When You Were Here

show you Shibuya, and I would take you to the fish market, and I would take you to the coolest shoppingareas where you could find all kinds of cute rings and necklaces and all the things you like.”
    “Take me there, Danny.”
    “You know we’d be freaks, though, Holland. I’d be the six-foot-two American, and you’d be the blond-haired, blue-eyed girl next to me.”
    “We’d be out of place, and it wouldn’t bother me one bit. I would be a freak with you anytime, anywhere.”
    I shook my head, not because I didn’t believe her but because I was in utter disbelief. She was the opposite of what my life had been like for years. Losing my dad, then my sister leaving with so much ugliness in her wake, then my mom’s illness. She, this, us, was a gift from the universe, the thing that made it all survivable. She was the other side of pain.
    “You know where else we should go?”
    “Where?” I asked.
    “Camping,” she said, and made sure to look right at me, to connect with my eyes before she said the next part. “Because it would be my first time.”
    “First time camping?” I asked, trying to sound cool.
    “I’ve been camping,” she said, and let her voice trail off along with my thoughts. “So maybe in a few weeks we should go.”
    We went to this state park thirty miles north of Santa Monica, right off the Pacific Coast Highway. We walked on the beach and watched the sunset and kissed more timesthan I could ever hope to count. As the sky darkened, she gave me this knowing look and touched the bottom edge of my T-shirt. She had these restless hands, exploring hands, and she was always touching my arms, my lower back, my waist. I twined my hands in her hair, pulling her blond waves away from her face. She tilted her head just a bit, my cue to kiss her neck. Then the hollow of her throat, then behind her ear in a way that made her gasp. She said my name in this low and husky voice that made me feel as if no one had ever kissed her like this, that no one ever would or could.
    A hush fell over the beach. We made our way back to the tent. We had set it up in the most secluded spot we could find, and we zipped ourselves up in it.
    As soon as we were inside she pulled me against her on top of all the sleeping bags, still fully clothed, then gave me this goofy, little grin. “Here we are.”
    “Here we are,” I repeated.
    She shifted her body against mine, answering all the questions I’d never had to ask, sighing into my mouth, moving under my touch. We pulled apart for a second, and Holland grabbed the edge of her shirt, then yanked it over her head. It fell somewhere. My shirt came off next; then Holland traced her fingers across the lines of my stomach, the way she had before, the way she knew I liked. I closed my eyes and breathed in hard. Then opened them to see her unclasping her bra. She reached for my shorts, and wefumbled through unbuttoning them. I unzipped her shorts and slid them off her, and I could have stared at her all night, at the spot where her bikini underwear hit her hip bone, if I didn’t want them off so badly.
    I reached a hand under the waistband and stopped for a sliver of a second. She was the only girl I had ever loved, and I wanted her to like everything we did.
    I wanted her to love everything we did.
    We stripped off the final layers, and though we’d been naked together before, now there was this .
    Holland whispered in my ear, “I’m glad I waited for you, Danny.”
    I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t respond. The power of language had been drained from me, and I was one giant electrical power line, humming, buzzing.
    I reached for a condom. I asked if it hurt. She shook her head and pressed her hands against my back, and I was sure that nothing would ever be better than this, because this was better than everything. It was the real world times a thousand. It was thunder and lightning and stars.
    The next day, after another time, she said, “Someday we’ll do that in the Maldives. Or the Seychelles. Or Tokyo.”
    “Next summer,” I said. “Next summer in Tokyo.”
    “Yes.”

    But we’re not camping now, and we’re not on a train now, and we’re not here now. We’re not together. She’s in the past, and I have to leave her there.
    I think I finally know how to do that. I think I know the way, thanks to my sister and thanks to my mom.
    When she rings me as she said she would, my hand hovers over the Talk button as I look at the face on the screen: Holland