by Emily Henry
You’re a high school English teacher in Ohio; of course they’re reading.
He sends back a sad face. Are you saying I’m not important enough for the U.S. government to monitor?
I know he’s joking, but here’s the thing about Alex Nilsen. Despite being tall, fairly broad, addicted to daily exercise and healthy eating and general self-control, he also has this hurt puppy face. Or at least the ability to summon it. His eyes are always a little sleepy, the creases beneath them a constant indication that he doesn’t love sleep the way I do. His mouth is full with an exaggerated, slightly uneven cupid’s bow, and all of this combined with his straight, messy hair—the one part of his appearance he pays no attention to—gives his face a boyishness that, when wielded properly, can trigger some biological impulse in me to protect him at all costs.
Seeing his sleepy eyes go big and watery and his full mouth open into a soft O is like hearing a puppy whimpering.
When other people send the frowny emoji, I read it as mild disappointment.
When Alex uses it, I know it’s the digital equivalent of him pulling Sad Puppy Face to tease me. Sometimes, when we were drunk, sitting at a table and trying to make it through a game of chess or Scrabble that I was winning, he’d deploy the face until I was hysterical, caught between laughing and crying, falling out of my chair, trying to make him stop or at least cover his face.
Of course you’re important, I type. If the NSA knew the powers of Sad Puppy Face, you’d be in a lab getting cloned right now.
Alex types for a minute, stops, types again. I wait a few more seconds.
Is this it? The message he finally stops responding to? Some big confrontation? Or, knowing him, I guess it’s more likely to be an inoffensive Nice talking but I’m headed to bed. Sleep well.
Ding!
A laugh breaks out of me, the force of it like an egg cracking in my chest, spilling out warmth to coat my nerves.
It’s a photo. A blurry, ineffectual selfie of Alex, under a streetlight, making the infamous face. As with nearly every picture he’s ever taken, it’s shot slightly from below, elongating his head so it comes to a point. I throw my head back with another laugh, half-giddy.
You bastard! I type. It’s one a.m. and now you’ve got me headed to the pound to save some lives.
Yeah right, he says. You’d never get a dog.
Something like hurt pinches low in my stomach. Despite being the cleanest, most particular, most organized man I know, Alex loves animals, and I’m fairly sure he sees my inability to commit to one as a personal defect.
I look up at the lone dehydrated succulent in the corner of the balcony. Shaking my head, I type out another message: How’s Flannery O’Connor?
Dead, Alex writes back.
The cat, not the author! I say.
Also dead, he replies.
My heart stutters. As much as I loathed that cat (no more or less than she loathed me), Alex adored her. The fact that he didn’t tell me she died slices through me in one clean cut, a guillotine blade from head to foot.
Alex, I’m so sorry, I write. God, I’m sorry. I know how much you loved her. That cat had an amazing life.
He writes only, Thanks.
I stare at the word for a long time, unsure where to go from there. Four minutes pass, then five, then it’s been ten.
I should get to bed now, he says finally. Sleep well, Poppy.
Yeah, I write. You too.
I sit on the balcony until all the warmth has drained out of me.
3
Twelve Summers Ago
THE FIRST NIGHT of orientation at the University of Chicago, I spot him. He’s dressed in khaki pants and a U of Chicago T-shirt, despite having been at this school for all of ten hours. He looks nothing like the sort of artistic intelligentsia I imagined befriending when I chose a school in the city. But I’m here alone (my new roommate, it turns out, followed her older sister and some friends to college, and she ducked out of O-Week events ASAP), and he’s alone too, so I walk up to him, tip my drink toward his shirt, and say, “So, do you go to University of Chicago?”
He stares at me blankly.
I stammer out that it was a joke.
He stammers something about spilling on his shirt and a last-minute outfit change. His cheeks go pink, and mine do too, from secondhand embarrassment.
And then his eyes dip down me, sizing me up, and his face changes. I’m wearing a neon orange and pink floral jumpsuit from the early seventies, and he reacts to this fact as if I’m also holding a poster that says FUCK KHAKIS on it.
I ask him where he’s from, because I’m not sure what else to say to a stranger with whom I have no shared context apart from a few hours of confusing campus tours, a couple of the same boring panels on life in the city, and the fact that we hate each other’s clothes.
“Ohio,” he answers, “a town called West Linfield.”
“No shit!” I say, stunned. “I’m from East Linfield.”
And he brightens a little, like this is good news, and I’m not sure why, because having the fact of the Linfields in common is sort of like having had the same cold: not the worst thing in the world, but nothing to high-five over.
“I’m Poppy,” I tell him.
“Alex,” he says, and shakes my hand.
When you imagine a new best friend for yourself, you never name him Alex. You also probably don’t imagine him dressing like some kind of teenage librarian, or barely looking you in the eyes, or always speaking just a little bit under his breath.
I decide that if I’d looked at him for five more minutes before crossing the globe-light-strewn lawn to talk, I would’ve been able to guess both his name and that he was from West Linfield, because these two facts match with his khakis and U of Chicago shirt.
I’m sure that the longer we talk, the more violently boring he’ll become, but we’re here, and we’re alone, so why not be sure?
