Can You See by Amelia Drake

Can You See | Amelia Drake

Our e-bikes wobbled. We lost balance. I half-pedaled, half-dragged my left foot across the busy crosswalk. Horse dung stung my nose as we passed horse-drawn carriages lined outside the park like soldiers. I suppressed an urge to unlatch the horses and yell, run. 

“This way,” he gestured. I followed. We darted through the park entrance and disappeared between the trees. 

The park was empty. 

I didn’t know what to do with such emptiness. The main loop typically streamed with exercise: strollers, lovers, speed walkers, gossipers, lost tourists, panting dogs, running clubs, biking clubs, UberEats bikers. Tonight, everyone was in a club or a bar or a boat or a pier watching the fireworks reflect on the river. We whizzed past one soul, a food delivery biker who gaped at us. 

Fireworks boomed and shook the horizon behind us. We whipped our heads to see, but the trees and skyscrapers hid the display. 

My legs flew on the electric pedals. “These things really move,” I said. Last time I rode a bike 13 years ago, I was on my way home from driver’s ed, and I ended up splat on the sidewalk, blood gushing from my face. 

***

It’s not like we didn’t try to watch. A few hours ago, we sat in the window of a restaurant near the fireworks viewing area. The restaurant was Italian, and it was special to us. It’s where we began maybe falling in love, a year ago. I wanted to hold onto that. Maybe he did too. 

We sat in the window and watched freedom pass by. 

Look at all the people dressed in red, white, and blue. Did you see the person wearing an entire American flag dress? Someone’s selling little flags for two dollars. Look, a roaring mega truck streaming an American flag. 

“That scene must be playing out in every small town in America,” he said, nodding at the truck. He grew up in a small town in Michigan. I grew up in suburbia Washington. 

“Hm,” I said. I looked at our outfits. He wore a black button-up, white shorts, white sneakers. He had slicked his red hair in a swoop and donned those classic 50s glasses. I had laced a floral corset across my waist to push up whatever A-cup boobs I could muster, zipped up a black mini skort, and slipped on my red high heels. 

“We forgot our patriotic outfits,” I said. 

“Oh darn. You should’ve worn your red, white, and blue corset,” he said. 

“It’s an American flag corset, actually. And there’s a button you press that plays the America the Beautiful.” I pressed the side of my corset. 

He laughed. “Oh, I thought you were going to say it plays The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“You can buy that song as an add-on.”

“Ohhh.” He raised his eyebrows. 

“Yeah, there’s one that plays the entire Declaration of Independence too.”

“Wow.” 

“I’d love to look super patriotic so I can talk to people about how America is the best country in the world,” I said. 

“You should wear that on the back of a T-shirt.”

“Yes. ‘America is the best country in the whole world.’” 

“Get it tattooed,” he said.  

“With a giant eagle and American flag together. A sleeve down my arm, don’t you think?” 

He chuckled. “Thing is, I’m sure people have that.” 

“I’m sure.” A trio of friends passed by, each one dressed in a different color: all white, all red, all blue. “If only I’d worn my red dress,” I said.

“If only I’d just put on a blue shirt with these white shorts…” he trailed. 

“We could be coordinated patriotism too.” 

“Isn’t that what you always wanted?” 

“Dreams do come true,” I said.  

He laughed. 

***

See, what happened was an accident. 

I was new to all this casual stuff. We were neighbors who casually dated for some cold, lonely months. I never spent the night. I never showed emotion. I asked a lot of questions to keep him talking. We stuck to three topics: books, fashion, movies. He always walked me home. 

Then we lingered. We began talking after sex. Somehow, we began telling each other more in a few months than we had told most before. Somehow, it felt like we could be naked with each other in every sense. Maybe it was because we needed to tell somebody. Maybe it was just because it was winter. Maybe it was because we trusted each other, deep down.

Then it happened like a roll of film. At an indie movie theater where we giggled like kids watching Totoro and sitting in a park holding his sunburnt arms to keep him from shivering and catching butterflies on our fingertips at a museum and dancing in a room of electronic blue glowing whales and laughing at fake bird exhibits and him sending me poetry and me sending him heart emojis and lingering in the morning with foreheads pressed and caressing too long for casual and my playlists changed and there’s a playlist about him and we’re swinging on the play set and dancing at the castle in the park at night and I don’t know why I’m crying, and he said, “Here, I wrote this, it’s everything I couldn’t say.” 

Tears rolled down my face reading the last couple of lines: Whether you’re a block away or 2400 miles away, my feelings for you are not going to change. It’s not like this with anyone else, and I’m happy to wait for you. ‘Love is a gift. It’s a gift of oneself given freely. It’s not something one can ever ask for.’

We held each other’s wet faces and pressed our foreheads together. I didn’t know how it could work. I was leaving the city. “We can make this work, we can make this work, I know we can,” he said. I nodded. 

Then the summer disappeared. Then we kissed on the rickety Ferris wheel on Coney Island. Then we lay on his rooftop and watched the stars with our hair flung off the side of the building. Then we read in the park, fingers intertwined in each other’s hair. 

