CHAPTER TWO
1013 Words
Brunch, 10:07 a.m.
The city is pretending it’s a normal Sunday.
Sunlight spills across the sidewalk tables like it wasn’t up all night watching two people tear each other apart with kindness. People laugh too loud, order bottomless mimosas, take photos of avocado toast. Eli watches them through the window of The Bluebird Café and wonders how any of them are still breathing when his own lungs feel permanently half-collapsed.
He got here twenty-three minutes early because being late would mean she’d have to wait, and he physically cannot add one more second of discomfort to her life right now. He’s on his third coffee. It tastes like ash and betrayal.
He hasn’t slept.
He showered, though. Twice. Stood under the water until it went cold, trying to wash the sound of her saying “pretend it didn’t happen” off his skin. It didn’t work. The words are tattooed somewhere under the ribs now.
The bell above the door jingles.
She walks in wearing his navy hoodie (the one with the frayed cuffs she chewed on during finals week senior year) and sunglasses that cover half her face. She looks like someone who cried herself to sleep and then put armor on top of the evidence.
Their eyes meet across the room.
For one terrifying second the pretending fails.
Her bottom lip trembles.
His fingers tighten around the mug hard enough to leave prints.
Then she smiles (small, careful, the smile she used to give him when she was hungover and pretending she wasn’t) and the world snaps back into its old shape.
“Hey, you,” she says, sliding into the chair opposite him like nothing is wrong. Like the last twelve hours never happened.
“Hey,” he answers, and his voice only cracks a little.
She steals his coffee without asking, takes a sip, makes a face. “You still drink it black like a psychopath.”
“Some of us enjoy suffering,” he says before he can stop himself.
She flinches. Just a flicker, gone before it fully forms.
The waiter appears like a merciful god. They order without looking at the menu (eggs benedict for her, french toast for him, the same thing they’ve ordered here for six years). When the waiter leaves, the silence swells up between them like floodwater.
Lena folds and unfolds the corner of the napkin.
Eli watches her fingers and remembers how they shook last night when she said I can’t.
“So,” she starts, too bright, “big plans for the rest of the weekend?”
He almost laughs. Big plans. Like he has ever had plans that didn’t revolve around her gravitational pull.
“Laundry,” he lies. “Maybe finally fix that shelf in the bathroom.”
She nods too hard. “Cool. Cool. I, um… I have a date tonight.”
The words hit him like a drunk driver running a red light.
He feels his face go perfectly blank the way it learned to do in sophomore year when she talked about boys who weren’t him. He’s had eight years of practice. He’s a professional at this now.
“A date,” he repeats, tasting metal.
“Yeah.” She looks down at the table. “This guy from work. Marcus. He’s… nice.”
Nice.
The cruelest word in the English language when applied to anyone who isn’t Eli.
He forces a smile that feels like chewing glass. “That’s great, Len. You deserve nice.”
She finally takes off the sunglasses. Her eyes are bloodshot, puffy, the color of a storm about to break. She looks at him like she’s searching for the lie in his face and finding it too easily.
“Eli—”
“It’s fine,” he cuts in gently. “We said we’d pretend. I’m pretending. See?” He lifts his hands in mock surrender. “World-class pretender.”
Her mouth twists. She reaches across the table like she’s going to touch his hand, then thinks better of it and curls her fingers around her own mug instead.
“I just… I don’t want things to be weird,” she whispers.
Too late, he thinks.
Weird is the only thing we have left.
But out loud he says, “They’re not weird. Look at us. Same table. Same terrible coffee. Same hoodie thief.”
She laughs, watery and surprised, and for one second it’s almost like before.
Then the food arrives and the spell breaks.
They eat in the kind of quiet that used to be comfortable. Now it’s a minefield. Every clink of silverware feels like a countdown.
Halfway through her eggs she says, suddenly, fiercely, “You’re still my best friend. That hasn’t changed.”
He meets her eyes. “I know.”
But inside something howls:
Everything has changed.
You just won’t let yourself see it yet.
When the check comes they fight over it the way they always do. He wins because he’s faster with the card. She rolls her eyes, but it’s fond, familiar, and it hurts worse than any fight they’ve ever had.
Outside on the sidewalk she hugs him goodbye (quick, careful, the way you hug someone you’re afraid might shatter). Her hair smells like coconut and the new shampoo she switched to last month that he pretended not to notice.
“Text me later?” she asks, already stepping backward, already leaving.
“Always,” he says.
She smiles, turns, disappears into the crowd.
Eli stands there long after she’s gone, sun burning the back of his neck, city noise roaring in his ears like white water.
He pulls out his phone.
Opens their chat.
Types:
Hope the date is everything you deserve.
Deletes it.
Types:
I’m proud of you for trying.
Deletes it.
Types:
2:14 a.m. is still yours if you need it.
Stares at the words until they blur.
Deletes them too.
Locks the phone.
Starts walking in the opposite direction of home, because home is full of her ghosts and he’s not ready to meet them again today.
- Writer
