sayitaintdoe

[sayitaintdoe]

grade8.

The thing I remember most about the eighth grade is white lights.  Doctors flashing them from one eye to the other, them obnoxiously beaming down at me from overhead in that godawful fluorescent way that only hospitals can master, the way everything behind my eyelids just sort of burst like fireworks before I hit the ground.  It’s a lot of white lights.  It’s the most present thing that comes to mind.

When I wake up in the hospital bed, my back hurts and my stomach feels violently angry – ripped up and raw and bearing its teeth.  I see my mom sitting by my bedside, flipping through a copy of People magazine and gnawing on her thumbnail in a way that’s very reminiscent of the way I do it.  I try to open my mouth, but I’m afraid that words won’t be able to come out.  The idea of speaking, of doing much of anything more than shifting my eyes one way or another, makes me ache.

She looks like she hasn’t slept in a few days, eyes dark under the rims and hair sticking out on  the sides, cheeks gaunt and lips chapped.  She looks absolutely nothing like the Glamazon she typically tries to put forth to the world, and for that, I feel responsible.  And yet, at the same time, I feel like a goblin for feeling honored that she would choose sitting by my bed over putting her face on.

“Mom?”

Her magazine falls, head raising and a soft, “Oh, mija,” slipping from her mouth as she nearly crawls out of her chair to get to me, to get her warm hands on my cheeks.  “Mija, you scared me,” she coos to my forehead, pressing her lips where she was just speaking.  I can feel her tears dampening my baby hairs, and I close my eyes and try not to start crying with her.  “How could you do something like this?”

By something like this, she means “stop eating,” and in my defense, it’s not like I did it on purpose.  If I wanted to be the asshole that I typically am, I could throw back at her that it only really started when her boyfriend of the season started reaching for my hand under the dinner table and making low comments on how “I’d sure grown up” over Christmas break.  I don’t say any of that, though.  Instead, I just shake my head back at her and breathe in a shaky breath, and I tell her, “I’m sorry,” because I am.

“They told me they’re going to…” Mom stops for a moment, putting herself together and pulling away.  I immediately feel our usual distance ever-so-slightly creeping its way back home.  “We have to put you in… in a treatment program, Dorinda.”

My mother is the only person that calls me Dorinda.  She is the only person who calls my brother, Sol, Solomon.  She claims that those are the names she gave us – for, you know, whatever reason – and that gives her the right to use them until she’s dead and buried.  I guess she’s technically right, but it doesn’t make me feel like any less of a ninety-year-old abuela.

“Can I have some ice?” I realize this isn’t the response she wants out of me by the way her eyebrow quirks at a nearly ninety-degree angle.

“You can have some food,” she replies curtly.  “Do you remember food?”

I do, as a matter of fact, but the idea of eating any is currently making my stomach churn all over again.  I look down at the sorry excuse for a blanket that’s draped over me, pushing myself up enough that I can sit.  “I’m not—”

“—I’m getting you food,” and she says it in a way that I know that I don’t get a rebuttal.  She grabs her purse from where it’s hanging over the back of her chair.  She looks grimly around the hospital room before looking almost pitifully back at me.  “Sorry excuse for a hospital.  Nobody’s even come to check in on you since noon.”  She reaches into the pocket of her purse, and when her hand returns, I see my enV staring back at me.  She hands it to me and I have to resist the urge to immediately flip it open.  “Don’t spend too much time on it.  You need you’re rest.”

She says this like I haven’t been in a borderline-coma for who knows how many days at this point.  I swallow down the cotton balls in my throat and nod back at her, waiting for her to retreat from the room with the click-clack of her heels on the tile floor before I’m flipping the phone open and staring at the notification staring back at me on the screen: NEW TEXT MESSAGES.

I don’t bother reading them.  If I see texts from my friends Teddy and Joy, I’ll just feel momentary guilt for not calling them first.  I immediately go to my speed dial, hitting the number two and waiting all of one and a half rings before my best friend’s familiar, cracking voice is filling my ears and sending tears springing to my eyes.

“Doe, holy crap, thank god.”  Preston doesn’t give me a chance to get a word in.  “I’m leaving for the hospital right now,” I hear his front door opening and shutting, the familiar scraping sound of him pulling his bike away from his front porch.  “I’m coming, okay?”

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

“I’m not going to break if you get closer, you know,” I say pointedly, because Preston Raimi is standing all the way across my room, pacing back and forth with his too long legs.

His head of curls is messier than normal – which is saying something – and I can tell that he’s trying to keep from shaking.  When he burst through the door four minutes ago, the first word out of his mouth was a nervous “hey,” and then he started laughing.  He tends to do that when he’s nervous or when he’s scared or when he doesn’t know how else to react.

“Not taking my chances,” he responds, waving a hand over at me.  “Besides, you look like a toothpick.  Who knows how fragile—”

“—oh, shut up, like you’re one to talk, noodle arms.”

He swallows, rocking back and forth unsteadily on his heels for a few seconds.

“Come here,” I change direction.  “Please?”

He can’t resist a good please, I know this for a fact.  I’ve known this for a fact since I was five and needed someone else to take the fall for breaking my mom’s Tiffany & Co. wine glass.  (Not that I knew what Tiffany & Co. was.  I just knew that it as “Mami’s very expensive cup.”)

And, of course, he listens.  He teeters forward, finally taking a seat on the edge of the bed before realizing it’s not quite good enough and curling all the way up, his head finding a home next to mine on the pillow.  His arm slings around my stomach, which is the most comfortable it has felt since they put me in this place, and his face is buried in my shoulder.

This is how we stay for a few minutes.  My eyes fall closed, already coming up with ways to convince my mom that Preston has to stay over.

We’re not, like, a thing or anything.  It’s not like that.  I mean, we did kiss over the summer.  And again, at Halloween.  And Christmas.  But it’s not like that.  He’s, like, my person.  Making him be anything other than that would just make everything confusing, and I think we both know that.  And anybody who actually starts dating in junior high is embarrassing themselves anyway, and yes, I’m including my own friends in that, because they know who they are.  But ever the same, even without us being a “thing” or whatever, this feels right.  This actually feels like the only good feeling I’ve had in a really long time, and I’m not ready to let that go.

“Did you tell your mom?”

And just like that, my eyes are open.

He doesn’t elaborate, but he doesn’t have to.  Preston might not have known that all of this was going on with me, but he’s not an idiot, no matter what he leads you and everyone else to believe.  He hasn’t liked Ricky since the moment he met him at a neighborhood end-of-summer cookout, and that only worsened when I broke down in tears to him on New Year’s Eve about what had happened over the past few weeks between the two of us.  He can put two and two together better than most.

“No.”

“Doe—”

“No.”

“You can’t go home to him.”

“I’m not going home period,” I fire back, and that catches him off guard.  He stills from beside me, sitting up a little higher before I’m yanking him back down next to me, immediately missing the weight on my shoulder.  “I… I like, have to go to some stupid treatment facility.  I don’t know.  Mom didn’t get very into detail.  But it doesn’t sound like it’s just going to be some weekend thing or whatever, so… yeah.  I don’t think I’m going home any time soon.”

Preston’s quiet for a minute, and one minute turns to two.  “Then I’m not going home, either.”

I snort.  “Yeah, because that’s how that works.”

“No, shut up, I’m serious,” his voice cracks with the words, but only a little.  It’s still enough to make my heart stutter in my chest.  “You can’t just, like, freaking scare the crap out of me like that and then just expect me to be like, Okay, cool, well I gotta get back to class tomorrow so hope you get to feeling better.  I’m not doing that.  I already missed class ‘cause I wasn’t focusing and that’s not going to just magically get better now, so.  Whatever.  If you have to do some stupid treatment stuff then I guess we’re both doing some stupid treatment stuff.”

I don’t have the heart to tell him that I don’t think that’s how it works.  All that’s floating around in my head right now is that I want to kiss him again, but that I don’t remember the last time I brushed my teeth, and I’m not that person.  I settle for placing my hand on top of the one that’s resting on my stomach, and I give it a little squeeze.  “You’re my dude, P.  You know that?”

“That’s why I have to keep an eye on you,” he says, and while I feel like a lot of people say that about me like it’s a chore, he says it like it’s a duty.  “Can’t have you disappearing on me, y’know?”

I rest my head on top of his own, letting my eyes close all over again.  I’m not thinking about my mom coming back in the room, I’m not thinking about her shitty boyfriend, I’m not thinking about calorie intake or passing out in the bathroom.  I’m not thinking about the white lights or the hospital wallpaper.  I’m just thinking about this moment, right here.  Me and my best friend.  

“I won’t,” I promise him.  And I mean it.