“So what are you here for?” I ask.
His brow furrows. “Here for?”
“Yeah, you know,” I say, “like, I’m here to meet a wealthy oil baron in need of a much younger second wife.”
That blank stare again.
“What are you studying?” I clarify.
“Oh,” he says. “I’m not sure. Prelaw, maybe. Or literature. What about you?”
“Not sure yet.” I lift my plastic cup. “I mostly came for the punch. And to not live in southern Ohio.”
Over the next painful fifteen minutes, I learn he’s here on academic scholarships, and he learns that I’m here on loans. I tell him that I’m the youngest of three, and the only girl. He tells me he’s the oldest of four boys. He asks if I’ve seen the gym yet, to which my genuine reaction is “Why?” and we both go back to shifting awkwardly on our feet in silence.
He is tall, quiet, and eager to see the library.
I’m short, loud, and hoping someone comes by and invites us to a real party.
By the time we part ways, I’m fairly confident we’ll never speak again.
Apparently, he feels the same way.
Instead of goodbye or see you around or should we swap numbers, he just says, “Good luck with freshman year, Poppy.”
4
This Summer
DID YOU THINK about it?” Rachel asks. She’s pounding away on the stationary bike beside me, sweat droplets flying off her, though her breathing is even, as if we were moseying through Sephora. As usual, we found two bikes at the back of spin class, where we can keep up a conversation without being scolded for distracting other cyclists.
“Think about what?” I pant back.
“What makes you happy.” She lifts herself to pedal faster at the teacher’s command. For my part, I’m basically slumped over the handlebars, forcing my feet down like I’m biking through molasses. I hate exercise; I love the feeling of havin
g exercised.
“Silence,” I gasp, heart throbbing. “Makes. Me. Happy.”
“And?” she prompts.
“Those raspberry vanilla cream bars from Trader Joe’s,” I get out.
“And?”
“Sometimes you do!” I’m trying to sound cutting. The panting undermines it.
“And rest!” the instructor screams into her microphone; thirty-some gasps of relief go up around the room. People fall slack at bikes or slide off them into a puddle on the floor, but Rachel dismounts like an Olympic gymnast finishing her floor routine. She hands me her water bottle, and I follow her into the locker room, then out into the blazing light of midday.
“I won’t pry it out of you,” she says. “Maybe it’s private, what makes you happy.”
“It’s Alex,” I blurt out.
She stops walking, gripping my arm so that I’m held captive, the foot traffic ballooning around us on the sidewalk. “What.”
“Not like that,” I say. “Our summer trips. Nothing has ever topped those.”
Nothing.
Even if I ever get married or have a baby, I expect the Best Day of My Life to still be something of a toss-up between that and the time Alex and I went hiking in the mist-ridden redwoods. As we were pulling into the park, it started to pour, and the trails cleared out. We had the forest to ourselves, and we slipped a bottle of wine into our backpack and set off.
When we were sure we were alone, we popped the cork and passed the bottle back and forth, drinking as we trudged through the stillness of the woods.
I wish we could sleep here, I remember him saying. Like just lie down and nap.
And then we came to one of those big, hollowed-out trunks along the trail, the kind that’s cracked open to form a woody cave, its two sides like giant cupped palms.
We slipped inside and curled up on the dry, needly earth. We didn’t nap, but we rested. Like, instead of absorbing energy through sleep, we drew it into our bodies through the centuries of sunshine and rain that had cooperated to grow this massive tree protecting us.
“Well, you obviously have to call him,” Rachel says, effectively lassoing me and yanking me out of the memory. “I’ve never understood why you didn’t just confront him about everything. Seems silly to lose such an important friendship over one fight.”
I shake my head. “I already texted him. He’s not looking to rekindle our friendship, and he definitely doesn’t want to go on a spontaneous vacation with me.” I fall into step again beside her, jogging my gym bag higher on my sweaty shoulder. “Maybe you should come with me. That’d be fun, wouldn’t it? We haven’t gone anywhere together in months.”
“You know I get anxious when I leave New York,” Rachel says.
“And what would your therapist say about that?” I tease.
“She’d say, ‘What do they have in Paris that they don’t have in Manhattan, sweetie?’”
“Um, the Eiffel Tower?” I say.
“She gets anxious when I leave New York too,” Rachel says. “New Jersey is about as far as the umbilical cord stretches for us. Now let’s get some juice. That cheese board has basically formed a cork in my butthole and everything’s just piling up behind it.”
* * *
• • •
AT TEN THIRTY on Sunday night, I’m sitting in bed, my soft pink duvet piled up on my feet and my laptop burning against my thighs. Half a dozen windows sit open in my web browser, and in my notes app I’ve started a list of possible destinations that only goes to three.
Newfoundland
Austria
Costa Rica
I’ve just started compiling notes on the major cities and natural landmarks of each when my phone buzzes on my side table. Rachel’s been texting me, swearing off dairy, all day, but when I reach for my phone, the top of the message alert reads ALEXANDER THE GREATEST.
All at once, that giddy feeling is back, swelling so fast in me I feel like my body might pop.
