The Perfect Pear

“Would a pear by any other name taste as sweet?”

“You know that’s not the actual quote, right?” I say to the pear hovering an inch from my face.

The pear lowers with a scoff. “Of course I know. I was being…” Dillon’s free hand goes to his chin in search of the word.

“Prosaic?” I offer, holding back the smile that accompanies the word, and a hint of internal disapproval. Dillon means well.

“Exactly!” He chimes. “You always know what I am thinking.”

And this time, it wasn’t the pear that grew closer but his finger as he boops my nose. I even see his lips silently, 'boop', along. My internal reproach goes right out the window. I shake my head and walk away.

“Wait! Where are you going?” Dillon, above all else, is quick on his feet and his arm loops around my shoulder. I dislike when he does that. He has no idea how it feels.

Why? You might ask. I bet you can guess. Fine, I will admit it. I have been half in love with, okay, ninety-eight percent in love with Dillon ‘would a pear by any other name taste as sweet?’ Parker since arriving at Dawson High. Which was approximately five hundred and sixty-one days ago, plus or minus eight hours. I could be more specific hours wise if I knew the exact time. Like most, it was unreciprocated. Allowing me to pine for him in secret. But perhaps, unlike most teenagers I know, the reason Dillon ‘pear’ Parker could not love me was because he liked girls and I wasn’t one. The girls of our acquaintance Dillon had not professed to being in love with were much fewer than the many he found out he loved for a very short amount of time. He could definitely have worn a scarlet letter if it weren’t for the current century.

We trudge along, and I imagine myself slowly treading into the ground under the weight of his arm, like some ridiculous cartoon character. The pear moves in and out of his hand with ease. Up, down. Up, down. My eyes darting to his knuckles, tightening around its yellowed skin.

On its next upward trajectory, my hand snakes out, snatching the pear in mid-air. A very impressive move, impressive and out of character. A silent internal mutiny has occurred within me and a reprimand will undoubtedly come down from my cerebral cortex.

“Woah! If I knew you were this good with your hands, I would've forced you to try out for the team.” Dillon’s empty hand latches onto mine as if to wrestle the pear back. And with it an electric shock zips up my elbow. My whole body freezes, lurching us to a standstill.

My brain had short-circuited at ‘good with your hands…’ I wanted to show him how good I was with my hands. Wow! Did that just pop into my mind? Another inevitable internal reprimand is soon to follow.

Dillon also stills, noticing my opossum-like state. His arm lifts from my shoulder, leaving a feeling of buoyancy the opposite of freeing as he turns to look at me.

How can a person long to have contact with someone but whenever contact does occur, they feel equally uncomfortable? A teeter-totter of conflicting emotion. Probably because it isn’t the desired contact. A friend’s arm around my shoulder as opposed to a lover’s. Geesh, lover? I am losing it. Chalk it up to the last day of school. The end of the status quo and beginning of future endeavours. Really, this doesn’t even sound like me.

The movement of Dillon’s shoulders brings me back as they dip so he can look me in the eye. Not much of a dip as there’s only an inch difference in our heights. His hand still wraps around mine, around the pear. If it isn’t pulverized in our mutual grasp by the sheer force being placed on it, it will disintegrate by the level of sweat my palm is producing.

He slow-blinks at me. The golden flecks that hover around his iris flicker like a flame. Dillon’s attempts to read me always fail to decipher anything, like a fortune teller reading the shards of their glass ball.

“What are you two up to?” Comes a voice from the void, with a hint of something else in its tone, creating my desired and yet equally undesired outcome. Dillon releases my hand as Helen steps up beside us, adding a followup question. “Where did you get a pear?”

I hold the pear aloft like Hamlet, wondering if his pretense to madness is something I have adopted. I played him in our school production at the end of last year. Perhaps a part of his character imprinted itself upon mine.

Dillon’s eyes shift between Helen and me as he easily removes the pear from my grasp. His eyebrows forming a tiny indentation, one I’ve longed to touch, as he steps towards Helen. “From the pear tree in my yard. This is not the first pear I have brought to school. Where have you both been?”

Dillon now throws his arm around Helen’s shoulder. A shoulder it often finds residency on, from when they dated the summer prior to Dillon’s reemergence in our senior year as a conquest for any available (and not so available) female students. Looking at them, I don’t know why they ever stopped. There is no equal to their perfect pairing. Like the perfect pear no clutched between them.

They now outpace my frozen form. I urge my legs to move, but am stuck in some imaginary quicksand. It is Helen who stops and turns, with a look I interpret as mock annoyance. “Are you coming?”

It dawns on Dillon that I have not moved. The indentation forming once again. Now I wish I could kiss it. Nope. Nope. Stop thoughts! Stop!

“I think he finally broke.” Dillon grins.