[sayitaintdoe]

when i wake up, i’m not wearing a shirt — this isn’t some rare occurrence, and it’s hardly the point, but i’m not wearing a shirt, and i’m not in my bed, and i’m alone.

i reach around for my phone on the nightstand next to me, seeing that it’s 11:42 a.m., and when i stretch my feet out underneath the sheets and blankets, reaching to the empty side of the bed, the sheets beneath my feet are cold.

sitting up, i drop my phone back to the nightstand, standing up and parading myself around preston’s room for a moment or two (okay, three, because i do make a pitstop to admire myself and the newfound little trail of marks down my neck in the mirror for a moment) before grabbing the nearest shirt — an old faded yellow one of his, draped over his desk chair, and tugging it over my head.  it falls somewhere past my thighs, and i decide that’s as good as it’s going to get before i’m out his door and into his apartment, in search of him or any other signs of life.

who i find is brady barton, sitting at the kitchen counter, shoveling a spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

“thought it was too quiet around here,” he observes, but it comes out more like, “fough if fuz oo qui rou he.”

i slide up next to him at the counter, snagging his spoon out of his hand and stealing a bite of my own.  “always a thrill to see you, darling,” i point out.  “what have i missed?  where’s the dreamboat?”

“stevie’s helping joy out with something.”

“where’s the second dreamboat?”

“you’re looking at him!”

“the bronze dreamboat?”

“he left a couple hours ago, pris had some emergency and called to see if he’d come over.  probably payback for bailing on family dinner last week.”

i’d forgotten about the fact that after preston’s parents had separated, they had still insisted on doing a family dinner every other sunday night.  i’d been next to him at the table for far too many of them, and it was one of the most bizarro experiences ever, considering his parents wanted to rip each other’s throats out half the time but always acted like that was never the case.  somehow, one visit around the ol’ raimi dinner table would make them look like the perfect nuclear family once again.

it didn’t work.  it was one of those mosaic images that only looked all right if you were far enough away.  once you were close enough, you saw that the images were really more of standalone than they were anything else.  or maybe cher horowitz said it best — they were a monet.  a full on mess.

“so, just you and me, bud?”

“just you and me, kid.”

i’ve known brady for a long time.  like, a long time.  that’s the thing about having a best friend like preston pretty much superglued to your side at all times — there is never a period of time where one of you knows someone that the other doesn’t.  and even when they do know someone that you don’t, you get introduced pretty early on.  you’re always in the circle together.

brady and stevie had known each other since they were in elementary school, and they’d only been in our lives since brady answered preston’s desperate (read: desperate) ad — on craigslist, no less — for a roommate after freshman year ended.  stevie was part of the package deal, but he wasn’t ready for the commitment of living with brady.  stevie moved in with joy, our circle got a little wider, and it was sort of like they’d been there the whole time.

and yet, even with all of that?  i don’t know if i’ve really spent that much time alone with just brady.  just the two of us.  like, i took him to a couple doctor’s appointments when stevie was having a panic attack and brady made preston stay behind with him, but that was basically just me sitting in a waiting room showing him memes on my phone to pass the time and wincing every time i heard him wheeze when he laughed.

but, here we are.  trying not to sit in an uncomfortable silence at his kitchen counter, and probably failing at exactly that.

“so,” i breathe out at the same time that brady says it.  and then we both laugh.  i want to drown in the leftover cereal milk.

thankfully, he keeps going.  normally at this point, i’d be forcing him to play never have i ever just to fill the silence, but brady has taken charge of the conversation.  “what’s the deal with you and p?”

honestly, i should have seen it coming.

and i should have prepared an answer.

how do i not have an answer?

why don’t i have an answer?

is there an answer?

i think back to last night, and the night before last night, and how we haven’t come up for air for days, like somehow new life has been bore into our lungs and suddenly, it’s just the two of us existing inside of each other.  it feels right, that’s the thing.  it feels like this is the way it’s supposed to be.

so, why doesn’t it feel done?  isn’t this where it stops?  where we say, “okay, charade’s over, maybe we’re taking a whack at it, everyone go home now” and pack it all in?

i know cait is still texting him, and i know there’s a little green monster that lives inside my brain and sometimes she wants to control the situation and flip all my switches and take charge and send texts for me because she doesn’t think i’m handling anything the way i’m supposed to.

and i know he wouldn’t talk to her if i asked him to.

and i know i could prevent this whole thing.

and i know that some part of me…

a knot balls up in my stomach, and i’m tapping the tip of brady’s spoon against the counter mindlessly until he grabs it away from me.  “it’s gonna get soggy,” he mutters, more to himself than to me, but i don’t hear him, not really.

…some part of me is ready to prevent it.  ready to call it.  ready to grow up.

“what happens now?” i ask, and i don’t even think brady knows what i’m talking about.  he can’t, really, because isn’t this an act?  and they know that, right?  because that’s what this has been the whole time.  every time i squished his cheeks before a date, every time we kissed for an instagram post.  it was all one big game of pretend, and they were all the fools who watched it happen.  and they don’t know they got played.

last night, nate texted me and asked if i’d dumped preston yet, and i’d left him on read.  i didn’t plan on responding.  i don’t plan on responding.  because preston was right when he said that nate never loved me, and i didn’t text nate because i wanted nate to take me back or because i wanted to take him back.  i reached out to nate because i wanted preston to feel it the way i felt it every time cait looked at him across the room and he met her gaze.

so, yeah.  brady shouldn’t get what i’m talking about.  and yet, he shifts to look at me with a sort of intensity i’m not used to seeing, as if this isn’t the same guy who just yesterday morning was playing playstation vr in a faded goof troop t-shirt so intensely that he chucked an open bottle of gatorade across the living room.  

“i think… i know a few really, really good people.  stevie’s the best one, and then there’s preston.  and there’s joy, and there’s teddy, and there’s—”

“—me,”

he doesn’t reply right away.  “i once watched you shove a kid out of the way because you wanted to get to the front of the line during a black friday sale, so.  there’s stevie and there’s preston and there’s joy and there’s—”

i clear my throat for him to continue.

“my point is, preston is one of the best dudes i know.  and i know that you know that, because you guys have… a really weird relationship, but it’s a real one.  it’s something that i don’t think i’d probably ever grasp, and i know that if i ever said one shitty thing about you, i’d probably have to find somewhere else to sleep for a couple nights — I’M NOT SAYING THAT I HAVE ANYTHING BAD TO SAY, DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT.  i just don’t want to see him get hurt.”

the knot in my stomach, which has been present for what feels like months at this point, tightens into a bowling ball.  “you think i’d hurt him.”

“not on purpose,” he says quickly.  “i just… sometimes not doing something hurts more than actually doing something.”  he waves his hand in front of his face.  “this isn’t coming out very good, i’m just.  i think he really loves you, doe.  okay?  i think he loves you.”

i could throw up on the counter.

“i know he does.  i mean, he hasn’t told me, but he doesn’t need to.  you’re not stupid, you know he doesn’t need to.  you know he loves you.  you know you probably love him, too.  you don’t want cait to have him, you totally sabotaged whatever was going on with that girl from col—”

“—that’s not true, she was an absolute tim burton-worthy nightmare and he was lucky to get rid of her, and we all know it.  she probably had a voodoo doll of me in her closet, brady.”

“because you’re you.  because nobody can compete with you.  because if he had to choose between the world or you, we’d all be fucked.”

i stare down at the countertop so hard i wonder if i could burn a hole through it, i feel like i could.  i feel like if i focused long enough, it could happen.  but brady?  brady just keeps fucking talking.  “you love him, doe.  i think… whatever you guys have been doing this past month?  because it was really weird, by the way — i think you know that if you had to pick between nate just one more line of coke, i swear saunders or preston?  you’d pick preston.”

my hands twist in front of me, eyes squeezing shut for a second.  “i’m not… i don’t think… i’m not really cut out for, like.  that.  i don’t think either of us are, and i’m pretty sure that’s been our whole point since day one, you know?  that we didn’t want to do that.  we didn’t want a relationship, or some fucking picket fence or anything.”

i think back to what preston said, we could be together and not get married.

we could be together and not get married.

we could be together.

he meant that, didn’t he?

together.  not for show.  not for kicks.  not to thwart off mipsy from pilates.  just together.

“and you think that’s what preston wants out of you?  you think you’re gonna decide to actually give a shit about each other and suddenly he’s gonna expect to come home to you baking him pies and popping out three kids in a row?  can you imagine what those kids would go through?  doe.  this is you and preston.  i don’t think anything would change.”

and, see, that’s where i think he’s wrong.

i’m pretty sure everything would.

i’m pretty sure it already has.

