“Hi.” She waits a moment, then breathes on her hands. “I know it’ll probably be super weird, but if this is going to take a while, can you come in? I’m freezing my ass off.”
This is exactly what I shouldn’t do, because I want this conversation to be short, but I don’t want to get frostbite … and if I give her my coat, it’ll smell like her for days. “Okay,” I say, following her through the screen door, which closes silently. “Hey, it’s fixed.”
She gives me a weird look. “Eddie moved in.”
“Huh.” Just one more thing we never got to discuss. The inside of their duplex looks like Santa’s workshop if the elves were tripping on way too much acid. “This is…”
“I was bored,” she says shortly, and takes off her sweater-jacket thing. “You want me to take that? Or are you leaving right away?”
“Um…” I can’t tell from her face what she wants me to do. I decide to err on the side of not being an asshole and hand her my coat. “I’ll stay for a bit, if it’s okay.”
She gets us some water. “So,” she says, when we’re sitting an entire couch cushion away from each other.
“So.”
She waits, fiddling with a button on her shirt. Finally she looks up, and now I can tell how she feels: pissed off. This is a Raychel I know. “So?”
“I leave tomorrow,” I mumble stupidly.
“I know.” She stares at the coffee table. “I’ll miss you.”
It’s the last thing I expected her to say, and it makes me blurt the truth. “I’ll miss you too.”
“I wish…” She shakes her head and gives a fake laugh. “I wish lots of things.”
“Me too.” We stare at each other. It’s now or never. This summer will be too late. “I’m sorry I never gave you a chance to explain,” I say in a rush. “I never even asked. But if you’re willing to tell me now, I want to listen.” It’s still a selfish request. I want to understand and I want her to help me. But I hope it will help her too.
She waits to see if I mean it, and I don’t know how else to convince her. So I scoot over, meeting her halfway. She exhales and slides over too, breathing quietly as I hesitate, then wrap an arm around her shoulders. This is okay. This is what we did as friends, with all our friends. She still fits just right, and I don’t know why I’m surprised. She’s a different shape and size in my mind now, I guess.
“Please,” I say, so close her hair flutters. “Tell me what happened.”
So she tells me. Everything.
RAYCHEL
When I’m done talking, we sit for a long time. Matt gets up to refill his water and sits back down close to me, our shoulders touching. I don’t say anything. I’m afraid it will give him an excuse to leave, and I just want to hang on to this last unexpected moment where we feel like friends again.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “That I just … assumed … you and me … you know…” He looks down at his hands in his lap. “And that I couldn’t protect you. That I made it worse.”
“The Carson stuff wasn’t your fault.” I mock punch his leg. “And I forgive you for the rest.”
“But—”
“I get to decide who I forgive,” I tell him. “I’m not saying it because I have to, or because I want you to say it back.” I’ve had an awful lot of time to think through what the word really means. “We’ve both lost too much for me to just … ignore that you’re trying.” I shake my head. “But I don’t forgive Carson. And nothing he did was your fault.”
“I want it to be,” he says, letting his head rest on top of mine. “It’s easier to pretend I missed the chance than admit I couldn’t do anything at all.”
“I know,” I say. “But you’ll make yourself crazy.”
“I make myself crazy anyway.”
His heart speeds up against my arm, and I’m worried he’ll say something stupid and ruin the moment, so I stand and grab his hand. “Come here. I want to show you something.”
MATT
She leads me down the hall to her bedroom. I slow at the door and she rolls her eyes. “You’re tall,” she says, pointing in her closet. “Get that down.”
I retrieve a shoe box and hand it to her. Inside, there’s a jumble of small things, but she pulls out Andrew’s pipe, the one he lost right before. “Where’d you get it?”
“Eddie. He saved it from the memorial.”
I turn it over in my hand. It glows slightly in the lamplight. I’m not sure what she wants me to say, or what I can say with this giant lump in my throat.
“You should take it.”
I shake my head and hand it back. “He wouldn’t let me use it, even if I wanted to. No way would he want me to keep it.”
She hesitates, then laughs. “Okay.”
Once I’ve put it back, there’s not much else to say, but I’m not ready to leave. “Oh hey,” I say, grasping at straws. “I should get your stuff out of my glove box.”
“You don’t have to—”
“No, hang on.” I don’t want it to be a reminder in Memphis. “I’ll grab it.”
She sits on the bed to wait. I jog outside and open the glove box slowly to prevent the avalanche. Hair ties, ChapStick, tampons …
I sit in the passenger seat and rest my forehead on my hands. The condom is gone, and I sure as hell didn’t use it. I remember Andrew almost knocking me down the stairs that night, and it’s not anger or even jealousy that I feel.
I’m still embarrassed. My pride is slowest to heal, and I hate myself for it. I want to let this go.
I fill my coat pockets with everything that might belong to her. “You can put it on the dresser,” she says when I return.
For a moment, I still want to bring the condom up, and see her squirm when I mention that my brother stole it from my car, probably because his were all gone.
My forgiveness just doesn’t seem to work the same as hers. Mine’s more like a slow trickle of sand than her dumping of a bucket. Or a glove box.
Unless forgiveness doesn’t mean putting it all in a pile and moving on. Maybe it just means carrying it, but wanting the best for the person who gave it to you anyway.
In which case maybe I’m closer than I think.
She’s staring at the ceiling and I follow her gaze. She’s covered it in posters since the last time I was here. “What is that?”
“Asha gave it to me.”
“Kitten torture?”
She laughs and clears a spot on her bed. “Here, you can see better this way.” I watch apprehensively as she pats the space beside her and sighs. “Come on, Matt. I’m not going to jump your bones.”
I bristle, but she’s not being cruel. She still trusts me, after everything.
I settle in beside her and we gradually relax enough to get comfortable, adjusting ourselves back into old habits. We really talk, without fighting, for the first time in months. “Have you met your new roommate?” she asks.
“I got a single, actually.”
“Nice.”
I don’t tell her it’s due to my “special circumstances,” or that it costs a lot extra. But I do admit I’m nervous about making new friends. “If I don’t have a roommate, how am I going to meet people?”