by Nicole Baart
“How is college life treating you?” he asked conversationally, apparently unaware of the effect his presence was having on me. “Looks like you’re doing great,” he added, and the tenor of his words was sincere.
I couldn’t tell him that I felt like I was sinking in quicksand, so I made my voice carefree and said, “It’s fantastic. I’m having a great time.”
“Becca seems nice,” he commented.
I nodded because it was true—nice was a broad enough word to encompass many different interpretations.
“Are you making a lot of friends?” he asked after a moment.
I was affronted. “Yes, Thomas,” I said sharply. “And I eat all my vegetables and stay away from drugs and alcohol.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean any offense,” he quickly defended. “I’m just trying to make small talk.”
It didn’t feel like small talk. It felt like he was worried about my miserable inability to make friends, but I was probably being oversensitive, so I let it go and tried to be mature and civil for the rest of the ride to the restaurant. Thomas hadn’t asked me where I wanted to eat, but I knew where he was going because there was a Denny’s on the way out of town if you were headed home to Mason. We both had a history of loving their breakfast menu.
We were settled into a maroon booth and studying the menu before I dared to get somewhat real again. “Thomas,” I started, glancing at him over my fanned-out menu, “what are you doing here?”
I had asked it very casually, and he felt safe enough to answer jokingly. “Deciding between Moons Over My Hammy and a Belgian waffle with strawberries and whipped cream,” he said with a goofy smirk.
He had always had a literal sense of humor, and I smiled because I remembered how he genuinely loved and laughed at stupid knock-knock jokes. “Come on,” I said gently. “You know what I mean.”
Instead of answering, he looked past me, and I realized the waitress had materialized at our table. He ended up ordering the Belgian waffle while I opted for the ham-and-cheese omelet with mushrooms. We each ordered a tall orange juice to go with our meals, and she refilled our already empty coffee cups.
“You know I’m going to need a bite or two of your omelet,” Thomas said when the waitress was gone. “I almost ordered that. You can have some of my waffle, too.”
I nodded, feeling a little nostalgic because some things never change. No matter what he or I had ordered, Thomas would end up eating half of mine anyway. He had a bit of an infatuation with breakfast. But I wasn’t going to let him distract me. “You were just about to tell me why you’re here,” I reminded him, pressing on.
He sighed and didn’t say anything as he ripped the corner off a packet of sugar and poured the powdery-white cascade into his coffee. I could tell he was trying to phrase it just right, so I left him alone. After he stirred his coffee, tasted it, and added one more packet of sugar, he said, “I’m here to check up on you.” He gave me a look that said, Please don’t be mad at me.
It was my turn to sigh. “Thomas, you don’t have to check up on me. Besides—” I shrugged—“we’re not even friends anymore. What made you suddenly feel obligated to see how I was doing?”
Apparently it was too honest of me to admit that we were no longer friends. Thomas looked hurt. “Julia, I’m like a big brother to you.”
That word again. I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes.
“Siblings aren’t always the best of friends,” he offered. “But they are always connected. They always love each other.”
He could tell by my expression that I wasn’t buying it. He dropped his gaze. Quietly, as a man caught in a half-truth that he no longer cared to sustain, he admitted, “Your grandma asked me to come.”
Finally. The truth. I wasn’t surprised.
“But—” Thomas reached across the table and grabbed my hand. I wasn’t expecting it and I didn’t know what to do, so I let him hold it as I watched him warily. “Julia, I really do miss our friendship. I really do care about you.”
I knew he believed what he was saying. It felt like too little too late, but we had once been close, and although it could never be like it had been, I was not opposed to the idea of having Thomas in my life again.
“Okay,” I said, looking him in the eye.
He took it as a definite step in the right direction. “Good,” he stated firmly, and we both knew that some sort of unspoken agreement had been reached. He let my hand go and sat back with an air of satisfaction.
By the time our food arrived, I had relaxed enough to enjoy his company. He was still the same funny, sweet Thomas I had known and loved, but he had also deepened somehow. He was more expressive, more sure of himself, a little more of everything that he had always been before. It was as if someone had gone over him with strokes of fresh paint and brightened all his colors.