[sayitaintdoe]

[sayitaintdoe]

[sayitaintdoe]

“are you ready to order?”

“doe?”

my eyes are so fixed on trying to knock half-empty mimosa over with my mind that i only notice my mom is trying to get my attention when she snaps her fingers in front of my eyes like a hypnotist pulling me out of a spell.

“no.”

that’s not what she wants to hear, and i can tell by the look she’s sending me.  but i don’t care.  in fact, i just raise my eyebrows back at her and shrug, issuing the challenge back to her.

“she’ll have the garden vegetable omelet with turkey bacon.”

“mom.”

she snags my menu from me, passing both of them back to the server as she places her own order.  “i’m not going to sit here for another unnecessary ten minutes waiting for you to inevitably order exactly that, dorothea.”

my insides turn out, sinking lower into the booth and gnawing a hole on the inside of my cheek.  “i’m not even hungry.”

this isn’t the right thing to say, and i can tell as soon as her eyes darken, settling on me, hard.  “this conversation isn’t heading n a very good direction, mija.”

“i’m fine, mom.”

but i know that’s not what she’s thinking.  i know that in her head, she’s thinking about how i spent my fourteenth christmas in some stupid fucking rehab clinic with an eating disorder i kept pretending i didn’t have.  how the ritalin made me feel so not like myself that i didn’t want to do anything but sleep, certainly not eat.  i’d rather not think about how i’m pretty sure preston’s mom still blames me for him almost having to repeat the eighth grade that year, but that bubbles to the surface just the same.  it always does.

my mom still remains unconvinced, and i squirm uncomfortably across from her, reaching for my glass.  “i’m just not hungry.”

because i’m not.  because in the back of my mind, i’m still thinking about fucking cait and cait fucking preston and more importantly, preston fucking cait.

this hasn’t happened.  not that i know of, at least.  but it could.  it might.  and i’m certainly not in the neighborhood to be replacing two best friends right now.  i don’t have the energy for that.

she begins to prattle off on some marathon for charity that she and paul have signed up for, as if you could pay me to run (for charity, for donuts, for a pair of christian louboutins, for anything), and i feign interest for a few moments before i give up and settle for my phone, and she settles for hers.

i’ve never really been much for facebook (because, you know, i’m not a sixty-year-old grandmother in missouri), but i still find myself mindlessly scrolling through my feed occasionally when there’s nothing better to do, and this happens to be one of those times.  it’s nearly always the same content, no matter what day it’s being posted — someone’s getting married, someone’s posting baby pictures even though they look like literally every other baby picture they’ve posted.  somebody’s pregnant, somebody’s passive aggressively indirecting someone, someone’s spilling more dirty laundry than they should.

and the buzzfeed quizzes.  everywhere.  it’s the only reason to use facebook, frankly.

normally, i’ll take them and then post them to preston’s wall to make him take the quiz afterwards so we can compare and contrast.  i do the same thing to teddy and kat and joy and cait.  it’s not like it’s an accurate determinant of whether or not we’re actually compatible, but it’s still fun.

and right now, there’s a buzzfeed quiz sitting on preston’s page.

and it’s not from me.

it’s from cait dempsey.

cait dempsey, the very same cait dempsey who almost always tells me that buzzfeed quizzes are “too mundane” to fill out.

and she’s left one on preston’s page.

“which disney prince or princess are you based on your preference on music?”

a knot ties itself in my stomach, and then it just sort of sits there.

“i got cinderella,” cait wrote, “if you get prince charming, i’m pretty sure you owe me lunch :P”

the knot vaults into my throat.

“doe?”

“i’ll be right back.”

i have to excuse myself from the table, because otherwise i’ll be yelling in the middle of a crowded restaurant, and i’m not really in the mood to make my mother regret bringing me out in public that much more than she already does.

i press down so hard on preston’s name under my favorites that the pad of my thumb turns white.  the issue here isn’t that i’m worried preston is going to actually get prince charming on this quiz or anything like that.  the fact of the matter is that cait had the nerve to message him that in the first place.  to be cute and coy and “cool girl” by challenging him at all.  and saying he’d owe her lunch if they were cinderella and prince charming?!

i’m waiting through the rings, and once they stop, all my words are spewing out in one big, long, exasperated gust.  “i don’t know where cait gets off thinking that she can just post shit like that on your wall, but she’s not cute.  it’s not cute.  and she knows what she’s doing, and you can’t honestly tell me that you don’t see what’s going on here, raimi.”  i pause to take a breath.  “anyway, this is doe.  bye.”

he’s calling me back within a minute.

“you get how you sound right now, right?”

every nerve in my body turns on, stomach twisting angrily.  “why don’t you tell me how i sound, preston.”

he does his nervous laugh like he can’t believe we’re actually having this conversation right now.  in a lot of ways, i can’t either.  “did you actually just preston me?”

“are you going to tell me how i sound?  are you going to tell me i sound crazy?”

“you sound like a jealous girlfriend.”

my mouth snaps shut, leaning back against the brick wall.  “i just think it’s funny how she has no disregard for our relationship, like, at all.”

“there is no relationship, doe.  don’t you—”

“—to her, there is.  and she doesn’t respect that.  she just can’t wait to get her panties on your bedroom floor.  so you know what?  maybe you should give it a whirl.”

a long, long pause, and i wish i could snag all the words from where they’re hanging in the air and swallow them whole.  “what?!”

my eyes screw shut and i’m swallowing the lump in my throat before it gets too cocky and grows any bigger than it already is.  “nothing.  i don’t know.  just, like.  how would you feel if nate was leaving stuff like that on my wall?”

“that’s not fair, doe.  that’s not even the same thing.  cait’s your friend, nate sucks and you know he sucks.”

“well, he texted me, you know,” i lie.

i can feel him tensing on the other line, and i don’t even know why i let the words slip out.  “so?”

there’s a lot of weight in those two letters, a lot more than i know he wants to let on.  i know how he feels about nate, how he felt about the whole situation, the relief he felt when it was over.  the little voice in my head is screaming at me to leave preston alone, to stop hurting him.  and i feel like this is only the start of it all.  somewhere, some part of me… it’s like this is merely where the end only begins.  like i’m driving a car without brakes, drunk off an entire bottle of schnapps.

i don’t know who’s going to break the horrible silence first, but then it’s preston who’s speaking up.  his tone is softer, with less of an edge to it than before, and i have to wonder why he puts up with me, why he hasn’t ran away screaming yet.  “what do you want me to do, doe?  do you want me to delete her post?  delete her?”

yes.

“no,” i say, because i know that’d be crazy, i know i’m crazy.  “just… don’t get prince charming on that stupid quiz.”

he’s laughing, then.  it’s an uneasy one, but sincere — weakly so.  “listen, doofus.  in what universe, would i ever be prince charming?”

i’m beginning to think that the answer to that is several, but i don’t say that out loud.  instead, i just laugh.

later that night, when i’m at home and in bed, i find myself sitting on the instagram profile of one nate saunders, all good jawline and sandy hair, perfectly pouty boy band lips.  when you just look at the picture, and not anything behind the lens, he looks like the ultimate pretty boy, every girl’s wet dream.

but scratch beneath the surface, and there’s far too much underneath — the drinking, the drugs, the attitude.  the one time he did reach out to me, he promised me that he was getting better, that he was making his amends, and he was moving on.  i know he’s seen other people we used to be friends with, but i haven’t seen him.  i haven’t spoken to him outside of a few text messages.

but there’s his profile, right there, out in the open, looking right at me.

boldly, or maybe stupidly, with my stomach in a knot, i tap the direct message button, and i tap out a timid, safe, “hey.”

at the same time, a text from preston rolls down on my notification bar.  “you up?” it reads.  i don’t reply, not right this second, because below, on the instagram screen, i have one new message.

“hey, you.”

[sayitaintdoe]

“hold on.  he made you breakfast?”

i’m doing that thing where i’m trying not to look like the most smug person in the room, and i’m failing miserably.  my nose scrunches up, and i shrug my shoulders as if to say who, me? before i’m nodding back at teddy, hands folded in front of me.  “breakfast.  my mans brought it to bed and everything.”

teddy seems bewildered, but it’s cait who speaks up, tucking a strand of her newly bleached and bobbed hair behind her ear.  “i didn’t even know he knew how to operate anything beyond a toaster.”

i flash her a look.  “who’s to say it wasn’t a short stack of eggos?”

her face falters.  “tell me it wasn’t flash-frozen waffles.  that’s not breakfast in bed.”

