...And Shine

“That’s a bit of a dangerous question, don’t you think?” she replies, with half a laugh. “It’s assuming a lot.”

I smile, as if trying to pretend I was only being half serious. “You know what they say. When you assume, you make an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘me’.”

Raisa frowns. “You know, I don’t really appreciate that too much.”

An icy hand grabs my stomach.

I play dumb. “Sorry, didn’t mean anything by it.”

She straightens out and turns fully towards me. Fearless, confident, Raisa stares straight into my eyes in a way that makes me feel like a trapped mouse.

“Do you have a specific reason why you said yes when I asked you out?”

I have to admit, the turning of the tables is effective. At least, if my burning cheeks and sudden inability to breathe are anything to go by.

“N-no, I just-”

Raisa’s face is serious. Too serious. This is another bit of hers, right?

But she doesn’t burst into laughter like usual. Instead, she simply stares, and waits for an actual answer.

I sigh, swearing I’m starting to get a kick out of the shame by now, and reply:

“Okay, fine. You’re funny. You’re likable. You’re attractive in a way that’s hard to describe and just as hard to get out of my head. And worst of all, you’re fun to be around.”

Raisa isn’t able to hold back an unbalanced grin. It teeters between smugly satisfied and the kind of warmly goofy that I must’ve had when she called me cute. Her toffee-colored cheeks take on a reddish hue.

“You sure have a way with words. Describing me like I’m just a wretched list of looks and properties… and making me like it.”

I have to admit. Even 17 years of stroking my own ego among other things didn’t prepare me for that kind of an emotional rush. And yet, something feels off whenever I make her laugh or smile. It’s like I’m happy that she’s happy. But in the way where I’m happy for her, not with her.

“All in a day’s work,” I reply, leaning on the nearest surface like some kind of cool bad boy.

Only the surface I chose was the automatic door. And there’s a good foot of snow to plow face-first into on the other side.

The next thing I know, her face is an inch or two away from mine as she’s pulling me out of the frozen carbonite. Our steaming breath rises between us as the sky turns this brilliant shade of storm-addled sunset pink. Raisa’s hazel irises absorb all of that color, and a dozen others. It’s a shame that her eyelids start lowering over them. Have I ever mentioned how intoxicating her presence is?

“Did I ever tell you,” she whispers, “How fucking frustratingly hot you are?”

As one might imagine, I don’t have anything in the vein of an answer when there’s a beautiful woman lifting me by the collar. She’s stronger than I expected, more into me than I expected. And as her eyes shut, and her lips approach mine-

I pull back.

Raisa’s eyes flutter open. Her expression is just like those scenes where someone realizes they’d sustained a mortal bullet wound once the adrenaline dies down. Her lips open to speak, but her whole steaming-hot mug wants to pretend like nothing was about to happen.

So I take the burden off her shoulders, “It’s really beautiful outside, isn’t it?”

She smiles, with tears beading up in the corner of her eyes, and sets me on my feet.

“Yeah,” Raisa replies. “It’s so pretty that I don’t even want to take a photo of it. I just want to live in the moment right now, y’know?

“Shall we?” I ask, offering her my hand.

Raisa lets out the cutest little ‘hmph’ and slips her hand into mine. With every step, she wraps herself further around my arm, head getting ever closer to leaning on my shoulder.

I can’t help but curse the knot in my gut. For the fact that the last time a girl got this close to me, it was my imagination playing tricks on me. And for the fact that I can’t help but think about that last time as another, equally magnetic woman does the same to me. Even the way that we walk together, in a sort of leisurely half stumble, makes me think of the way that I walked Anne-Marie from the ER to her cab on the night we met.

“My dad used to tell me,” Raisa says, “That there was a snowflake for every star in the sky.”

I prep a wholesome smile in reaction, but she continues:

“I used to think it was super cool, until I learned that there’s like ten times more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the planet.”

“Wait.” I snort. “What’s all that supposed to mean?”

