On Coles and 8th

by Alyssa Lian Bacay

Image credit: Alisa Anton on Unsplash

The first time I fell in love with a girl, it was my best friend.

I am sixteen and in my junior year of high school — I tell my friends I am bisexual, though it is never more than puppy love with a pretty girl I see in the hallways. But if I tried to count the boys I crushed on, I wouldn’t have enough fingers. The rebellious boy from youth group who played the bass, the class clown who spent his free time teasing me. The basketball player whose games I force my friends to go to with me. I never would have called it love, though, save for one or two.

Instead, I fall in love with Kaia.

Kaia is loud and brash. She is good at pretending to be strong. Her hands are smooth, delicate from the years of piano and violin. She teaches me how to play Dungeons and Dragons; she holds my hand and teaches me to box. She lives in flannel shirts and Doc Martens. She always breaks the dress code. She learns to sword fight for fun and keeps two practice blades underneath her couch. She wears her frizzy black hair in loose curls; she gave up on ponytails in freshman year. She dreads the fact that she was almost named Athena, because it just sounds so much cooler than Kaia. She is unladylike and speaks like a sailor, but when she chooses to be soft, to write, it feels like she is a young god.

Kaia has been my best friend for five years now. We confide in each other about our families— how I had another fight with my dad, how she’s worried about her brother. We spend hours rambling about our latest hyperfixations. For years, I joke about how my favorite book is This Is How You Lose the Time War— I never read it, but because it’s her favorite, it’s mine, too. Other times, she hears me gush about boys; she teases me about having a new crush every other month. In return, I listen to her talk about this girl she recently met in New York, how she heads there every other week under the guise of visiting an aunt. She tells me about the girl’s touch, but never the girl’s name. For five years, Kaia is a boundary I don’t think to cross.

I fell in love with Kaia because of a mug.

We stand on the corner of Coles and 8th Street, waiting for her aunt to pick us up. My school bag is too heavy on my back, filled with textbooks and papers that I decide not to put in my locker, all so I could have a little more time with my friends after school. The heels of my feet dig into the boots I wear. I am tired. I’m the only one out of our little friend group that has gym this marking period, and I’ve just made the trek from the locker room in the basement to the 4th floor and back downstairs. In one of my hands is my lunchbox— a childish number with teal and pink stripes, a little felt flower on the flap, filled with the most random assortment of goods: soft peppermint puffs, two mechanical pencils, a crumpled math test, a set of polyhedral dice for our next D&D session. I wear a poorly fitted gray sweater, probably a little sweaty from my journey. The spitting image of a romance option, I’m sure.

She doesn’t care, though, and we talk. It’s always the silliest things— something about running away to Korea with only $20 and some wooden planks. A freshman comes up and joins us. We know this one from our attempts to rope people into joining our anime club, of which we are president and vice president. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that if our worlds tried to form a Venn diagram, it would just be a circle.

“Oh, Alyssa, before I forget,” She pauses the conversation to pull something out of her bag.

“Yeah?”

“I saw this and thought of you.”

It’s a mug. I don’t remember what the mug looks like— just how heavy it felt in my hands and the cold porcelain. At 20, I’m sure the mug, or at least what remains of it, sits in a landfill. I take it and stare for a second. I don’t remember the last time I had gotten a gift from anyone.

“Oh, thank you-“

“Don’t cry now,” She punches my shoulder. I try not to.

“You guys aren’t dating, are you?” The almost-forgotten freshman pipes up.

She looks a little disgusted at the idea, “No!”

For the first time, I kind of wish we were.

***

Alyssa Lian Bacay

Alyssa Lian Bacay is an Asian American writer from Jersey City, New Jersey who writes poetry and creative nonfiction. At New Jersey City University’s Writing Center, where she works as a Lead Tutor, she has organized and hosted community writing events, including monthly Open Mics. She graduated from New Jersey City University with a degree in Computer Science and a minor in Creative Writing. You can find her at @alyssalianb on Instagram.