by Misa Sugiura
“We happened to meet Willow at the Moonraker this past weekend,” explains Max. “Totally random.”
“What a fascinating coincidence!” exclaims Mrs. Hsu, who must not think it’s that fascinating, because she follows this immediately with, “Well, I’m sure Max and Nozomi have lots to do, so let’s not keep them any longer.” She turns to Stephen and says, “And I still need to get your input about the tables.”
“Of course,” Stephen replies. He offers his arm to Mrs. Hsu and says, “Shall we go to my office?” To us, he says, “Take your time, guys. Max, I’ll check in with you in a few minutes.”
Mrs. Hsu takes Stephen’s arm with exaggerated aplomb, and the two of them swan off, Mrs. Hsu already telling him how the catering company refuses to listen to her about the layout of the atrium. She pauses and addresses Willow over her shoulder: “Willow. Please get that makeup under control. And don’t cry in front of the customers,” and she and Stephen disappear around the corner.
“Oh my god,” Willow mumbles. She takes two deep breaths, exhaling hard, then clenches her jaw and closes her eyes. More tears make their way down her cheeks before she swipes at them with surprising force, this time with the backs of her hands. It makes me want to wrap my arms around her and tell her everything’s going to be okay.
Max clears his throat. “We should let you get back to . . . whatever you were doing. Come on, Zomi.” He takes a couple of steps toward the door, and when I don’t move to follow him, he grabs my elbow and says again, “Come on, Zo. Give the girl some privacy.”
“Uh-huh,” I say. I can’t seem to tear myself away. “Are you okay?” I ask Willow, and immediately regret it. Of course she’s not okay. “I mean, um . . .” What? What do I mean?
“Nozomi, leave her alone. Let’s go,” says Max even more urgently. He clearly doesn’t trust me not to say something cringey and he’s trying to get me out of here before I do, just like he did at the Moonraker. I understand and I sympathize. But the way I see it, the universe is giving me an enormous gift right now—a second chance—and I am not letting Max get in the way this time. This was obviously meant to happen, and I’m going to trust the universe to help me say the right thing. I shake Max off and say to Willow, “What I mean is, what can I do for you? Anything?”
See? Perfect.
She draws a shaky breath and looks up, her eyes dark with pain, and she’s so beautiful I could swoon. I think I really would do nearly anything to make her happy. I start by offering her a pack of tissues from my bag, as she seems to have run out of her own. “What happened?” I ask.
She sniffles and dabs at her eyes with one of my tissues. “You don’t want to hear it. It’s a lot. Anyway, my mom’s right—I can’t be crying out here. Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay. We all need to vent sometimes,” Max says in soothing tones, already backing away again. “But you probably need some time alone, and we do have to get to work, so—”
“No, wait!” I say. “We can talk later, if you want. Like after work. Max and Stephen and I are going to Off the Grid, and you could come with us and we could talk then.” The words come streaming out in a hopeful rush, and she looks a bit stunned. Oh no. I’ve gone too far. Why, oh why don’t I ever think before I—
“Maybe.” She examines her fingernails. “I just . . . I don’t know, I feel so down. I just want to go home and crawl into bed and cry.”
“Yeah, no, I get it,” I backpedal frantically. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“I do love Off the Grid, though,” she says, almost to herself, and my heart leaps. “And my parents are doing this all-vegetable diet, so there’s literally nothing to eat at home. . . .”
“It might help to process what happened. With, you know, like a neutral third party or whatever,” I say. Neutrally. “Or if you don’t want to talk, it would take your mind off things for a little while.”
She nods. “True.” A long pause, during which she runs a hand through her silky hair and I imagine doing the same, and think say yes, say yes, say yes at her as hard as I can. Finally, she sighs, looks at me with a faint smile, and announces, “Okay. I’ll go with you.”
“Great! We’ll stop by after work, then,” I say, trying to sound like I ask beautiful girls to dinner all the time and this is Not a Big Deal.
