Chapter 4
Harrison: Testing testing
Harrison: Ah! I see you unblocked my number.
I stare at the texts, and they stare back at me.
I was definitely hoping the message would read something along the lines of “It was nice to see you today, let’s be friends again” or maybe “Thank you for unblocking my number—I’ve been trying to text you for five years to tell you you’re still the most important thing in my life” or even an “I missed you.” A girl can dream.
I would probably have continued staring at this string of texts for another thirty minutes if Jo hadn’t chosen this moment to call.
“Hi,” I say.
“Oh, lord help me.”
“What?”
“Your tone,” she says immediately. “It’s all wrong.”
I open my mouth to argue, then close my mouth and do not argue.
“Spill. Now.”
I asked Harrison to get coffee with me and I got rejected, and I don’t know how to handle my emotions, I think. “I have a date,” I say. “A double date, actually.”
Silence.
Finally, Jo sighs. “I’m coming over so you can explain that to me in person. I’ll be there in fifteen.”
She hangs up before I can thank her.
By seven p.m., Jo has listened to me rant for nearly two hours, during which we unpacked and (mostly) put away every clothing box in my apartment, all in search of the perfect double date outfit.
We finally landed on a pale blue spaghetti-strap sundress with little buttons down the front.
It’s a bit tight in the boobs now, but if I go braless, I can still pull it off.
The rest of the dress is flowy enough to cover everything.
“How do I look?” I ask, turning in a circle.
Jo admires me from her perch on top of an unopened moving box (Em’s Crap!). “Like a spring fairy goddess. Harrison is going to be falling all over himself.”
“You mean my unnamed date. Who is not Harrison.”
“Yes, that.”
“You’re sure it’s not too much?” I ask, eyeing myself in the mirror.
By the end of my teaching career, I wasn’t putting much effort into my daily outfits.
When I started teaching at twenty-two, there were a lot of rainbows and florals and book-themed T-shirts.
Like if Ms. Frizzle taught middle school English.
After five years, though, I’d replaced my headbands and fun scrunchies with messy buns and ponytails.
As my body aged and changed and grew weak and flabby from lack of exercise, I donated my Magic School Bus pieces and never replaced them with anything fun.
And I didn’t have much of an excuse to dress up outside of work hours, since you don’t need to dress up to stay at home and read, or get dinner with your parents, or FaceTime Jo, or grade essays.
And by that point, I’d lost interest in hanging out with most of my Tampa friends, since the majority were high school acquaintances who I had mixed feelings about anyway.
Even the ones I did like were no longer great options for a hangout, since they were—and still are—getting married and having kids.
Not limited to but including my aforementioned roommates.
“I’m sure,” Jo says. “It’s perfect.”
There’s a feeble knock on my door, and Jo and I exchange a wide-eyed glance and a deep breath before I walk over and swing it open.
Harrison is wearing a pair of perfectly tailored jeans with a light blue button-up shirt and a navy cardigan over the top.
He has on the same pair of worn-in white sneakers he was wearing yesterday, and his waves have been combed into submission while still retaining enough fluff to look casual.
This is an art he must’ve mastered in the last five years.
He sure as hell didn’t know how to tame his hair during college.
Stephanie probably taught him. The thought thumps uncomfortably around my brain.
His brown eyes dart to my dress, then immediately back up to my eyes.
I clear my throat, and he does the same.
“You look,” he says, pausing, “like you’re ready to go.”
“Hi, Harrison,” Jo says from behind me. We both turn to face her. “I don’t think anyone would be mad if you told her she looked nice.”
Harrison stares at her blankly, then just says, “Hey, Jo. Good to see you.”
“As always,” she says. “Didn’t realize you’d moved here.”
“Yep,” he says, eyes darting toward me awkwardly. “Neither did Emma.”
No one responds to that.
“All right, then!” Jo says, clapping her hands together. “Sounds like you two are in for a fun night!”
I study Harrison, begging him to give me something—anything!—but he just offers Jo a weak smile, then turns his gaze back to me. “You ready to go?”
I nod, and Jo comes up behind me, jumping on one foot as she puts her shoes on. She grabs her purse from the floor, then shoots us both a peace sign. “Have fun, kids. See ya at the coffee shop.”
She’s gone before I can ask her to pretty please fifth-wheel on this date.
