I picked my way down the narrow steps. Even though I had to squint in the darkness, I clocked Caleb immediately by something I hadn’t thought about in forever. His hat. I swallowed, nearly dizzy with relief. Almost everyone I knew had a Polo pony hat in high school. He’d gotten mad when I had joked it was the default setting for a Cape Cod boy: the white hat with the navy insignia. If he turned his head, I’d see its leather strap. You used to be able to recognize those boys’ lives by the stains on their hats, the athletes sporting yellowed sweat and grass stains, the moviegoers and gamers with oily snack fingerprints on the sides, the anxious ones with hat brims like duck bills.
I lifted my chin and approached his table. He glanced at me,put down his phone. “Olivia Adler,” he whispered, his eyes widening beneath his thick-framed glasses.
I couldn’t help it. I blushed. “How long has it been?” I moved to hug him.
He froze.
“I think you’re looking for me, Adler,” said a voice behind me.
It was my turn to freeze, but only for a fraction of a second. I darted my glance to the side, trying to pinpoint what was unmistakably Caleb’s voice. My recoil knocked the sunglasses I’d propped atop my head to the floor.
“I’m a huge fan,” not-Caleb said. He leaned over, scrambling to pick up my Ray-Bans. “You’re the one who told me about Soulmail, actually.”
“My mistake,” I said weakly.
He raised a hand in farewell.
I inhaled, trying to steel myself, when my eyes finally landed on what could not possibly be Caleb, but somehow was.
Lean. Even from a seated position, I could tell he was taller than me. His hair was dark and slightly curled, beard just barely shadowing his cheeks, his lips parted in a surprisingly familiar crooked smile.
Gone was the gapped tooth. I kind of missed it.
“Caleb Mariner,” I said.
A grin lit across his face. “In the flesh.”
Fourteen
“Why didn’t you stop me from nearly hugging astranger?” Iasked once I’d sat.
Caleb’s eyes were bright with laughter. “Would you have stoppedme?”
The rough timbre of his voice was the same, as was the startling gray of his eyes, much more obvious now that they weren’t hidden behind glasses. I always thought some people looked better in glasses, and I would have pinpointed Caleb to be one of those people before today. “No,” I admitted.
“There you have it. We both agree the opportunity was too good to pass up.”
“But your hat! He was wearing the hat you wore every single day your senior year.”
A waiter came by and silently presented the menu. The staff here mimed their communication unless otherwise needed, one of the quirks of this place. I pointed at their version of a greyhound cocktail. While Caleb scanned the menu, I let my eyes rake over him, trying to figure out what else I’d forgotten. He liked picking pepperoni off my pizza, he could run a mile in less than seven minutes, he was freakishly good at drawing spotted turtles. Further back, he had taken forever to figure out how to ride a bike without training wheels, but had been embarrassed about it, so his parents would bring him to the high school track in the next town over to practice.
The waiter nodded and disappeared after Caleb pointed to his drink choice.
Caleb tapped his empty water glass. “Nerves make me thirsty.”
I raised a brow. “That bad, huh?”
“How could Inotbe freaking out a little?” Somewhere during the last decade-plus, my mind had misplaced the way his left lower lip pulled in when he smiled, the right one curving. The way his face had looked, hovering above mine, washed in basement-egress-window moonlight. We had been hazy with fatigue that last night, him nervous about leaving, me sad about being left, and the feelings I’d snagged were so unexpected I had no idea what to make of them.
It was yearning. Teenage longing, sure, but a deep craving for another person I’d never experienced. As senior year fall bled on, as I waited and waited for him to text or call oranything, as he answered my texts with brush-offs, I realized things really hadn’t gone smoothly, or without awkwardness. I learned things are never truly good when you have to saywe’re good, right?
At least I hadn’t forgotten how mad I’d been the last time I’d seen him, and most of the times I’d thought of him since.
“I was a little edgy before I almost hugged that guy,” I said. “Now I’m just flustered.”
Honesty had always been easy between us. It was a feeling I’d forgotten, the way you drive down a street you haven’t been on but remember its crests, its bumps, the tactility of the pavement beneath the rubber. There was a time in my life when I would tell this man anything. Everything. I could babble without fear, without worry he was going to judge me. All I’d wanted then was for him to notice me as someone other than a childhood best friend, so I told him my fears and my wants and my irrationalities, handing them to him with every exhale.
It was different once I was in an actual relationship, though it wasn’t that I lied to Wells. It was that I handpicked what I revealed to him. It felt like he’d accept anything I’d give, but part of me had been afraid that if I peeled back too many layers of myself, I’d flip our future like a traitorous backyard hammock.
