20
W e’ll always have Florence,” I say over the chatter of a group doing trivia behind us, although I can’t be certain, given they’re speaking Italian.
“That’s from a movie!” Teller shouts, proud of himself for catching on. His eyes drift upward, searching his brain for the title.
“Technically, the line is Paris , not Florence . And it’s from Casablanca .”
“Never seen it. But it sounded cinematic.”
“Seriously, though. I’m glad we’re here, despite it all,” I say, blowing my bangs out of my eyes.
“It may have plastic menus, but it’s better than those fancy places I tried to take us to,” Teller says.
I laugh, enjoying the freedom of speaking loud without feeling like people are watching and judging. “That hostess at the first restaurant wanted us skinned alive. But I’m glad the night turned out this way. Even if I got snot on your shirt.”
Teller’s eyes are trained on the rainbow lights reflecting on the glass behind the bar. He gives me an earnest shrug. “What are best friends for if not to wipe your snot on?”
I cough a little, throat drier than the Sahara. I hadn’t expected him to say that. “I’m still your best friend?”
“Why wouldn’t you be? Am I not yours?”
“No, you are. I just figured I wasn’t yours anymore. That you’d met other friends at college and replaced me.”
He throws me a funny look. “Me? Make friends? Ha!”
“You did make new friends. The B-school fam?” I remind him. He and Sophie made a group of friends in their business program that they called the “B-school fam,” according to Sophie’s social media captions. I was secretly jealous of their group Halloween costumes, Friendsgiving, and Super Bowl parties.
“Correction, I inherited those friends through Sophie. I was just along for her ride, as usual. That’s why I was so ... weirded out when you wanted to be friends with me. My whole life, I’ve never been a person anyone wanted to be friends with.” He hangs his head.
“That’s not true,” I start.
“It is. Even with my siblings—when we were younger, my brothers were inseparable. Always playing together, doing sports. Everywhere we went, they’d pair up. I still remember going to Disney, where almost every ride is for two, like most of the roller coasters. They’d always go together. Then there was me. The odd one out. And I know it’s dumb. Obviously, there’s gonna be one left over with three kids. But it was all the time.”
My heart splinters. I always got the sense he didn’t fit in with his siblings. Whenever I went to his house, there was barely a moment where his brothers weren’t roughhousing and being generally loud. All things Teller hates. His parents and both brothers are all quintessential extroverts. I can’t imagine feeling like an outsider in your own family. “Like I said, you’re the best Owens brother, even if you don’t believe me.”
He places his hand over mine and gives it a solid squeeze. “Thanks, Lo.”
I think back to the night we “officially” became best friends. It was nearing the end of summer, and I could feel autumn creeping its way in.
“We only have two more weeks working together,” Teller said, breaking the silence on the drive home from work. It had been a particularly eventful shift. The handicapped stall in the women’s bathroom had clogged again and flooded. It took hours to clean.
I pressed my fingers into the edge of my seat, as if holding on to the last bit of summer disappearing behind the trees lining the road. “Ugh. Don’t remind me. I hate fall.”
He wrinkled his nose. “I’m offended. Halloween is not hateable.”
“My sincerest apologies,” I said with a snort. “Why do you love Halloween so much?”
“It’s just fun. It’s the one night of the year you can be someone else.”
“Do you want to be someone else?”
A pause. “Doesn’t everyone?”
That made me sad. “I wouldn’t want you to be anyone else.”
“Thanks, Lo,” he said. “I didn’t always love Halloween, actually. It was always a pissing contest with my brothers. Always a huge battle to get the most candy. Lots of stealing and fighting over the best ones, a lot of Kit Kat robbery. Anyway, in third grade, my dad helped me make this Transformers costume out of boxes from the garage. It was so cool, because if I crouched down, the boxes would actually fold and transform.”
“That is really awesome,” I said, closing my eyes to picture nine-year-old Teller.
“The kids at school thought I was like, the second coming of Christ or something. Suddenly, they all wanted to be my friend. Not that I usually love attention, but it was nice. Just for that day.”
“I love that. Okay, I’ll forgive Halloween. Even if fall sucks.”
“Don’t girls love fall? Isn’t that a thing? Pumpkin spice lattes, cozy sweaters, changing leaves and all that?”
I shook my head vehemently. “I’m the Scrooge of fall. I mean, why would I want to celebrate death and decay? It’s morbid, if you ask me.” I loved my summer routine. Soaking up the sun in my backyard before a Cinema shift. The guarantee of seeing Teller almost every afternoon and evening. And it was all coming to an end. The Cinema didn’t need both of us during the school year since business was pretty dead. Teller would work at his mom’s coffee shop, but I would pick up some shifts here and there.
“The Cinema isn’t gonna be the same without you,” I said.
“You’ll be perfectly fine without me. I trained you well.” He pauses, before adding, “I’m glad you started working there, for what it’s worth.”
“Really?” I asked, flattered. This was the closest to a compliment he’d ever given me.
“Yeah,” he said. “Who else would help me unclog the toilets?”
I pelted him in the chest with a Raisinet. “Seriously, though. I’ll miss you.”
