Page 167 of Mad Girl

“Michael wouldn’t be caught dead watching Gossip Girl. I bet you secretly loved it.” The fashion. The pretty girls. The cute boys, too.

“Well, it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever watched,” you said with an eye roll.

“Blair or Serena?”

“Easy,” you said. “Blair.”

“She’s a scheming bitch, though.”

“On the surface, yeah. But, deep down, she’s quite soft and sentimental, whereas Serena’s a bit fickle, isn’t she?”

“Chuck or Nate?”

“Nate.” This, too, you said without a moment’s hesitation.

“Really? I figured you’d go with Chuck.”

“For a good time, maybe—but Nate’s better boyfriend material by far. He’s the one you want to settle down with. Blair should’ve ended up with him.”

“What about Dan?”

Your eyebrows knitted together. “Fuck Dan.”

I grinned. “Don’t lie. You were highly invested in this show.”

You wrinkled your nose, grinning, too. “When Claire and I moved out together—soon after our mum died—it gave us something to do. Something different to talk about, you know? It helped us forget that our lives had just fallen apart, even if it was only for a couple of hours.”

I could picture it: you and Claire, sitting side by side on a sofa somewhere in the past, doing something so mundane together. A bright spot in the midst of unimaginable grief.

So, in that gallery—surrounded by the faces of people, real or imagined, who had (one way or another) let go—I let go, too, and slipped my hand into yours. No more shutting out. No more taking. Life without you was far too bleak, anyway.

You glanced down at our joined hands, then squeezed mine.

“You know, if you want, I’d be up for watching Gossip Girl again,” I said. “I only made it through the first four seasons with Tinsley.”

“Wait, so you don’t know who Gossip Girl is?” you asked. Then quickly backtracked, saying, “I mean, yeah. That’s cool. If you really want to.”

I laughed loudly, prompting a little old lady, who had just walked in, to toss me a stern look. My dad, too, from the next room. You pulled me against you, laughing into my hair.

Back in Boston, we went back to taking those long strolls on the days you picked me up from school. I felt reinvigorated by the pops of green, the buttercups sprouting along Comm Ave, the cherry blossoms in the Garden, the great wisteria vine on the house, already beginning to bud. Those giant purple blooms were my favorite, often sprouting at the end of April or in early May, bringing me cheer the last few hectic weeks of school before summer break.

That spring, Michael rarely came by the house outside of brunch, but he started popping up again the closer it drew to your birthday. We found him waiting in the kitchen one rainy day when we tumbled in through the back door, dripping wet, having been caught in a downpour without an umbrella.

You greeted him with a smile, then disappeared to the basement to grab us some towels and a change of clothes from the stack of laundry that had recently been folded by Henriette.

Michael stood with both hands jammed in his pockets and softly asked, “How have you been?”

I turned my head. Clasped my hands to the damp arms of my cardigan. Shivered. “What do you care?”

“Elliot.” The pleading tone of his voice squeezed my heart. “Don’t be like that.”

I finally met his gaze. “I haven’t heard from you in weeks.”

“I see you at brunch every Sunday.”

“Yeah, and you act like I don’t exist. I don’t remember anyone ever saying you couldn’t talk to me at all.”

“You don’t understand,” he said, his expression torn.