And so I was rolling my eyes, chugging my coffee, and about to begin complaining about all this to Lola, who was using her brand-new master’s degree in Gender Studies to smoosh a premade caprese sandwich into an electric panini press because New York City, when it happened. When everything I’d spent the past eight years trying to forget roared right back into my life.
“Katie?”
I knew the voice.
I knew the voice before I’d even looked up.
“Katie,” it said again as my heart began to race. As my jaw began to ache. As my knotted, twisted stomach tumbled to my platform-sneakered feet.
Lola walked out from behind the counter. “Well, you don’t look like an Abigail.”
Lola was extremely open-minded and infinitely cooler than I was, so this was an unusual thing for her to say, but she was also entirely correct. Standing in front of us was not the very pretty, very-into-Squishmallows Vassar graduate from St. Petersburg, Florida, we’d been internet stalking for the past three days.
It was Tyler McNally.
And I knew him like the back of my hand.
He looked different, of course. Nearly eight years ago, I’d tried to remove every reminder of him from my brain, my body, and my social media feed. The last part, at least, wasn’t very hard. Tyler never had any socials—too cool for that—and, by the time he’d turned nineteen, didn’t really have any friends left either. And still,that first year, every time my phone buzzed, my inbox dinged, or the doorbell to my new house rang, a not-so-small part of me believed it’d be him. That he’d come back for me. That he was ready to explain all my pain away. But he never, ever did.
He’d become a ghost to me. The face of a thousand memories I’d no choice but to push away and keep under lock and key.
But in this very moment? Now? I was twenty-five years old, and I was shaking, and the skin on my throat was hot and splotchy and not enough to cover me, to cloak me. It was not enough to protect me from the fact that I was still me and Tyler was still Tyler, except twenty-seven, he must’ve been twenty-seven, and with sleeve tattoos, a five-o’clock shadow, and artsy black glasses covering that same set of hazel eyes that would not, would not, would not look at me.
Lola, brow furrowed, put her hand on my shoulder. Tyler continued to stare at the ground. He was shaking his head, chewing on his bottom lip, twisting a watch I knew was his father’s around his all-grown-up wrist.
He opened his mouth to speak. “I...”
I was frozen. Silent.
“I didn’t know,” he said, and then he came a step closer. His hands, hovering there like an oath. I flinched, and he took two steps back. “I didn’t know it was you.”
I closed my eyes. For a moment, that first summer unfurled—hot and soft and so, so stupid. And then, in a flash, it was replaced by the only scene that mattered. The only one I’d allowed to stay seared in my mind.
I was seventeen. Everyone was crying. Everyone except for Tyler, who was standing there in a suit that did not fit, his face expressionless and his arms drooped. My mom was wailing, every howl straight from her heart: a guttural, high-pitched ache. The kind that stays with you, scrapes at you, claws at the last few quiet parts of your brain when you’re trying to forget. When you’re trying to become somebody new. When you’re trying to pretend you didn’t come from where you came from. That you’re not always going to be that second child. That, one day, you’re going to matter. That, one day, you’re not going to feel so alone.
“Katie,” Lola said. “What’s going on? Do you know this guy?”
I opened my eyes.
“He was my brother’s best friend.”
Lola’s grip on my shoulder fell limp. “You’re—You’re Tyler?”
He nodded. “I, um...” He looked my way. His gaze, broken and sorry and entirely different and exactly the same. “Can we talk? Can we maybe go somewhere? Please?”
I made a sound. And then, before its echo could ring between my ears, I bolted out the café door.
Lola got back to the apartment around sundown. I was slumped on the fire escape in the same clothes as earlier: a hot pink crop top, matching bike shorts, and a bedazzled headband. The whole look categorically wrong for dissociating to someone else’s sad girl playlist on the eve of the first unofficial day of summer. But what other choice did I have? Everything I owned was like this, and so I was just sitting there, head tipped back against the windowsill, dressed like a redheaded extra from the opening dance number ofBarbie, staring straight into the melting New York evening. Lola sat down next to me with a shitty bottle of rosé and exhaled.
“You okay?”
I shook my head no. She frowned, then handed me the bottle and softly scratched my forearm while I counted my breaths: one, two, three, four. I took a long swig, then passed the wine back to her and focused only on what I could see: the mustard yellow of her overalls, the lapis threading of her anklet, the bright white nail polish I’d painted onto her toes, and the way those colors popped against her dark brown skin.
Lola was the only person in my current life who knew the truth—who knew what really happened. And, honestly, the other version of the story had never really felt like a lie. Anytime I’d go on a first date or chat with a new copyeditor, I’d say the same thing: That I was an only child. That my parents and I left Long Island after my junior year of high school. That my dad was a retired elementary school principal, and my mom was in nonprofit work. That they didn’t make it down to the city very much, at least not to see me.
“Do you want me to text everyone?” she said. “I told them you weren’t feeling well—that we probably wouldn’t make it.”
I nodded. She pulled out her phone, whittled off a few whooshing messages, and then looked at me. Tears burned my cheeks.
