Chapter 1 #3
I might be imagining it, but the tone of his second question sounds less Wow, what a surprise! and more What could possibly have inspired you to come here and infringe upon my peace?
“I live here?”
His eyes widen again. “What does that mean?”
“I—” I pause. “I’m actually not sure how to rephrase that, but yeah, I live here now?”
Harrison’s eyes, bronzed in the afternoon sunlight, finally move away from my face and down to the moving boxes now piled at his feet. He stares at them for a moment, then jerks his head back up, his mouth returning to its original o shape.
“So, when you said you live here—”
“Basement,” I say, tilting my head back down the stairs. “As of this morning?” I keep putting statements in question form? I need to stop? I don’t know how to act like a normal human being?
“That basement?” Harrison looks at my front door like it’s a portal to hell.
And then it occurs to me to wonder why Harrison is standing outside of my apartment.
“I…” he says, stumbling over his words. “I live upstairs. First-floor apartment.”
I stare at him. “No, you don’t.”
“I…yes, I do, actually?”
“No,” I say, my breathing growing rapid. “Jo said you live in Allston. This is not Allston.”
Harrison studies me like he’s studying a patient exhibiting signs of shock. “Yeah, I…I moved? Last month. I moved here. To Jamaica Plain.” He points to our building. “Specifically, to right there.”
Something lodges in my throat, and I’m not sure whether it’s my saliva or my sanity. My heartbeat pounds in my ears, but the thumpthumpthump is more sobering than comforting, reminding me of a completely different thrill than the blood-pumping evidence of my life force.
Is it possible for my greatest regret in life to be something I had zero control over?
If so, my greatest regret in life is unintentionally listening to my former best friend/one and only love of my life have loud sex with his current…
booty call? Girlfriend? I don’t know which option is worse.
I don’t want to think about it long enough to decide which option is worse.
Nor do I want to think about why I care so much.
And is it possible to have a former love of my life, or does “love of my life” suggest the feelings are forever?
No way. It’s been five years. Of course I’m not in love with him anymore.
In so many of my memories of him, his eyes are always lit up, his eyebrows always raised in a slightly questioning way. His smile is always soft, and his tone is always gentle and caring. Now, his brows are furrowed, and his eyes look…confused? And hard.[*1]
That’s my fault.
I should probably take his stuttering words and his lack of hug to mean he wants me to leave this conversation, and probably also this city, but instead, all I can think is that this is all my fault, and that I would literally do anything to change the expression on his face and erase the tension in his shoulders, and so I add, “Maybe we can get coffee sometime?”
He stares at me blankly. “I don’t know about that.” He opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again. “It’s just that, I—”
A pause.
“You—” he continues. “And I, we—”
Another pause.
I clear my throat. “Right. Yeah. Maybe another time.”
For the first time during this interaction, his eyes soften the tiniest bit as he tilts his head gently to the left.[*2] Unfortunately, I know this face well, seeing as I was so often the cause of it.
Harrison stares down at the cardboard boxes.
“Right, well, I’m going to bring that to the recycling bin,” I say.
Neither of us moves for a full five seconds. When I finally start to bend down to collect my mess, Harrison gives a barely audible sigh and steps forward.
“Stop—just—stop, please. I’ve got it.” He grabs the boxes, pulling them gently out of my hands. As he stretches out his arms to hold all the cardboard, his shirt pulls taut against his muscles. I am vaguely aware of my mouth going dry.
I will not objectify him. I will not objectify him.
He shakes his head to the side, flinging the waves out of his eyes, and I swear the movement takes place in slow motion.
Harrison Carter is the type of man who uses conditioner in addition to shampoo.
And I’m not counting 2-in-1 Head & Shoulders.
This man goes to CVS and picks out two separate bottles.
Harrison doesn’t utter another word as he walks away with my boxes. That’s probably (another!) cue that he wants to be left alone, but I speed-walk to catch up.
“Thank you, Harrison,” I say, my voice breathy.
Harrison grunts in response, and I do everything in my power not to file that noise away to fill in some gaps in my imagination the next time I hear thumping coming from my ceiling.
Was he this silent in college?
No, definitely not.