But I can’t stop the huge grin that spreads across my face once I’ve left the gift shop.
“Oh my god,” Max says. “No. I know what you’re thinking, and no.”
“Don’t be such a wet blanket. A girl can dream, can’t she?”
He throws his hands up in disgust. “How am I even related to you?”
I know. I understand. It’s madness to think that Willow’s going to fall for me when she’s so obviously devastated about her ex. But you never know. She just might.
7
ALL EVENING, I’VE BEEN IN WHAT MIGHT BEST be described as a tizzy: heart rate slightly elevated, head a bit light, skin thrumming and sensitive to Willow’s presence—literally inches away from me, oh my god. I could probably power the entire city with my crush right now.
Things started off a bit rough; of all the amazing street food that Off the Grid offers, I picked saag paneer kati, a regrettable (though delicious) choice, given its tendency to squidge out of the roti wrap, and even worse, its high potential for Spinach Between the Teeth. It’s been difficult to project a sexy, sympathetic listening vibe, what with my body being abuzz with excitement and my brain constantly sending hygiene alerts: Wipe mouth! Check teeth!
To make matters worse, when Max and Stephen went on a quest for giant s’mores, Willow responded with surprising enthusiasm to my subsequent invitation to process her pain—by showing me photos of herself and her ex, Arden Frederick. Arden, naturally, is turn-your-head-for-a-double-take gorgeous. She’s Black, with flawless medium-brown skin, tightly curled dark hair, perfect eyebrows, and a radiant smile. She’s got the same glamorous It Girl energy as Willow, and she wants to be a filmmaker like Ava DuVernay. As Willow scrolled through photo after photo, I kept having flashbacks to Helena going, “You’re just not my type.” Willow and Arden are definitely the same type.
But I gritted my teeth and didn’t give up, and finally, we’re where I want to be: Willow spilling the contents of her heart, and me (mostly forgetting about spinach and) listening.
“We didn’t even make it ten minutes before she did it,” Willow says. “She was all, ‘Willow, I can’t do this anymore. I need to date other people.’ Just like that! Just . . . boom. Goodbye.”
“She didn’t give you any warning at all?”
“None! I was totally blindsided.” A single tear trickles down her cheek, and she sighs and asks, “Are you sure you don’t mind this? I don’t want to ruin your evening.”
“You’re not ruining my evening,” is what I say. You’re making my evening, is what I don’t say. “What happened next?”
Willow sighs again and continues. “I told her she was probably freaking out because it’s been a whole year, and we could take it down a notch if she wanted, but she wouldn’t listen. She was just like, ‘You should date other people, too.’”
Here, Willow pauses, and I take the opportunity to suggest, as a purely objective outside observer with no hidden agenda whatsoever, “Well, you could try dating other people.”
“But I don’t want to date other people! I want to date her!” Then she winces and says, “Oh my god, listen to me. Just tell me to shut up. Please.”
“No. It’s okay, really.”
She bites her lip and looks at me, unsure, but I nod my head. “Go on.”
“Well . . . all right.” She leans forward. “So here’s the kicker. I’m bawling my eyes out, right, and Arden’s sitting there all reasonable, like she’s so mature, such a grown-up, and she’s all, ‘I hope we can still be friends. I hope you’ll still come to my birthday party.’ I’m like . . . what?”
“No!” What a shitty thing to do.
“Right? Like I could possi
bly show my face there now, after she’s dumped me.”
“You’re not going, are you?”
“No, of course not. It would be too humiliating.” Willow pauses to blow her nose, and then adds, “But you want to know something? Part of me wants to go, just to see her. To make her take me back.” She looks at me with her great, sad eyes, and says in a trembling voice, “I just want to go back to the way we were.” Then her face crumples, and she buries her face in her hands and says in a muffled voice, “Oh god. Oh my god, I’m sorry. I’m so pathetic.”
