,” Catherine said with a preppy laugh over the phone one night. “What have you been buying for your college dorm room?” She went on to describe the beautiful, expensive things she’d gotten to bring to her private university.
She waited patiently for my answer
“Nothing.”
…
“I think I’m going to try to swim,” Delilah said, pushing her hair off of her freshly tanned skin and sitting up from the beach blanket we both laid lazily on top of.
“Okay.” I shut my eyes as I heard her gentle footsteps in the sand get quieter. The sun beat down on me like a blanket from above, painting my skin a darker shade of tan and the inside of my eyelids a deep orange. At one point, I looked out at the horizon, hoping to see Delilah, as the sun and the water glittered around her. But, I only saw a hand as it went under, a few moments of nothing, her head bobbing up for a second and then going back under.
Everything seemed to slow down and speed up at the same time. I seemed to stand with my feet in the shallow parts of the water for hours, yet swim to her in only a matter of seconds. I grabbed her and swam us back to shore, bringing her into the shade of a palm tree, where she could cough and laugh embarrassedly. Finally, her lips painting a nervous smile on her face, she awkwardly said, “Thank you. I didn’t know you were so good at swimming.”
“I used to be on a swim team when I was younger,” I said, distantly remembering the days of one pieces and chlorine. “And of course. What happened?”
“Well,” she paused for a long time, finally admitting, “I can’t really swim. I’ve never really learned how. Somehow I thought I would figure it out.” I nodded, quiet. And she came to me, “Once when I was little, me and my family were staying on a lake and I went out swimming one morning and got caught up in a wave and started kind of drowning. And I just kept thinking someone was about to come and save me. It’s weird, no one did. I just watched as the water swallowed me.”
“That’s terrible, I’m so sorry-” I trailed off, my voice lost to the sound of the waves lapping up against the shore. It felt vulnerable of her to say. “You know, I was driving home from work the other day and saw this guy protesting a pride parade. I mean, I’m not sure what you think about that, but it made me feel weird that he could be so hateful about love.”
“No, it’s messed up that he did that. I agree. Our whole town sucks. I hate it.”
“I know. I think my parents are that way,” I trailed off. “Well, I know they are. And it’s so strange. Are yours?”
And it must have been too much, too close, because she shrugged and we didn’t talk again.
…
We’d been driving for nearly 30 minutes the next night when Delilah said, a red light shining on her freckled face, “I’m sorry about shutting down the other day. Yeah, my parents are probably like that guy you saw. But I don’t like to think of them that way. They’re good people. I want them to be.”
The light turned green and I nodded as she looked away, stayed quiet as she drove away.
She told me later that night that she was going to go to college in Chicago and never come back to this town. I could see by the way her voice wavered that she didn’t expect to say it, didn’t expect how real it felt sitting on our chests.
I saw a shooting star. And I told her I couldn’t wait to leave either.
…
As the blur that was June turned to the slow moving July, Delilah started to be a constant part of my life, bright green eyes in my mind’s eye, her gentle voice in my ears. I started driving to her house after work, watching movies as movies melted into watching the low tides at night. The passenger’s seat of her car started to feel like home, with the bit of smoothie I’d spilled and the pair of sandals I kept on the floor, always ready for us to melt into the sand together.
One afternoon, walking out to my car to drive to work, I found a little model of the Eiffel Tower sitting on the side mirror.
A smiley face drawn in her hand writing sat snugly on the bottom of it.
As I looked out at the sea, I felt something more than joy, gentler than excitement, more fluttery than anxiety, something uncomfortable and raw. The wave I was watching crashed into the shore and I slipped into my car, driving away and leaving that feeling behind, a shadow in the rearview mirror.
…
Delilah took me to this bench nestled snugly in a grove of trees one day. Sunlight filtered through the willow branches that hung like curtains around the small space of grass and quiet. The ground beneath our feet gave way with every step, rich with moisture and life. And looking at her smile from the side, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from how the sunlight rafted through her eyelashes and caught beautifully on the tip of her nose.
We sat peacefully and silently on that bench for what felt like hours, letting the sound of crickets and the distant highway fill the sparkling space between us.