“if it’s breakfast and it’s in bed, i’m pretty sure it counts.”

cait seems less than convinced, but i’m convinced she was born with a stick up her perfect little ass, so it’s kind of a toss-up.  the two of us have been friends since my ill-fated attempt at living in the college dorms (i gave that up, like, real fast).  at the time, she was an exchange student from ireland.  now she writes articles for, like, literally every wedding publication out there, so she’s convinced that she knows everything there is to know about romance 101.

“point is, they’re still doing this,” is the only contribution kat gives to the conversation, adjusting her headset over her ears and scrolling through fortnite screens.  i can hear her muttering to someone on the other side of her mic, and i can tell that it’s brady who she’s in the middle of bickering with by the frustrated sigh she throws out before she’s dropping herself back onto the couch.  “i can’t stand him.  or him.”

“specific,” teddy laughs, sipping the earl grey she insisted on brewing, and before i can clarify, cait is speaking up for me.

“brady and preston.”

“what she said,” i tip my half-empty glass of wine in cait’s direction before bringing it back to my lips.  “but she’s just saying that.”  i tap the button of kat’s nose, and she glowers back at me before begrudgingly starting her next match and grumbling for brady not to “fuck it up this time.”

teddy is in the middle of texting her husband — god, what a bizarre word to use in correlation with one of my own friends — so she’s hardly paying attention to us.  in fact, i’m hardly paying attention to us.  i’m too distracted by the ring that keeps hitting a rainbow onto the corner of my living room wall every time the light from the window hits it just right.

i can’t imagine it, i realize.  getting married, i mean.  i know my mom’s happy, and that’s great for her or whatever, and anyone within the tri-state area can hear teddy singing from the rooftops whenever she gets home at night, but i can’t imagine sharing that much of my life with someone.  sharing my bed every night.  using the word “we” to describe something that was once just mine or theirs.

being codependent?  using those corny fucking couple expressions?  miss me with that.  relationships — even the very few ones that i’ve had my own experience with — are nothing but disappointment.  marriage is just, like, a sequel to that.

and the sequels are always worse than their predecessors.  that’s just a known fact.

anyway.  where was i going with this?  oh yeah.  fuck the sanctity of marriage.

teddy can be as happy with will as she wants, and she is, and that’s great for her and whatever, but that’s something that feels like a whole world away from me.

i notice that both my and cait’s gazes are on teddy, then, before cait’s blue eyes are settling on me instead.  “how did it happen, anyway?”

i’m playing stupid like it’s my job.  who, me?  “how did what happen?”

“you and preston, dumbo.  after all this time?”

i finish off the rest of my wine, give a nonchalant shrug like i’ve told this story a million times before even if this is really the first time anyone’s actually asked me.  wow.  is this actually the first time anyone’s asked?

everyone has just kind of given us a brush off up until now.  they’ve looked at us with this “oh, we were just waiting for this to happen” look.  even my mom and my brother.  they didn’t ask.  it’s like they just knew it was coming, an inevitability.

“well…” i nod my head over in teddy’s direction.  she’s still not looking over at us, but i have a feeling she will be in a second.  “it started at bill and ted’s wedding.”  yep.  there she is.

“wait, what did?” she asks.  “you and preston?”

“welcome to the conversation,” kat contributes dryly, before she’s swinging her mallet and hacking some poor unsuspecting zombie to shreds.

i tuck my legs under myself, and i can feel cait’s eyes piercing into me.  teddy’s already at the edge of her seat, her phone long forgotten and face down beside her.  i love being the center of attention, especially when i haven’t even gotten ten words out.  i’m just that powerful.

“well, after the disastrous date you set him up on — melania, or whatever?  horrible.  anyways, after that, we went up to my room and…”

my train of thought sort of comes to a halt right then and there, remembering laughing into the crook of his neck and kissing the smile off his lips and the way we didn’t even make it to the bed before he was fucking me up against the door, my dress hiked up around my waist and my fingers pulling at his hair.

“…and?”

it’s cait that brings me back to reality, pulls me away from thoughts of preston’s curls tickling my nose when i woke up that next morning.  my stomach settles and i sit up a little.  “and anyway, we ordered room service — belgian waffles for him, pancakes for me — and i asked him why he even bothers going on dates with all these boring girls when the girl he should be going after is right in front of him.  and he said i was right and… i don’t know.  i guess it just clicked.”  that sounds kind of believable, right?  “it made sense.  it makes sense.  we go together.”

teddy starts humming the song from grease, but it’s cait that’s concerning me.  i mean, cait’s always intense, always the serious one out of all of us — i don’t know if it’s because she thinks she has to be or because she just is — but right now, it’s like she has a million words bursting at the tip of her tongue and she doesn’t know which ones to go with.

“you good?”

“it makes sense, yeah,” cait winds up nodding, tucking her hair behind her ear again from where it must have slipped back out.  “you two, i mean.  i suppose i always thought he was taken to begin with, you know?  by you, i mean.  ever since uni.”

i’d normally make some comment about how cute the word “uni” sounded coming from her, but something about her just seems… sad.  longing.  off.  and then it clicks.  my face drops, sitting my empty wine glass on the coffee table in front of me.  “tell me you’re not thinking about spider-man again.”

“can we stop calling him that?”

“uh, no.  we can definitely keep calling him that.”

some insight on spider-man, who’s not actually peter parker.  he’s this, like, stupid flexible guy that the tinder gods decided to bless cait with two summers ago when some genius (me) decided that kat, cait, and i should do tinder groups since joy and teddy were already so annoyingly paired off as it was.

it didn’t work out for kat or me (frankly, i don’t think kat even tried), but it did lead cait to logan, who did parkour on youtube (because yes, apparently those people still exist).  and she was smitten.  and he was cute!  and then he got back together with his ex-boyfriend last christmas and she wrote the most depressingly empowering article on how love tends to be destined to fail and how the greatest love story is the one you have with yourself.

she went viral on buzzfeed over the guy and everything.  he’s definitely not worth that many second and third thoughts.

“anyways,” she says briskly, clearing her throat and sitting up a little, “i’m not thinking about him.  i’m just saying that you and preston make sense, is all.  i suppose.”

teddy’s giving her a look like she knows something i don’t know, like everyone knows something i don’t know, but my thoughts are derailed before they can come to fruition by the door opening and preston coming in with arms loaded with takeout.

“oh popeye, my hero,” i wail, all other thoughts forgotten as i get up from the couch, take the bags from his arms to sit them on the counter, and knock him back against the door to kiss him right there in front of everyone.

“i’m gonna have to bring you food more often,” he laughs against my mouth, and i’m smiling big when we part ways.

i look back over my shoulder, noting teddy’s eyes back on her phone and cait’s eyes on the two of us before she’s standing up and walking toward us.

i try to stop preston’s irish accent he always throws at her before i’m too late and it’s already happening.  “top of the mornin’ to ye,” he’s drawling out, and she’s laughing because of pity, i can only assume.  “you staying for dinner?”

“no, i actually should get going.  long night ahead of me,” she says, even though when she got here, like, two hours ago, i could have sworn she’d said she didn’t have any plans tonight.

“don’t worry, pres,” kat pipes in, suddenly gone from her spot on the couch and next to us at the kitchen counter without a sound, poking around in the bags of food for her usual order.  “i’ll be here all night.”

preston’s laughing, then, swooping in and launching into talk about some track he sent her that i remember spamming her airdrop with last week.  “lucky me!  you’re my favorite person in the room anyway,” he promises her.  “don’t tell doe.”

“i heard that,” i shoot back, leaning over and tickling my fingers into his sides.

when i look back at the door, cait’s long gone.

[sayitaintdoe]

moodboard ♡ primadonna.

[sayitaintdoe]

contrary to popular belief, the tanner family in full house did not live in the painted ladies — the, like, really famous townhomes that they show in the background during the end of the title credits.  the seven sisters, postcard row, the painted ladies, whatever you wanna call it, is one of the most famous neighborhoods in san francisco, and it is also the one i usually lied and told everyone during elementary school that i grew up in.

i didn’t.  i lived in a townhouse, it had a similar all-stacked-together and squished-between-two-other-houses vibe, but it didn’t look like any place that jesse katsopolis would call home.  so literally what even was the point?

