Twenty-Two
“I don’t think,” I say, and suck in a deep breath. “I don’t think Josh and I had the best relationship.”
The words fall like stones and shatter the sleepy silence in Odette’s room.
“What?” Odette drops her bottle of water, and it rolls under her desk into a maze of servers.
“It’s just something I’ve been thinking.” I wave her off. “Forget I said anything.”
“Absolutely not.” She squeezes an arm between computers, and the bottle comes out covered in a mixture of condensation and grime.
“You should stick a Swiffer back there every now and then,” Poppy says. “Better yet, just swipe it all around the room.”
Poppy and I are draped across Odette’s bed, her SpongeBob socks perilously close to my face. Odette is parked in front of her computers, as always, her mind half in our conversation and half chronically online. The hum and heat of her machines has prickles of sweat beading across my chest and hairline.
“Poppy, let’s try to focus on the present issue.” Odette cuts her eyes to me. “Like Lo having a breakthrough.”
“Like I said, it’s nothing. Are you done being mean to people on the internet yet?”
“No, no, lean into that truth.”
I stick out my tongue. “Maybe if you turn off one—”
“—or two—”
“—or two, thank you Poppy, monitors, we wouldn’t be melting into your Lord of the Rings bedspread.”
“This just guarantees that we’ll continue our tradition of always getting milkshakes when you come to my house.”
“I don’t need to steam like a pot of crabs to agree to that.”
“At least open the door,” Poppy says, undoing her purple denim vest with a collar she personally bedazzled.
“And let my weasel brother ruin anything with his eyeballs or greasy little fingers? No, I’d prefer the melted human remains.” She points accusingly at me. “What made you finally see the light about Josh?”
I sit up on my elbows, peeling myself off of Aragorn son of Arathorn’s face. “There was no lightning strike.” I feel shy, like the words are important. Like finally looking at all my twisted feelings and acknowledging them makes them real. “I’m just realizing that in hindsight the relationship may not have been as healthy as it should have been.”
“Fucking finally!” Odette whoops, spinning in her chair.
I blush. “I wasn’t dragging my feet on purpose; I just needed a little time to work through it all.” I flop back and try to ignore their attention aimed at me like a laser beam. “As long as we’re all sharing revelations, anything you want to add about Hazel? We want to know everything about your love life too.”
Odette rolls her eyes. “Yes, I’m familiar with your greedy brain, and we haven’t had this conversation yet because…” Her mouth twists as she struggles for words. “I don’t know. I’m just seeing what feels right, and labeling every feeling and relationship made it too serious.”
“Oh no, not serious,” Poppy whispers.
“Shut up, you. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you mainlining romance novels and not volunteering a single peep on your own thoughts.”
Poppy sighs. “They’re just books, Odette. We’re all allowed a good story now and then.” She has a point, and a silence settles in the close, sticky air. “Plus, I’m pretty sure I’m on the ace spectrum, but Sloane is giving me recs and I’m still feeling it out.”
“Look at you, such an overachiever you had to collect two spectrums.”
I snort, and Poppy elbows me in the calf. Her skin sticks against mine.
“Where does our hot, grumpy goth fit into all this?” Odette grins, oblivious to the swamp ecosystem she has created.
“We’re friends.” Even I can hear the uncertainty in my voice.
“And that’s it?” Poppy’s voice is soft and slow, and we’re probably ten minutes away from her passing out on us. She’s like a shark or a toddler—if she stops moving, it’s lights out.
I shrug, although only Aragorn and I can tell. “Things have been strained, and he’s gotten more distant as we get closer to the last letter.” I feel like there’s an anvil on my chest. “I don’t think I want to give it to Josh anymore anyway.”
“Nothing left to say?” Odette rolls closer to me, as Poppy softly snores.
“More like too much to say,” I murmur, choking on a rising tide of anger and hurt and regret, the pieces finally sharpening into focus.
“Let’s finish it then.” Odette rolls across the room, digging for a pen under the haphazard stacks on her desk. “Let’s do it together right now.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. I can help.” Odette grabs a sheet of paper off the printer and rolls back. “I’m something of a romance expert too, you know. I’ve had many dates, many sexy moments—”
“—almost zero relationships beyond a month.” I yelp as she pinches my armpit.
“As I was saying, I’m well on my way to a serious relationship.”
I study her face, looking for signs that she’s joking.
She grimaces a little, but nods. “Yes, I’m serious, yes, I’m more surprised than you, and yes, you should apologize to me.” She lets the news settle before hitting us with: “I don’t know, I think I might… love her.”
I gasp and shove a still-snoring Poppy until she sits up. “What?”
“Odette loves Hazel!”
“What?”
“Calm down, both of you. You’re disturbing Legolas.”
Poppy’s hands unclench from the bedding. “Did I miss anything else?”
“Yeah, we’re going to help Marlowe write her last letter, so she can put this all behind her,” Odette says.
