You Look Different in Real Life

life.
    The hug lasts a few seconds and then Nate breaks apart first.
    “Thanks for what?” I ask.
    “I don’t know,” he says, and we laugh. “I guess there’s just so much that wouldn’t have happened this weekend, if it weren’t for you.”
    I’m about to give him a You’re welcome but it feels like another lame-ass substitute for all the things I really want to say. Suddenly, I’m so sick of not saying them, and all the rest too. Sick of watching and not doing. Of wanting and not taking.
    “No,” I say.
    “No?”
    “This,” I say, and lean forward. I’m not sure what’s going to happen and I haven’t thought through the consequences. But now Nate’s leaning forward too.
    And here, his lips.
    His lips, which taste new yet familiar, scary but safe. It’s like taking off and landing at the same time. I give myself over to this blood-thudding rush of contradictions.
    My hands are in Nate’s hair and his hands are on the back of my neck. I’m unsteady on my feet and maybe he senses this, because suddenly he’s pressing me against the side of the barn and kissing me harder. I kiss back harder.
    After a few moments I open my eyes and see the ridge in the distance. The tower, straighter and taller than ever, watchful and protective. Always staring back.
    When Nate finally steps away from me, I feel shaken loose.
    “Whoa,” he says.
    “Is that good?”
    “That’s good.”
    We move back toward each other and meet halfway, and kiss again several times quickly, as if to get in as much as we can before this good wears off.
    “Can you stay awhile?” he asks, his voice a little wobbly.
    I don’t know how to deal with what just happened, so my old impulses take over. “I should go do what I have to do. Lance and Leslie, then home.”
    Nate nods, looks stricken.
    I fight those impulses back down. Be gone. “But then . . . later?”
    “Will you meet me later?” Nate’s face is earnest now. Hopeful.
    “Where?”
    “The boat launch down by the river. Three o’clock?”
    I brush my fingers across his. “I’ll be there.”
    And now I do let myself flee, running to the car, but this time, not away from something. For once, I’m running toward .
    Look at me. I’m in such a state.
    Olivia’s car may as well be flying, one of those jet cars you see in bad futuristic movies. I don’t even care that Lance and Leslie might be home and I’d have to face them.
    The sweet spring sun and air on my face through the open window, this road I have traveled a thousand times in my life. The trees, fully swollen with leaves at last. I breathe it all in and glance at my reflection in the rearview mirror. Then again, and again. Each time, I recognize that girl.
    Lance and Leslie are renting half of a duplex just outside of town. I’ve never been there before, but I know where it is. When I drive up, I notice the front door open and just the screen door closed. I’ll have to be quick.
    I hop out of the car with the camera bag, prepared to drop it on the porch, knock, then dash off. Even if theysee me, they can’t stop me. But when I get to the porch and put the camera bag on the doormat, I find it hard to pull my hand away. I picture the camera sitting in there, feeling abandoned. Missing me.
    Or me missing it.
    No, no. It’s not mine. It’s one thing to borrow but at this point it would be stealing. I will return what doesn’t belong to me.
    I take a step away, but look back at the camera bag again.
    Then I figure it out, what’s calling to me. It’s not the camera. It’s the footage inside it.
    You were telling our story. And I think that’s your story.
    Suddenly, the thought of handing over the film, our film, my film, to Lance and Leslie seems wrong in every possible way.
    I hear movement inside the house. Someone running down the stairs.
    I unzip the bag and scoop up the camera, and the old videotape Nate gave me. I’m holding them tenderly in my arms when Leslie appears in the screen door, only half-visible.
    “Justine,” she says. “Oh, Justine.”
    “Leslie,” I say.
    Then she opens the door and I see her face, flushed with concern and regret. She starts to reach for me, out ofinstinct, I guess. Or out of love. I can accept that. But she stops herself.
    We know each other so well. I can accept that too.
    There is so much else I can say at this point: apologies and explanations and confessions. But when I open my mouth, this is what comes out first:
    “Listen, I have an