25
My Ashmore interview is tomorrow, and I can’t focus for the life of me.
I spend half the workday imagining catastrophic interview scenarios—they’ll quiz me on organic chemistry, or ask me why I didn’t have a summer internship between sophomore and junior years,
or tell me the Principal Investigator of the lab I’m interested in is moving to Portugal—and the other half of the day lost in memories of my weekend with Andy—the positions he put me in, the sounds we made, then the way he made me laugh until real tears were streaming down my cheeks.
I text him for support.
Me: Can we go out tonight? My brain is mush and I think I’ll go crazy sitting in the house
Andy: Yes. I will make a dinner reservation.
After a thorough and systematic review of online ratings, menus, and photos, Andy makes a reservation for us at a new speakeasy across the river in Cambridge.
We enter through a black door in an alley, marked only with a crescent moon.
Hand-in-hand, we descend a flight of stairs, following the sounds of airy female vocals, then duck through a night blue curtain into a dimly lit single room.
There’s a long bar against the back wall, soft blue and purple uplighting illuminating the herringbone wallpaper, and mismatched velvet chairs around mismatched wooden tables.
We’re given a table in the corner. I sit in a red armchair, and Andy takes the long wooden bench against the wall.
The menus are leather bound books with ink illustrations, and I am absolutely delighted by them.
When our cocktails and food arrive, my drink is garnished with some kind of dried fruit that looks like a tongue, and I can’t resist doing bits with it.
Every time Andy reaches for his fork I use it to lick his hand until he’s hanging onto his sanity by a thread and I’m cracking up.
“If you lick me with that thing one more time you’re gonna regret it,” he says, batting my fingers away before finally taking a successful bite of his meal.
“Oh yeah? What are you gonna do about it?”
He puts his fork down, gaze searing me from across the table. “Maybe I’ll just have to lick you back.”
Suddenly I’m not just hungry for the food on my plate.
I lean forward, dragging my lower lip between my teeth. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, Walsh.”
Then he breaks our eye contact with a laugh, scrubbing his hands over his eyes and shaking his head. “Yeah, that’s not good.”
“What!” I shriek. “You started it. You—” I point at him across the table “—are not allowed to make fun of me for trying to be sexy while we’re on a date. That’s like… a low blow, dude.”
“It’s not… you’re not…” He sighs the world’s biggest sigh, then leans across the table towards me, voice dropping to a whisper.
“You’re making me hard in public, Sophia.”
He says my name like it committed a crime.
“Biting your lip like that, when I spent the whole day imagining things I want to do to your mouth. Fuck.”
He tears his gaze away, looking to the left and up and right and anywhere but at me.
“Say something really unsexy,” he begs. “Please.”
I’m fighting a losing battle with a grin.
“Mmmmmm….. Okay, I’ve got it! When I was a kid we had a bunch of chickens on the farm, and they used to lay eggs that we could sell or use in our own cooking or whatever. And one time I was baking a cake—I don’t remember why—and I needed eggs, so I went out to the yard to get some,
and there were plenty to choose from, and when I got them inside they all looked perfectly normal. So, I started cracking them into my batter, and I was adding the very last one, but when it cracked open it was bloody. Like—have you ever seen a bloody egg?
It was like mucus-y streaks of red and purple instead of a normal yolk… absolutely disgusting. I almost vomited into my cake batter. And it wouldn’t have even mattered if I had, because I had to throw the whole thing out anyway. And that was the day I decided I hate cooking.”
Andy stares at me in horror, blinking slowly. “Okay… That was pretty good. I think it got me down to a semi.”
My laugh shoots out like a bullet, ricocheting off the walls until it hits Andy in the chest and he starts laughing too.
We’re almost hysterical when we realize the tables on either side of us are glaring.
But honestly, it’s hard to care when everything else is perfect.
Even Andy, who’s usually so desperate to fade into the background of everyone’s attention, offers me a beaming two-dimple smile from across the table, like these strangers’ glares are simply less important than the moment we’re sharing.
It’s such a small thing—for anyone else it would be nothing—but with him it means the world.
“Do you ever miss living on the farm?” he asks.
I shrug. “I miss some things.”
“Like what?”
“Like the chickens and the ducks. They always had a really chaotic energy, and they each had their own personality, which I loved. And we had a pond with a whole ecosystem that evolved every year.
