Chapter 2
HENRY CHEN AND ELLIE HOPPER HAD ALWAYS seemed like a match made in high school heaven.
Not prom king and queen level—that title belonged to Griff and Libby—but still, they were a really cute couple.
Ellie played the lead in all the school musicals and Henry was her handsome, well-dressed film-buff boyfriend.
They were the only people I knew who had AMC Stubs memberships.
Henry mostly sat with his improv friends at lunch, but he chivalrously walked Ellie to her cafeteria table of choice and came back to walk her to class afterward.
She watched all of his tennis matches; he went to every musical and play.
They did clever couples costumes on Halloween.
Friday was date night, and they had dinner at her house on Sundays.
“If you and Henry were a Taylor Swift song, which one would you be?” I’d asked Ellie back in March.
We’d been working on a statistics presentation at Rise after blowing glass for two hours tonight, I’d just put my last piece in the annealer—the kiln—when Ellie texted me the news.
“His name is Chase,” Henry said.
I snorted. “Really?”
“I know.” He rolled his eyes. “Makes it even better, right?”
“I mean, a little,” I said. “‘Chase’ seems like the quintessential douche…” I trailed off when Henry stopped spinning the blowpipe and looked at me expectantly.
May I please tell the tale? his expression said.
I nodded.
“Chase Reynolds,” he told me, “is not a new face. He’s Pinks’s ex-boyfriend.”
Wait, what? I thought with a slight jolt. Ellie dated someone before Henry?
Henry and Ellie had always seemed so together, it was difficult to imagine either of them being with anyone else.
“It was before you moved here,” Henry answered my unasked question. “She was a freshman; he was a junior. They broke up when he left for college.”
“But kept in touch?” I surmised.
Henry shook his head. “She told me he’d drunk-texted her a couple of times his first semester, but other than that, no contact.”
I waited for him to say more.
“Remember when she and her parents went to Davidson’s revisit day?”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Davidson was in North Carolina, and Ellie had applied on a whim; she’d never set foot on campus. “Let me guess,” I whispered. “Chase goes there?”
“Bingo!” Henry chirped. “Chase not only transferred there last year, but he also was her tour guide or orientation leader or whatever that whole day… and lo and behold, they’ve been texting ever since.
” He sighed. “She told me she’s really sorry, but she’s been emotionally cheating on me for the past few weeks, and they’ve talked about seeing each other this summer… ”
A lump rose in my throat. “Oh, Henry.”
His face twisted. No one put their girlfriend on a higher pedestal than Henry Chen.
I swallowed, and after confiscating his blowpipe, pulled him into a hug. He was trembling. “But it’s definitely not a big deal,” he said, quoting his ex’s text. “It was amicable.”
“Mutual,” I corrected him.
His laugh sounded more like a cough.
“Are you hungry?” I asked after a beat. Henry and I didn’t usually hug, so it was a little awkward. He was so angular, all edges and points. “Do you want to order pizza?”
Thankfully, the rain had let up and our food was delivered within the hour.
Ottimo’s brick oven pizza was the best in town.
Henry and I had ordered our favorite white pie with grape tomatoes, mozzarella, arugula, and topped with shaved Parmesan, prosciutto, and basil.
My mouth watered as I carried the pizza box to the back of the garage, which my cousins had dubbed the “groupie area” when I first set up shop.
Grace and James had helped me arrange a mid-century leather couch and round aluminum coffee table—two of my mom’s castoffs—on a fraying Persian rug to make the corner cozy.
I flipped open the box as Henry inspected the contents of the tall minifridge, digging through some water bottles, seltzers, and a lone iced tea until he found what he was looking for: Stiegl Goldbr?u.
Otherwise known as Austria’s most popular beer.
Since our expatriate experience in Vienna, my parents stocked a steady supply and turned a blind eye so long as I didn’t touch their meticulously curated wine collection.
“We trust you, Audrey” was my mom’s recurring line.
She knew I liked hosting friends but would never throw a party.
I wasn’t extroverted enough for that.
The beers paired well with the pizza, and we each cracked open another bottle after the last crust had been eaten.
Besides being heartbroken, Henry was a lightweight, so he now bounced from topic to topic: Golightly Glass’s new stickers, his grandfather’s dog chewing his sneakers, how Matt Rife was an overrated comedian, the LSATs (depending on the day, Henry either wanted to be an entertainment agent or lawyer).
I confiscated the beer and switched us to water when he somehow brought everything back around to Ellie and Chase.
“It’s stupid!” he sputtered. “She’s going to Barnard next year, not Davidson. We were together almost two years, and she’s throwing it away for what? A summer with him?”
Feeling all warm and fuzzy from the beer, I battled the urge to break into an off-key rendition of Grease’s “Summer Nights.” Ellie had starred as Sandy last semester.
“It’ll be a long-distance summer too,” Henry added. “He has some internship in Boston.”
“Wow,” I said, straight-faced. “Tell me how you really feel about long-distance relationships.”
“They’re doomed,” he replied. “Even with the best intentions and purest hearts.”
What movie did he steal that from? I wondered. Or is it a Henry Chen original?
“Okay, so get her back in the fall,” I told him after a long sip of water. “Let Ellie and Chase crash and burn, then make your move. NYU is only a subway ride from Barnard—”
“No way!” he said. “I want her back now.”
I gave him a look. “You sound like an overtired four-year-old.”
Henry groaned. “But, Audrey, I love her.”