My Lovely, Rabbit

a love story in three parts

the velveteen rabbit, illustrated by komako sakai, 2012

I.

And then suddenly the rabbit darted out from under the brush and appeared right at my feet.

I looked at the rabbit. I was curious. I had felt its presence over the last few weeks; a heaviness on my chest, paws pushing at my throat–sometimes a phantom foot trailing my cheek as pressure scampered across my face–but it was always frustratingly out of reach. I hadn’t even known it was a rabbit until that moment, when it finally decided to reveal itself to me.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” I said to the rabbit. It blinked. It was funny because as soon as I said those words out loud I realized I had been, in a way. I just hadn’t known for what or for who, I just knew I was waiting; back then I was always waiting. I had just graduated school with no job lined up, I couldn’t even use that to define me; so I was waiting, waiting to take shape and become something, although I wasn’t sure how I would know once I succeeded. It was strange, waking up in my childhood room every day knowing that my feet already stuck out of the end of the bed.

The rabbit blinked at me, again, it was demanding like that, but I didn’t mind. Its shape was blurry at the edges, the color of its fickle fur constantly shifting; moving through a kaleidoscope of grays and browns and blues and greens and back again so quickly it was barely perceptible. But I noticed.

I wished I had a carrot or something for the rabbit, but I had biked to the secret garden so my supplies were minimal. Without thinking I reached out a hand and connected with soft fur. The rabbit was now lying down on the grass beside me, stretching out long, until it had become almost the same length as me. I could feel it pulsing beneath my fingertips, it was warm but not at all solid. I closed my eyes and felt better but also like I wanted something I was missing.

When I woke up the sun was setting and my right hand was open and lonely. The rabbit was gone but it was still with me and now I wasn’t afraid at all.

II.

It was almost eight o’clock and I was meeting my best friend for dinner but we were telepathically connected so I knew she would know I was running late.

My best friend was seated at a table outside of the café and had a glass of white wine in front of her. The glass was perfectly clear on top except for the soft smudge where her lips had sipped. That’s how I thought of her, I knew her inside and out except for that one smudged part of a person that no one else can ever really know, and that used to really frighten me.

I parked my bike in the rack and walked over to the table.

“Hi.” I smiled.

We had a good dinner. We split a bottle of white wine (even though I’ve always preferred red, but it was summer and that’s what my best friend wanted) and truffle fries and buttery shrimp and plates of angel hair swimming in sauce and chocolate cake for dessert. For as long as I could remember, my memory only stretching back as far as I would allow it, what’s mine was hers and what’s hers was mine and I never realized when we were talking out loud or through our minds. A few times throughout the meal I could feel my iridescent rabbit darting over my toes or wrapping itself around my leg but it didn’t stay too long, not then.

By the end of the meal I felt warm and satisfied from the wine and the food and the ease of being with yourself but with someone else. It was a quarter to ten and it was a warm night in early June that was young and full of possibility, just like my best friend. She asked me if we should go out.

“Yes, but you’re buying,” I told her.

She was a year younger than me and that summer she had a fancy internship that she had gotten through her fancy college that I hadn’t gone to. Maybe if I had gone there I wouldn’t have been unemployed after graduation, maybe I wouldn’t have been left behind like my bike that I left out on the rack overnight, but what was done was done.

It was a ten-minute walk and we were laughing, we were probably already a little wine-drunk, and we chased each other down the quiet side streets until one would catch the other from behind, shrieking, and spin them around and tug at their hair. Sometimes it was like we were one being and also like I was a kid again, not the kid I remembered myself as but the kid I had always wanted to be. While we were playing I sensed more than saw the rabbit darting in and out of our intertwined legs, our laughter, our shimmering strands of hair that so often tangled together. We held hands, me and my best friend with the rabbit in between us, and the three of us skipped down the last side street until we made a sharp left onto Main and heard before seeing the throngs of people filling up the night with their words. We stopped holding hands and the rabbit disappeared.

At the bar, I saw a boy I used to know. We said hello. Honestly I didn’t really mind him and sometimes I even liked him. The rabbit didn’t, though, and it made sure I knew it; disappearing whenever he was around. But I was a little tipsy and I was in a good mood because of the warm night and quaint feeling and my best friend so I felt like being sweet. I loved when I was sweet and back then I wished I could be that way all the time, but it never worked out that way.

We could have talked about anything, but really it was nothing, not compared to my conversations with my best friend. I let him kiss me outside in the smoking area but when he told me his parents were out I shook my head.

“I told my best friend she could sleep over at my place tonight.”

“Always your best friend.”

At around two in the morning my best friend and I got back to my parents’ house. We had to be quiet because everybody else was already asleep and had been for a long time. It was always like this, but especially in the dark and in the summer it really was like we were the only two people to exist. I forgot all about him, and my other friends, I pretty much forgot about my mother and father. But I didn’t feel lonely, not at all.

We pushed each other up the stairs and giggled in whispers.

We changed into t-shirts for bed and went to the bathroom to brush our teeth. We made faces in the mirror at each other and toothpaste suds bubbled at the corners of our lips. A little bit of toothpaste had dripped onto my best friend’s chin, I swiped it with a finger and then put my finger in my mouth. “Delicious,” I said. She gave me a little kiss and it tasted minty. Toothpaste got all over my lips. I laughed and she laughed and we finished brushing our teeth.

