It’s weird to think about how much has changed and gotten messy, almost as if our friendship was a one-thousand-piece puzzle being put together by a one-year-old who got everything wrong. Sometimes this universe feels like an alternate, but maybe you already knew that.
I step out of the elevator, and if I was thinking about changing my mind and running home, I’ve lost my chance. Wade walks out of his apartment carrying a garbage bag in each hand. He’s wearing nothing but his bright orange basketball shorts and white ankle socks. My heart drops, like I’m back in the elevator and the cables have snapped. It’s not just because his body is beautiful without the abs he desperately wants or the way his eyes narrow whenever I surprise him, like he’s trying to find me without his glasses. For the first time since you’ve died, I’m admitting to myself how much I really missed this guy and how strange it’s going to be to only be friends.
It’s you all over again.
“Griffin.”
The chills running through are not like the kind that come from a cold winter evening like this one. They can only come from someone calling out the name of a person they love.
“Your socks,” I say.
Wade looks down at his socks. “My socks?”
“They’re going to get dirty,” I say.
I close the space between us, doing my damn best to fight away this hollowing urge to hug him. I reach out for the bags, brushing my cold fingers against his warm knuckles for a quick, unbearable second, and I carry the bags to the other end of the hallway, smelling the clinking beer bottles, and drop them down the garbage chute. I’m expecting to find Wade waiting for me by his door—if he hasn’t ignored me or told me to go away by now, I trust he won’t at all—and he’s walking toward me, stepping through the puddles of melted snow my boots have left.
“Your socks,” I say again.
I think he’s going to kiss me. I don’t have a single muscle left in me to push him away, but instead he wraps his arms around my neck and presses himself against me. I hug him back and almost even laugh when he flinches at my cold fingers on his spine.
“Your socks are going to be so dirty,” I say.
“I don’t care,” Wade says. “I don’t care about the socks and I don’t care why you’re here. In a good way.”
There’s the Wade we know, Theo. He’s always getting the sentiment right and the words wrong, but there’s no getting mad at him because it’s almost as if saying the wrong thing is his first language, and he can’t quite shake it off. He stops hugging me but cups my elbows and I wish I wasn’t wearing this coat right now so I can feel his palms against my flesh. “I want you to come inside, but I have to ask my mom first. I know that shit makes me sound like we’re twelve again.”
“Is everything okay?”
He sighs. “I’m on lockdown like never before. Long story.”
“Short version?”
“I was skipping school.”
“Why?”
“Wait for the long story.” Wade walks back to his front door and is hesitant to go in, a lot like when we all went to Coney Island and he didn’t want to go on the roller coaster, which I feel even more awful about today since I got to hold your hand while I was freaking out and Wade was forced to sit with a stranger. “You’re going to be here when I get back, right?”
There’s no saying no to that vulnerable, don’t-break-me look of his.
“I’ll be here,” I promise.
His you’re-piecing-me-back-together look says he believes me.
You’ve never seen this side of him, Theo, which makes sense because people reveal different parts of themselves to different people. I don’t know why I could never see that before. How I was with you isn’t how I was with Wade, and how Jackson was with me isn’t how he was with you.
Wade returns to the hallway with a fitted white T-shirt that hugs his shoulders, and he waves me in. The apartment is very warm and smells like vanilla, which I mistake for a candle before quickly remembering it’s probably the smell of his mother’s flavored vodka floating around.
I walk into the living room where Ms. Juliette is half asleep and watching some game show. She says hi and asks me how I’m doing, but not in the same way everyone else has been, as if I’m a fragile piece of glass. The normalcy is almost a relief. Ms. Juliette asks Wade for water, which I hope isn’t code for more vodka, but Wade fills a glass from the kitchen faucet, and she downs it in almost one gulp.
She announces she has a headache and is going to go to bed early and that I shouldn’t stay too late because Wade shouldn’t even have company in the first place. She’s pissed for reasons I’ll learn in a second, but she still kisses Wade on the forehead before retreating to her bedroom.