“I asked my parents if I could get this small tattoo with my own money and they said no, isn’t that the stupidest? I’m literally 18.” She looked over at me with a smile that wasn’t the stupidest at all.
“It totally is.” A bird sang somewhere in the distance. “I say you just do it.” My voice quieted a little bit, the bird’s song taking over. “You’re literally 18.”
She laughed, her laughter light sweet like the bird’s chirps.
Another peaceful eternity of silence passed before she gently said, “I’m so tired, are you okay if I lay down and take a nap for a minute?”
“Of course.” I scooted to the end of the bench to give her space, but she laid her head down right on my legs and I tensed under her touch. The sun kept shining, kept brushing against our skin and I eventually sunk into it, the sweat between her neck and my legs, the way her hair tickled my knees. Her presence was so light, but so heavy, so real and so right. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, as I sat perfectly still and listened as her breathing slowed, listened to the sound of the ocean.
I could still hear the bird when she finally woke up and we started to walk back to my car.
…
“Catherine, can I talk to you about something?” I asked tentatively, watching as she looked up from her eyeshadow pallet and small vanity.
“Yeah of course.” She went right back to packing white eyeshadow under her eye.
“Well I was with my friend Delilah the other day and she fell asleep on my lap.” I trailed off. “And it was just so strange. I couldn’t stop thinking about her touching me. I’ve never felt that way before. Does that mean something?”
“Hmm,” she shrugged, unbothered. “I don’t really think it means anything. You probably just don’t like touch or something.”
“No that’s the thing,” I paused as the song changed on her radio, “I liked it. And I’ve never really felt that way with a guy before. Like that safe and nervous at the same time.”
I watched as her eyebrow raised suspiciously in the mirror. She turned slowly with an accusatory gaze, saying, “You know liking another woman is a sin. And if you’re having urges like that for Delilah, you should pray about it.”
“It’s not like that. I don’t like Delilah as more than a friend.” Sweat started growing defensively on the back of my knees and in the palms of my hand. So bad, I wanted to have the backbone to tell her she was wrong, more wrong than she even knew. “And-” I almost said it, how it wasn’t wrong at all if I did like a woman, how her hate was only going to rot away at her core, but my voice faltered, then disappeared altogether. “Nevermind, it was nothing.”
I couldn’t hear the sea or any birds through the thick pane of her closed window and the fog on the glass made it so I couldn’t even see the brilliant green and blue of the horizon. I could barely breathe.
…
Nearly a week later, Delilah showed up at my house and showed me the side of her shoulder, which sported a freshly inked black tattoo. Our grins met one another in the dying sunlight as I asked, “Were your parents mad?”
“They were not pleased,” she said with a sweet giggle. “But it wasn’t too bad. I’m not in any real trouble.”
I smiled, melting into her car as she drove us to our spot overlooking the ocean. Her rebellious spirit filled the air as she rolled the window down, as I looked over at her in a feeling that must have been envy. It ate away at my heart in the same way. And made my stomach do backflips.
Our parking lot was waiting for us, empty and beautiful as always. She got out of her car, staring over the cliff and I quietly joined her.
A storm was brewing over the sea as we looked out at it. And, switching my gaze from Delilah’s new tattoo to the churning dark clouds, some strange feeling sparked inside of me, some fire that wasn’t even tamed when I went to sleep that night.
“Are you cold? You’re shivering,” Delilah’s voice cut through the stormy air, cut through the smoke in my mind, and brought my attention to the goosebumps growing in colonies on my arms.
“Oh, I guess I am. I didn’t expect it to be stormy.”
She didn’t hesitate, just wrapped her arms around me and let the back of my head lean into her shoulder. The salty wind from the sea was chilly and harsh, but her breath on my neck was warm.
And I could have stayed there forever.
…
The feeling didn’t pass. I woke up with a fever in my blood and an anger coursing through my veins that brought me right to Catherine’s house. The trim was freshly painted and the lawn beautifully landscaped, and as I walked through a rainy morning to her front door, each footstep on the wet concrete brought that anger right back.
Her mom answered and sent Catherine to the door. Her hair was still in a messy bun from sleeping, her eyes puffy, and I ate at her vulnerability. “You’re wrong, Catherine. And so small minded. It’s okay for a woman to love a woman. Or for a man to love a man. Or any consensual, appropriate relationship. And if you don’t see that, then I’m sorry for you. Because it must suck to hate love. And it must suck to be you.”
