Chapter 15
15
Natalia
senior year
“Marquez?”
I look up from my book with a green straw hanging from the corner of my mouth while slurping the last bits of my matcha crème Frappuccino when I hear my name in the crowded Starbucks.
Hayden is standing in front of the entrance, having just entered the coffee house, with a wide grin on his face.
“Funny running into you here,” he comments, sliding into the seat in front of me.
“My sister’s at the mall, shopping. And I have official chauffeur duties,” I explain, pointing to the large building across the street with the red Macy’s logo facing us. I turn the book on the table, placing it downward with the spine facing up as I put my drink down next to it. “What are you doing here?”
“Just picking up some coffee,” he says, tilting his head toward the counter. “Jenny likes her mocha fraps on the weekends.”
“What a doting boyfriend you are,” I comment with a small smirk.
He chuckles. “So,” he says, leaning back in his chair and crossing his ankles underneath the table as if he plans to stay long, “you all ready for your visit to NYU next week?”
I nod enthusiastically. “My dad’s already on a hunt for a ‘Proud NYU Parent’ bumper sticker.”
My visit to tour the campus has been all I can think about as of late. But aside from touring the campus, I’m also excited to explore the city. This will be my first time in New York City, and I’ve been jittery from the excitement.
He chuckles, running his fingertips along the table’s edge. “What are you majoring in when you leave Beavercreek for fancy ol’ NYU?”
“I’m leaning toward communications,” I answer shyly, fidgeting with the worn edges of my book.
“Leaning?” he asks, curiously questioning my indecisiveness. “You haven’t decided?”
I lean forward, crossing my arms in front of me. “Can I be honest with you?”
He mirrors my movements, leaning toward me until we’re inches apart. The light streaming through the window reflects off his bright eyes, making them look more green than brown as he narrows his gaze on me.
“You’re really joining the circus?”
I lightly poke his arm. When I tell him the truth, my honest answer, I pause before sharing the small chunk of me that I don’t share with most. “I don’t really care what I study as long as I get out of here.”
His smile falters, and his brow furrows. When he stays quiet, I continue.
“I’m probably going to major in communications just so I have a lot of opportunities when I graduate, but my goal is to leave this place. I want to move to the city and see what’s out there.”
He doesn’t say anything, but he smirks, his smile calm yet surprised in a way that shows he didn’t expect my answer.
“At least, that’s what I hope,” I finish, leaning back in my own chair. “Unless I chicken out or something.”
“You will.” I look up at Hayden, his eyes serious, his voice full of conviction. “You’re going to get out there and see the world.”
I smile, a flushed heat spreading across my neck. “Thank you for your vote of confidence. Now if you can carry the same tenacity when it comes to dissecting frogs,” I joke, shifting the attention away from Hayden’s surety in my future despite my lack thereof, “I wouldn’t have to do all the work.”
“I’ll leave the cutting into dead animals to you, Marquez,” he quips. “I mean, what are lab partners for if not to do the dirty work?”
I smile sincerely at his joke, realizing how different he is from the first day of class. When he was so abashed by his lack of preparation for our lab assignment and now, he’s more than willing for me to take the grunt work, knowing I won’t judge him.
Instead of getting up to get Jenny’s coffee, Hayden stays. We talk about Manhattan in the fall, our favorite places to eat in Beavercreek, and our speculations on why the north side of campus, where the foreign language classes are located, smells like stale prune juice and moldy bread.
We sit and talk for the next two hours until I get a text from Lucy to meet her outside. For that short moment, I forget all about the scary future ahead of us. Instead, I focus on how Hayden and I have somehow fallen into this pattern of conversation and laughter as if we’ve been doing it for years.
present
“This. Is. Delicious,” I groan. “You have to try some.”
I turn to face José. He’s sitting on the other side of the wrought iron table where our hamburgers and fries are scattered. I’ve just taken a long sip of the most delicious pickle lemonade that I’ve ever had, and the disgusted look on José’s face is his silent answer to my offer.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more disgusting combination of flavors in one cup,” he comments, taking a sip of his much safer blueberry lemonade.
We’re on an extended lunch break. The weather outside is clear after raining most of the week, and the crisp air that’s warmed from the bright sun felt too good to pass up on. So we settled for Lemon Patty, an over-the-top hipster burger joint about eight blocks from our office that specializes in various flavors of lemonade along with gourmet burgers. And now, with the discovery of pickle lemonade, my new favorite lunch spot.