Harrison clears his throat again. “Shall we?”
We leave the building, turning right when we hit the sidewalk.
It’s unusually crisp out tonight—mid sixties, probably—and the air feels refreshing on my skin, which is overheated from unpacking.
It would be so easy to comment on the weather.
To ask him whether it’s normally this cool during the summer in Boston.
He might roll his eyes at me since I, too, lived in Boston for four years during college and therefore know exactly what the weather is like.
I was never here during the summer, though, so he might cut me some slack.
More likely, he’d ignore my question, since the silent treatment seems to be his MO right now. The awkward silence treatment, perhaps.
A driver honks his horn, and a car swerves a few feet from the sidewalk.
Before I can properly react, Harrison grabs my arm and tugs me away from the street.
I accidentally bump into his side. He takes a quick step, catching himself from falling, but then we both immediately almost fall again due to how quickly we separate from where our bodies accidentally touched.
We’re like two magnets, with the wrong ends pointed toward each other.
“Sorry, can you just—” he says, facing me with several feet of distance between us.
“Just walk on the other side, please.” He takes a step forward and toward the street, leaving space for me to walk on the inside edge of the sidewalk.
He doesn’t look back to make sure I’m following before he continues walking.
I take a few speedy steps to catch up before opening my mouth, committed to breaking the silence before this adrenaline subsides. “Are we walking to dinner because you got rid of your Beetle?”
The only reaction I can see is a slight stutter in his step. The tiniest of pauses.
“No,” he says. “Stephanie and her friend are driving over from Beacon Hill, and she offered to pick us up, but I told her not to bother. It’s a short walk. Figured we’d save the environment.”
“So you still have the Beetle?”
“No,” he murmurs. “Sold it. It wasn’t a practical car.”
That’s definitely true. It had been his grandfather’s—a retirement purchase that eventually got handed down to his favorite (and only) grandson when the small interior and low seats lost their appeal.
By the time we were in college, the car was already well loved, the sea-green exterior faded in spots, the synthetic material of the seats shredded and stained from overuse.
It wasn’t the best winter car, and it wasn’t particularly comfortable to ride in.
But Harrison loved that car, and I, by extension, loved that car.
“Actually, I sold it to a guy who guts cars and turns them into dune buggies.”
I stop walking. It takes Harrison a few steps to realize I’ve fallen behind, at which point he also stops walking and turns around. “What?”
“What do you mean, what?” I ask, laughing. “No way that’s a true story.”
The corner of his mouth ticks up.[*1] The expression is so familiar, but seeing it on his twenty-seven-year-old face feels unnatural, like the expression is cheating on itself.
“I swear,” he says. “He paid me five hundred dollars for it. The transmission was wrecked. I needed to get rid of it, and apparently his clients go crazy for Beetle buggies.”
I let out a choked laugh. “Holy shit. You’re not joking.”
“Too crazy to be fake?”
“I know when you’re joking with me, and you’re not joking.”
His smile falters. “Yeah, well. Maybe I look different when I joke now.”
He keeps walking before I can respond. I take a deep breath, decide to set that comment aside to spiral over later, and keep walking.
We arrive at the restaurant ten excruciatingly silent minutes later, then continue waiting in silence for Stephanie and her unnamed friend to arrive.
There is not a single normal thing I can think to say to start a conversation, which maybe makes me the worst former English teacher of all time.
I should know how to form complete sentences.
Instead, I stare at a framed photo of a family on the wall, choosing to memorize the labeled names from left to right instead of attempting to engage in conversation.
Beatrice, Lorenzo, Sofia—Harrison shifts his weight between his feet, back and forth in an unbearable cycle, but I ignore him—Marco, Elena. Beatrice, Lorenzo, Sofia, Marco—
“There they are!” a shrill female voice calls out.
Stephanie looks frustratingly good in a dressy black tank top, French-tucked into a pair of dark wash mom jeans that make her long legs look otherworldly.
Her hair is styled into those perfectly smooth waves that could only be achieved using a Dyson Airwrap.
I, on the other hand, have been using the same fifteen-dollar curler since sixth grade.
The man standing next to her is admittedly good-looking. He’s all tall and muscle and tan, and when he steps forward and outstretches his arms, his charming grin coaxes a smile out of me before I even know what my facial muscles are doing. I lean forward and let him hug me.
“Alexander,” he says.