His face lit up. “An artist? What type of art?”
She shrugged and nibbled at one of her fries. “I haven’t decided yet. Technically, I’m studying biology at Hampton.”
“Biology?” He rolled the word over his tongue. “That’s an odd choice for a budding artist.”
“My mother thinks I came to America to become a doctor,” she explained.
“Ah. I understand that.”
“You do?”
“My parents think I’m working at the diner to save money to be able to go to college.”
“And you aren’t?”
He grinned and shook his head. “Well, most of the time, I’m not even working. And when I am, I’m saving money to move to New York. You see, my father owns a store.” Something crossed over his face. “The store, it’s close to here, actually. And he wants me to take it over. It was his dad’s before it was his, so it’s kind of this family thing.”
Lena nodded along. “But you don’t want to run the store?”
Julian shook his head again. “No. And I don’t want to make wooden stools for the rest of my life. But to get my dad off my back, I told him that I was going to go to college so that I could be more book smart when it came to running the store. Business degree or some shit.”
“But that’s not your plan?”
“Naw,” he said, his grin back, stretching wider this time. “I’m going to be a musician.”
“A musician?”
“Yeah.” He locked his eyes with hers. “I want to write songs that make people feel new things. And remember things they’ve forgotten.” He paused and tapped his knuckles against the table. “I want to write your favorite song.”
Lena blushed. His sheer confidence in his dream was infectious. It made her want to believe more deeply in her own.
When she didn’t say anything, he added, “Isn’t it perfect?”
“What?”
“This.”
She smirked. “I already told you the burger wasn’t cooked properly.”
“No, silly,” he said, and the word “silly” very much felt like its meaning as it slipped from his mouth. “This. Us meeting. Someday we’re both going to be killing it in New York. You a badass artist. Me a badass musician.”
She considered this, tilting her head to the side. “I don’t know how I feel about New York.”
“But what if I’m in New York?”
“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?”
“Always,” he said with a grin. And then something crossed his face. “I’m Julian, by the way.” He stretched his hand across the table in a way that seemed overly formal considering the bizarre intimateness of their encounter so far.
When she would replay this afternoon over again in her head, as she would do multiple times over the years to come, she always found it strange how time didn’t seem to exist in her memory. The afternoon felt both like an eternity and a fleeting blip. Maybe all of life’s most defining moments were like that.
She shook his hand. “Lena.”
“Lena. I should’ve known you would have a perfect name.”
“What makes a perfect name?”
“One that perfectly suits the face it is assigned to.”
She studied his face. The faded acne scars. The hooked nose. The piercing, expressive eyes. “I don’t think Julian is the perfect name for you, then.”
This seemed to amuse him. “Oh, really?” He raised his eyebrows dramatically. “Then tell me, Lena, what would be a better name for me?”
She shrugged and dragged a fry through a dollop of ketchup. She was still in the process of determining whether or not she liked the condiment. Most days, she found it to be too sweet. But in this particular moment, she didn’t mind it so much. “What’s your last name?”
“Oliver.”
“Okay.” She popped the fry into her mouth, the burst of salt and sweet tomato paste tangoing on her tongue. “I think that’s better. I’m going to call you Oliver.”
“You, Lena,” he said in a theatrical voice, “can call me anything.”
She smiled wide despite herself. Wide smiles revealed the noticeable gap in her bottom teeth and enhanced her dimples. “Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself again?”
His eyes shone. “Always.”
III.
“What the hell, Oliver!” Harlow said as we pulled into the parking lot of Oak Falls Memorial Hospital. “You’re a sadist. You can’t leave us hanging like that.”
I had to agree with Harlow. I wanted more, more, more. But even as Julian filled in certain blanks for me—how my mom met him, when she met him—more blanks appeared. Wider and more nagging. When did it go wrong? How did it go wrong?
I wanted to know. And I also didn’t.
Unlike Harlow, I’d never liked sad stories.
“Sorry, lady,” Julian said to Harlow, but he was looking at me. “Got to stop for now. We’re here.”
I moved to get out of the car, but Harlow stayed planted in her seat. “Tal,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Is it okay with you if I just wait on a bench outside the hospital?”
I nodded. Julian stepped out of the car, presumably to let me and Harlow talk in private.
“I want to be there for you,” she said.
“I know.”
“But it feels weird.”
“It feels weird to me, too.”
She gave me a knowing look and then stared down at her chipped nail polish. “I know. But it’s different. You …”
“I …?”
“You should be here,” she finally said. “This is your family.”
“But I don’t know them,” I said, and then amended, “Well, I barely know them.”
“That’s the point, though, right? That’s why you should be here. To get to know them.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Julian watching us.
“You should go,” Harlow said firmly. “I’ll be right here.” She paused and then looked out the window and gestured. “Or right there.” She pulled volume three of Saga out of her oversized canvas tote bag. “I even brought reading materials.”
She reached over to hug me. “I feel like I should say good luck, but that doesn’t sound right. So I’ll just say I love you, okay?”
“I love you too,” I said, and stepped out of the car. It felt good to say that aloud and to hear her say it too. When we were younger, we used to tell each other “I love you” all the time, but as we got older, we stopped saying it. Like it was stupid to repeat something we already knew. But sometimes you need to say things aloud. It makes them feel real. And after the few weird months that Harlow and I’d had, I was glad it was starting to feel real again.
As Julian and I walked toward the front entrance to the hospital, he asked, “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, staring down at the cement sidewalk. “I mean, I don’t know. I guess?”
He laughed a little and slung his arm around my shoulder. His touch startled me. It was still weird. One part of my mind understood this was my father. But the other part still had difficulty separating that from the fact that this was a man who had been on the cover of Rolling Stone. “I know what you mean.”