I think I’ve told you that’s what got me interested in biology originally—watching the plants and animals in the pond change over time. I just miss the little things like that. But I could never see myself going back.”
“Why not?”
I push some food around on my plate. “I guess I’m a city girl like my mom. The farm just felt… claustrophobic somehow? Which doesn’t really make sense because on a farm there’s nothing but space. But like… emotionally claustrophobic?”
I take a bite, then say around it, “I probably sound insane right now.”
Andy doesn’t reply, but the look in his eyes says he finds my explanation both reasonable and interesting. Though maybe that’s my wishful thinking. I am in love with the guy, after all.
Before I can start spiraling about that particular fact, I start rambling again.
“That was a big part of why my parents got a divorce. My mom moved to the farm because she loved my dad and wanted him to have the life he was dreaming of—’cause he inherited the land from his dad and on and on for a few generations—but it was never right for her.
She was going for the ‘love conquers all’ thing, but in the end it just wasn’t enough. I know she resented my dad for it, even though it was her own choice.”
“Your mom’s happier in Minneapolis now?”
“Much. And I’m happy for her. But my dad… I don’t know if he’ll ever get over it. It seems like he regrets everything about the last 30 years of his life.”
With that, I look up at the man across the table from me, the one I know I could never get over—have never gotten over in all of these years of trying.
I notice the small things that have changed in the time I’ve known him.
The crease in his brow that’s a bit deeper, the tiniest number of gray hairs starting to appear at his temples—though you wouldn’t notice them unless you were really looking.
The same soft intensity he’s always had, though.
The same rare, genuine smile that cracks my chest wide open.
“That can’t be true,” Andy says. “You’ve been around for 26 of those years, and I don’t think anyone could regret you.”
It’s not elaborate or poetic or effusive.
It’s such a simple statement. But in that moment, the love I feel for him is so intense that it aches.
My happiness is so wild that it defies itself and leaves me devastated.
Because I love him, I really do. But I’m not naive.
If life has taught me anything, it’s that I’m better at loving others than being loved.
My parents love me, but it wasn’t enough to keep them together. My exes loved me—at least they claimed to—but never enough to make it work. And Andy… well, I know he loves me too. He certainly loves me as a friend. He’s a great friend. And I can’t deny he seems to like having sex with me…
Does it make me ungrateful to want more?
My traitorous brain pulls forward all the things I’ve done that he hasn’t. I asked to move in with him. I asked if we could be more than friends. I suggested we go on a date, and sleep together. I told him I love him while he was inside me, and the absence of his response throbs like a phantom limb.
I could beg him to explain what he’s thinking now—about me, about us—but I can’t quite face the present yet. It’s easier to start with the past.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
I reach up to touch my earlobe, the red gem hanging there. “Why did you give me these earrings?”
Andy cocks his head to the side, obviously confused by the question. “For graduation…?”
I already know that much, obviously, but it’s not what I’m asking. Since the day I got them, I’ve always wondered if the gesture meant as much to Andy as it did to me.
He gave them to me during my and Lia’s last week of college, the night of our senior formal.
We invited the other half of NASA as our “dates” so we could all enjoy the event together, since Andy and Nolan graduated the year prior.
Of course, I brought Nolan and Lia brought Andy—there was no way Lia was bringing her brother as a date, even in the most nominal way.
And I was mid-prep, mascara wand in hand, when I heard a knock on my dorm room door.
“Come in!”
Andy poked his head around the door. “Hi.”
“Hi! I didn’t hear you guys arrive.” I gestured for him to enter. “Make yourself at home, I still have to do my makeup.”
“You’re wearing red.”
“Yes…” I quirked a brow in his direction. “Is that okay with you?”
“Yeah, no it’s good,” Andy replied, seeming distracted or maybe nervous. “I… um… got you a graduation present.”
“Really?” I asked, putting the mascara wand back in its tube and turning to face him. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know,” he shrugged. “And moreover, I didn’t get anything for Lia so don’t tell her.”
I laughed, then covered my mouth, realizing I had to be quiet with Lia in the next room. “Okay, what is it?”
“Don’t get excited, it’s not as fancy as it seems.”
Andy pulled a small square package out from his pants pocket. I walked over, then took it from him as I joined him on the edge of the bed. The gift was immaculately wrapped, every corner crisp and neat—such a perfectionist, even back then.