Picking Up Peony

TW: eating disorders

Peony looked more beautiful than ever, stepping out of the house in her bright green bell bottoms and a tight white blouse revealing her warm, sun-kissed chest. Emmett was always excited to visit her during the summer, but what Emmett didn’t love was the amount of bags Peony wheeled behind her, as though she wasn’t pulling a thousand pounds of luggage down her driveway. Well, it was her driveway, and the gaudy ‘For Sale: SOLD!’ sign didn’t seem to help make this fact any less apparent. 

“Your girlfriend is about to transform into a Cali chick, how about that?” Peony laughed, kissing Emmett on the cheek and hurling her entire life into his van. Emmett smiled as she jumped in, noticing how she didn’t even take a second look back at her old house.

 It belonged to no one anymore, a tiny cottage with white trim and pink shutters where Peony had lived since she was ten. It was empty; no more ripped corduroy couch sitting in the middle of the living room. Her height marks had been scrubbed off the wall and the scratched up interior was restored to a dull eggshell color. It even smelled empty, the odor of a willowy plant no longer sneaking its way through the kitchen, no more old opened books from the large shelves revealing a comforting, grainy aroma. Even Peony’s bright blue bed was gone, the one Emmett and Peony had both lost their virginity on. Emmett had moved to California with his mom a year ago, yet the image of Peony sitting cross-legged on her desk chair and singing drunk into her curling iron was one scene he didn’t expect to never see again.

“You okay?” Emmett asked, meeting Peony’s eyes that were hidden under her favorite pair of square-shaped sunglasses. 

“If moving in with your boyfriend to the sunniest state in America means not being okay, then I don’t know what is, love.” 

“Where do you think all the furniture went? You know, after it got sold.” 

Emmett hit a speed bump then, yet Peony’s body never moved in her seatbelt. “Don’t know, don’t care. All I know is that I solemnly thank those people, as they are the sole reason that I am not in debt.” 

“Peony--”

“We have two thousand miles to think about it, Em.”

And they did. Two days of driving, in fact, that wasn’t starting off strong. The two day drive beforehand to Peony’s was nerve-wracking, as Emmett spent most of his time eating Taco Bell and trying not to rehearse what he was going to say to Peony for the one millionth time: 

Baby, I’m so sorry. 

I know, we’ll get through this together, I promise. 

It’s okay your dad’s dead, he was a dick anyway.

Passing their favorite pizzeria in town, Emmett moved his mouth to say the words, “Damn, I’m really gonna miss that place” but no noise came out. Emmett caught himself before he began, reminiscing to himself, remembering Peony’s stinky breath after they would share a garlic knot;  she would always purposely kiss him straight on the mouth just for him to taste it. 

“So, how much do your friends know about me? What am I getting myself into at this cool new high school?” Peony cut through the music as they made their way out of the state, gripping Emmett’s thigh tightly. He thought about how to answer this. 

In Emmett’s mind, Peony would always be beautiful, her skin dipped in honey, traceable curves that outlined her body and deep dimples in her cheeks, with perfect breasts that rose like soft, evenly baked bread. Her fingers always had hardened calluses on them from playing her guitar, her lips always in a sweet, convincing smile that may or may not have almost stopped the palpitations of Emmett’s heart a couple of times in the public gaze of the hallways and in the privacy of the bed. Yet the Peony he was able to see through a stranger’s eyes was someone he no longer recognized: dark bags drooped under her glassy eyes, her face puffy and her body grotesquely skinny under her thin clothes, the summer sun forcing her not to hide herself in a hoodie. Her voice came out scratchy, a low croak emitting from her throat like it usually did most mornings over coffee, yet now she couldn’t seem to shake the sound. 

“They’re stoked to meet you.” His friends hardly knew about her. 

            “If I found out that you have a secret San Diego girl awaiting your arrival, Emmett, I will be mortified.”

“No secret San Diego girl besides you, baby.” 

Peony smiled at that, staring out the window. 

He remembered the first time she had jumped into his car when they had been freshmen, the beautifully weird girl choosing to take a ride home from him on the last day of school, the one who never shut up about the sunshine and made her own earrings out of bent metal from the school’s workshop and never bothered to put on a bra. 

“Woah, this thing is awesome,” Peony laughed, and had flicked her fingers on Emmett’s Hula girl bobblehead and had traced the etchings on the patterned seat covers.

“Eh, it’s nothing really,” he remembered saying, wanting to take those words back and eat them whole after looking at Peony in the passenger’s seat. 

“This is the coolest car I’ve ever been in,” she breathed, not breaking eye contact with Emmett as he almost swerved into a mailbox. He wasn’t sure why he said yes to taking Peony home when she randomly approached him in the parking lot. He could only assume it was because he could see her nipples through her tank top; but, he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t noticed the pink chipped paint that covered her arms or the sweet smell of the pottery room still lingering in her scent. 

“Hey, really, you don’t gotta hype me up or anything. I’m sure you do cool shit all the time,” Emmett shot back.

“My dad works a lot, and I don’t have a car, so not really.”