“It means the universe is bigger than I thought. And the world is a whole lot smaller.”

I waggle an eyebrow. “Oh c’mon. It’s not that small.”

Instead of calling me a pervert, she simply maintains that same, calm smile. It’s surreal. It feels like she doesn’t even judge me, even when she doesn’t like the joke.

“It really is though,” Raisa argues, her voice strained ever so slightly by sincerity.

“I mean that sorta makes sense in a tarot-card kind of way. But it’d help if you gave an example, I guess.”

“Okay.” She stops walking, turning to face me dead-on. “Have you ever had those moments where you spend an entire evening talking to someone new? Like, the kind that can change your life, even if the two of you never speak again?”

I reflect upon my near two decades spent making and breaking friendships and one-night alliances across the spectrum of dozens of games and nationalities. Whether it’s that one Scottish college student who I talked into a revelation about his alcoholism at the ripe age of 10, or whether it was that Venezuelan construction worker who gifted me a spare copy of Left 4 Dead 2 and singlehandedly made my entire middle-high school summer break. Those kinds of experiences go both ways, and I’m only now realizing just how life-changing they can be.

“Yeah, of course,” I reply. “I practically was raised on the internet, after all. No small thanks to my parents, though.”

Raisa lets out an ever so slightly imperfect laugh, like a chunk of luminous amber with a microscopic insect caught in it.

“Of course you understand,” she says, leaning into that heartwarming smile of hers. “I knew you would, after all.”

“What do you mean?”

I punch myself almost as soon as I ask that, wishing that I had Anne-Marie’s warm incisiveness to sort this all out. But Raisa replies:

“Let’s just say that I’ve liked you for a long, long time.”

This moment feels like a maze. And I feel like I’ve been running headfirst into the same wall for the entire evening. Why am I so stupid. Why can’t I give her what she so clearly wants. Am I just broken?

“I’m not the only one,” she announces.

I go scrambling through my memory to make sure I didn’t accidentally speak my thoughts out loud. But I’m sure of it. She has to be a mind reader.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

She speaks with a lump in her throat that drops her tone. “It’s obvious that you’ve had eyes for someone else. I could tell the whole time. Well, almost the whole time.”

I open my mouth to reply, but her words ring my head like I’m standing right next to a church bell. She’s right. Painfully, awkwardly, and entirely right. I couldn’t even go five minutes without comparing her to Anne-Marie. My shoes are leaden with guilt, and I stop walking. The only thing I have to go off of is:

“Almost?”

“For brief flashes, when it’s just the two of us-” She pauses, struggling to squeeze a breath in through a sniffle. “When it’s the two of us, it almost feels like we’re in our own little world. Like a little cage that protects us from expectations or the eyes of others.”

My eyes boggle as I’m reminded of Anne-Marie’s invisible arena. There I go. I’m still doing it.

“But I can see the way you look at me sometimes,” Raisa continues, “As if you’re looking through me. As if we’re a mile apart despite being right next to each other.”

“I-”

She’s right.

“You’re right.”

“I know.” She almost chokes on her words. “I knew you’d understand what I meant. But that’s why it hurts so much.”

“...”

Raisa throws her arms into the wind like she’s taking an invisible bullet.

“Because I think I love you, Ogden!”

My entire body is seized with pins and needles.

“And because,” her voice simmers as she brings her hands back over her chest, “Because I know there’s no way in hell you could ever feel the same! Of course not, you’ve practically just met me.”

Words slip through my fingers like greased-up rabbits.

“But even still.” Her eyes return from their detour, and lock onto mine. “I’m glad I’m spilling my guts to you. Because even though I know your answer, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t give it my best shot!”

Her radiant aura has returned, flaring out behind her like a blazing lighthouse over the long horizon of a starless sea. Eyes more determined than ever before, chin raised higher than the snow-clad heavens. If she wasn’t so right about everything, there’s a chance that I genuinely might have fallen for her in that very moment. And yet-

“I’m sorry,” I say, with the weight of a stone-etched prophecy, “But I think I have feelings for someone else.”

