“Yeah. Chris’s dad negotiated on my behalf.” I take another sip. My Coke is getting warm. “Can we talk about something happier, please, before what little buzz I have left is gone?”
“Absolutely.” Derek smiles. For the first time since I’ve known Derek, the smile looks forced. “I think you should show me some pictures of your girlfriend and tell me the story behind every single one. It may be the closest I’ll ever get to true love.”
I force a smile of my own. “Fantastic idea!”
I take out my phone and we go through the pictures. Derek seems genuinely fascinated by it all. And talking about how things were between Gretchen and me in high school makes me feel a little better about us than I did before. Our relationship has the most solid foundation it possibly could. We’ll see each other in a couple of weeks for Halloween, and it will be amazing. As soon as I put my arms around Gretchen again, everything is going to feel a thousand times better.
It’ll be easy again. All we have to do is touch. That’s the only thing I’ve ever needed.
Before
FEBRUARY
JUNIOR YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL
5 MONTHS TOGETHER
GRETCHEN
I was the first one to say “I love you.”
I’d been thinking it way before that night. I’d been thinking it a lot. But the saying-it-out-loud part seemed impossible.
I thought one of us might say it the first time we slept together, but that had already come and gone. Even without an “I love you,” that night was amazing in its own right. I’d had sex before, with my last girlfriend before I left New York, but there was something completely different about being with someone you actually, seriously cared about. Someone you knew so well they were almost a part of you. Afterward, lying under the beige Pottery Barn quilt on Toni’s huge brass bed, we’d laughed and whispered until I had to leave to make curfew, and then we’d written secret notes on each other’s phones that we promised not to look at until later. When I got home and read Toni’s note, it said,
I knew it was you. The first time I saw you, I knew it would always be you.
I clutched that phone to my chest and grinned like a doofus until I fell asleep.
It was the happiest I’d ever been. I’d probably thought I love you a hundred different times that night, but I’d never found the breath to say it.
When it finally happened, I didn’t have to find the breath. It found me.
Toni found me first, though. It was a dark, cold Tuesday night, and I was home with my parents watching basketball. I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and a pair of headlights out the window caught my eye.
Toni was sitting in her Nissan out front of my house. The streetlight was on the opposite side of the road, so Toni was just a dark silhouette, her forehead tipped against the steering wheel, a hoodie pulled up over her spiked hair.
I looked at my phone to make sure I hadn’t missed a text saying she was coming over. I hadn’t.
I told my parents I was going for a walk. They looked at me like I was crazy—it was freezing outside—but they couldn’t tell me not to. We lived in an incredibly boring suburb in Maryland where nothing bad ever happened. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, my brothers acted like they had to keep a watch out to make sure I didn’t get mugged walking to the deli for a soda, but from where we lived now I could probably walk all the way into DC without running into a single wacko.
I hugged my sweatshirt around my arms as I tiptoed down the driveway, shielding my eyes against the glare from the headlights. Behind them, Toni and her car were completely still. The engine was off and she wasn’t wearing a coat. She had to be freezing.
She didn’t look up when I approached. I tapped lightly on the window. She turned toward me, her forehead still resting on the steering wheel.
I could tell right away something was wrong. Something had happened.
Toni smiled a faltering smile anyway.
TONI
Lord, it was good to see her.
I unlocked the doors, and Gretchen climbed inside. She wasn’t wearing a coat, and she was rubbing her hands together against the cold. “Aren’t you freezing?” she asked.
“Oh. Right.” I turned the key and flipped the heat on. Warm air flowed out of the vents, making my bare fingers prickle. I hadn’t realized it was that cold out.
“I didn’t know you were coming over.” Gretchen took one of my hands and held it between hers. Her skin was warmer than mine. “Do you want to come in?”
“No.”
“Do you want to drive somewhere?”
I shook my head.
When she spoke next, her voice was lower, like she already knew my answer. “Did something happen?”