He raised a brow. “Really? Haven’t I annoyed you enough?”
I shrugged. “No more than I annoy you. Anyway, you’ll be my only friend at school.”
“You’ll make tons of friends and forget all about me,” he said. I couldn’t tell if this was disappointing or a total relief to him.
“Of course I won’t.” The idea seemed absurd. I’d spent more time with him than anyone else all summer, including Dad and my aunts. On the two days a week we didn’t work together (Sundays and Mondays, The Cinema was closed), I missed hanging out with him. I wasn’t sure whether things were going to change once school started. At least at The Cinema, we were forced to spend time together. But if we were going to stay friends at school, we’d have to actually make the effort.
I was also scared for Teller to know me outside of work. At The Cinema, I was just me. I didn’t have to be the weird, quirky girl with a dead mom like I was at my old school.
When I confessed I thought he’d ditch me, he gave me a sideways look and said, “Lo, I’m in the computer science club at school. I don’t exactly have a lineup of friends.” He was being dramatic. He wasn’t the massive loser he thought he was. Sure, he wasn’t at all the parties or the center of attention in the cafeteria, but he was generally well liked. He had a small group of friends—guys and girls—who were on the nerdier side but weren’t totally on the fringes of the social landscape. Still, Teller never really felt like he belonged anywhere.
“Well, good. Because I wasn’t going to let you go anyways. You’re my best friend.”
The moment that statement slipped past my lips, I held my breath, desperate to take it back. Teller was my best friend, sure. I’d told him more about me than I’d told anyone else. Different as he was, he was a good listener. He listened when I told him what it was like not to have a mom. He didn’t look at me with pity. He just acknowledged my feelings.
Most of all, I didn’t have to do anything to impress him. But what if I wasn’t his?
Instead of looking at me like the weirdo I was, he just grinned with eyes trained on the road ahead.
“Am I your best friend?” I ventured.
A moment of silence went by before he finally answered, “Yes. Why?”
I reined in my smile. Best to play it cool. “Well, I wasn’t sure. But thank goodness. It would have been embarrassing if you’d said no.”
He just smirked. “Why are you so shocked?”
“I figured I annoy the crap out of you.”
“Oh, you definitely annoy me,” he said with a laugh. “But you’re the only person I can be around for long periods of time without wanting to submerge myself in the nearest body of water.”
“That is the highest compliment.”
He studied my face for a beat. “As your best friend, I should probably tell you ...” His voice trailed as he pointed to my mouth with a wry smile.
I slapped my hand over my mouth, mortified. “What? Do I have something in my teeth?”
“A bit of raisin. Right in the front.”
Yup, we were officially best friends.
He looks at me now like he knows I’m thinking about the past.
“Why are you always so surprised when I say you’re my best friend?” he asks.
I shrug. “Maybe because we’re so different? I don’t know. And you said on our double date that I made you be my friend.”
“I mean, you kind of did. It’s not an insult. It’s just how I am. The friends I have are the ones that have made the effort. I don’t mean it like my friendship is so exclusive or anything. I guess I just assume no one is that interested in me, so I don’t really go out of my way to try.”
“People are interested in you,” I assure him. “Why would you think otherwise?”
“Because I’m going to be a data analyst,” he says straight up. I remember when he told me he wanted to major in data science. I gave him a hard time at first. Who wakes up one day and decides their dream job is crunching numbers? But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was the perfect job for him. Numbers and statistics are predictable, logical.
“Caleb didn’t mean that offensively,” I say, realizing I’ve uttered the name we weren’t going to mention tonight. A fresh wave of sadness washes over me. In all our running around, I’ve managed to avoid thinking about him most of the night. I will myself to stay in this moment with Teller. But I need to make my point. “He was just trying to say it wasn’t something he could picture himself doing.”
He shakes his head. “That’s exactly it. Numbers and data are boring to most people, especially Mr. I’m Not Like a Regular Tourist I’m a Traveler—shit. Sorry. I know we aren’t talking about him.”
I can’t help the giggle that escapes me. “I’m not a tourist, I’m a traveler,” I say in my best deep Caleb voice. I don’t make a habit of talking badly about people I care about, but a little shit talking feels justified. “You hated him, didn’t you?”
“Not at all. We’re just different people.” I observe Teller for a few beats. “Okay, every time he said, ‘Let’s do something authentic,’ I almost expired. Like, what does that even mean? Let me do this touristy Colosseum tour without you reminding us how you’ve already seen it five times.”
We devolve into laughter and vow to do the most quintessentially touristy stuff for the rest of the trip.
Roasting Caleb feels kind of good, strangely cathartic. “Remember the time he talked about volunteering with starving orphans in Chad? We get it, you’re virtuous.”
Teller snorts. “Or when he stared into the eyes of a lion in Kenya ... which, to be fair, is pretty freakin’ cool. No wonder he thinks I’m a boring number cruncher.”
“That’s exactly why you’re not boring, though. Most people like to travel. But you find excitement in things not a lot of people do, even though you hate most things,” I add with a little sauce.
“I do not hate most things.”