“Oh. Why’d you ask for a ride?”

“Because I thought you were pretty.”

Emmett remembered the way he almost stopped breathing then, his hands numb on the steering wheel and oblivious to the stop sign in front of him.

“Oh,” he said back. 

“What are you thinking about?” Peony asked while the sun started to go down, her legs crossed on the seat, how she sat in every chair. Her thigh scared Emmett to grip while he drove, too afraid he’d hold onto her too tightly until he felt bone. 

“How about you?”

“Just wondering what the smoothie joints are like up there. Is that a weird thing to think about? Of all the things that’s going on, to wonder where I can still get my favorite kiwi juice?”

“No,” Emmett tried to laugh, which seemed to turn into a choke. “There’s lots of places, I promise.”

This was followed by an empty silence. 

“This is the most awkward reunion we’ve had in a long time,” Peony said back.

“You’re not talking to me.”

Emmett regretted saying the words, felt his speedometer pushing fifty, sixty, seventy, waiting for an annoyed response or a worn out huff from her, yet nothing came. He felt as though he was driving back to California alone again.

“I know.” 

“Pe-”

“Do you remember the day before you moved away?” Peony snapped. 

“Yeah.” Emmett truly did remember that day. They set up a little picnic by the lake, eating Peony’s most favorite weird vegan food and making out on top of the blanket, sucking face so hard as though it may or may not have been the last day they ever got to see each other ever again. 

“I was gonna break up with you.”

“Oh,” Emmett said. He was now doing eighty, his foot pressing so hard onto the gas pedal that the sole of his foot throbbed in pain. 

“Well, if you didn’t already know, I didn’t go through with it.”

Emmett’s mind was racing again. He was not prepared for this conversation in any way shape or form; the idea of a breakup on the way to California, this type of talk on the way to Peony moving into his house with his mother. It was supposed to be far from the agenda. “Peony, did I-”

“Pull over,” she commanded, the pastures around them turning pitch black, the country road foreboding, but not enough not to do what Peony instructed. 

When the van was pulled over, he barely had time to process that Peony’s seatbelt was unsnapped from her waist, her large lips hitting his face, her protruding cheek bones seeming to clank up against his own. His large hands were around her body once again, his palms curved into the exact shape he was accustomed to feeling when holding her in his arms, yet all he felt was how hard her ribcage seemed to have become, how banged up her body looked in the moonlight. Every time Emmett kissed her neck Peony winced, every time he hugged her back she squirmed, every light touch became an accidental hard tap that Emmett deemed unfair to continue to inflict on her. 

“So, are you going to kiss me, or what?” Peony asked, wearing a bright blue bikini she had knitted herself to the beach, her skin even hotter than the bonfire that burned right next to them. 

All summer the two of them had struggled to get past first base, but that night Peony had downed a hard seltzer and the two of them were surrounded by even hornier highschoolers such as themselves. “Is there spinach in my teeth or something? Spinach is my favorite snack, you know.”

“Oh, please,” Emmett rolled his eyes while Peony planted a kiss right on the side of his mouth, which made Emmett practically do a flip off the log they were sitting on, knee to knee. Her lips were just as perfect to kiss as he imagined they would be after staring at those pillowy wonders for over a month. Emmett felt as though Peony fit into the dips of his own body nicely, his mouth perfectly made for her own, and from then on, the rest of the school year seemed to agree: Peony and Emmett were undeniably unshakeable. 

Emmett gathered what was left of Peony’s face back into his palms and planted a kiss on the side of her mouth once again. “You’re allowed to not be okay.” 

“I just never thought he’d die, not now, not ever.” Peony half-laughed, meeting Emmett’s eyes again, watching her face unharden as he adjusted to the darkness.

“He loved you.” 

“He could’ve stuck around a little longer.”

“I could have, too.”

“Well, you’re still here, trying to nurse your grieving, anorexic girlfriend back to health.”

“That's fine with me. Besides, I want to be the one to dump you down the road, anway.” 

She snorted at that, the chirping crickets no match for her eruption of laughs, as Emmett reached for her body, yearning to hold her so close that both of their beings meshed into one of their own. She was fleeting far away from him and Emmett refused to let go. 

“McDonald’s Egg McMuffins are literally a heaven sent gift from God,” Peony laughed that next morning after they both fell asleep into a sweaty heap into the back of the van. She ordered three muffins and a chocolate milk, Emmett refusing to watch the primal way she seemd to be shoveling down her breakfast. 

“I can’t believe you’re eating animal products,” he teased as they travelled down a mountain, the hot summer air seeming to be no match for his broken AC. 

“I can’t believe you let me stop and eat there.” Peony snorted again, her mouth full of bread and buttery goodness.

“I can’t believe you’re coming back to California with me,” Emmett said back. 

“I can’t believe I get to see your mom.”

“I can’t believe I get to see your boobs.”

“Emmett, what the hell! I can’t believe you’re such a perv--”

“I can’t believe you didn’t take that as a compliment.”

“I can’t believe I let you drive me all this way already….”