Chapter 39
EVERETT
P eople always say that you never forget your first love. That no matter how long it was ago that you loved them or how messily it ended, you’d never fall out of love with them completely.
My first love was a girl named Maddie. When I was volunteering at an animal shelter at the end of eighth grade, she volunteered with me and attached her number to the collar of a puppy we were playing with.
We were together (whatever together means as an eighth grader) for a whole year before she to ld me that it wasn’t working.
She said I was distant. That I wasn’t spending enough time with her.
She was right, to an extent. My grandmother would help with the restaurant then, but she was starting to falter.
I noticed her forgetting things and not being able to wait tables anymore.
That’s when I had started transitioning into taking the lead with the restaurant, which was really hard as a fourteen-year-old, even with all the help Mr. Patel gave me.
But I should’ve cut it off when I noticed that I could never meet up with her anymore.
But that thought was a bit too advanced for my brain at the time.
I spent the day Maddie broke up with me (over text, by the way) wallowing in self-pity.
I was sitting on the roof of the restaurant, looking at the city lights in the distance when I heard footsteps behind me.
I whipped my head around, making sure that there were no more tears rolling down my cheeks, to find Jahnvi.
This was when she still had braces. She was holding a mango lassi in her hand, so I knew it was a ceasefire, and I wasn’t hostile.
Joining me on the ledge, she handed me the drink.
I don’t even know how she figured out about Maddie, but she told me something in her little pep talk that I never really forgot.
“Everett, she doesn’t know you like I do.”
Here’s the thing about Maddie: I barely remember her. Even though she was my first real girlfriend, I barely remember what we used to do together.
And I think I know why now.
Because Jahnvi has always been my first love.
So, yes, your first love is memorable.
I remember the way Jahnvi used to hate her teeth before her braces, and how she wouldn’t show her teeth when she smiled.
I knew how she carried this small elephant toy to every speech competition in part of some weird ritual.
She bit her fingers until they bled, she checked her reflection in every surface, her favorite shade of lipstick was the brightest red she could find, she hated spiders, she made everyone call her “J” for a year because she hated her Indian name, and now she hated that because it was proof of how insecure she’d once been. I knew it all!
And she couldn’t even tell that I loved her.
Or, I hadn’t done a good enough job of letting her know I loved her. Not as much as she deserved.
Love...
Whoa, big words there Everett, I told myself as I stood in a dingy bathroom stall. Someone slammed the bathroom door, and my entire stall rattled.
Now, why was I hiding in a dirty bathroom stall and not rushing to my next round? Because even though I had made it into an octofinal round, I hadn’t made it to the semifinal rounds.
I was done.
I wasn’t mad at the judges or anything; I expected it. I had gotten absolutely no sleep walking in so I could barely tap into any emotion as I performed. And as I performed, I had looked to the right and caught Jahnvi’s eyes.
I stopped completely.
Looking at her was...too much. That little falter, even if it was for only a few seconds, was enough to get me out.
I looked up as I heard the door squeak open and the clack of heels.
The heels stopped in front of my stall. Something whizzed into my stall and hit my foot; I saw a hand with messily-painted red nails retract as the person stood up.
I smiled down at the granola bar by my shoe. “Don’t you have a round to get to, Pickles?” I asked quietly.
You know, even though I had probably just performed for the last time in my life, all I could think about was Jahnvi. In the past four years, I had put in hours for speech and it all was over . But all I could think about was how much I missed Jahnvi.
But of course, our fight hadn’t rattled her at all.
She had performed perfectly, just as I knew she would. Her emotion was on point, she looked well-rested, and she was perfectly put together. It’s not that I expected or wanted her to mess up like I had.
I was so, so , proud of her.
But it looked like she wasn’t even bothered at all. Not even a little bit.
“I have time,” I heard Jahnvi say on the other side of my stall door. “Everett, I am so sorry. I thought that performance was one of your best—”
“You’ve proven that you’re the better actor, okay?” I cut her off, my voice still soft. “Stop lying.”
Stop lying about it all.
“Is this still about last night?” Jahnvi took a step closer to the door. “Everett, all you gotta do is talk to me. That’s the whole issue with you; you never open up. What happened last night?”
I took a step closer to my side of the door. Placing my palm on the stall door, I imagined myself holding her hand. If that dirty stall door hadn’t been in between us, we would’ve been standing head-to-head.
I would’ve been able to look into her eyes as I repeated, “‘You only wanted to use me.’”
“What?”
“What you said about me last night. ‘You only wanted to use me.’” I rested my head against the stall, closing my eyes.
“Everything happened so fast last night. I didn’t mean half the things I said.”
“No.” I smiled to myself like a maniac. “You did say a lot of things out of anger, but you meant that one. You know, that’s what Sai Brahma told me too before she chucked the flowers I got her into the trash in front of me.
This was after I’d left her at a restaurant because I had to take my grandmother to the hospital. ”
“You know that’s in no way your fault, right?”
“For the third time? Yeah, I deserved way worse, actually. Truth is, Jahnvi, that every other girl that you seem so worried about? I always put them after me. I always put them after the restaurant, my life. But for you? I made time. I made time to spend with you; I always have from the day I was born in the hospital room across from the one you were born a week later.”
Silence.
“But you know,” I continued. “That still wasn’t enough. I still wasn’t enough. That is the problem, Jahnvi. You still see me as a competitor, someone who could, who would be willing to, mess up your chances.”
“But you are enough—more than enough!” Jahnvi responded. There was some type of motion next to the tip of her black heel. I looked down right as another bit of something clear made a perfect circular drop on the brown tiled floor.
She was crying.
“Everett, I...” I heard a sniffle that caused my eyes to well up.
“I fucked up and I let my emotions get the best of me. You’re my first.
..everything. I’ve never done this before, and I’m sorry, okay.
I was insecure, stressed, and people were saying things, and everything combined, and I said things I never should have.
It scares me to think how much I need you.
I always have, too, way before all of this wedding order bullshit.
I’ve always needed you right across from me, whether that’s you living across from me, working at your dirty, stupid, restaurant across from me, or competing across from me!
I need you now too.” Her voice suddenly became quieter, “Truth be told...I’m horrified right now.
This round is going to be impossible, and I don’t know how I’m going to do it.
Oh, and this is my last tournament, and maybe my last time acting forever and I have no clue how to deal with that. Accept my apology? Come out, please?”
Eyes watering, it took everything I had to keep my voice steady as I said, “Apology accepted, Pickles, but I’ve been thinking all night. You deserve someone right across from you, but not someone like me. Someone who doesn’t need to rearrange their life just to spend time with you.”
“Everett?”
“I just can’t be enough for you, Jahnvi, and I’ve known that for a very long time.
That’s why I went around dating all those other girls, when it’s always been you from the beginning.
It’s...always been you.” My voice betrayed me and broke on my last word, making it painfully obvious that I was crying too.
Her phone buzzed, a reminder that she needed to get going.
“I’m such an idiot.” Her feet took a few steps away from the door. “I can’t believe I made you feel like that. I never meant to.”
“You didn’t do anything—”
Her phone buzzed again, she really needed to get going.
“Jahnvi.” I cleared my throat. “Pickles, you need to get to your round.”
I wasn’t going to hold her back anymore.
“I...”
“I’m not coming out anytime soon, and you really need to get going. Just leave, Jahnvi. It’s fine.”
A third buzz.
Speech won for a third time.
“Everett, god, I...” Her feet walked closer to me, then backed away and walked toward the door, but turned and walked back to me, before finally heading out the door. She wordlessly left.
And I wordlessly looked at the ground.