Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Three
Sabrina
Dave always wanted to meet in the same place, at Snak’s Coffee House toward Mount Airy.
Sabrina learned that he liked to know what was coming—Dave didn’t like surprises.
Sometimes Sabrina would suggest they try a place she read about downtown, in a different neighborhood, but he liked this one and always sat at the same table, which was, in Sabrina’s opinion, too close to the bathrooms.
Snak’s was usually full, except for a brief time between two and three in the afternoon.
A line of regulars who she started to recognize chatted among themselves.
The loaves of bread behind the counter were displayed with proud precision, and she would stare at the shiny gleam over the cinnamon buns.
A wiry Australian man sometimes served her, and wore a lopsided name tag that read Matt.
He joked with her sometimes, but Sabrina had felt awkward talking to him.
She stopped standing by the counter where he served the baked goods.
Eventually, he made a tight, unfriendly smile, and she returned it before heading through the coffee shop to find Dave.
He sat in his usual spot, his back to the front windows and doors of the café, hunched over a book, the remains of a croissant on his plate.
Dave liked to fold his napkin and tuck it underneath the side of his plate.
She liked this. When she was in kindergarten and right the way up to second grade, she had hated the way Kit scrunched up her napkin, grabbing it with her messy fingers when she ate.
The stains stared back at Sabrina, and she wondered how this ever cleaned anything.
Sabrina wanted to fold the napkin neatly and pass it back to Kit.
She pushed the seat in front of Dave with her foot and put her bag on the floor. The thud announced her arrival, and he looked up.
“Hey, I’m sorry I’m late.”
“You’re fine.” Dave made a half smile. Was it fine? Was he fine? She was still learning about him. And thanks to his mother, Sabrina had come to learn a great deal about Dave in the weeks they had spent together so far.
Mrs. Harrison liked to remind everyone, including Sabrina, that Dave was born in New York. The Harrisons had moved to Philadelphia soon after the boys were born.
They looked like the perfect family, but Dave hated his brother, Brad, though he never said those exact words.
Sabrina knew this about him. A part of Dave judged his brother because popularity and athleticism were enough for him.
Sabrina knew this about Dave because she felt the same way when she tried to imagine what it would have been like to be Dave.
This was something she did for everyone she cared for: to imagine how their clothes would feel, how they felt walking into a room, how they slept at night, and what made them smile from the inside out.
So Sabrina could guess how Dave saw his brother.
Some would have put it down to sibling rivalry, jealousy from the less popular, less boisterous brother.
But Sabrina did know how this felt, because every day since she had known Kit, she was the lesser one.
But now, the inequality between them no longer seemed so vast. Sometimes, she felt an overwhelming swell of joy, knowing that there were some heights Kit would never reach.
And one of them was knowing Dave the way she knew him.
Kit probably didn’t know that Dave only read physical books.
That he loved Hemingway and daydreamed of going to Les Deux Magots in Paris to write all day and drink red wine from a carafe.
That he daydreamed about what he would do with his life when he finally got to leave Philadelphia.
Sabrina knew that Dave hated milk and would never have any in his coffee or tea, that his favorite show was still The Sopranos , and his favorite character was actually Carmela Soprano and not Tony or any of the mob.
She knew he had been in therapy for most of his high school life since he found his grandfather dead in the hallway one summer at the end of middle school.
And that he preferred his father to his mother, but actually, he had loved his grandfather most. She knew him so well that she protected all of this as though it were the most tiny precious quail’s egg in her palm, and she wanted to keep it from everyone.
The other thing she loved about Dave was that he asked her the best questions.
What’s the most embarrassing account you follow on Instagram?
Would you rather be eaten by a snake or a great white shark?
What would you buy Billie Eilish for her birthday? Dave knew she loved Billie Eilish.
What is the best Prince song of all time? “Purple Rain”?
Are you a good gift giver?
What’s your death row meal?
Would you rather own five snoring pugs or three yappy Jack Russell terriers?
She watched him swirl the coffee in his cup. The black liquid had left a stain halfway down the cup, and she knew he’d already been there for some time.
“What’s up? No tennis today?”
“Nah, wasn’t feeling it. How was your day?”
