Chapter 5
When I wake up the next morning, I swear to myself I won’t spend all day reliving the horribly awkward date from last night. I need to stay focused as I prep for my first non-training shift at Jo Jo’s.
I’m on track to accomplish my goal for about four minutes, until I hear the pipes groan and the shower start above my head.
Harrison’s shower schedule feels like the kind of information that’s too intimate for me to know given his general lack of interest in speaking to me.
True to its label, the box contains a bunch of shit.
A couple of cookbooks (as if I ever cook), a palette of watercolors (it was a phase), and some kitchen towels (again—as if I ever cook).
As I’m digging to the bottom to see if the box contains anything actually helpful, my hand catches on something metal, and I pull back my fingers, muttering a curse as I see a speck of blood forming.
I run to the kitchen to grab a paper towel and wrap it around my finger.
I then realize I do not have paper towels, so instead I hold my finger under the sink and then run back to the box to wrap it in a kitchen towel.
Holding my towel-wrapped hand to my chest, I gingerly sort through the mess until I find the culprit: a spiral-bound notebook, its spine twisted out of shape by nervous, busy fingers.
The notebook brings back memories more painful than the finger prick.
I’d planned to stay in Boston after graduating from college, but after what happened with a certain upstairs neighbor, I made the heartbroken decision to run home to Tampa.
My parents were so concerned by my last-minute change of heart that they insisted I find a therapist. Which, to their credit, was good parenting.
I needed therapy and probably had for a while.
At my first appointment, I wasn’t quite ready to open up about everything.
Unfazed, the therapist had recommended I do some journaling before our next appointment.
Opening up in writing could be the first step, and then eventually, we could talk about it together.
So I stopped at a drugstore on my way home and bought this bright-red, college-ruled, sale-section notebook.
Except instead of writing typical Dear Diary entries, I’d somehow ended up writing long, rambling letters to a specific person. Were they helpful? Yes, in getting me to talk to my therapist about my most painful memories. No, in getting me to talk to that specific person.
I flip to a random page toward the beginning.
Do you remember the day after exams ended our junior year, when me, you, Jo, and Macy were supposed to drive from campus to the Cape, but then Jo got sick and Macy stayed behind with her, so it was actually just us?
And we’d hung out all the time 1:1 before that, but all of a sudden I got this idea in my head that this was the kind of day trip a couple would take, and then I fixated on that idea and couldn’t stop thinking about it.
And I kept telling myself it didn’t count as a date because that wasn’t the intention when we planned it, but then I got in my head about whether intention matters more than action when it comes to dating.
To planning dates, that is. I still don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know your car still has a stain on the floor of the passenger side where I dropped a chunk of the strawberry ice cream you bought me.
And I do know I still think about the way it stormed on our drive home, when I kept telling you that you should let me drive because I’m the Floridian and therefore know how to drive in a tropical storm, which was a stupid argument because (a) it wasn’t a tropical storm, (b) it was—is—a stick shift car, and I would’ve stalled out immediately, and (c) you were driving the same way you treat me, carefully and tenderly.
You were driving like my life was on the line, which it wasn’t, because really it was just a passing shower that lasted maybe twenty minutes, and also because you would never, ever let anything hurt me.
I wish I had treated you with the same care.
I wish I hadn’t let my excessively tight vagina keep me from one of the best things in my life.
But that’s how it works, isn’t it? When I don’t see an easy solution, I freeze. I clamp up. Mentally and vaginally.
If I had a second chance, I’d do better. But it’s too late for that, I think.
I close the notebook, press it against my chest, and sink down onto the floor.
If I had a second chance, I’d do better.
Here’s the thing about long-lost friendships: They’re generally lost for a reason.
When you’re that close with someone, you don’t just grow apart.
You end up with hurt feelings and broken hearts.
But does that mean they’re broken beyond repair?
Does that mean your feelings can’t be replaced with newer ones? Nicer ones?