Thomas must have thought the same of me because he kept looking at me as if he were seeing me for the very first time. I realized with some regret that he had always known me as a sad victim, someone he had to protect and shield. Seeing myself reflected in his eyes across the shabby Denny’s booth, I could see just how much I had changed. Here I was, a confident, independent, pretty—all his words—engineering student with the whole world spread out before me like an untouched field of new snow. It was up to me to make the first footprint.
I couldn’t help wondering if I really was all his expression told me I was or if I had become a great actor. Was I good enough to fool even this man who had once known me better than anyone else? Or had I truly become a new invention in so little time? Either way, as we pulled into the parking lot of my building, the quicksand that had been threatening to drag me under suddenly didn’t seem so ominous anymore.
Thomas got out with me, and we stood by his car for a few minutes. He was finishing a story about one of the middle school students in the classroom where he volunteered. It was part of the graduation requirements for his bachelor’s degree in education, but it was obvious that the kids were more than an obligation to him. I was filled with a sort of pride and admiration for this amazing, selfless man, and when he offered his arms for a good-bye hug, I was happy to step into them.
“It was so good to see you,” he said sincerely.
I responded with a heartfelt, “Mm-hmm.”
I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but just as he was letting go, I was gripped by a desire to give him a kiss. Something unexplainable made me brave, and instead of letting the bizarre impulse pass, I turned my head to place a chaste little kiss on his cheek. It would have been over in less than a second, but he had also turned his head to say something, and in the end my lips brushed the corner of his mouth.
Crimson, he pulled away from me. “Francesca and I are still together—”
“Accident!” I interrupted, touching my lips with the back of my hand and forcing a laugh. “It was a thank-you kiss, a sister kiss. … I meant to get you here.” I poked my finger into my cheek.
He smiled hesitantly and nodded.
If he was skeptical, I couldn’t blame him. Deep down, I was a bit skeptical myself. What in the world had made me do that? But I tried to ignore it and keep the light feeling that we had so carefully cultivated all morning.
“Make sure you tell my grandma that I’m doing fine,” I said, marching right past what had just happened as if it were nothing at all.
“Beyond fine,” he confirmed as he stepped back into his car. He shut the door but rolled down the window.
“I really am glad you came today,” I said, hoping he wasn’t bemoaning the fact that he had done my grandmother a favor.
“Me too,” he said, and he must have believed me when I explained away the awkward kiss because he grabbed a pen out of his console and took my hand. “Do you want my e-mail address?” he asked. When I nodded, he wrote it on my palm, then repeated it so I could remember it properly. I wrote mine for him on the back of the Denny’s receipt.
Looking at his e-mail address smeared across
my hand, I smiled. “Thanks.”
And when he drove away, he was smiling too.
Initiation
MY RELATIONSHIP WITH THOMAS grew in fits and starts. As I mounted the steps to my dorm room that early September Saturday when he reentered my life over a Belgian waffle, I promised myself that I would not pursue him. I would carefully tuck him into some darkened corner of my heart while I filled my time with classes, homework, study sessions—my present reality. If he emerged as more, if he became a part of me again, so be it. But I wouldn’t dwell on some empty hope or delude myself with visions of life as I had imagined it to be when I was a naive little girl.
As it turned out, all my attempts to be cavalier and indifferent proved unnecessary when Thomas continued to seek me.
His first e-mail was waiting in my in-box by Monday morning, and although it consisted of a single, practical line—Just checking to see if I have the address right—it was a beginning. More than that, it was a beginning I had not initiated.
I responded on Tuesday, not wanting to seem too eager, with an equally short and matter-of-fact message. You have the address right. I debated writing more, sat at the computer typing and retyping innocent little questions and friendly, innocuous banter, but I couldn’t get anything to sound right. In the end, I sent only that one impersonal line with my name typed formally at the bottom. No Bye or Sincerely or Have a nice day. Just a short, uncomplicated dash followed by Julia: Dash Julia.
