Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
HAPPILY EVER BEFORE
Arden
The swift double knock on the door could only be one person. The only person left now. What once was a vibrant social life has boiled down to me, and my former, whatever-you-call-the-person-you-had-casual-sex-with-at-eighteen. Somewhere between then and now, we became the only two left, and he's only here part of the time, though he always says Boston feels different from everywhere else he's been, that he could see himself coming back here someday. All of our other college friends are gone in one way or another. And while he doesn't live his life with the same permanence and doesn't believe in planting roots, he's turned that into a career that he seems to find incredibly fulfilling. I guess someone is thriving.
I read along with his name in the byline of his travel journal series, as Stella and I text back and forth fawning over the latest photo of him cliff diving or eating some kind of insect on a stick.
His knock comes right on cue. Always unannounced, always perfectly timed.
Clinging to the remnants of people in the form of texts, voicemails, and emails, is a digital shell of something that used to be more. And sometimes when I’m only getting the highlights on delay, I think about how these relationships used to just be easy, it didn’t require effort. Now, every single one of them is constantly on life support. There is some passive effort, but every contact just is a little farther apart from the previous. The time zones and heartache keep the distance in place, but what exists between the walls of time and space are the memories that keep me trapped in this pocket of nostalgia.
My friends have all found themselves in what they do. This all just isn’t what I thought it would be, it isn’t quite right. And for the hundredth time this week, I wonder if anything ever will be .
Another knock on the door and I’m sure it’s part of the reason why he’s here. His eyebrows knit together fiercely. He’s assessing my well being. His hair falls in his face with a tilt of his head and a short double nod to match his knock, he breaks into a smile and wraps his arms around me. It’s been months. He only returns now because his moms live just outside of the city. A bear hug like no other, with a bag of what looks like Thai food swinging from his hand at my back.
Ethan Hayes stands in my doorway not that different than he was at eighteen. Hair perpetually wild, skin tanned from all the ways he exposes himself to the world, brown eyes still carrying the same unshakable restlessness, as if he's forever on the edge of something.
"All good, kid?" he asks and it sounds like he already has a sense of the answer. I don’t remember exactly when he started calling me kid… probably around the same time we stopped sleeping together. ‘Sleeping together’ being a complete euphemism considering we never slept. It’s not that he has any real seniority here in terms of age, none, in fact. I’ve got him beat by a couple months. But as our physical relationship dissolved and became the most natural friendship, everything before that had been wiped away. That shifted dynamic resulted in him tossing out the occasional ‘kid’ as if a reminder. I had never given him the credit he deserved in being my friend. But he always was. And sometimes now, especially when my relationship with Stella is just a game of phone tag, he feels like the only one left.
"I’m fine , E," I say as I grab the bag and make my way into the kitchen, careful not to trip over the collection of shoes that are reproducing in the middle of the room while he cues up a playlist so the silence isn’t so silent.
"You finally broke up with him." It’s not exactly a question, definitely not an accusation, but a confirmation that it happened. Ethan was never a huge fan of Gabriel, but tolerated the idea of him enough whenever I’d give him the abbreviated update on my dating life. His feelings on the man are not too dissimilar to my own.
"Can you really even call it a breakup?" I ask as I roll my neck from shoulder to shoulder.
"I don’t know, you never did with us, that doesn't mean it wasn't." He reaches into a container and grabs a couple of spring rolls offering me one with a smile. And while it might have the bite of a sarcastic remark, remembering a few years ago, there never were any hard feelings. Any reference to it now is just honesty.
"Break up implies broken. Nothing was broken between us. Why do we all treat it like there are only ever two options, a classic happily ever after or someone totally shattered and broken." I nab the spring roll and tap it against his, in a rehearsed cheers motion before taking a bite.
"What do you want me to call it?" he asks as he pops the rest of the roll in his mouth.
"I don’t know. It just feels sad when you call it a breakup, and as I recall, neither of us were sad." My response makes the corner of his mouth quirk up with amusement, and a bit of memory.
"There was nothing about us that was sad," he says and it’s true, there never was. He pops the lid to another food container, and hands it to me, my stomach more eager to participate in this conversation than either of us.
"Well, whatever you call it, it’s over now. It was time. Not just because of him, but because of me. I’ve been dating forever, in some form of the word. And I’m exhausted. It’s all predictable, just following the same patterns. He’s interested, I’m interested, we learn each other’s favorite colors over coffee, maybe he asks me my middle name on our second date, I force myself to sit through a movie, we go to dinner, I talk about my job, he feigns interest. He talks about his career, or band, or recent golf game, all while we are just dancing around the big question of sexual compatibility. It’s all so superficial. I know that and I get that it takes time, but the idea that this is what’s out there, it just feels like I’ve been misled by every romance I’ve ever read. I don’t see myself with anyone now, because even when I was with him, I wasn’t with him. You shouldn’t be alone when you've got someone in bed with you. I’ve tried, I’ve done the love thing, and maybe we will again, but I just am not going to force this same stale but comfortable version of companionship when everything I got out of that relationship I can just as easily fulfill being on my own."
I take the breath needed to fill my lungs as I complete the rant I just word-vomited at his feet. That’s fine, he’s seen me real vomit.
"How did he take it?"
"About as well as he did everything…pretty agreeable. There was a moment there I thought he might prove me wrong, but nope. Once again, I was right."
"Then it sounds like you got what you want, and you’re on your own, kid."
He says the words aloud, words I served up on a silver platter, but even that, like everything else, doesn’t feel quite right. We let the silence hang between us, until I force myself to break it as usual.
"I don’t want to talk about this anymore, I want to talk about you," I say, "Where to next? Who to next?"
His laugh barrels out of him as if I don’t know a big portion of his travel is because he falls fast and follows whomever he can across any borders, to the tops of mountain peaks, or the depths of underwater caves. And his journalism degree does the rest. But he always jumped in, heart first, and for being so fueled by passion and people, he always just enjoyed the ride, regardless of the destination.
"You didn’t think Thai was a coincidence, did you?" He nods to the container of pad thai. "I'm still here a few more days if you want to go for a run tomorrow morning," he offers, already knowing my answer.
"I'm running up enough hills at the office trying to keep up with the boys club. I’ll pass."
A familiar song comes over the speakers, and despite that saying about old habits dying hard he just hits skip and instead asks me about work.