“I know,” she says, with a dejected chuckle and a remarkable smile. “And I’m so happy for you. I really am.”

We stand there as seconds blur into minutes. Everything we imagined in our heads, that we projected out into the world like a grand display of light and sound, comes shooting back into the recesses of our minds like the black tendrils of a rewound tape. At the end of it all, we’re just two teenagers in a darkened storm. Staring at and past each other as the whipping winds pile snow around our ankles.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she sniffles, “Think I’ll be fine.”

“It’s okay. Take your time.”

And she does. I wait until she’s breathing through her nose again to speak.

“Let me set this straight, just so there's no misunderstandings.”

She gazes up at me, unable to hide a hint of that hopeful expectation from earlier.

I push on. “There's no reason why a smart, beautiful girl like you should shed tears over a two-bit keyboard warrior like me. I'm serious. There's probably so many fish in the sea for you that you could open a wet market.”

Raisa bursts out laughing. “You’re right. But you’re also an idiot for saying that.”

I wiggle my eyebrows. “How so?”

“It’s not a good look to shit-talk something that other people care about, you know.”

I step closer. She does the same.

“Listen,” I say, “It really is nice being around you. You're sweet, and fun, and funny in the real way. In fact, you seem like one of the only people that I'd spend time with even if I wasn't forced to.”

Her eyes light up. “Do you really mean that?”

“What, you think I’m an idiot and a liar? I mean fair enough, but-”

“Shut the fuck up,” she says, interrupting herself with a laugh, “Alright, alright. I’m going to be okay. It might just take some time.”

I nod. “Not like I’ve got much else going on.”

About half a minute passes as she recenters through a mix of flowing hand gestures and breathing exercises. When she’s done percolating, Raisa steps forward.

“I know it might be weird to ask,” Raisa says, keeping her brilliant eyes rooted to the slushy ground, “But would it be okay if we took a picture right now? It’s fine if you don’t want to or anything, but I want to remember this moment. Even if it stings a little bit.”

I answer her with a hug. She buries her face in the warmth of my chest and lets out a series of quiet sobs that I will pretend never happened. Then, wiping her face, she pulls out her phone. It’s strange how quickly the two of us can make ourselves look happy for a photo. The two of our goofy grins and peace-sign bunny ears tell the story of an evening of unbridled, platonic fun.

“Just so you know. There’ll be an open seat at the lunch table waiting for you.”

She nods as she starts walking off. Then she stops.

“Don’t waste those feelings of yours,” Raisa says. “It might turn out to hurt more than anything else in the world, but you’ll be glad you did something about it.”

With a giggle and a sleeve of glistening periwinkle wind, she’s gone.

I start the agonizing trek home. It’s truly hard to describe what it’s like to be mentally burnt out like a lightbulb yet physically energized and present in your own skin. The closest thing I could compare it to might be what it’s like to drop a toaster in at the end of a long, relaxing soak in the jacuzzi. So I moan and groan, slip and curse at every one of nature’s attempts to fight me on the way back.

Out of habit more than purpose, I check what fifty bajillion notifications the boys’ group chat was going about this time. And to my ire, it looks like they were still gossiping about me. I skim the message history, which is equally as vile as when I left, and am about to power my phone off for the night when Doug drops a smirk emote and types:

“Lookey what I found,” alongside the post of a social media link.

“Holy shit,” White Jim types, “Is that Ogden?”

I tap on it, and stare back into my own idiotic mug against the backdrop of the snowy night. Beside me is an absolutely radiant Raisa. Every muscle in my body contracts at the revelation that the boys just found her finsta.

“Bro, you’re never going to believe this-” Ricardo starts.

I roll my eyes. If there was ever a worse time for another Ricardo-induced inflammation of the gray matter, I quite literally couldn’t think of it. And then he says something that fills my mouth with the acrid taste of my pretzel-and-ice-cream dinner:

“That’s the girl from that freshman party!”