(unrelated, i made preston dress up as jesse once for halloween in the seventh grade.  i was, in fact, joey and not becky.  the more you know!)

the point in all of this, really, is that my mom never left this house.  not even when she remarried, and who could blame her, because, like, these houses are worth a small fortune.  it’s just, like…

it’s weird, i guess.  it’s weird to be in the same house i’ve been in since i was a toddler, and to have someone else in the kitchen.  to have different pictures on the wall, some with family members i don’t even know because they’re not my family.

the dude’s nice enough, i guess.  definitely tries too hard, but nice.  and his daughter is my age, or close to it, but i’ve never cared enough to double check on that one.  she’s one of those girls who’s kind of a walking “felt cute, might delete later” who never actually deletes later (respect).  i don’t think she likes me, which is fair, because i tend to have that effect on people anyway.

right now, i’m perched at a barstool at my mom’s kitchen island, twirling a straw around one of those green smoothie nightmares instagram is always raving about that tastes like kale and chalk to pretend that i’m actually drinking it.  last year, my mom and paul, stepfather extraordinaire, decided that since they’re not going to live forever, they might as well make the remainder of their lives miserable by drinking the cast of veggie tales every morning.  and today, i got to join in on the fun.

always a pleasure to visit.  always a pleasure.

“i usually toss mine in the sink when they’re not looking — but, like, a quarter at a time.  that way i’m not making it too obvious, you know?” i look to my left, and summer, daughter of paul, stepsister of doe and sol, has slid onto the stool next to mine.  she has a sheen to her cheeks that looks like a fresh highlight but is probably just sweat, and her strawberry hair is combed back into a loose braid.  but she’s cute.  i guess.

sol, my younger brother, practically shit himself when he first met her and then the process repeated itself when he realized he was going to get to live with her after she moved back home when she graduated from berkeley back in june.

“i don’t want to give them the satisfaction of thinking i drank it at all,” i retort, giving the glass in front of me a disdained look.  “some drinks just… don’t need to exist.  this is one of them.  and they need to now that this is one mistake that doesn’t need repeating.”

my phone lights up from where it’s sitting next to me on the counter, a text from preston — all in caps — about how kat clearly hates his new mix because it was “marked as read” over a week ago and SOS RESPOND IMMEDIATELY — and i catch summer gazing over at the screen from out of the corner of my eye before i can turn off my screen.

“so,” she hums.  “preston, eh?  i saw your little… date the other night online.”

i shrug in that way that i tend to do, all flouncy and dismissive, like i’m used to being the center of everyone’s attention — because i am, because of course i am.  “yeah, we finally decided to take it to the next level, i guess.”

she sighs, then, resting her head in her hands and keeping her gaze focused on the subzero fridge in front of her.  “i always thought he was so cute.  i guess it’s a good thing you guys figured it out before i snatched him from you.”  she giggles.

yeah.  because i was so threatened by you, summer.  jesus.

a tight-lipped smile is all i give her back, feeling my best tighten into a knot, but just for a second, before my mom is looping around the corner, arms waving.

“why were you hiding preston from me?  you know how much we love him.  he’s like another member of the family, dorothea.”

“ma.”

summer chokes on her own green drink.  “dorothea?  can i start calling you dory? dorothy?  dottie?  do—”

“—i will pour this on your head if anything other than doe comes out of that pretty mouth of yours.”

“she means it.”  this time, it’s sol.  his head is popping up from where he’s lounging back on the couch, a head of unruly, dark curls.  even sitting on the couch, he’s still a foot taller than me.  he always has been, ever since he was turning ten shortly after my thirteenth birthday.  the kid is fucking crazy.  “she dumped lime kool-aid over the back of my head once when i was sleeping.  mixed with a little bleach powder?  shit fucking turned my hair neon ass green for weeks.  all over calling her dory on my first day of freshman year.”

“because it’s doe.”  i turn back to summer, smile still tight-lipped as ever.  “just doe.”

my mom is clearing her throat, drawing the attention back to herself, and i turn to see her tapping her fingers on the edge of the countertop, head tilted to the side with eyes wide and expectant and right on me.  “back to preston, doe.”

“there’s nothing back to preston about it,” i shrug.  “it just… happened.”

“it just happened?!  we’ve only been waiting and WAITING for you two…” her thoughts trail off for a moment, which they’ve been doing more and more lately, before she looks over at summer.  “oh summer.  you should have seen these two growing up.”

“be glad you didn’t,” sol fires back, and i chuck a bran muffin from the basket straight at him, hitting him square in the temple.

my phone goes off again, but this time it’s ringing, and it’s preston’s face filling my screen and looking right back at me.  i grab it without thinking twice about it, and from next to me, summer is sighing, almost dreamily.

“god, i love a good love story.”

i snort, picking up the phone and answering.  “then go find one,” i tell her.

“go find one what?” preston asks, and i can see the way his brows are furrowed, his mop of hair not cooperating at all.  his lips are perfectly kissable, and being halfway across san francisco seems really, really far away all of a sudden.

“oh nothing, nothing at all,” i hum, sashaying into the living room and dropping onto the chaise lounge across from sol.  “what’s up, love?  missing me already?”

he’s blushing.  i love that i can make him blush.  he might want to leave me for dead half the time, but i can still turn his cheeks pink.  “how’s home?”

“i don’t know,” i shrug.  “how are you?”

sol’s head pops up for that one, looking across at me in awe.  see?  fake dating is easy.  it’s almost like it’s not fake at all.

[sayitaintdoe]

i was thirteen when i conned preston into asking me on our “first date,” and in a way, i guess it’s nice to see that some things never change.  for instance, that was thirteen whopping years ago — literally half of my life ago — and i am still conning my best friend into taking me out on dates.

this one, though.  this one is different, because this is for his benefit.  this is to help him.  when we were at the tail end of seventh grade and i was giving him pro-tips (because if anyone was a pro at dating in the seventh grade, it was the girl in the vote for pedro shirt who had never, ever been on a date before), it was because i wanted us to get it out of the way before we were in the eighth grade and, like, everyone was dating.  and god, we definitely needed the practice before high school.  we could not be the only losers in freshman year who had never been on a date before.

so, we had a practice date with each other, and it was perfectly uncomfortable in just the ways that i’m pretty sure first dates are supposed to be, and once again… it’s nice to see some things don’t change.

because this?  sitting in this restaurant across from preston, neither of us making eye contact and nothing on the menu having prices on it?  uncomfortable as fuck.

the waiter comes by for the fifth time, a pleading and desperate look flickering in his eyes that clearly reads please for the love of god order something, and i prop my elbow on the table, chin resting on palm, and tilt my head back at him.

“are you positive that you guys don’t do some kind of a bread basket here?  a little baguette, maybe?  some bruschetta, perhaps?”  i know he’s imagining my head being launched across the room like a perfectly spiked volleyball.  “all i’m saying is, olive garden sets a pretty specific standard to follow.”

preston swiftly kicks my shin from under the table, and i flinch back only for a second before i’m kicking his right back.  a moment later, a mere beat later, my foot is in his lap and the blush that warms his cheeks could light up our whole table.

the waiter ignores me (again), and i comply just long enough to order whatever sounds the cheapest before closing my menu and vowing to myself that i won’t open it again.

he leaves, thankfully, and i sit back in my seat, foot shifting in preston’s lap, but not moving back down to the floor.

“pretty sure this place doesn’t hide something like that as well as a booth at lori’s, you know.  might wanna keep the feet where feet… normally.  go.”

a lightbulb flashes atop my head just then, or maybe it’s more like one of those neon lights you can buy at target, and this one is in the shape of a giant milkshake.  one of the good ones that gives you a metal cup for all the excess milkshake because it’s just too much for the milkshake glass to hold.  oh my god, and a plate of fries.

this place does not have either of those things.

preston clearly notices this — notices me, at least — i can tell by the way his face shifts, eyes looking me up and down and lips parting slightly like he’s ready to ask a question but not sure which one to go with.  before he can pick which one to land on, i blurt out, “WE SHOULD GO TO LORI’S.”

and then, his face just drops entirely.  not out of disappointment or anything, i don’t think so, at least, but out of confusion.  “but we’re here.”

“here sucks.”  our waiter shoots me a look as he walks by, and i wave my hand at him, leaning across the table to get closer to preston and nearly burning my elbow on the candle between us in the process.  “let’s go to lori’s.  we know lori’s.  and it’ll be cuter for, like, pictures anyway.  it’s more us.  and then it’ll look like we just have a place, you know?”

i know he knows i’m right, but i also know he doesn’t want to admit it, because then he’d have to admit that i’m always right, and we both know that he just can’t do that.

but i have him.  i know i have him.  i always do.

“we already ordered.”  his attempts at hardball are no match for me.

i reach for the clutch i brought with me, pulling out a five dollar bill and placing it on the table.  “for his trouble, yeah?”

i’m already standing up from the table, as if i’m going to just march off to the diner with or without him, which isn’t necessarily true, but i know that he’ll get up, because i know him much in the same way that he knows me, and if i jump, he jumps.

is that mean?  that’s probably mean.  i remember there was a girl who was, like, fucking obsessed with preston in high school — was she his girlfriend?  i can’t even remember at this point — and she used to say that all i did was bully him and guilt him into going along with me.  but that’s not how it works, and that’s not how we work.  like, okay, wsateveryournamewas.  he might have been kissing you at the football games you dragged him to, but i was the cheerleader’s window he was climbing into when he dropped you off, so jot that down.

