At turns hilarious and gut-wrenching, this is a tremendously fun slow burn

He could be mine, still.
Why didn’t I have this reaction when I should have – two weeks ago?
I reel back through all the things that have happened to me since our falling-out, and other than Dad
dying, nothing else feels all that significant. It’s as if life was just on hold, I was moving along, getting
things done, but not really living. Is that awful, or fantastic? I have no idea.
Sabrina’s hand comes over mine on the picnic blanket, and I meet her eyes, wondering how much she
reads on my face.
“Okay there?” she asks, and I nod, forcing a smile and wishing like hell I believed it.

---

T
then
twelve years ago
he only reason I made it through freshman and most of sophomore year was because of Elliot – and
Dad’s willingness to spend nearly every weekend up in Healdsburg. The weekends we were up there
were spent reading, tromping through the forest, and on occasional outings to Santa Rosa. Once, Elliot and
I even ventured together as far as a concert all the way down in Oakland. Elliot was more family than
friend, but over time, he became more personal in some ways than family, too.
But what all of this closeness meant was that whenever we missed a weekend at the cabin, the
intervening weeks seemed interminable. We both did well in school, but I hated the social posturing and
politics of high school friendships. Nikki and Danny felt the same about it, and were always zero drama –
we spent lunch together every day as a group of outcasts-by-choice, sitting on a sloping patch of grass and
watching most of the chaos unfold.
But after school, Nikki went to spend time with her grandmother, Danny went home to skateboard with
the kids on his street, and I carried out my weekday routine that felt nearly ritualistic: swim practice,
homework, eat, shower, bed. That we did nothing together outside of school made it hard to form very tight
emotional bonds with them, but all three of us seemed oddly fine with it.
As spring of sophomore year wound down, I grew acutely aware of Elliot becoming… more. Not only
intellectually, but physically, too. Seeing him only on weekends and during the summers made it feel like I
was watching a time-lapse video of a tree growing, a flower blooming, a field sprouting across the year.
“Favorite word.” He shifted on the pile of pillows, eyes moving over me. They were doing their own
catch-up, apparently.
It was May 14, and I hadn’t seen Elliot since my sixteenth birthday weekend in March – the longest we’d
gone in nearly two years. He was… different. Bigger, somehow darker. He had new frames, thick black
ones. His hair was too long, his shirt stretched tight across his chest. His jeans skimmed the tops of his
black sneakers. New jeans, then, too.
“Tremble,” I said. “You?”
He swallowed and replied, “Acerbic.”
“Ooh, good one. Update?” I settled in, picking up a book of Dickinson Dad had left on my bed.
“I’m considering learning to skate.”
I glanced up at him, eyes wide. “Like ice skate?”
He glared at me. “No, Macy. Like skateboard.”
I laughed at the emphasis he put on the word, but stopped when I took in his expression. In a pulse I
wondered whether he was learning because he knew it was something Danny did… “Sorry, it’s just… maybe
just say skateboard.”
He nodded tightly. “Anyway. I saved up and am looking into boards.”
I bit back a smile. The boy was so hopeless. “There has to be a website that has lingo or something.”
He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, annoyed.
“Sorry. Go ahead.”
“Also,” he said, staring down at his shirt as if engrossed with the hem, “I’m taking some of my classes
next semester at Santa Rosa.”
“What?” I gasped. “Santa Rosa as in college?”
He nodded.
“As a high school junior?” I knew Elliot was smart, but… he was still only a sophomore now, and already
qualified for college courses?
“Yeah, I know. Biology and…” He blinked away, suddenly fascinated with something in the corner of the
room.
“Biology and what, Elliot?”
“Some math.”
“‘Some math’?” I gaped at him. He’d finished advanced calc already? I mentally glared at my impending
algebra course.
“So the skateboarding is maybe to help me bond with some of the students in my grade.”
The vulnerability in his voice made me feel like an enormous jerk. “But you’re with them every day at
school. Right?”
He was quiet, watching me. “Yeah, after school. At lunch.”

---

“Wait. You’re not in classes with kids in your grade now?”
“Only homeroom.” He swallowed and attempted a smile. “I’ve been working on my own at school but I’ll
start this semester at SRJC.”
I glanced down at the book in his hand. Franny and Zooey. It was dog-eared because we’d each read it
several times.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were so special?”
He laughed quietly at my question and then it transitioned into a full-on laugh attack.
“Sorry,” he said, slowly catching his breath. “I don’t really think of it that way.”
I stared at him, trying to figure out why he thought it was so funny.
“It’s just been this semester,” he explained. “And, I don’t know.” He looked up and suddenly seemed
years older. I had a preemptive pang for our lives in the future, wondering whether we’d be close like this
forever. The possibility that we wouldn’t was revolting to me. “It didn’t seem like the right thing to include
in an email because it seems sort of braggy.”
“Well, I’m super proud of you.”
He bit his lip through a smile. “Super?”
“Yeah. Super.” I lifted my head, shifting my pillow. “What else is new?”
“There’s a new ‘skate park’” – he made quotation marks with his fingers and a teasing little grin – “just
past the Safeway, though I’ve been learning in the beat-up parking lot behind the laundromat. And, let’s
see… Brandon and Christian are going hiking in Yellowstone for a month this summer with Brandon’s dad.”
His two closest guy friends. “You’re not going?”
He shook his head. “Nah. Christian is already talking about how much booze he’s going to hide in his
suitcase, and it sounds like a mess.”
I didn’t press. I couldn’t really see Elliot hiking in Yellowstone anyway.
“Go on.”
“Went to a prom,” he mumbled.
The sound of tires screeching to a halt echoed through my head. Taking classes at a junior college
seemed tiny compared to the magnitude of this omission.
“A prom? But you’re a sophomore.”
“I went with a junior.”
“Was he cute?” I swallowed my more honest, bitter reaction.
“Ha ha. She is fine looking. Her name is Emma.”
I made a face. He ignored it. “‘Fine looking,’” I repeated. “What a roaring compliment.”
“It was pretty boring. Dancing. Punch. Awkward silences.”
I grinned. “Bummer.”
He shrugged but grinned back. Not a half-hearted half smile – a full, eager one. But it slowly
straightened as my expression darkened. I remembered the name Emma, and the cute, rosy-cheeked
preteen in the photo on his bulletin board.
“You mean the same Emma from that picture?”
He gave a deliberately casual shrug. “Yeah. We’ve known each other forever.”
Forever. My stomach twisted. “Did you get lucky?” I asked, keeping my tone light.
His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “No… I’m not sure I like her like that.”