Truthfully, if I weren’t so in love with him, I would roll my eyes at having to repeat this conversation. I’d found it so funny at eighteen: I went by a nickname that traditionally belongs to boys, and he went by one that traditionally belongs to girls. It was funny in 2012, okay?
“Yeah, you’d probably know,” he jokes back.
“Kids can be such dicks.” That, at least, will always be true. I lean in conspiratorially, a moment I’ve replayed countless times in my head, and say, “You wanna switch names?”
He lights up like a little kid.
“Yes! Okay, take two.”
He walks away from me just a bit, maybe six feet, does a U-turn, and strolls back to where I’m standing. Waiting. He holds his hand out, and I take it in mine.
“Nice to meet you, I’m Joey,” he says.
“Hi, Joey, I’m Ellie.”
“What’s your major, Ellie?”
“I’m majoring in…” I trail off, wait for him to provide an answer I already know.
“English, technically, but sort of undeclared,” he whispers.
“Right. I’m an English major. For now, anyway.”
He never did switch his major. He kept toying with the idea, but in the end, he decided to go into publishing. He became a literary agent, one of the few based in LA, from what I can tell. It suited him—I’d never met someone who loved books as much as Ellie. I was never a big reader, but I sometimes felt like Ihadread the classics because he loved to give me play-by-plays of his favorite books. Reading them on my own could never live up to his passionate retellings.
“What about you?” I ask. Weird, since I’m basically asking to talk about myself.
“Oh! Yes, I’m…”
“Business. Pre-law, with a minor in political science,” I whisper to him. We’re so close, it’s like we’re sharing secrets and not basic biographical information.
“Wow. Really? Damn, go me,” he says, genuinely impressed. “I mean, you know. Business, pre-law, poli-sci. No big deal, I just have my life together. Gonna save the world one day. Really know what I want. What can I say?”
I was very muchnotchanging the world as a corporate lawyer—actually, I was working to keep the status quo exactly the same, and it’s not like law ever felt like a calling. But now’s not the time to get into all that.
“That’s great. I love a guy who knows what he wants,” I say, my flirt turned up to a ten. He notices. I don’t miss how nervous it makes him.
“Yeah?” Ellie murmurs.
“Yeah.”
We stare into each other’s eyes. He leans in. I follow suit. Or maybe I start it; impossible to say. I see the exact moment he begins to doubt himself. Six years from now, he’ll drunkenly laugh about how he can’t believe he almost kissed me the night we first met. He’ll make an offhand comment about how he wanted to, but he was scared. Scared he was misreading things. Scared I was just joking. Scared I was out of his league. But he’ll say that he’s glad he didn’t, because he can’t imagine his life without me as his best friend.
That comment will haunt me, quite literally, until the day I die.
I was scared too. Too nervous to make the first move. Hoping beyond hope that he would justkiss mealready.
And he almost did.
But then he didn’t.
I spent years mourning a kiss that never was. A kiss that never could be. He starts to back away now, and I think,Fuck it. I’m not letting him go that easy. Not this time.
I guess I’ll just have to be brave enough for the both of us.
I stand on my toes, grab the back of his head, and gently bring him down for a kiss. Slowly, making my intentions clear. If he wants to stop this, he can.
He doesn’t.
