F*ck Love

“Have you ever been depressed?” I ask her.

“Well, there was this one time…” she says, winking at me. For an artist, her personality lacks the ups and downs, the moodiness.

She makes a list in purple sharpie, and we check off places one by one. It’s all a trick; I know this. She’s trying to wake me up, and I do wake up. The air, the wind, the water, the mountains—they all wake up my senses. My heart is asleep. We are at Hurricane Ridge one afternoon when Della texts to say she thinks Kit is going to propose to her. I turn off my phone and lie back on the narrow wall we’re sitting on until I am looking up at the gray sky.

“What is it, Helena?” Greer asks, crouching next to me. “You’re only melodramatic like this when something is really wrong. Is it Kit who makes you like this?”

I can’t lie to her after everything she’s done for me. I try to turn my face away, but she grabs my chin with her long, smooth fingers and studies my face, frowning.

“Della thinks he’s going to propose,” I say. And then, “It’s no big deal.”

“Shit,” she says. And then, “Shit.” Again. “What are you going to do?”

“Oh, you know … nothing.”

Greer laughs. “You should at least tell him.”

“Hell no. Tell him what?”

She doesn’t say anything; she’s thinking. I pull out clumps of grass as I wait for her evaluation. “Don’t hurt the grass, Helena. We need everything on our side from here on out, especially the earth. Tell me about that dream you had. The one you said started all of your troubles.”

I dust my hands on my pants. “No. You’ll think I’m crazy.”

Greer sighs. I’m trying the pixie’s patience.

“You’re his ex,” I hiss. “I’m the psycho who’s in love with him. Forgive me for not wanting to talk about my inappropriate feelings with the woman who chased him out of town.”

“Ahh, Helena!” She spreads her arms out, and the wind whips the tassels on her purple jacket. “The best kind of love is the love that isn’t supposed to happen.”

I chew my nails, spitting them out the side of my mouth.

Greer slaps my hands then motions for me to start talking.

I tell her about my dream as we sit on a wall on top of Hurricane Ridge. I’m terribly embarrassed by it. When I’m done, she’s quiet.

“When Kit was a little boy, he had this recurring dream.” She shakes her silver hair at the mountains, smiling some long ago smile. “It was about lions. A pride of them. They’d come for him, only him. Pace the empty streets of Port Townsend looking for him. He’d hide, but no matter where he hid, they’d always find him. He was terrified. He said he could smell their rancid breath, feel them ripping into his body with their teeth, and he’d wake up screaming.”

I grimace.

“So, we went to see this ‘witch.’” She makes air quotes around the word ‘witch,’ and smiles at me. “She had this new age store, sold dream catchers and whatnot. She doesn’t have the store anymore, but she lives near the winery on Marrowstone. People still go to her. Anyway, she told us that Kit needed a talisman to chase away the dreams. First, she gave us a dream catcher. Of course it didn’t work. So we went back to her the following week. She gave us these stones next—said that Kit was to put them under his pillow and they’d trap the dream.”

Greer hands me a bottle of water from the cooler. She opens and sips her own, and I notice that her lips leave a strawberry pink mark on her bottle.

“When the stones didn’t work we went back, and when the tonic didn’t work we went back, and so on and so on. Finally, when we went to her for the fiftieth time, she sat us both down. She told us that something in Kit’s life was causing him to have the dream, and we could stop it together.”

I feel uncomfortable now. I know so little about Kit’s life, and she knows so much. It makes me feel like I have no ground for this thing I feel for him.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“Kit said that sometimes he was aware that he was dreaming, and it was still frightening, but less so because he knew he’d wake up. So we talked about him fighting back during those aware dreams. Hurting the lions before they could hurt him. He was skeptical, but he said he’d try. A week later he came running up to me at school, said he’d done what I’d told him. He’d ripped the lions’ jaws open with his bare hands. Fought them off.”

“Did he have the dream again?” I ask.

“Yes,” Greer said. “But, less and less frequently. Sometimes he still had it before he left PT. But he conquered some sort of subconscious fear, and he wasn’t afraid of it anymore.”

“Ah,” I say.

Now that the story is over, I’m not sure why she told it to me. And then it clicks. The night Kit and I took a walk through my apartment complex. My asking him about having a Greer-inspired tattoo. ‘Don’t fear the animals.’ That was hers. I feel sick with jealousy. So much more meaning than a flower, or cross, or even her name. It is their history. Their bond. And what right do I have to be jealous? He isn’t even mine. I am not in the chain of girlfriends; Della is.

“He’s going to be in Santa Fe next weekend,” Greer says.

“What? How do you know?”

“His cousin’s wedding. I’m invited, and I’d love it if you came along as my date.”

I shake my head. “No. I can’t. Della will—”

“Della will not be there,” Greer tells me. “Her mother’s birthday or some shit like that.”

I feel guilty that I forgot about her mom’s upcoming birthday. I used to be very close to her family.

“Either way, it’s not right. I can’t do that. They’re a family, her and Kit.”

“Not until they’re married,” Greer says. “And we have ample time to stop that from happening.”

“It’s wrong,” I say.

Greer shrugs. “Suit yourself.” She stands up and stretches, her purple shirt bright against the green backdrop. “Let’s go hike,” she says. “Stop the talk about Kit and Della, yes?”

I stand up, too, and follow her. We make it half way up the hill before we stop. And then we decide that we’d rather go get hot chocolate. Or chocolate. Or not hike.