This was another thing she noticed about Dave. He really listened. He didn’t ask questions with the motive of answering them himself the way Kit did.
“It was fine, regular.”
“A regular Sabrina Chen day.” He smiled.
“So I’ve been thinking…”
“Uh-oh…”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking maybe I need to tell Kit we’ve been hanging out. When I see her, you know?”
Dave didn’t move, but his expression changed for a millisecond around the eyes.
“I don’t think she’s gonna like that.” He looked away from Sabrina as he spoke.
“Probably not, but she will like it even less if she finds out and we never told her.”
Dave rolled his eyes. She waited, but he said nothing.
“What is it between you both? I never ask, because I’m trying not to intrude, but what happened?” She asked as though it had just occurred to her.
“I don’t really wanna talk about it,” he said quietly.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not proud of how I acted. Because I was kind of a dick to Kit.”
“Why? Because she wasn’t popular and you were ashamed?”
“No!” He looked hurt at her suggestion—and she felt a deep shame spread through her—to have given him so little benefit of the doubt. “That’s what you think of me?” A redness rose to the surface of his skin, and his lips pursed.
She regretted saying it.
“I didn’t know what to think. Kit would barely talk about it with me. I just knew when she was upset or angry. That was all, I never knew why.”
The bell rang again at the door as the last of the remaining customers left. That quiet hour.
“You wanna know what it was with Kit and me? And this is me being totally honest. Because what I’m going to say makes me sound like a real asshole. Maybe you won’t wanna be my friend afterward.”
“I doubt that,” she whispered, but he heard her.
She wanted to reach out to hold his hand, a way to tell him that it was all right. She wouldn’t pass judgment on him. But she wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t.
“I didn’t really like her , so much. Like, she was pretty and all, but her personality.
And it was weird because we’re kinda tied outside of school, right?
Our parents know each other. I never thought she took it so seriously with me.
I thought, actually, she just kind of used me a bit too.
I knew she liked Brad, but he would never give her the time of day.
And so, one time we were all drinkin’ down at the shore. ”
“I remember…”
“What?”
“I remember. I was staying with Kit that time when you guys first…”
“Oh yeah…”
“You don’t remember.”
Dave paused, his eyes searching beyond her again, and then he shrugged and shook his head. This hurt her more than having to hear about his feelings toward Kit. It hurt her most that even though she always knew it, she had been invisible back then.
“It was different, Rina. I didn’t know you then—we didn’t know each other, really.”
This was a truth.
“So? Why did you keep it going with Kit if you didn’t like her?”
“I guess because I found her pretty. But I didn’t wanna spend time with her outside of fooling around. And somehow, that’s how it ended up being between us.”
“So what you’re saying is, you treated her that way because she let you? That seems a little convenient, don’t you think?” She couldn’t hide the disappointment from her voice.
“I don’t know, I guess. I’m not saying this to excuse myself.
But I wasn’t good to her. I knew she liked me, and I just let her carry on.
And now I feel bad about it. But I know if I talk to her about it, it will be a whole thing, and I just want to leave it behind.
Because it’s all finished now and we’re all going our separate ways after the summer and it will just be easier to make a clean break.
Somehow with Kit, it’s always drama. I don’t want a big thing.
I’m not looking for a big dramatic moment.
I want quiet. I like it quiet. And she’s not quiet. Am I making sense?”
Sabrina nodded. She understood him better now.
She could have berated him in that moment. She thought about what Eva Kim would say: This is toxic masculinity, Chen. Run for your life.
But the outrage evaporated. This was one of many things she decided to let Dave get away with: convincing himself that Kit pushed him away.
She knew that Dave had just done what he wanted with Kit, and Kit’s feelings were too big to push back.
He had ignored her in the cafeteria, in the library.
They had fooled around in his den at home, with that heady scent of lilies from the hallway creeping down the stairs.
She didn’t remind him of the times that Kit would cry in the bathroom stalls when he had passed her in the hallway and ignored her.
“I know what you mean about being quiet,” she said.
So instead, Sabrina chose to believe her version of the truth. That she wasn’t invisible all those years, that Dave had felt Sabrina’s shadow somehow. And that all this time they had just been moving toward this, their inevitable friendship.