My time off is usually spent at the pottery studio down the block, or watching old episodes of Murder, She Wrote while cleaning the apartment Wyn and I picked out together two years ago, before things went south with his mom’s Parkinson’s and he went back to Montana.
The long-distance arrangement was supposed to be temporary, only as long as it took for Wyn’s younger sister to finish grad school and move back, take over Gloria’s care. So Wyn left, and we made it work, until we didn’t.
I didn’t have to ask whether Wyn had told Parth about the breakup. I would’ve heard from everyone if he had. So instead I’d asked about Wyn’s mom. Does Gloria know?
Not the right time, he said. After a minute he added, She’s been trying to get me to go back to SF. She already feels so guilty I’m here. Tried to check herself into an assisted-living home without telling me. If I tell her now that we broke up, she’ll blame herself.
I loved Gloria, and I hated the idea of upsetting her. Still, I thought about suggesting Wyn tell her the truth. That as far as he was concerned, it was all my fault.
He messaged me once more: Can we wait to tell everyone? Just a little while?
And I’d not only agreed, I’d been immensely relieved to put off those conversations, to relegate them to the realm of Problems for Future Harriet. After two months, on a night that I found myself perilously close to calling him, I finally blocked his number. Though I’d occasionally unblock long enough to engage with him in the group chat; I’d always been a sporadic texter, so I figured the others wouldn’t notice. A month after that, I’d initiated the email conversation over how to handle the yearly trip, and we’d settled on the plan. The plan that currently lay in shambles somewhere in the kitchen.
That was two months ago, and now Future Harriet has some choice words for Past Harriet about her shitty decision-making abilities.
She’s the reason we’re in this situation.
I focus on the thin ring of green around Wyn’s irises rather than the entirely too overwhelming totality of him. “How will it work?”
He shrugs. “We just pretend we’re together a little longer, then come clean.”
I start to cross my arms, but Wyn’s standing too close, so rather than wedge my arms between our stomachs, I awkwardly return them to my sides. “Yeah, I got that. I’m talking about the rules.” I brace myself so I can say, nearly evenly, “Do we touch? Do we kiss?”
He glances sidelong, a little embarrassed, guilty. “They know what I’m like with you.”
A very diplomatic way of saying they’ll expect him to be touching me, constantly. Pulling me into his lap or hooking me under his arm or wrapping my hair around his hand and kissing me at the dinner table as if we’re entirely alone, burrowing his face into my neck while I’m talking, or tracing my bottom lip when I’m not, and—
The point is, some people live the bulk of their lives in their minds （me）， and some are highly physical beings （Wyn）。
Briefly I fantasize about pitching myself out the window, over the cliffs, and into the ocean, swimming until I reach Europe. I’d happily take Nova Scotia.
But as someone who’s not a highly physical being, I’d probably knock myself unconscious on the way down and awake to a shirtless Wyn performing mouth-to-mouth.
“No touching when no one’s around to see it,” I say quickly. “When we’re with the others, we’ll . . . do whatever we have to do.”
His head cocks. “I’m going to need more specific guidelines than that.”
“You know what I mean,” I say.
He stares, waits. I stare back.
“Holding hands?” he asks.
I’m not sure why that of all things makes my heart shoot up into my esophagus. “Acceptable.”
His chin dips in confirmation. “What can I touch? Lower back, hips, arms?”
“Do you want me to draw you a diagram,” I say.
“Desperately.”
“It was a joke,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “And yet that doesn’t make me any less curious.”
“Back, hips, arms, stomach are fine,” I say, stomach warming ten degrees for every word.
“Mouth?” he says.
I glance over at the side table. A black leather folder sits propped up there, like a dinner check waiting to be collected. “Are you talking about touching my mouth or kissing it?”
“Either,” he says. “Both.”
I grab the folder and flip through it, pretending to read while I wait for my synapses to stop screaming.
“Itinerary.”
At my evident confusion, Wyn juts his chin toward the document I’ve been “reading.” “We’ve got personalized itineraries.”
“But . . . we do the same thing every year,” I say.
“I think that’s the point,” he says. “It’s a keepsake. Plus, Sabrina planned some individual surprises for us for Saturday, so she and Parth can have a little alone time before the wedding.”
“Oh my god.” I study the page in earnest. “She’s got bathroom breaks on here, Wyn.”
When I look up, he’s caught off guard.
A memory flares bright, swelling from the back of my mind until it overtakes the present: Wyn and I hopscotching across the wet rocks at the bottom of the cliffs behind the house. Yelping and leaping aside as the tide’s icy fingers raced toward us. From down the beach, the sound of our friends’ laughter spiraled up into the night sky, carried by the smoke of our bonfire.
I’d volunteered to run up to the house for another six-pack, and Wyn, who never sat still if he could help it, came along. We raced each other up the rickety stairs to the cottage’s back patio, choking over laughter.
You’re a six-foot-tall block of muscle, Wyn. How am I beating you?
His hand caught mine as we reached the patio, the flagstone aglow with the strange green light of the heated saltwater pool. It was the first time he’d touched my fingers. We’d known each other only a few days then, on our first group trip here, and my whole body hummed from the simple contact. He murmured, You hardly ever say my name.
I must’ve shivered, because his brow pinched, and he peeled his sweatshirt, the Mattingly one with the tear in the neck, over his shoulders.
I told him I was fine, through chattering teeth. He stepped in closer, slowly, and pulled his sweatshirt down over my head, pinning my arms to my sides and making my hair wild with static.
Better? he asked. It terrified and thrilled me how, with that one quiet word, he could make my insides shimmer, shake me up like a snow globe.
When we were with the others, I could still barely look at him.
But because Wyn and I had been the last to arrive, or maybe because the others had decided our friendship should begin with a trial by fire, we’d been sharing the kids’ room all week, and every night, when we turned off the lights, we’d trade whispers back and forth from our beds on opposite sides of the room. Talk for hours.
I rarely said his name, though. It felt too much like an incantation. As if it would light me up from the inside, and he’d see how much I wanted him, how all day long my mind caught on him like a scar in a record. How, without even trying, I knew exactly where he was at all times, could likely cover my eyes, get spun around, and still point to him on the first try.