“Or I can just stop responding to Josh’s messages and fade into the ether?” I protest.
“Don’t you want him to know how much he hurt you? How much his little games have sucked?” Poppy wipes sleep out of her eyes, but the question hits me square in the chest, poking and prodding at my already badly bruised heart. It gives a heavy thump, and I feel the answer in my bones.
Yeah, I kinda do.
“I’ll deliver this last letter in person,” I say, making up my mind and announcing it to the universe before I can take it back.
Odette whistles low. “Well, let’s get cracking then. Should it just be a page or two of roasting him? At least you don’t have to try to wax poetic about his soul, which I think is only made up of football and cheese fries.”
I nibble on my lip because I’ve been asking myself the same thing. “It’s almost too big a topic. How do I describe everything I’ve felt over the last few months? All the questions I still have?” I sigh, flopping back on the bed.
“What is it that you need him to know? What just made you tell me, Pops, and all my servers that you think things weren’t healthy? That his soul is kind of a dick, and that dumping you before first bell in a freshman lab does not make him Mr. Darcy?”
“It should have at least been the fancy new chem lab,” Poppy says.
I smile at the joke, but my head feels stuffed with cotton. Why couldn’t I be honest? Why shouldn’t he know what the last few months have cost me?
I pull disco cats out of my bag and flip through my prior attempts. The failed letters where my hurt would bleed onto the page, and I scrapped them for not being lighthearted or lovey enough.
What happened to “me and you forever baby,” as your face lit up from my lips and the dashboard light.
I rip it out and keep flipping.
I want to dig my fingernails into you until you stop that distant pitying smile, as if I’m just something unfortunate you’re hearing about secondhand.
Rip.
Do you check my activity on socials to see if my schedule has been disrupted too? Are you also scrolling through strangers’ babies and recipes at 3am because my face is what you see when you close your eyes?
Rip.
I miss you.
Rip.
Sometimes I want to apologize for not being enough, and sometimes I remember your faraway stare and disinterest in the things that matter to me. And I wonder if maybe it was you who were not enough?
Rip.
I’m panting, and every wound from the past four months is spread across Odette’s bed in a sea of scribbles and paper scraps.
Wordlessly, Poppy and Odette sift through the wreckage, my feelings leaping from the pages, and my face burns.
“Yes,” Odette says, clearing her throat. “This is what the fourth letter needs to be. Your soul.”
I pull out another pink envelope, too aggressively optimistic for these contents, and stuff the papers inside.
“When are you going to do it?” Poppy asks.
I have the good sense not to pull anything like this at school, and I would never recover if I showed up at his house and his mom told me to go home. “Tomorrow. Derrick is having his annual ugly-sweater party. I’ll do it then.”
My invitation must have mysteriously gotten lost in the mail this year, but no matter. I will get in, say what I need to say, and then listen to my mother. I’m not chasing Josh Stallings any longer.
“And with all of this settled,” Poppy starts, “are we crystal clear, hypothesis proven without a shadow of a doubt, could take it all the way to the bank, sure … that we don’t want to make a new plan for Ash?”
“How about we press pause on any more plans for a while.” My stomach cramps, but I deflect, deflect, deflect, and hope the ache will go away.
She scoots closer to me on the bed, sticky limbs and stickier thoughts crowding me. “Look me in the eye and swear on all that is holy—the Entoloma hochstetteri mushroom—that you haven’t thought about Ash kissing you every day since it happened.”
“Analyzing the mechanics of it is hardly—”
“Marlowe. You want to insist on Josh being honest about the breakup, your relationship, the ways you both fell short? At least be honest with yourself first,” Odette says, sliding closer in her rolling chair.
The fuzz clears a little, and I hate it. I hate the messiness of this more than I did when I only had my snarled tangle of Josh to unravel. “It’s just a crush. What am I supposed to do with that? Tell him I want him to kiss me again, and this time Josh has nothing to do with it?”
“Yes,” Odette and Poppy say in unison.
WHAT DO YOU WANT, MARLOWE?
Odette rolls closer still, her knees knocking against mine. “It’s okay to just jump and see what happens. Maybe nothing! Maybe something! Take a risk, Lo!”
I shake my head, even less inclined to respond to this intervention than the one about The Sims. I shiver as I remember Ash stepping closer and closer in his room. You’re a smart girl, Marlowe, I’m sure you can figure out why I would have a picture of us on my desk.
But what if I’m wrong? What if it blows up in my face and it’s too awkward for us to carry on? I don’t want to lose the books or teasing or weird adventures. I can’t lose him.
“I don’t know. I just want to focus on one thing at a time.”
Odette slides away, and I can tell that they’re sharing knowing looks over my shoulder, and that I have failed some epic character test. But I am not a jump, then fall, then flourish type of person. I want a ladder, a survey team on the bottom, and a slow descent into friendly territory.
I shove the envelope in my bag and force every ounce of normal to the forefront.
“So, is it milkshake time?”