“Come on, you can’t be that superstitious. What if we can help you make that wish come true? What if the universe put us, your friggin’ fabulous best friends, here to be your WGGs?” Avery loves speaking in cheeky acronyms and has moved into the sage-advice phase of her comedown, which I love but would never admit.
“Uh, let me guess, walrus golfing groupies?” I say with equal cheekiness.
“Wish-granting guides, duh!” she chimes back.
“Being a wish-granting guide sounds like a lot of work,” Mateo whines. “Can’t I just plant one on you and call it a night?”
My heart catches, but only for a second. “No, thanks. I’m good.”
I reach for the glass of water Avery set out for me so I can swallow both the crusted cannoli bits and my battered pride. Freshman year, I thought about kissing Mateo. A lot. This was before I was out but after he and I became assigned roommates turned close friends.
Now, we’re in too deep and he knows too much. The allure is gone. And that’s fine. Honestly, it is. Except I still have an email drafted to him in a special folder on my Google account. It’s my Pre-Coming-Out-Almost-Kisses folder (covertly titled, DO NOT LOOK HERE! IT’S TENTACLE PORN!).
It’s the place I’d poured all my misplaced feelings before I knew I was queer. Before I stopped, dropped, and rolled out of the closet as “gay.” If that’s even still how I identify.
There are four total messages sitting unsent in that folder. I haven’t even thought about it in half a year.
“Isn’t there anyone we went to high school with that you’d want to kiss?” Avery asks, aimlessly scrolling through her socials, cannoli crumbs still collected on her chest.
Two names from yesteryear flash through my mind on that marquee from before, but I ignore them. Or try to ignore them. But try as I might, one name grows bigger and brighter the more I try to switch off the screen.
“Wait!” Avery shouts as if she can see those flashing lights. “What about Derick? I know you’re a geezer who doesn’t really do social media anymore, but I saw he came out sophomore year of college. You were obsessed with him back in the day. Do you think he’ll be home for the summer?”
Derick Haverford. His senior picture, in his purple-and-black cap and gown, appears on a fake pinup movie poster below the marquee. The picture is the same one I mooned over under my comforter by phone flashlight the summer after graduation. The one I drew dainty hearts around in red pen before that epic night of our almost-kiss-gone-wrong.Lovesickdoesn’t even begin to describe what I was for him.
I’m sure he’ll be home, considering his dad is an investor and part owner of Any Weather Transportation Group, the company that oversees the commercial bus lines to and from Philadelphia and New York City. If you commute for work or travel for pleasure from our county, you’re familiar with the Any Weather Transportation Group and the face of the freshly graying man on all the local ads.
I wonder if that’s what Derick will look like all grown up and filled out.
I wonder if he ever thinks of me too.
“He ghosted me, remember?” Is it still considered ghosting if you’re only friends who almost kissed once? Maybe that’s ghouling or zombieing or poltergeisting. Whichever one terrorizes the most and yellsboo!the least.
“Oh.” Avery twirls a strand of her hair and doesn’t meet my eyes. “Right.”
“Ghosting should be punishable by death,” Mateo says, tapping on his phone at hyperspeed. He looks up to catch our matching concerned expressions. “What? Ick. Fine. At least a public flogging.”
“A public flogging? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Avery teases. Mateo is a proud kinkster, and we love him for it.
As much as I wish I could punish Derick for throwing away an amazing year of friendship for a rotating cast of frat boys, allowing our bond to become emotional bondage, there’s not much I can do about it. It is what it is. I’m destined to be hismaybe.He’s destined to be myalmost.
“Derick’s in the past.” I sigh with finality. “Maybe I’ll meet someone at the drive-in. That’s sort of always been the fantasy. Hitting it off with a movie buff who has the same taste as I do. I mean, that place is my only hope, really. I’ll be chained to Wiley’s all summer. I’m doing everything in my power to make sure it stays open.” My boss, Earl, would never admit that the drive-in is suffering financial hardship, but with a new streaming service dropping every second, how could it not be? “I’d like to keep a steady paycheck. My student loans aren’t going to pay themselves.”
“I know you just got promoted, but you aren’t thinking about staying there after this summer, are you? We’re going to be adults who need, like, adult jobs.”
“How astute.” I roll my eyes at Avery. “And how is Wiley’s not, like, an adult job?”
She shrugs, nestling herself farther into the pillows on the futon. “I just mean, obviously, I don’t want it to have to close or anything. We’ve worked there together since high school. It’s our special place. I’ll do whatever I can to make this season great, but I’m going to be job hunting for full-time work ASAP. Earl doesn’t pay that well.”
“He doesn’t?” Mateo pipes up. “How did I let you two talk me into working there again?”
“Like your Rosevale summer-stock theater salary was going to be so much better?” Avery shoots back. After a disastrous casting snafu where Mateo was passed over for the role of Bobby inCompany, he faced a real Sophie’s choice between bussing tables at his parents’ Filipino fusion restaurant in Brooklyn or joining us in the land of summertime cinema to make some money.
“At least I’d get paid in applause there.”
Avery flicks a crumb in his direction.
I don’t care to consider what Avery was suggesting. The thought of leaving Wiley’s has me in hives. It’s embedded in my DNA. It’s the reason I became a film studies major. Most humans are sixty percent water, but I swear I’m sixty percent fountain soda at this point.