In bed we held each other like always. The window was open, just a little, and a lazy summer night breeze stirred through the quiet and blew a few whispering strands of my best friend’s hair in my eyes but I didn’t mind. She was warm and perfect and sometimes I felt like I wanted to be her, not actually but in a deeper way that I’ve never been able to describe. The rabbit was sleeping with us, too, it had reappeared as we were heading home together. That night the rabbit was small but not in a bad way, in fact it fit perfectly between my best friend and me, nestled deeply. I felt its soft fur pressing into my chest but it wasn’t unpleasant, in fact it was soothing and I fell asleep right away with a smile on my face. In the morning the birds woke me up along with the imprint of paws right in the middle of my chest, where I liked to imagine my cartoon heart would be.

III.

It was a solitary summer and it would’ve been a lonely one if not for the rabbit and my best friend. The rabbit would often ride with me to the beach, nestled between my handle bars with its ears tucked back to shield from the wind. My best friend I didn’t see as much, her internship was getting busy and final presentations were coming up and then she would go back to her fancy school. The only difference was that I was still going to be here, I wasn’t going back to my school, whether it was fancy or not, in fact I wasn’t doing anything notable to speak of and maybe never would again. But something was telling me that taking care of the rabbit was notable in its own right, maybe even noble. I always kept a bag of baby carrots on me so I could help it grow big and strong. And it was working, it was more solid than I had ever seen it, but it was still a kaleidoscope of changing colors. It was okay though because I liked it that way.

A week later I finally saw my best friend. She had given the final presentation at her internship that day and we were celebrating. She told me that it went well, that she was happy with it, and it felt strange that she had to tell me, that I wasn’t there for it; I felt like I should have been there.

But we celebrated and ate tapas and drank sangria and ran out into the steamy August night. My best friend smacked my shoulder and, laughing, she ran away and I was it.

She shrieked and giggled and I started running faster, following her towards a park at the end of the street. Something in me wanted to catch her, to take her down, to take her over, but also to shield her, and cushion her fall. We ran through the woods surrounding the park. Our laughter was breathless now, our feet crunching on fallen leaves. I hadn’t played in the woods for so long, since I was a little kid. This time around it felt different but also in certain ways exactly the same.

The path was getting narrower and I was gaining on my best friend. I was so close I reached out to grab the back of her shirt but caught air. She turned around and stuck her tongue out at me. I snatched again, this time connecting with soft fabric and the smallest whiff of her skin. I pulled and tugged her back, she fell shrieking onto me until we were just a tangle of limbs on the woodsy floor, no beginning or ending, no head or feet; just one. My best friend turned to face me so we were chest to chest, she was still lying on top of me, and then she kissed me. I kissed her back and it was almost like I was kissing myself and everyone I’ve ever loved at the same time.

There were leaves in my hair and there was a twig in hers and I untangled it for her while we kept kissing and my hands drifted from her hair down to the small of her back and she had her hands on my waist and my hips and I couldn’t tell if I was facing the sky or the ground, she pulled me up and kept kissing me and was sitting in my lap with her hands around my neck and suddenly the rabbit, the rabbit appeared in the sky above the treetops, looking down on us. The rabbit was a constellation, made out of thousands of glowing stars, the rabbit stretched out and took over the entire night sky. The rabbit was so bright it showered me and my best friend in soft silver moonlight filtered by the trees, it dappled the ground and dripped across my best friend’s cheekbone and the side of her face and her clavicle. She stared at me with huge eyes that seemed to soak up all the moonlight, her eyelashes and her pupils were white. I smiled at her and she smiled back.

“I love you,” I said. She told me she loved me too.

And then suddenly the rabbit fell through the sky and landed in my arms.

I caught it right in time, pulling out of my best friend’s grasp at the last second. I knew she would understand. The few times we had been able to hang out the past couple weeks, the rabbit had become a secret we shared but never really talked about. But my best friend didn’t seem to mind when it would come to the beach with us and stretch out in the sand, she didn’t seem to mind when it burrowed in between our warm bodies in bed, she didn’t seem to mind when it excitedly hopped through our limbs while we watched a movie on the couch.

Now the rabbit fit into the two cupped palms of my hand and it was radiant, it was no longer a kaleidoscope of colors, it wasn’t even a color at all, just a brilliant beam of light, streaked silver from the moon. It warmed me from head to toe, I felt sizzling, electric, my stomach flipped but in that way I loved.

“Do you want to pet it?” I held it out to my best friend. It was the first time I had really acknowledged the rabbit between us but I figured it was impossible to ignore now, it was shining so bright.

My best friend looked at me. I looked back. Her pupils reflected our rabbit’s silvery glow and she hovered a hand over its moonlit back.

“Go ahead,” I said, “it doesn’t bite.”

Her hand started to lower, but right before she caught its silken fur between her fingertips she took her hand back. She hesitated.

I saw the moonlight in her eyes, again, but this time the outline of the rabbit was reflected in the deep darkness of her pupils, her perfect pupils and I knew she had seen the rabbit, had known it was there before it had even decided to show itself to us, had always felt its presence without realizing it, or sensing how important it was for us. I saw it all in her eyes and I knew she saw it all too. Then she blinked and the moonlight was gone.

And then she told me that she didn’t see a rabbit.

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i wrote a version of this story in 2023. it was the first piece i worked on after my 5-year hiatus from writing, and i still remember the new-but-familiar feeling of gripping the pen in the coffee shops i used to haunt back then. the story is fiction but the feeling is real. it was my first love and my first heartbreak and i thought i would never get over it. but time heals all wounds (and creates new ones…) i feel lucky to have loved so intensely. it’s a feeling i almost forget i had until i read these words and it all comes back to me, but now it makes me smile :)

i just spilled my guts, the least you can do is buy me a matcha….