I swing him a look. “You hated me when we first met.”
“I did not! I admired you.”
I do a double take. “Admired me?” I certainly never got that impression.
“You were ... fearless. About the world, about everything.”
“That’s completely untrue,” I argue, righting myself on the stool, knee brushing against his.
His eyes catch mine. “I know now that you aren’t completely fearless, but I thought you were. You let your dogs lick your mouth.”
I nearly topple off the stool laughing. “Touché,” I say.
“By the way, I like that you like so many things,” he says before taking a sip of his drink. “The world excites you.”
“That’s kind of my problem, though. I like everything, but I don’t love anything enough to stick with it.”
“Have you tried tackling it the opposite way? Thinking about what you dislike instead?”
I consider that, dragging my fingers through the condensation under my glass.
“There isn’t much I dislike.”
“Oh, come on. Even an irrational hatred?”
“Oh! I have an irrational hatred of butterflies.”
“That’s not irrational. Butterflies are terrifying. An irrational hatred is something like ... how I hate this song.” “Happy” by Pharrell Williams is piping through the speakers.
“You hate ‘Happy’? That’s just dark. This song is literally joy personified.” I clap the surface of the sticky bar to the beat, just to get a rise out of him.
Teller buries his head in his hands. “I hate it with a passion.”
“What else do you hate irrationally?” I shift closer, like a reporter waiting for their subject to reveal something juicy.
“Claymation. It makes my blood boil.”
“Claymation? Oh my god. What did poor little Claymation Rudolph ever do to you?”
“It’s so creepy, with the wide mouths, bug eyes, and weird expressions. The movement. It’s awful.”
I can’t stop giggling—and neither can he. Hanging with Teller like this feels like second nature. Like old times. It’s so natural, there’s no way we won’t be doing this in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time.
It’s even more fun to witness Tipsy Teller in action. There are a few telltale signs Tipsy Teller is here. First, he starts exhibiting unusual behavior. He doesn’t second-guess everything he does or use his sleeve to open door handles. And tonight, Tipsy Teller is weirdly giddy, swaying on his stool and humming to the music while clumsily sipping his drink through a rainbow-striped straw. He’s also social, chatting it up with the bartender, asking about his family and children, waving at customers as they walk in. He even buys a beefy dude covered in tattoos (including his face) a fruity drink with an umbrella because he “looked lonely.”
Beefy Tattooed Guy’s name is Kai. He takes the free drink as an invitation to sidle up next to us, umbrella tucked fashionably behind his ear. He loves the umbrella.
Over the next half hour, he twirls his umbrella, orders us each another drink (with umbrella, please), and tells us all about his baby back in Scotland (a pit bull named Norman). We bond immediately over our pets, taking turns showing each other photos. This evolves into him trying to entice me to buy a fake Louis Vuitton tote that apparently matches my eyes. When he’s not being a devoted dog dad or hawking fake luxury handbags, he works in the paint department at Homebase, the Scottish equivalent of Home Depot.
Teller asks Kai all about his tattoos, the explanations for which vary considerably. Some mean absolutely nothing, like the dragon emblazoned on his chest when he was fourteen and feeling himself, while he gets a little teary talking about others (the deflated balloon with a party hat on his calf). By the time he’s ready to leave, he wants to get the umbrella tattooed on his left index finger.
“Kai. What a stand-up guy. I want to be him when I grow up,” Teller says before he’s even out of earshot.
“Aside from being a criminal, yes.”
“Eh, it’s what’s inside that counts.” He waves his hand in the air, swooping it around to fold me into his side.
That’s another thing about Tipsy Teller. He’s, dare I say, affectionate. And carefree. And silly. He wouldn’t stop poking me and laughing in the Uber back to the hostel.
I watch as the silver glow of the moon dances off his face, giving his skin an almost iridescent effect.
“Excuse me!” he shouts suddenly to the driver. “Can you let us out here?”
“We’re not even close to the hostel,” I say as he practically flings himself out of the car. Jeez, he must be really wasted. It isn’t until I look out the window that I see the neon-pink sign.
A tattoo shop.
I swing him a wild look. “Are you kidding?”
By the time I get out of the car, he’s already walked in. It’s like he’s been taken over by Kai’s essence.
An hour later, we emerge with new ink.
I got a dime-size outline of a crescent moon to symbolize him, and he got a sun to symbolize me. All Teller’s idea.
“The sun to my moon,” he’d said, which would have been more adorable if he hadn’t slurred it, hand over his eyes so he didn’t have to see the needle.
Neither of us thought it hurt that badly, probably because the tattoos are tiny, barely noticeable on the inner part of our index fingers. He’ll regret this tomorrow morning. I’m sure of it. But right now, I couldn’t be happier.
“We’re in the most magical place on Earth, and I still have the most fun with you in a dingy tattoo parlor,” I gush.
“Let’s just hope we don’t have hep C,” he slurs into the shell of my ear, nestling his head on my shoulder.
As we look out the window and count the number of fountains we pass, I can’t help but smile down at my tattoo. It feels like a middle finger to the vision. Proof our friendship is too strong to crumble.