I didn’t know what I expected, but she scowled at me like gum on her shoe and slammed the door in my face.
I drove to Delilah’s house crying, but free.
…
I left out the part about her, but told Delilah all of it. How I was finally free, how I finally had a backbone. And she told me that I was brave for it, that she was proud of me. As she said it, I swore the ocean was in my heart.
…
We were on her roof watching the stars when Delilah turned, her hair sprawled out on the roof tiles, her eyes concerned, and said, her voice soft and real, “Elise, I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. Except for you.”
“What way?” I wondered, my voice breathy, barely there. She turned her head back to the constellation of stars laid out on the night sky in front of us.
“Like I’ll still call you when I’m in college.”
I squeezed her hand for a moment.
I watched the ocean after she left, watched as the dark waves churned with the wind, longed deeply for something, for that feeling.
…
“I want to tell you something I’ve never told anyone before,” Delilah said one night while we were watching the waves. My heart constricted in excitement, in nervousness. “I hate my name.”
Releasing the tension in my bones, I laughed, freely. And she did too. “Why, it’s beautiful.” I could hear music gently playing in the background as she rocked our hammock with her free leg.
“It just doesn’t fit me.”
“Well then what would you rather it be?” I asked under the silver moonlight.
She grinned. “Something epic.”
And I don’t know what it was about that moment, but the next time I stared out at the ocean, I was overwhelmed with emotion, overwhelmed with the feeling of a wave crashing right over me, and I knew what I wanted.
…
She was sitting on the bench she had fallen asleep on when I found her. And the sunlight shone brightly on her forehead and nose as the willow branches swayed in the wind behind her. “Delilah?”
“Yeah?”
“I keep looking out at the sea. And thinking about how beautiful the waves are when they crash and how much I want to feel like a wave crashing into a rocky cliff. But that’s how you make me feel. You make the ocean look just as stupid as our stupid town. And I want you, Delilah. I want to kiss you and take you to the movies and I want to not care. About our dumb town and the dumb people here. I know this is stupid too, we’re both going to college in a few months and we know it’s just going to end and hurt, but I’d rather feel the burn of losing you every single moment of my life than feel nothing. And I know that’s me just being young and naive talking like that, but you make my heart crash into itself like a wave.”
She smiled this awkward little smile I’ll never forget and a blush grew on her cheeks like a wildfire. “I don’t know what to say.” She hesitated and then stared silently at the ocean for way too long. I held my breath and sat defeatedly next to her. Ages passed and she finally said, while looking down at her hands. “I read this really terrible book the other day. Basically about all these wasted lives and wasted time, just the idea that we’re all going to die and it’s going to mean nothing. And I guess I’ve never told you but I’m so scared to die.” She fell quiet. I could hear the waves crashing into shore, a low rumble. She looked up, her green eyes sparkling, “But I’ve never been scared about it when I’m with you. And I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what any of this means.”
I sighed.
“I just know that you feel like life. Like being alive.”
We grinned at each other in the bright sunlight. “You do too,” I whispered as we fell quiet again.
“And you know we’ll still call in college,” she said quietly. “We’re not going off the grid, or dying or something.”
I nodded.
“This is so awkward,” she said with a twinge of a pink blush that lit me on fire. I laughed. And she kissed me.
It was awkward at first, and I pulled her closer, and then it was so right. The sound of the ocean was screaming in my ears now, falling through my blood. She felt like home. Like a wave crashing up against the shore of my chest, like how the moon feels shining off of the ripples in the sea. Her lips felt like late night drives and the longest July. They felt like the fact that the sun didn’t need to always shine. Because the moon is just as beautiful and loves us even more.
It was overwhelming, and messy, and just right, and truer and freer than this town.
She promised to take me to the movies tomorrow as we walked back to our cars, as we drove away under the blue sky, forever changed. I could hear birds singing in the distance.
Maybe the sun doesn’t always shine in Wayside, maybe the people are rude and the streets littered with trash, and the sun doesn’t shine like it promises.
But maybe it doesn’t need to.