“There was something I wanted to…throw out there,” José says, interrupting the unintentional humming sound I’m making in the midst of my heavy slurping.
I stop, curious but a little apprehensive. The last time he looked at me the way he’s looking at me right now, suggestive and insistent, I sat through a blind coffee date with a man who thought diva cups were a special type of chalice meant for “boss ladies.”
“I feel like I should be nervous, but go on.” I gesture toward him to continue.
“I want to set you up,” he finally says.
“That’s what I thought.” I sigh. “No.”
“Nah-taliaa,” he whines, elongating the vowels as his almost nonexistent accent becomes thicker .
I hold up my hand. “Did you not learn from the last time?”
“That was a mistake,” he confesses. “I should have known the moment he compared himself to Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.”
I focus my attention on cleaning up our trash, hurriedly standing from our table while collecting various wax wrappings and paper boxes. José gathers his own trash and follows.
“My cousin Shawn just moved to Manhattan,” he explains as his urgent steps catch up with mine. “He’s in desperate need of a woman. A companion.”
“Then get him a dog,” I say briskly.
“I showed him your picture.”
I side-eye him.
“He’s interested.”
I roll my eyes.
“And he’s a good person, Natalia.”
“Then why is he so desperate?”
“Well, he’s not really ‘desperate,’” he says, using air quotes. “He’s just lonely.”
My face softens. Boy, do I know what that feels like. Just as the inconvenience of being set up draws up an imaginative shield, I lower it, feeling sorry for this lonely cousin.
Breaking under José’s over exaggerated pout, I throw my hands up in surrender. “Fine. I’ll think about it.”
He squeals and wraps his arms around me. “And I promise he isn’t some creep or serial killer.”
“If he is, then you’re buying lunch every single day until I retire. If I’m not chopped into tiny human chunks and fed to the seagulls.” I finally smile before playfully shrugging him off my shoulders as we continue our walk back to the office.
I guess misery really does love company. Who would have thought the one thing to convince me to go on a blind date would be my loneliness? Sympathizing for another lonely soul in New York City. And then I realize I haven’t felt as lonely as of late. As much as those bouts of loneliness waver in and out, the last time I felt truly lonely was before Hayden came along. Ever since we came to the decision, much to Hayden’s persistence, to call each other when we were lonely, it’s as if I’ve been filling that void with him. With memories of him, memories of us . That empty hole Matteo left behind is now being filled with my past.
The smirk that creeps up on my face as I think about my long-stretched phone call with Hayden while we talked about everything and nothing comes out of nowhere. While I reminded him of his aversion to dead animal carcasses, he reminded me of my obsession with pastel gel pens and color-coordinated highlighters. As I teased him about his teeny-tiny fixation on Emma Stone and her stunning red hair, he reminded me of my own addiction to Swedish Fish, voicing his disgust for the snack I used to sneak in small bites when Mr. Khan had his back turned to us.
José and I are walking on the semi-crowded sidewalk bustling with other nine-to-fivers on their lunch break when we walk past a small bookstore. I peek inside through the glass display window, peering at the shelves lining the walls and small tables full of best sellers and sales.
“Can we go in for a second?” I ask José, who’s busy with his nose buried in his phone.
He looks up as his gaze lifts toward the storefront. “Sure,” he answers.
When we enter the shop, the copper bell chimes, welcoming us, as well as the scent of old, dusty books. I can practically feel the coarse pages rubbing between my fingers and the spines splitting as they’re cracked open for the first time. My fingers trace over the shelves as I leisurely walk the aisles, recognizing titles from John Green and Danielle Steel before I land on a copy of The Perks of Being a Wallflower . The smile that spreads across my face transitions into a full giggle. I’m still laughing to myself when I remove it off the shelf. And before I know it, I’m clutching it against my chest, spreading my warmth through it. As if transferring my memories into the tightly bound pages so I can physically hold it in my hands.
“What’s so funny?” José asks from behind me.
I shake my head, tucking my chin toward my chest as if sharing a silent inside joke with myself and the book.
“Nothing.” I turn to face him with the laughter still dancing around the corners of my mouth. “Are you ready to go?” I ask, my hold on my newest treasure growing tighter.