No, we definitely used to talk at all hours of the day.
I would word-vomit about my homework and my classes and my dorm drama and my hopes and dreams, and he would word-vomit in return.
Except “word-vomit” isn’t really an appropriate descriptor, because he’d always think before he spoke.
I’ve certainly stunned him into silence before, like when I performed all of “Fergalicious” without looking at the screen during dorm karaoke our freshman year, and also when I told his mom to go to hell (not in those exact words, but in words more similar to that than they should have been) for trying to pressure him into going to law school instead of pursuing a career in nursing during dinner that one time.
But those were positive, or at least neutral, or maybe impressed, silences.
This silence is weighty and impermeable, less of a fog and more of a brick wall.
We remain silent as we walk to the side of the house, we remain silent as he puts the boxes in the bin, and we remain silent as we return to the front stoop. Harrison starts to walk up the stairs, and—
There’s a flash of orange on his socks.
Actually, it’s a flash of oranges, because he’s wearing navy blue socks with tiny Florida oranges embroidered on them.
“Holy shit,” I whisper, and he finally turns around to look at me. He seems concerned by my outburst, as if he’s looking to see what’s threatening me, but I only have half a second to appreciate that before he notices what my eyes are trained on.
He pulls his leg down from the first step, his pants now covering both of his socks. But I know what was there. And I know what that means.
I lock eyes with him. “You still wear those socks.”
I bought the first pair for him for Christmas during our freshman year of college, when our dorm’s floor did Secret Santa and I, in a lucky turn of events, drew Harrison’s name.
He wore the socks so much over the next five months that they started to get holes (don’t ask me about the quality of these socks), and so I bought him the same pair for his birthday in late May.
The following Christmas, I decided I might as well keep it going, and when I noticed they were on final sale clearance, I bought them out.
It was an investment in our friendship. That’s what I told him. And that’s what I convinced myself.
By the time we graduated, he owned more than a dozen pairs, thanks to a couple of Get Well Soon and Happy St. Paddy’s Day gifts thrown in there.
We were dedicated gift-givers, the two of us.
He pulls his lips to the side thoughtfully.
Just when I think he’s going to deny it, he surprises me.
“Yeah, Emma,” he says, quietly sighing. “They’re still my favorites.
” I have to stop my brain from automatically translating his sentence into You’re still my favorite, because I know that’s not still true.
I’m about to stutter out some incomprehensible string of words when I see Jo’s face pressed against the glass of my window, fog bubbles appearing beneath her nostrils every other second, her eyes wide and a little unhinged as she takes in the scene.
Her lips curl into a deranged smile that reminds me of the movie poster for The Shining. Here’s Johnny!
When I drag my eyes away from the window, I expect Harrison to be laughing at Jo. Instead, he’s still looking at me with pained, red-rimmed eyes.
“I guess I’ll see you around, then,” he murmurs. When I don’t respond, he nods his head toward my door. “Neighbors, and all.”
“Just like freshman year.” I attempt a smile. “Four-twelve and four-thirteen.”
The memory crash lands in my brain, and I wish it had stayed locked away in the Fantasy Corner.
This memory is best revisited in dark, half-asleep moments, not Saturday afternoons.
I don’t want to think about the way we met, the way he welcomed me into his life at the one moment I needed a friend more than anything else.
I don’t want to think about our neighboring freshman dorm rooms or our shared coffees or our late-night study sessions.
And I certainly don’t want to think about the many, many times he made my heart feel things it never has with anyone else.
Harrison nods silently, takes a deep breath, and walks through the upstairs door. I’m frozen for a moment, but when I finally recover the mental capacity to move, I run back into my apartment and immediately collapse.
“Holy shit,” Jo says. She looks like someone surprised her with a new car—wide eyes, unhinged grin, nervous energy.
I shoot her a desperate look. “How hard is it to break a lease?”
Skip Notes
*1 Furrowed brows · Parted lips · Bated breath | Facial expression | Frequency: low
Confused devastation.
Unsure of appropriate reaction.
*2 Softened eyes · Head tilt to the left · Clenched jaw | Facial expression | Frequency: medium
Emotionally conflicted.