“you in?” i’m holding my hand out to him, and he’s looking right at me.  it reminds me of when i first saw him earlier tonight, when i saw that he was dressed up for tonight, dressed up for me (?), and he saw that i was dressed up, too.  and somehow, just the sight of him taking me in — which he’s done several times before, mind you — was enough to make my knees buckle.  and now it’s just kind of doing the same thing all over again.

he slides his hand into mine, and i pull him up.  i press a kiss to the tip of my finger and then press that finger to the tip of his nose, before pulling him out of the restaurant, calling out one final “apology” to the waiter, who we all know was just as glad to get rid of me anyway.

“sorry,” i told him.  “i remembered i’m allergic to noodles.”

i have to remind myself the entire car ride to the diner that preston actually has a task to do (you know, not crashing and whatnot) and that he can’t spend the car ride making out with me, and so i opt for stealing his phone instead.  he already has a few missed texts from miranda, and a phone call from her?  the fuck?  and i ignore that as one should, opting for his instagram instead.  i know she follows him, because he’s sent me screenshots of her like sprees on his page before, following by a series of confused emojis as to what exactly he did through this whole thing to make her like him in the first place.

i go straight for the post new story feature, snapping a quick selfie with preston at the wheel and me in the passenger seat, winking at the camera, lips puckered, and save the photo before adding the caption “when bae steals your phone” and posting it for all the world to see.

before putting his phone down, i set the picture as his new lock screen and find one of my pictures i’ve sent him (which is a lot, because i get bored easily and apparently he doesn’t delete anything, ever) and set it as his home screen, before i’m leaning back in he passenger seat as he rounds the corner to sutter street and, ugh, i can practically taste the milkshake from here.

i’m pulling him by the hand as soon as he’s parked, tugging him all the way to the front doors of the diner.  “time’s a-wastin’, sweet pea.”

lori’s diner is an old 1950s style place that we’ve been going to ever since we were in middle school and our parents trusted us enough to get ourselves home after school.  it was always a pitstop for fries and a shake, and much like everything else these days, some things never change.

“i bet i can put both my feet on your lap here and everything,” i tease, and preston’s rolling his eyes in that way that he always does when he knows that deep down he loves being secretly stuck with me forever.

he kisses me before we go in, familiar and somehow unfamiliar at the same time, and i push my fingers into his hair and pull — just a little, just to keep things interesting.

whatever little skip my heart gives me after that is pushed down, ignored as it should be, and i take a candid of preston when he’s not looking, all the bright lights and colors of lori’s an out-of-focus parade behind him.

“date night with my baby.  our usual spot, our usual booth.  it’s casual.”  

and then i make sure to share it across all my social media profiles and tag preston front and center, just to make sure mona sees it.

[sayitaintdoe]

[sayitaintdoe]

[sayitaintdoe]

[sayitaintdoe]

it is the day before d-day, and theodora graham has made her descent into san francisco, and i have to remind myself when the notification goes off on my phone, like, six times that teddy is married now and doesn’t need me showing up at the airport with bells on to pick her up from her last great adventure.

which is probably for the best, considering i’m already running late for work as it is.  but that is really just a technical detail more than it is anything else.  late, schmate, am i right?

okay, not right, because my friend syd will murder me if i don’t start actually, like, showing up on time (or at all, really, but i do at least tend to usually have the decency to show up if nothing else).

my car, an old and sputtering and wheezing volkswagen beetle far past her prime (talulah, if you must know), creeks up into my designated parking spot, but she doesn’t make a cute little BEEP! when i lock her so much as she makes a sad, miserable boop.  a “please put me out of my misery and put some of your grubhub money toward a new car, dumbass.”

i ignore this, hiking my bag up my shoulder and heading through the front doors of grove & joy, the eclectic little hipster paradise of a salon and pop-up shop my friends syd and joy own.

see, this is my thing.  everyone i consider a friend is between the ages of 23 and 30, and i just want to know, why it is that i am the only one who doesn’t have a single goddamn clue what i’m going to do with my life.  like, we’re talking nothing.  nada.  i am wandering around perfectly content to run the fucking register at this joint so long as my friends are around.  and everyone else is off getting married and (god forbid) getting pregnant and having, like, grown up jobs.

and then there’s me.   square peg, round hole, trying not to be one of those millennials that every dumbass article complains about but then wondering what is so wrong with liking avocados in the first place, bob from kansas city?

i’m losing track of my point.

and whatever point i’m trying to make (is there one?) is soon enough derailed by a flurry of rainbow sherbet arms and tiny, slim arms wrapping tight around me.  “you’re on time!” every time joy announces something, she announces it with a giggle.

“even a broken clock is right twice a day,” i reply, getting in my daily dad joke for the hour (okay, the half hour), and dropping my bag to the floor behind the front counter.  “what’d i miss?”

her hand rests at her hip, head tilted to the side before her face lights up, a second later.  and from there, she’s nearly pouncing, soaring toward me with her hands quickly finding my shoulders and gripping tight.  “you have a date and you didn’t tell me!”

“oh, do i?”  i pretend to be focusing on my nails, before flashing her a cheeky grin.  “there might be a date happening, yes.”

“with PRESTON?!”

“how much are you bribing him, exactly?”  a second voice, definitely belonging to sydney, pipes up from the back.  i turn my head and can see just enough of the peaks of their newly frosted silver hair poking over the half-wall staring back at me like an early 2000s disney channel character.

i clear my throat, swooping around the corner to approach them, hands propped on my hips.  “for the record, he asked me out.”

well.  now he did.  maybe they won’t mention it to him!

sydney raises their eyebrows back at me, clearly surprised by this.  i just nod eagerly back at them.  “uh huh, yeah.  thats what i thought.  how’s that for bribery?”

“i think it was only a matter of time,” joy chimes out in her singsong voice, pressing a kiss to my cheek and then pressing one to sydney’s.  “i mean, the two of them have been married since middle school.”  pause for laughter.  “remember that time we had to do that flour sack project and—”

for some reason, i feel my cheeks flush, and i quickly swat my hand at the air like that’s going to stop the memory from rolling up, or at the very least, stop the conversation from progressing.

luckily — luckily!  call me zack morris because i am saved by the bell, literally — the door chimes open again, to save me from this conversation, save me from them, stop any of this from going any further, and i turn around for the distraction with my well-trained customer service smile.

but it’s not a customer.  it’s her.

all five-foot-eleven of her, standing tall and willowy.  teddy.

“YOU’RE ACTUALLY HERE IN THE SAME PLACE AS ME IN THE SAME TIME ZONE AS ME CRAZY RICH ASIANS THE REALITY SHOW IS OVER ARE YOU SERIOUS?” i spew out all my words as one long string, throwing myself across the salon and right at her, tackling her into a hug as a client comes in behind her and kennedy sweeps into professional mode, but not before giving her a squeeze on the shoulder.

“i called preston when i landed to make sure where you’d be, i wanted to surprise you!” she hums back in my ear, and married teddy feels the same as single teddy and engaged teddy and broken hearted teddy.  still firm and strong.  just, like, now with this weird big rock on her finger.  sparkling back at me, begging me to look at it.  so, i don’t.  because fuck you, wedding ring.

 “speaking of surprising you…” joy hummed in that teasing, singing voice of hers, looking between teddy and myself and going so far as to wink.  WINK!

teddy blinks back at her, and then she’s looking back at me.  “speaking of?  what did i miss?  and if you hold out on me, i will physically kick your butt, and you know that i can and will win.”

i clear my throat.  “well, first of all.  your goldfish is definitely not dead.”

“so, you just... put a doppelgänger fish in the tank.”

let’s skip ahead.

teddy leans back, taking a sip from her iced coffee and looking at me like it’s the first time she’s ever seen me.  the good news is that she’s somehow thankfully managed to calm down after learning about goldie the first’s most untimely demise.  the bad news is that she’s definitely not going to let go of the fact that i let it slip that in order to speed up the grieving process, preston healed my wounds and drowned my sorrows by asking me on a date.

so, okay, yeah, i just keep adding onto the story - but that’s what makes it so interesting.  it’s the layers that make a cake good, not the flour.

