Five times I read the note, and then I cannot get to my phone fast enough.
“Hi, kiddo. How are you?” Simon answers with his usual cheer.
“How did you know I wasn’t opening the care packages?” I demand.
He laughs. “Well, honey, every time you call to thank me, you are very polite but very vague. I figured that if you’d been opening them, I would have heard something about the inflatable unicorn, which I knew you wouldn’t find funny, but I do.”
“I’ve only opened one box.” I pause. “You sent me an inflatable unicorn?”
“Maybe...”
“Simon?”
“Yes?”
“I really like the coffeemaker.”
“I’m so glad.”
“And I’m going to open the rest of the stuff you sent.”
“Whenever you want.”
I realize that I am smiling broadly. “Hey, know what? Guess who is here?”
“Santa Claus? The Easter Bunny?”
I laugh. “No. Steffi. She flew in for the weekend to surprise me.”
“Wow, that is a surprise. That’s a long trip for such a short time. Anything urgent going on?”
“No,” I say too quickly. “No, it’s just... well, she got all worked up over something that happened. There’s this boy, and...I don’t know.”
“Ahhh,” he says. “A boy. A boy you like?”
“I don’tlikehim like him. It’s just something weird happened between us, and Steffi got crazy over it.”
Simon’s voice grows concerned. “Something weird meaning that I should be mailing a box of condoms instead of coffeepots?”
“What? Simon! Oh my God!”
“Just checking.”
I hear rattling at the door. “Can I explain another time? Steffi is back with dinner. But don’t worry. Everything is fine.”
“If you say so. Call again soon, will you? I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
I am frozen with the phone in my hand after I hang up. I don’t believe I’ve ever told Simon I miss him. But I do. I realize that now. I’m allowing myself to miss him.
Clearly, I am having some kind of bizarre midcollege crisis in which my mind is being taken over and replaced by someone else’s.
Steffi is now kicking the door from the outside and hollering at me. “Hello? A little damn help here would be nice!”
I jolt from my poor attempt at self-analysis and rush to the door. Steffi is holding an enormous paper bag in one hand and a plastic bag from the liquor store in the other. “The handle on the Chinese-food bag ripped, and we’re about to have a lo-mein disaster of epic proportions.”
“Where have you been?” I ask as I take the bag of food. “You’ve been gone for ages.”
