Just Friends(81)

Roshi claps as she honks with laughter.

“You guys are ridiculous,” I say with affection.

“And you’re in love. Our blinky Blairy is in love. Finally,” Faye singsongs, kneeling on the couch and clutching her hands to her chest.

“Not finally. Just again,” I say.

Roshi and Faye look at each other with wide eyes like they don’t recognize this version of me sitting on the couch.

“Oh my gosh.” I cover my face with my hands. “Do you guys want to know a secret? Since we’re already exposing everything about me right now?”

“Spill,” Faye demands.

“Declan may or may not live right across the street.”

Roshi and Faye freeze like they’re being pranked. They look at each other again, then slowly turn back to me. And then they scream.

“Oh my gosh! Blair, you self-effacing freak. I forgot about that. Why didn’t you remind us the second we came in?” Roshi yells, picking up a couch cushion to fling at me.

“Hey, you didn’t tell me that!” Faye whines.

I shrug and cover my face in self-defense.

“Well, now that I know that, you think I’m just gonna let you sit there? Get up! Get up!” Faye squeals.

They both fly up from the couch. Roshi, to throw soft things at me, and Faye, to physically pick me up from the corner I’ve been occupying.

“You are literally ridiculous. I can’t believe you’re a real human being who has avoided being in love with their best friend for this long. Get up, right now, we’re going to the bathroom to do your hair,” Faye rants as she sticks her pokey fingernails into my armpits to lift me up, and then pushes me to the bathroom, whipping out my hairbrush.

“You guys, it must be midnight at this point. I can’t just barge over there in my pajamas and bang on his door,” I argue.

Roshi checks her phone. “It’s only eleven twenty-three. You’re going over there. And you’re right. You can’t wear pajamas. Put this on.” She rips the first black dress she sees from my closet and hands it to me.

“You’re kidding me. I am not wearing a dress to walk across the street.”

“Oh, but you are,” Faye says matter-of-factly. “Arms up.”

And that’s how I end up in a little black dress at eleven thirty-five, crossing the street with Roshi and Faye peeking through my living room blinds. The second I step outside, the ridiculousness of the dress hits me. I try to turn around and run back inside, but Roshi and Faye barricade the door. I roll my eyes, secretly grateful for the excuse not to chicken out. Faye gathered the top section of my hair into a half-up hairdo and curled my curtain bangs to frame “the petite features of my face.”

Crossing the street and onto Declan’s lawn takes no time at all, and it feels like I blinked and appeared at his doorstep. The memory of me waiting on his childhood home’s doorstep reverberates through me like a dissonant note and internally, I cringe. But I forgave that. Now, I had to hope he would forgive me for running away. I raise my hand and knock.

Silence.

I turn around and squint my eyes at Faye and Roshi’s not-so-subtle window peeking and throw my arms up. They wave frantically as if to say, Just try again! So, I lift my hand once more and knock. Still, nothing. No footsteps. No television sounds in the background. Not a sound.

Disappointment ricochets through me, and I suddenly feel naive for thinking Faye and Roshi’s plan would work. This isn’t some grand romance book ending. He’s probably entering REM sleep at this very moment like a normal person at eleven thirty-eight.

The bitter sting of rejection spreads through my limbs as I cross the street, but the moment I walk through the cottage’s front door, they smother my encroaching shame with emphatic coos, shoulder pats, and assurances.

Padding into the bathroom, I lock myself inside to peel off my black dress and hop into bunny-printed pajamas. Even with the door closed, Faye and Roshi are shouting encouragements. I laugh them off like they’re a nuisance but secretly they are helping.

On Sunday morning, Faye and Roshi are leaving, but they would leave me with more confidence than I felt all summer. I hadn’t witnessed myself being open with people often, but I discovered they were a soft landing. It was confirmation that the people in your life could only be as close to you as you let them. Which I hoped to apply to Declan, in ways that were closer than friendship allowed.

Loving Declan came naturally to me. It was, potentially, the one thing in my life I never had to try at. The one place where feeling came more naturally than thinking.

“Promise us you won’t chicken out once we’re gone.” Faye blocks me from retreating to the bedroom the second I unlock the bathroom door.

“You can trust me on this. I’ll sit on his doorstep all week if that’s what it takes for him to let me in,” I promise, and the proclamation takes root inside me.

We decide to call it a night, but before the hands of sleep claim me, I think about the nearly finished manuscript on my laptop, my best friends beside me, and the cottage that holds them all. I fall into the deepest sleep I’ve slept all summer.

For the first time, I could sense that I hadn’t just returned to my home again, but I had returned to myself, too.





Chapter 25


Car rides after dropping off loved ones at the airport have always struck me as particularly eerie. From loud, trilling goodbyes and tight hugs to abrupt silence. Alone in the car with my thoughts as their journey began and mine with them ended.