“do you know where he’s taking you?”

is it weird that i haven’t thought about it?  like, any of it?  but where is he taking me?  why does he have to decide where we go?  it’s 2018 and i have good taste and this was all my idea anyway, so shouldn’t i get to have a say in where we go?

will it be different than every other time we’ve gotten dinner together?  we’ve done some very... how you say, couple-like things when we’ve grabbed dinner together before, but is this different?

holy shit.

am i going on a date?  with preston?

“doe?  you okay?  you look pale.”

i am brought back to grove & joy, back to teddy watching me cautiously and a stream of customers filtering in around us.  

“somewhere with a violinist,” i blurt out, recalling something i remember preston telling me the other morning when i was slipping out from under his covers.  “and no peanuts.  otherwise brady can’t have any leftovers.”

a date with preston.

a date with preston.

going out with preston in a date-like environment where we’re supposed to pretend to be a couple and it’s weird because we don’t do that and what the fuck was i thinking and why did i suggest it you IDIOT

it’s late now.  not so late that kat will pull dramatics if i stumble into the apartment in the dark, but late enough that i know preston’s not doing anything else (he couldn’t possibly), and somehow that’s all i need to know.

despite everything, despite feeling some weird twist in my gut telling me this is most likely all going to blow up in my face (it’s bound to), i still find myself reaching for my phone as i skip the usual route to my apartment in favor of the turn for his, pulling up in front of his building and slipping in without a word.

i know brady and stevie enough to know better than to disturb them, so i go for my spare key that isn’t so much a spare key as it is i stole preston’s and had my own copy made, and i let myself in.

every closed door has a glow coming through the cracks, and i can hear the obnoxious late eighties hip hop wafting out of preston’s room when i twist open the door.

my jacket’s off before the door is shut behind me, followed by my shoes, and then my top.  my fingers are working to my jeans and then suddenly his hands are there, replacing mine, charting out territory he’s mapped many tones before, and his lips are meeting mine, and he’s dragging me in and i’m letting him.

“hello, lover boy,” i tease against his mouth, hearing his half-laugh, half-whine of a “don’t ruin this” that’s returned to me.

and it’s funny, this thing about us.

one of us is always waiting for the other, always expecting the other to show up.  it’s always an extended invitation, an exclusive welcome mat.

and most of the time, we accept it.

this is what i want to focus on: his lips on mine and my hands quickly working off his shirt and his stupid spongebob squarepants boxers, us tripping over each other on the way back to his bed, but him catching me before my head hits the mattress without him like some freaking john mayer song.  because we’re best friends, and that’s what it means to be best friends.  you catch each other, right?

this is the here and the now.  and this is way less stressful than the storm building up in my head for no goddamn reason.

so i let it take me.

[sayitaintdoe]

i would date the hell out of myself.

i’ve given this a lot of thought over the years — i mean, i’m sure, like, everyone has — and even if more often than not, i do come to the conclusion that relationships just ain’t my thing, i know that i would be so good at them.  you could only be so lucky.

preston could only be so lucky, so jot that down.

“come on!” i’d pleaded last night, prancing around teddy’s kitchen to try and get him to just look in my direction, because if he did, then i’d have him where i needed him.  “come on.  preston.  come on.”

he did that cute little trick he does where he looks everywhere but me, eyes averting in all directions across teddy’s kitchen, before they finally — finally — settled on me for one moment, just long enough to say.  “that never works.”

in his eyes, that was that.

but, i’m not letting him go that easy.

like i said, i know i’m a good girlfriend.  i also know i’m cute as fuck, and anyone would be lucky to call me their significant other — ESPECIALLY PRESTON, so how dare he act like he’s suddenly above this.  people have been acting like the two of us were some sort of “item” since junior high, after all, so it’s only fair that we allow the world to live out this fantasy.

which is all that it would be, after all.  a fantasy.

i don’t realize i’ve actually said, “it just has to look legit,” out loud as i’m walking into my apartment after goldie the first’s funeral until my roommate, kat, is looking up from where she’s flopped in her bean bag chair in the living room.  one of her beats is cupped around hear ear while the other is slumped between her ear and shoulder, but whatever focus she’d had on what i would bet my nonexistent life-savings on was music-related is now on me.

“what does?”

katji wu is the girl you want to see when you look in the mirror each morning, and also the girl you want to wake up next to in bed every morning.  unfortunately for my sorry ass, the only thing she is to me is the girl who’s picked me up sloppy drunk off the kitchen floor more than once and paid my bail when a lipstick (or three) fell into my bag once at a sephora.

i blink back at her in the way that my little stepsister does whenever she wants to show off her eyeshadow that’s comprised of 99% glitter and 1% vaseline.  “oh, nothing,” i say nonchalantly, but all kat does is roll her eyes and go back to her computer at that, so i have to (quickly) change my tactics.  “except everything.”

she snorts, combing a strand of her strawberry hair behind her ear and rolling her eyes.  “okay, doe.”

my bottom lip juts into a pout before i regain my composure, straightening my stance and smiling back at her.  she’s not looking, but that’s beside the point.  “well, as it just so happens…”

i let my words trail off, then.  thinking back to michelle the yoga instructor and how if she thinks preston and i are more than a dynamic duo, it can’t just be her.  because, like, hello?  that’s exactly how this sort of thing would fail!  all she would have to do is ask teddy, and teddy — a notoriously terrible liar — would blow the whole thing.  she’d probably laugh, oh god.

i can just hear her now.

“doe and preston?” pause for canned audience chuckles.  “oh, god.  no!”

nope.  it has to be convincing.  it has to be all or nothing.  we’re not just convincing meagan and her bendy body parts that we’re a thing, we’re convincing everyone around us.

“you never heard this conversation,” i tell kat, as if she’s listening to me anymore, before i’m grabbing my bag from where it had slipped down my shoulder and heading into my room, clicking the door behind me and reaching for my phone.

i skip the notion of texting in favor of facetime, slipping my headphones in for maximum privacy and pacing the width of my room as i wait for preston’s face to fill my screen.  when it does, i can tell that he’s on his computer, cereal bowl in hand and that stupid tv show he’s obsessed with playing in the background.

“god, is this how boring your life is post-doe all the time?”

“i’m so glad we get a chance to talk like this,” he deadpans back at me, shoveling another bite into his mouth.

i sigh, dropping back onto my bed and silently praying my phone doesn’t fall on my face in the process.  “so, i’ve been thinking about our plan.”

“your plan—” 

“—our plan, yeah, like i was saying.”  my peripheral vision tells me he just rolled his eyes at me, but i’m focused on my manicure to the side of my phone screen, just for a moment.  “and anyway, we can’t just do this to molly, you know?”

“who?”

“oh.  sorry.  muffy.  the yoga girl.  remember?”

his eyes screw shut, but i can see the smile that he’s trying so hard to push down by the way his dimples are fighting to be seen from either sides of his cheeks.  if i could reach into the screen and kiss them, i definitely would.  but science, despite what all the pop-ups would lead you to believe, has yet to go too far for that to be a reality.

“you give me a headache.”

i know that i don’t actually, so i just keep going.  “am i allowed to continue?  anyway, we can’t just do this to melissa.  it’d be too easy to figure it out.  it has to be, like…everyone.  preston, i hate to break it to you, buddy, but you’re gonna have to really act like you like me here if you want this to work.”

he snorts.  “that so?”

“so, here’s what i’m thinking.  you, me, dinner on friday, get the ball rolling from there.  that way, mopsy will see that clearly you’re interested in someone else — someone prettier, but you didn’t hear that from me, and we can just keep it going long enough for her to move onto some boring jock who spends too much time taking mirror selfies and drinking protein shakes.  deal?”

“what is it with you and conning me into taking you out on dates?”

i beam back at him.  my dad had always called it my 1000 watt smile, and let’s be honest, the man’s not wrong.  

“see you friday!  wear something charming, will you?”

i hang up without giving him a chance to say anything but yes.

[sayitaintdoe]

[sayitaintdoe]

yikes.

safely, you can cross petsitter off the list of potential career paths for me to take.  because here i am, lying on teddy’s bedroom floor, one of those obnoxious little cat toys in hand, jingling it in her cat, thackery’s direction in the hopes that he’ll take the bait.

she told me petsitting was low maintenance, that all i had to do was come in and make sure thackery and his brother, berlioz, were being fed and had fresh water.  but, you see, that’s the problem.  the food was going untouched, and thackery wouldn’t get out from under the bed, and berlioz?  gone.

like, gone girl gone.

okay.  not gone girl gone, but you get what i’m saying.  MISSING.  NOWHERE TO BE FOUND.  the loft teddy has been living in since she was twenty-one is short a cat.  and i can’t tell her that, because she’s on her honeymoon.  she’s living it up in tokyo and thailand and dubai right now, and the last thing she needs to hear is, “so, between you and me — you always hated berlioz, right?”

oh.  and her goldfish died.

forgot about that.