“You’re not pathetic. You’re just sad. You’re allowed to be sad.” I’m a bit surprised to hear myself repeating Dad’s mantra from the spring. But it’s true, I guess.
And it seems to have an effect on Willow, who nods and says, “Yeah. Thanks. I needed to hear that.” And then, with a sniffle and wry smile, “You must think I’m a total drama queen.”
What I think is . . . well, it’s not so much a thought as an endless stream of ginormous heart-eyes emojis. I love everything about her. Her passion. Her sensitive soul. Her willingness to be real, to say exactly what she thinks, even with a stranger like me. I just want to sit here and absorb more and more of her. But obviously I can’t say all of that, so I say, “You’re just passionate, that’s all. And you’re not afraid to be vulnerable. And . . .” I take a breath. “And I think that’s really cool.”
“Ohh.” Willow smiles at me. “That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.”
I smile back and try to will her to hug me, but my powers of telepathy are not that strong, apparently.
She adds, “Hey, thanks for listening. My friends are out of town on all these summer programs and vacations, and I haven’t had anyone to talk to about this.”
“I’m here for you anytime,” I say, and I mean it. Honestly, I’d be content to just be her friend. I really would.
Oh, who am I kidding, that’s not true. I want to be her girlfriend.
Stephen and Max arrive not long afterward, brandishing four s’mores the size of hamburgers. The marshmallow surfaces are crispy golden brown and white against the graham crackers, with chocolate squares, a generous slathering of Nutella, and pale banana slices peeking out; tucked neatly into sheets of crinkly white parchment paper, they’re almost too pretty to eat.
Stephen distributes them and holds his s’more up. “To summer dreams!” he says, and we all raise our s’mores and echo, “To summer dreams!” Stephen hooks elbows with Max, and nods at me and Willow to do the same. So we scoot closer together and link our s’more-holding arms—and as we look into each other’s eyes, I realize that she’s close enough to kiss, and then it’s not just the s’mores that are all warm and melty inside. After a few decadent bites, I recover enough to take a selfie of me and Willow holding our s’mores, and AirDrop it to Willow’s phone before posting it on Instagram.
8
BOTH OF MY PARENTS FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL media, which is not ideal, but it was never a problem until recently. Dad usually restricts himself to the occasional like, but ever since she moved out, Mom has been liking—and commenting on—nearly everything I post. “I just want to stay connected,” she says whenever I ask her not to. And I know her life is “in upheaval,” as she says practically every other day, but the only other action she’s taken to “connect” with me has been to buy an air mattress so I can stay at her apartment three nights a week. So which is it? Does she really want to connect, or does she just want to leave cringey, age-inappropriate comments on my social media?
I should have blocked her as soon as it started happening. But I didn’t, which I see now was a serious lapse in judgment. At the very least, I should have remembered that from the day I set foot in San Francisco, Mom has been stalking me on Instagram with the obsessive commitment and wild-eyed enthusiasm of a K-pop fan. Because when I checked my Off the Grid photo with Willow a minute ago, partly to see who’d liked it and partly to relive the moment, I discovered that Mom had commented:
Gurrrl! Who’s the new bae?
So many things wrong on so many levels. I begin by deleting her comment and messaging her: PLEASE do NOT leave comments on my posts. Especially don’t say stuff like gurrl or bae
She responds right away: Why not? And what’s wrong with saying gurl and bae? Did I use them wrong or something?
Me: First of all, you’re old, and it’s weird. But also because gurl and bae are Black Vernacular English and it’s not okay to use those words like they’re yours. It’s like you’re pretending to be something you’re not.
It’s like when people get kanji tattoos when they’re not even Chinese or Japanese.
It’s just all-around embarrassing and inappropriate.
I know I’m being super lecture-y, but who else is going to tell her? Not her white friends, or her Asian ones.
Mom: I’m just trying to connect with you.
Me: Don’t
She doesn’t respond, and after a minute I feel bad about how harsh that was, so I add, Please.