It’s a picture message, and when I tap it open, I find a shot of my hilariously bad senior photo, complete with the quote I chose for them to print beneath it: BYE.
Ohhhhhhh nooooo, I type through laughter, shoving my laptop aside and flopping down on my back. Where did you find this?
East Linfield library, Alex says. I was setting up my classroom and I remembered they have yearbooks.
You have defied my trust, I joke. I’m texting your brothers for baby pictures right now.
Right away, he sends back that same Sad Puppy shot from Friday, his face blurry and washed out, the hazy orange glow of a streetlight visible over his shoulder. Mean, he writes.
Is that a stock photo that you keep saved for occasions such as these? I ask.
No, he says. Took it Friday.
You were out pretty late for Linfield, I say. What’s open apart from Frisch’s Big Boy at that hour?
It turns out that once you’re 21 there’s plenty to do after dark in Linfield, he says. I was at Birdies.
Birdies, the golf-themed dive bar “and grill” across the street from my high school.
Birdies? I say. Ew, that’s where all the teachers drink!
Alex fires off another Sad Puppy Face shot, but at least this one’s new: him in a soft gray T-shirt, his hair sticking up all over the place and a plain wooden headboard visible behind him.
He’s sitting in bed too. Texting me. And over the weekend, when he was working on his classroom, he not only thought about me, but took the time to go find my old yearbook shot.
I’m grinning hugely now, and buzzing too. It’s surreal how much this feels like the early days of our friendship, when every new text seemed so sparkly and funny and perfect, when every quick phone call accidentally turned into an hour and a half of talking nonstop, even when we’d seen each other a few days before. I remember how, during one of the first of these—before I would’ve considered him my best friend—I had to ask him if I could call him back in a second so I could go pee. When we got back on the phone, we talked another hour and then he asked me the same thing.
By then it seemed silly to get off the phone just to avoid hearing pee hitting a toilet bowl, so I told him he could stay on the phone if he wanted. He did not take me up on it, then or ever, though from then on, I often peed mid–phone call. With his permission, of course.
Now I’m doing this humiliating thing, touching the picture of his face like I can somehow feel the essence of him that way, like it will bring him closer to me than he has been for two years. There’s no one to see it, and still I feel embarrassed.
Kidding! I reply. Next time I’m home, we should go get sloppy with Mrs. Lautzenheiser.
I send it without thinking, and almost immediately my mouth goes dry at the sight of the words on-screen.
Next time I’m home.
We.
Was that too far? Suggesting we should hang out?
If it was, he doesn’t let on. He just writes back, Lautzenheiser’s sober now. She’s also Buddhist.
But now that I haven’t gotten a direct reply to the suggestion, positive or negative, I feel an intense desire to push the matter. Then I guess we’ll have to go get enlightened with her instead, I write.
Alex types for way too long, and the whole time I’m crossing my fingers, trying to forcefully will away any tension.
Oh, god.
I thought I’d been doing fine, that I’d gotten over our friend breakup, but the more we talk, the more I miss him.
My phone vibrates in my hand. Two words: Guess so.
It’s noncommittal, but it’s something.
And now I’m on a high. From the yearbook photos, from the selfies, from the idea of Alex sitting up in bed texting me out of the blue. Maybe it’s pushing too hard or asking too much, but I can’t help myself.
For two years,
I’ve wanted to ask Alex to give our friendship another shot, and I’ve been so afraid of the answer that I’ve never gotten the question out. But not asking hasn’t brought us back together either, and I miss him, and I miss how we were together, and I miss the Summer Trip, and finally, I know that there is one thing in my life that I still really want, and there’s only one way to find out if I can have it.
Any chance you’re free until school starts? I type out, shaking so much my teeth have started to chatter. I’m thinking about taking a trip.
I stare at the words for the span of three deep breaths, and then I hit send.
5
Eleven Summers Ago
OCCASIONALLY, I SEE Alex Nilsen around on campus, but we don’t speak again until the day after freshman year ends.
It was my roommate, Bonnie, who set the whole thing up. When she told me she had a friend from southern Ohio looking for someone to carpool home with, it didn’t occur to me that it might be that same boy from Linfield I’d met at orientation.
Mostly because I’d managed to learn basically nothing about Bonnie in the last nine months of her stopping by the dorm to shower and change her clothes before heading back to her sister’s apartment. Frankly, I wasn’t sure how she even knew I was from Ohio.
I’d made friends with the other girls from my floor—ate with them, watched movies with them, went to parties with them—but Bonnie existed outside our all-freshman squad-of-necessity. The idea that her friend could be Alex-from-Linfield didn’t even cross my mind when she gave me his name and number to coordinate our meetup. But when I come downstairs to find him waiting by his station wagon at the agreed-upon time, it’s obvious from his steady, uncomfortable expression that he was expecting me.
He’s wearing the same shirt he had on the night I met him, or else he’s bought enough duplicates that he can wear them interchangeably. I call out across the street, “It’s you.”
He ducks his head, flushes. “Yep.” Without another word, he comes toward me and takes the hampers and one of the duffle bags from my arms, loading them into his back seat.