“thackery, i will pay you cold hard catnip to get out from under the bed.”

i just need him out from under the bed to, like, confirm he can get out from under the bed.  he isn’t blinking.  he’s just staring at me.  and i get that maybe he just doesn’t like me, and he’s staring me down, and this is his way of saying, “no, you leave,” but i’m not going to let a cat tell me how to live my life.  there is too much at stake here.

but for right now, my phone is buzzing in my pocket, and i pull away, sitting up on my knees to check it.  “this isn’t over,” i warn him.  a glare is my response.

🤑 🎱 🤩 — 99.5% sure you didn’t lose the cat.

my eyes narrow into annoyed little slits at preston’s lack of concern for the situation at hand, tapping back my response.

if you’re so sure of that, then CLEARLY you should be over here helping me look, chief. — 🌻 🦌 🥑

****************************************

because he’s preston, and because i’m me, and that means that he comes when i call, preston is tapping on teddy’s front door within the next fifteen minutes — complete with a bag of takeout, and only a slightly annoyed look on his face.  it’ll be gone within a few seconds, i know that because i’m me, and it’s impossible to stay mad at me for that long.  it’s a scientifically proven fact!  probably!

“look at you coming in clutch,” i grab the bag of food from him, and for a few moments, the task at hand is forgotten.  “please tell me there’s a cheeseburger in here.”

preston is deadpan in his response.  “so, i can see you’re still very torn up about this.”

he says this like i’m not pulling a cheeseburger out of the bag followed by a box of curly fries.  please.

“it’s been a long night, p.”  i don’t give him a further explanation than that, bypassing sitting at the kitchen table for hopping up on the kitchen counter, letting my legs dangle off the side.  i’m nine times more likely to get preston between my knee that way, not that i’ve calculated the probability of this before — it’s just that it’s a fact.

i tear into the burger first, grabbing a fry to bite into along with it, and preston watches me for a second before he’s stealing a fry out of my box and going for the cup that i know has a cherry coke in it, because i know him like he knows me.

“so,” he starts after his sip, “did you tell teddy the terrible news?”

“about the sex thing?  no.  i didn’t want to ruin her honeymoon.  come to think of it, i could have saved her a divorce because isn’t there some, like, annulment rule if you do it within three days or something?  she’s bound to find out eventually.”

he blinks at me for a few long seconds.  he looks exhausted, which i know isn’t possible, because — hello? — he just got here.  “i meant about berlioz, you dodo.”

i grimace at the thought.  “i’d rather tell her about the sex thing.”

i go back to my sandwich, and he goes back to the fries, and for a few moments we stay like that in a comfortable silence with each other.  it’s the same way we used to sit on the school bus in the morning before school.  after school, it was all planning the afternoon and evening ahead of us, but in the morning?  i was slumped on his shoulder and he was folded up between our seat and the seat in front of us, a book open in his lap, both of us too exhausted to do anything aside from exist.  i’d offer him the bagel my mom always tried to force on me in the mornings because there was a very, very long period of time growing up when i didn’t do breakfast, and he would stick an earbud in my ear and show me the song he was currently obsessed with, and we’d stay just like that until we got to the school.

suddenly, a thought blinks into my head.  “you’ll never believe who dm’d me the other night.”  i can’t believe i forgot to tell him this sooner.  i grab my phone from where it’s sitting beside me, tapping my way to instagram, getting to the message in question and holding it out to him like a detective with his most prized piece of evidence.

“tell me this isn’t nate reynolds.”

“oh, it’s most assuredly nate reynolds.”

the brief, reader’s digest version of nate reynolds is that he was the one and only boyfriend i ever actually had for longer than five seconds.  longer than five days, even.  nate and i were together for a whopping six months sophomore year of college, plus a few months of on-again, off-again before and after that.  i still don’t know how i managed to pull it off, but in my defense, it was when he had really nice hair.

it’s a defense.  it’s absolutely a leg to stand on.

anyway, he cheated, like, more than once.  and last i heard about him, he’d gotten super fucking coked out on some trip to vegas and sent to rehab or something.  and now here he was, sitting in my dms, calling me pretty.  and i mean, he said other stuff, too, but that was clearly the important part of it all.

“he’s out of rehab?”

oh, yeah.  that too.

“and he’s sorry.  he’s doing his cross-country making amends tour.”  i reach to snag the phone back from him, but he’s still reading the messages, teetering back on his vans.  i reach out with my leg to hook it around his waist and pull him in closer and for a second, he stumbles closer before regaining his balance.

he’s focusing on something that nate said for a second, before holding the phone back out to me.  “i mean he’s not wrong.  it’s a good picture.”

i look at the picture nate had sent to me, when he’d told me i was “still beautiful.”  it was taken at teddy’s wedding, the strap of my wine red dress slipping off my shoulder and my head popping up over preston’s shoulder, laughing at the photographer’s camera.  teddy had sent me the picture as soon as she’d gotten the test copies, all in caps, exclaiming HOW CUTE! and i’d begrudgingly had to agree.

something about the faraway look in preston’s eyes catches me off guard, but just for a second.  i know he’s seen the picture before, seen me before, but something about his face looks different.  or maybe i’m tired, and it’s been a long night.  but, suddenly, i feel guilty for showing him that message.

“are you going to say anything back to him?”

“i already responded.”

“i mean, like, besides the kissy emoji.”

i snort.  “i think that pretty much sums up all i have left to say to nate reynolds, thank you.”  i snag my phone back from him, sitting it back down beside us and reaching out to him with my other leg now, and my arms.  i’m hooking myself around him, and he’s letting me.

“shouldn’t we be investigating?”

“investigating is depressing.”

his forehead nudges against mine, and he’s giving me one of those annoying knowing looks that he always gets when he’s about to challenge me — sometimes, it’s to uno when he’s drunk, because for some reason, that’s when he’s the best at uno, and other times, it’s when he’s about to be wise beyond his years, like right now.  “it’s not depressing if you’re still uncertain of the outcome.”

“except i’m not, because i started this whole petsitting thing four days ago with three pets and now i’m down to one, and i don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work.”

preston’s laughing, and if it was literally anyone else, i would be annoyed, but it’s preston, and there is nothing he could ever do at this boy that would make me genuinely mad at him (we already faced one “I’M NEVER SPEAKING TO YOU AGAIN” moment, and that was years ago, and that was more than enough for a lifetime, i’m nearly certain), and he presses a kiss to my forehead.

he helps me off the counter, tugging me through the loft after him.  “where’d you say thackery is?”

“under teddy’s bed.”

he looks confused for a moment, peering over his shoulder, behind us and near the front door, before he makes his way into teddy’s room, sliding down to the floor with ease, spotting the cat, and waiting for only a second before he’s responding with a confused, “uh, doe?”

“hmm?”

“that’s not thackery.”

my stomach is in my throat.  “what are you talking about?  of course that’s thackery.”

“thackery’s a black cat.”

i get down under the bed beside him, and sure enough, the cat staring back at me has a gray and white face, bright eyes and blinking.  i can hear the cat menacingly calling me a dumbass bitch from here.

“then that’s—”

“—berlioz.”

i fall back on the balls of my feet.  “so i lost thackery, not berlioz.  which is worse, might i add, because he’s a black cat, and nobody likes black cats, and—”

“—you mean the cat that was literally laying in the front window when i came in?”  pardon?  “no, i think he’s good.”

oh, hell no.

i march out of teddy’s room, back down the hall and toward the front door.  and there he is.  that little fucking twerp.  laying by the front window with his head on his paws.  thackery.

“YOU NEARLY GAVE ME A HEART ATTACK,” i exclaim, as he remains unfazed, unbothered, unwavering in his confidence.

i whip back around to face preston as he approaches me, berlioz now tucked comfortably and happily in his arm.  “we good?”  he’s smiling, crinkly in the corners of his eyes and everything.

i exhale, hands at my hips and cheeks puffed out in frustration.  “so, what are you going to tell me next?  how’s the fish?”

“very dead.  literally sleeping with the fishes.”

preston lets berlioz down, and he slides up against my leg with a smooth purr before wandering off in search of his brother.  as that happens, preston steps closer to me, looping his arms around my waist and tugging me in closer.  “it could be just me, but i think you’ve had enough…trauma for one evening.”

i’m not even going to argue, resting my chin atop his shoulder for a second, eyes closed and sighing — out of relief, exhaustion, who knows what?

“yeah,” i hum.  i can feel his lips in my hair.  “take me home.”