Then my dad picked me up in a U-Haul. He shook my dad’s hand. He helped us load. I left New York with my playlists blasting and drove back to Seattle. I drove with ferocity, with a hunger for the road. 

Then we became long-distance. It was supposed to be temporary—9 months. I was supposed to return to New York next June to attend the journalism grad school I was accepted to. Only I realized I didn’t want to become a journalist. Only I decided not to go. Only I decided I didn’t want to be in New York anymore. Only we didn’t know what the hell to do. Only he was crushed. 

So then I returned to New York in June like I promised, 9 months later. I joined him in his apartment, said I could maybe try to live here temporarily for him, for us. Only in my heart, I knew. I didn’t want to move back to New York. He didn’t want to move to Seattle. 

Then we fought. We cried. I packed. We ate. We slept. We held each other. We cried. We cooked. We stared. I still didn’t have a ticket back home. 

Then time ticked. Then it was the Fourth of July. 

***

Police cars lined the streets. We finished eating and walked arm in arm to find a fireworks viewpoint. Sirens screamed. Voices yelled. The noise of the city rose like its stench in summer heat, and I wanted to cover my ears and curl in a ball. “Why is there yelling?” I asked. 

A stream of protesters marched past. A group of police officers gathered across the street. Tourists stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and gawked at the scene. Red, white, and blue clouded my vision. 

The noise and heat and flashing lights and crowds pressed me on all sides. I felt like I was back in the subway station, escaping a shooting a year ago. Hauling my groceries into the Chinatown station, ready to cook my mom’s Singaporean dishes. Down, down. Underground. Everyone rushing, pushing, pressing from all sides. A voice wailing. Rice flour broken and splayed across the ground. I couldn’t move. 

“Want to take the subway and get out of here?” he asked, glancing at me. I nodded. 

We took the train to the edge of the park. I breathed. The park was dark. 

We rode our e-bikes away and away. We left the gleam and burst of pyrotechnics to the tourists and rooftop clubs and cruise boats and two-dollar flags.

We laughed. “Have you ever ridden without hands?” I asked. 

“Of courrrrse.” He took his hands off and let them hang by his side. 

“Show off,” I teased. He laughed just like I hoped he would. We stood up on the pedals of our bikes. “Look at us good little suburban kids,” I said. 

We rode away from America’s birthday party. America burst behind us in dazzling smoke, and all I could feel was the whir of the bike and the emptiness of a park. 

Something wet plopped down on us. Rain like firework sparks. I spread one arm into the air to hold the spark. 

I would never tell anyone from Seattle this, but I hated the way rain made my long black hair frizzy. I was too proud to use an umbrella in Seattle, but I always used one in New York. This time, I let my West Coast out. I whooped and spread my arms to the sky and threw my head back and laughed. I let the rain destroy my bangs and blanket my body.  

We braked at the angel. I saw her below. In the middle of a brick courtyard, a bronze angel rose, pouring water into the fountain. I stopped at the top of the stairs. “I’ve never been here before when it was empty. I could get used to this,” he said. 

“I’ve been here once when it was empty,” I said. I remembered the empty pond drained of all water and my hand tucked into the pocket of my first love, two and a half years ago. I was three months new to the city, and everything was new and new and bright. The angel had gleamed above us like a church steeple. 

“How’d you manage that?” he asked. He looked at me closely. 

“Winter,” I said.

“Ah.”

“Want to go down and touch it?” I asked. I’d asked my first love the same thing. Maybe it was my thing, you know. Maybe I gave them what they all wanted. Still, it was my hello to the city; now I wanted to say goodbye. I was leaving the city and my second love, and we both knew it and we both couldn’t say goodbye. 

We parked our bikes off the main road. I began running down the long stairs dotted with dark rain. I ran down and he ran down and we crossed the emptiness and I put one finger in the fountain and said I touched it and so he touched it and he grabbed me and we were covered in rain and the bricks were slick and he kissed me good. 

He followed me under the trellis. Someone played music and I wanted him to dance me but he wasn’t really the dancing kind so I grabbed his hands and danced him a little and he chuckled like he didn’t know what to do. 

We turned our backs to the angel of the waters. We turned towards home. We neared the park’s exit.
Before us, a whole line of professional looking bikers blocked the lane in the park. What is happening? we asked each other. The bikers cheered. In order to exit the park, we slowed our bikes and gently asked, sorry sorry can we get through? Surrounded by real bikers, I wobbled on mine. A biker looked at me sympathetically and said, you got this. 

I smiled. I really, really didn’t got this. 

I dragged my foot, and we pulled off to watch. A guy standing to the side held a microphone to his mouth.  

Ready? The crowd cheered. 

I pressed my hand to my corseted waist. My breath felt cinched. I wasn’t sure I was ready. We’d said goodbye in his shower, our faces streaming with water or tears, and we had pressed our foreheads together and said we’d always love one another. 

Set? The bikers rang their bells in unison. 

My bags blocked his front door, but we couldn’t book my flight to Seattle just yet. I had to be back by August for work. Every day, we crawled into each other’s arms and cried. Maybe in another lifetime. 

GO. The bikers sped off hollering.  

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