Helen dips away from Dillon’s toned arm and shuffle-stomps towards me. The mock annoyance grows with a slight twinkle in her eye. I dislike that twinkle. I always have. Reaching me, her magic touch frees me from my quagmire as her hand grasps the same place Dillon’s left. Tugging me forward, I stumble one step before my muscles snap into memory. Why couldn’t her hand elicit a similar pang as Dillon’s? I’m sure it would make things slightly easier for my heart, but my DNA has already been coded. I will forever love the Dillon’s of this world.

“How are you getting home?” We form a line, Helen the epicentre. I realize the question was directed at me when she tugs my arm.

“I’m giving him a ride.” Dillon peeks into my periphery. “Did you need one?”

“Nope. Got my mom’s crossover.” The jingle of keys hits the air. I do not know how, as her hands are occupied. “But I will see you both later.”

I am manhandled by Helen all the way to the door of Dillon’s jeep. Aware that I am not functioning at full capacity. She proceeds to open the door, de-backpack me, and shoves me into the front seat, leaning over to do up my seat belt. With an open hand, she gently pats my cheek before winking and shutting the door.

Had she actually winked? Or was it my imagination?

My forehead brushes the window and I can just make out an exchange between Dillon and Helen through the side mirror. It looks like a pep talk, which appears to end with her lips rising in a cheshire grin as she grabs Dillon’s shoulders to slightly jostle him.

Stooping, Dillon runs the hand which held mine through his hair. Oh, if I were a hair upon that head. The thought rolls within me, and so do my eyes. Perhaps it is not the melodrama of Hamlet that has infiltrated my soul but The Bard himself.

Helen provides a secondary shoulder jostle before turning Dillon away with a coach-like pat on the back. Very un-Helen-like.

Catching one more glimpse of Helen, I swear she winks at me again, adding a sort of finger-gun-like movement. Maybe high school broke us all. She has somehow ended up with the perfect pear and takes a quick bite before turning away with a flourish. She thrusts the once bitten pear skyward, like some 80's movie we’d seen once.

The ride out of the parking lot and towards our destination, my house, goes by in silence. Not once do Dillon or I attempt to strike up a conversation. It's odd and eerie. The music from the radio plays our own version of elevator music.

When we stop, I am confused by what is outside my window. It’s Dillon’s pear tree of ‘would a pear by any other name taste as sweet?’. We’re outside his house, not mine.

I shift to look at him. His eyes dart away, taking with it something I can’t quite place. His hands are no longer on the steering wheel, his thumbs appear to be twiddling. Did people actually twiddle their thumbs?

It strikes me that Dillon looks out of place. His buoyant exuberance having drifted away.

“I didn’t know we were going to your house.” It’s more a statement than a question. My voice creaking.

The thumb twiddling continues and I watch his bottom lip edge beneath his teeth.

His mouth makes my mind leap to quote Shakespeare, but I stop it in its tracks. With my nails biting into my palms, I close my eyes towards the ceiling to silently chastise my thoughts.

“What are you scolding yourself about now?” His voice comes, bringing with it a fingertip to my temple. A gentle imprint searing my skin.

I do not answer. How can I tell him that I have broken? Not by high school or an uncertain future. But by an infatuation I’ve suppressed, even through his jokingly misquoting of Shakespeare. My feelings are now desperately trying to shine through the fragments of myself.

The finger drops from my temple, passes my shoulder where I expect it to land, and touches down on my forearm. It rests there before providing a gentle squeeze. I expect it to remove itself immediately, but it does not. Lowering my head, I open my eyes to look at it. This hand belonging to Dillon. His thumb sweeps across my skin in a way it never has before. Once. Twice. A third time.

“Helen said, if I don’t take the chance. I will always regret it.”

Helen? Chance? What chance? The questions reverberate in my mind. My tongue is out for the summer.

His thumb forms a continual circuit swiping right. Almost hypnotizing me. He chuckles, “How do you tell your closest friend that you care about them...” His thumb hovers for a moment, just above my skin. The hair on my arms rising to meet his fingerprint. “... as more than just a friend?”

“Helen?” I glance up at him. “I’m sure Helen knows.”

Dillon’s pupils dilate. His thumb joins his hand squeezing my arm as he leans in. His words barely audible, “Helen? I’m talking about you.”

“Me?” I croak.

His laugh fills the jeep as his hand lifts from my arm, his thumb tracing a new path along my jaw. I freeze once more, but for a different reason.

“But I thought I kept my…”

I’m silenced as Dillon’s thumb touches the corner of my mouth. “Oh, you have. If it weren’t for Helen…” His words drift with his eyes to my mouth. “I’ve wanted to do this for five hundred and sixty-one days.” He glances towards the dash, “And nine hours.”

His eyes meet mine one more time as they draw closer. “Can I?”

My mind screams yes! But my head keeps cool as my chin tilts downward.

Dillon’s face now not so far from my own lights up with a smile I’ve never seen just before his lips brush mine.