It only takes a second before a reply pops up: What if I just DM you?
Frankly, I’d prefer if she didn’t DM me, either. I’d prefer it if she stopped trying to connect with me at all. But I guess that’s not fair.
To make myself feel better, I look at the photo again—taken just an hour ago—and bask in the warm glow of the memory, how generous and honest Willow was with her emotions, how great it felt that she trusted me enough to open her heart to me the way she did.
I wonder if Mom really does think Willow might be my . . . no, I’m sure she was joking.
But what if she wasn’t? She could just as easily have written, Who’s your new friend?
I examine the photo more closely. Getting a good selfie requires a lot of close contact, and I was pretty much vibrating with desire when we took it. Is it obvious? Is there something in my body language that gives me away? Or maybe there’s something in Willow’s body language. I search for clues, but it’s no use. My heart—my poor, pitiful heart—is clouding my judgment.
And then another comment appears: who’s THAT?
Oh my god. “Who’s THAT!” With heart-eyes! The commenter is Tracey, a girl from the QSA who was in my art history class and whose sister was on the track team with Helena. I feel dual flames of excitement and petty, vindictive hope that Helena will see this. I reply: wouldn’t you like to know?
On a whim (oh, okay, fine, with a clear purpose), I go to Willow’s account.
She’s posted the same photo, and it’s received lots of likes and several comments. The third one down reads, gurl who’s the new girl lol
For one blood-curdling moment I think that Mom has somehow found Willow’s account and commented on the photo. Then I see that the commenter is not @jennifer_nagai_1972, but someone named @kris_tea_nuh.
Then I look at the replies and almost have a heart attack:
@Cygnet1000: what @kris_tea_nuh said!
@Willow_Shoe: ???????? Idk what you’re talking about
@kris_tea_nuh: WAIT WUT srsly WHO IS THIS MYSTERY
WOMAN!
@Willow_Shoe:
She can’t possibly—I mean, she’s not really—okay. Calm down. She said she didn’t know what they were talking about. She posted all those laugh-crying emojis.
But there’s that mouth-zipped-shut emoji.
It’s a joke. She’s joking.
Except . . . if people—that is to say, not my mother, but real, actual, normal people—are saying it, maybe we do look like a couple. Maybe there is something there. Maybe I have a chance after all.
Seconds later, I get a message from Willow:
hey, have you seen the comments on my post?
I have, and even though it pains me, I text back:
Willow: people are ASKING QUESTIONS, mystery woman
Me: omg lol
We’re the talk of the town
Willow: right? it’s weirdly empowering lol
Feels way better than crying
The not-quite-a-plan swirls around, twinkling with tantalizing possibility. You know what the first step is, it whispers. Take it.
Quickly, before I can succumb to any more second-guessing, I start typing.
Me: wanna do another one?
Willow: . . .
Me: Just for fun, I mean. Like a prank.
Willow: . . .
I try not to pass out while I stare at my phone and wait for her reply. Breathe, Nozomi. In, out. In, out.
Willow: omg let’s. I’ll take you somewhere really cool and tell everyone it’s our first date. We’ll blow everyone’s minds lol
Me:
Willow: this is so much better than moping. The universe sent you to me at just the right time lol
I stare at my phone. The universe sent you to me at just the right time. I could have written that sentence to her. It has to be a sign. I gaze at it for a while, luxuriate in it. I feel like I could read it forever, over and over, and never get tired of it. Under the golden beams of light emanating from that sentence (Let me read it again: The universe sent you to me at just the right time. Yes! Yes! Yes!) my lumpy gray doubt vanishes, and in its place is my plan, blazing and brilliant.
I check Willow’s feed again, and she’s left a new comment:
Stay tuned for further developments
It takes me forever to fall asleep. My brain starts spinning plans, playing out endless pastel-colored scenarios of Willow and me going on a series of pretend dates that become increasingly romantic and increasingly, perfectly, one hundred percent real.