He said he didn’t know. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try. I broke it, so I should be responsible for fixing it, right?
There’s a voice in my head: Do better, do better, do better.
It’s the voice of a teenage girl who would be devastated to learn how things ended.
It’s the voice of a girl who would do anything to keep Harrison in her life.
It’s the voice of the girl who wrote this diary and knew Harrison would always mean the world to her.
Do better. I owe him that, at the very least.
I dig through the box to find a pen, then flip to the next blank page in the notebook and write, How to Do Better.
You should always start a list with something you’ve already done, so Get my own apartment tops the list. I cross it off.
Or maybe you should start a list with two completed tasks. Can’t hurt.
Get a new job, I write.
I cross it off, then take a deep breath and keep writing before I can chicken out and end the list there.
Finish setting up the apartment within the next month.
Find a new therapist.
Go on a date. (Double dates don’t count.)
Start doing pelvic floor therapy.
Go to the gynecologist.
Determined not to end the day without scheduling at least one or two or three of the appointments I need to make, I place the notebook next to my bed and continue to search for real pants.
By the final ten minutes of my first full shift at Jo Jo’s, I’ve honed the following useful skills:
How to use the espresso machine.
How to operate the cash register.
I have also learned the following information:
Rose’s roommate uses shampoo intended for horses.
Rose’s film studies professor “isn’t forward thinking enough,” which is why Rose received a B- on her essay about why the next James Bond should be a woman.
Rose has yet to meet a man in her two years of college who doesn’t have navy bedding.
Not only are my feet aching, but my ears are also bleeding.
Nonetheless, I am extremely determined to bond with Rose.
Being friends with my other co-worker will make this job more fun, and besides—I’m not that much older than she is.
There’s opportunity here, and I need more friends so I’m not completely dependent on Jo.
It’s been four days since I moved to Boston, but we’ve probably talked on the phone twelve times and seen each other six times.
And it’s not like I’m making any progress with other friendships, as evidenced by my painfully awkward double date last night, and none of the other friends I kept in touch with after college are still living in Boston.
I’ll eventually dive into my list of college acquaintances and reconnect with some people, but I need to have compelling answers to “How are you doing?”-type questions in advance of that happening.
Rose continues to monologue as she makes a double-shot espresso for a customer with enormous bags under his eyes and an equally enormous scowl.
“God, living at home is the worst,” she says.
Now that is something we can bond over. “That’s why I opted to take summer classes on campus and go ahead and move into my off-campus apartment. ”
“I hear that. I was living in my hometown until about a week ago. About a five-minute drive from my parents.” I scan her face for some indication of understanding, but instead, she narrows her eyes at me.
“Why? You should not be that close to them. You’re, like, an adult.”
“Mmm,” I say, wiping down a countertop. Rose makes great coffee, but her process involves a lot of splashing. “I’m still young. I get the struggle.”
“Hm,” Rose says, uninterested. “Last month when I went home for a couple weeks in between the spring semester and our summer classes, my mom caught me smoking weed in my bedroom. She was, like, it’s okay, but don’t do it in the house, please.
But, like, where else was I supposed to do it?
Plus, nobody gives a crap about my childhood bedroom anyway.
It’s basically become a nap room for my cat.
There’s fur everywhere. Like, I find it on every part of my body,” she says, eyeing me meaningfully.
“When I was unpacking yesterday, I found my hairbrush in the box with all my books,” I add.
“Plus, if I’m living at home, how am I supposed to date?
You won’t catch me dead on a date with anyone from my high school.
That’s embarrassing. But my mom doesn’t get that, and she keeps trying to set me up with this guy, Noah.
We weren’t friends in high school, but our moms are in a book club or something, you know?
Empty nester shit. Anyway, Noah is the kind of guy who wears graphic T-shirts, but, like, with sayings on them.
He was wearing this shirt last time I saw him that said, ‘Don’t talk to me. ’ Like, okay, I wasn’t planning on it!”
“I hate dating.”