Thomas must not have interpreted my briskness as unfriendly because the next day I got a full e-mail from him. It was boring stuff, really, mostly harmless babbling and the running narrative that seems to creep into all instant correspondence: My roommates are making supper in the kitchen, and it smells awful. I think I’ll order pizza. … As if I cared about his dinner menu. But it was nice to hear his voice in the words, and I found myself smiling in spite of my wariness.
I wrote back a quick paragraph that probably came off sounding a little preoccupied—which was accurate—and he responded within hours.
We continued like this for weeks, slowly getting to know each other again—virtual strangers with nothing more in common than a few shared memories—as we played an unhurried game of catch. He’d throw me a piece of himself and I’d reciprocate, at times matching his offering of familiarity with a small gift of myself and other times throwing him a bit of a curveball just to keep him guessing. Sometimes we wrote every day. Sometimes I wouldn’t have a spare minute to check my e-mail for almost a week, and one of his messages would sit unopened in my Hotmail account until whatever it contained was stale and hardly worth reading anymore.
Thomas never wrote directly about Francesca, but occasionally he would slip Francesca says hi into one of his e-mails, and I assumed that she had walked into the room while he was writing to me. So she knew about our rekindled connection and apparently had no objections. That meant Thomas’s motives were purely platonic and nothing more, and I convinced myself that I was relieved to know exactly where I stood—that friendship was all I really wanted anyway. I found myself politely tagging my notes with Say hi to Francesca, because it felt like the proper thing to do. The companionable, the sisterly thing to do.
By mid-October Thomas and I were Internet pals if nothing else, and I looked forward to his quirky notes with unguarded anticipation. Becca regularly teased me about “the one that got away,” and though I regretted sharing a bit of my Thomas story with her, it didn’t stop me from continuing to work at our growing friendship or even deter me from writing to him in our dorm room. It was this almost careless acceptance of our renewed familiarity that changed my communication with Thomas in a way I never thought possible.
When I arrived at my statics study group on Wednesday, Parker was slouched in a desk. He was attending our group as part of his rounds. I appreciated the help that I knew he would be able to offer, but my heart did a little tumble when I realized he was there. I had six weeks of college under my belt, and still Parker was as inscrutable as the first day I met him.
We were friends of a sort, but how he treated me depended on the day and the mood he was in. Mostly he was nice—in his blunt, somewhat uncomfortable way—but he also liked to get under my skin, and discussion groups continued to be an intimidating experience. I had no idea how he would behave toward me or what I should be prepared for when I saw him at my study group.
However, after an hour had passed and we were ready for a break, it was apparent that Parker wasn’t gunning for me today. He let me be silent and take notes madly and ask the occasional question to which he did not respond with derision. Knowing that he was privy to my grades made me nervous, but apparently the fact that I was struggling was making him more sympathetic to my cause instead of the alternative.
I gave him a brief, thankful smile when we paused to stretch our legs and rest our minds, and he returned it easily. Pleased, I slipped out of my desk to grab a quick drink and walk up and down the hall a few times. When I returned to the room, it was still half empty, so I settled down in front of my laptop for a peek at my e-mail. I was halfway through a note from Thomas when I felt Parker behind me.
“E-mail from your boyfriend?” he asked, peering over my shoulder.
My hand shot up to fold the screen of my laptop down and shield Thomas’s note from Parker’s prying eyes. At the last moment before my hand slapped the lid shut, I realized how desperate it would look to Parker, and to avoid piquing his interest, I merely brushed a fuzzy from the glowing monitor.
“An old friend.” I faced him and gave him a casual smile. We were having such a good day together, and I didn’t want my mistrust to jeopardize that. I put my back to the computer to show him I had nothing to hide, nothing to protect. And I didn’t really have anything to hide. Thomas’s e-mail was completely innocent—it contained a rather boring rundown of his encounter with a professor—but it felt secret to me, precious somehow. It was mine. Although I tried not to, I flinched a little when Parker’s eyes drifted from my face and glanced at the screen.
“Are you sure it’s not a boyfriend?” he asked tauntingly. As always, I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me or playfully teasing me. “Maybe an ex? That’s it.” Parker searched the e-mail for a moment. “This Thomas is your ex.” I didn’t like the way he said Thomas’s name. It was somewhere between derisive and—though I hardly dared to consider it—jealous.
I laughed. “Yeah, Parker, he wishes.”
Parker ran with it. “Ouch, Julia!” He grinned at me. “How can you say that about your long-lost beloved?”
“Oh, please.” I rolled my eyes and turned away from him, effectively ending the conversation—in my mind at least—and returned my attention to the e-mail.
But Parker wasn’t finished. “You have to be coy,” he said, leaning over my shoulder and tapping the corner of the keyboard. “You’ve got to leave him hanging, keep him wanting more.”
I exhaled sharply. He was aggravating me in spite of my every effort to be impenetrable. “I told you, he’s not a boyfriend. I don’t have to play any stupid games with him.” Forcing a smile, I gave him a blithe look and added, “Besides, I don’t have time for a boyfriend.”
“You’re a good listener.” Parker laughed, patting me almost paternally on the back. “But you’ve got to loosen up a little. Come on—have some fun. Let’s make him jealous.” He spun the laptop so he could reach the keyboard. As his fingers picked at the keys, he narrated: “Hey, Thomas, it’s Parker.” He punched a period with his finger. “Julia says hi. She’s a little busy. . . . Can’t talk now.” He paused to survey his handiwork.
“Parker, grow up,” I said with just a hint of unease in my voice.
“It’s funny!” He was smirking at the monitor as he dragged his finger across the touchpad.
I didn’t want to overreact, but I couldn’t stand the thought of Thomas getting some ridiculous, suggestive e-mail from Parker of all people. Very carefully, I said, “It’s not funny; it’s stupid. He doesn’t eve
n know who you are. What will he think?” I reached for the computer, but he slid it out of my reach.
“He won’t know what to think. That’s what makes it so fun,” Parker stated confidently, and before I could stop him, he had clicked the Send icon.
I froze for a moment. Mentally reading and rereading what Parker had written, I wavered between being angry with myself for even checking my e-mail in such a public place and being angry with Parker for being so obtuse. Things were just starting to feel good between Thomas and me. Had Parker written anything to endanger that? I had never once even mentioned Parker to Thomas—what would he think when a message from my account came written by a stranger?
Parker must have sensed my growing unease because he returned the computer to its spot in front of me and gave my forearm a little brush with his fingers. “Hey, I was only fooling around, Julia. You don’t have to look so heartbroken.” He was wearing the sincere expression that he reserved for after a discussion group when he had really put me on the spot. I had never known anyone to flip-flop so abruptly, to go from almost merciless, spiteful teasing to seemingly genuine care and warmth. It reminded me of elementary school when boys pulled little girls’ ponytails in a poorly chosen display of affection.
When I remained silent, Parker jumped in. “Listen, I’ll send him an e-mail and tell him I was only trying to be funny. Would that help?”
There were a dozen things I wanted to say to Parker—none of them nice—but when he stopped his incessant teasing and baiting, there was always a part of me that felt oddly sorry for him. It hit me that he didn’t seem to know how to act, and if it was a ploy, it was very convincing. I sighed. “Parker,” I said softly, “why are you so mean to me?”
He didn’t even pause. “Because I like you,” he said. And then he winked and walked away.
Exasperated, I glared at his retreating back even as my cheeks warmed just a bit. Parker was impossible. But because it was habit, as normal to me as blinking, I convinced myself I was more concerned about Thomas. I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t the person he believed me to be. I didn’t want him to think that I was hiding things from him or that this dialogue we had begun was a joke to me. I thought about writing him immediately and trying to explain away Parker’s weird message, but I decided to ignore that it had happened at all. Maybe if I didn’t bother to acknowledge it, he would write it off as a silly joke and forget about it.