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My breath catches for a second as I scan through the note again once, twice, three times. We love you more than you can ever dream, I read, then I skip back to the sentence starting with Someday, when the time is right.
I don’t know if the worst part is that I’m not surprised, or that I’m kind of at peace with it. After my trip to see Joy, and furthermore, even just on a daily basis for the last few months, things have felt strange around home. Like my parents and I were the strangers in the quantum entanglement experiment.
But I saw them keep looking for Joy, and deep down, I know that they’ll be looking out for me from wherever they’ve gone, and that gives me some semblance of comfort.
Just then my doorbell rings, and there’s a sharp few knocks on the door, and there’s only one person it could be.
“Hi, Harry,” I say as I open the door. He smiles back.
“Hi,” he says, and steps in, closing the door behind himself. “Can we talk?” He’s bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet, clearly happy. I know how he’d react if I told him about my parents—as full of empathy as he is—so I decide it can stay unsaid until after we talk.
“Yeah,” I reply, “obviously. Why would I tell you to come over if you couldn’t?” I take a seat on the couch/bed, and he follows suit, although he makes sure not to invade my personal space—which seems kind of stupid, considering we both know he’s here for a reason that is decidedly not platonic.
“So,” Harry says, drumming his fingers on his knees, “Regina and I broke up.”
“From what she said, it sounded more like she broke up with you,” I tease, because from his texts, it seems that he’s definitely not at all broken up over it. He looks taken aback for just a second before realizing.
“So that’s why you were ignoring my texts,” he says.
“I wasn’t ignoring your texts.”
He dismisses it with a wave of his hand. “Okay, buddy, but you did. Anyway, so things have changed. And I was thinking about what you said.”
“Did you just call me buddy?”
“Yes,” he says. “It’s a perfectly valid nickname—“
“Shut up,” I tell him, and for good measure, I lean over the distance between us (which is still too big, in my opinion) and press my lips against his.
I’ve never kissed a guy before—or anyone, for that matter—and noone really gives you the correct kind of advice for when you’re in a capital-m Moment. You just end up figuring it out for yourself as you go along. This is the kind of learning you can’t get at RISD, the sarcastic part of my frontal lobe tells me. I tell it, on a molecular level, that it also needs to shut up.
After the split second has passed where approximately 30 different thoughts run straight through my head competing in a 200m sprint, Harry, who I know for a fact has kissed people (girls, at the very least) before, pulls me closer. I am incredibly thankful one of us knows how to kiss, or this would be a lot more awkward. His hands are still big on my waist as they’ve always been, but in a different way than on the ground in the basketball court, where I could feel my pulse inside of my wrist, his stupid heartbeat 10 times slower than mine. We kiss like it’s the end of the world, and I guess that in a way, it’s kind of the end of the world as I know it.
I pull away first, and Harry just stares at me for a second. “Um, wow,” he says.
“Wow, indeed,” I reply. He rolls his eyes.
“I like you, if you haven’t already noticed. Like, a lot more than in a friend way.”
“Yeah, I totally didn’t get that from the fact that we just made out on my couch, but thanks for the heads up.” Harry rolls his eyes a second time, even more exaggerated and theatrical. “I love you,” I say, and even though it’s the first time, it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it. It feels like it’s something I’ve been repeating over and over again in every empty space, in every momentary silence where I don’t have the courage. Like all my atoms are letting him know that I’m thinking about him.
(One question about my dad’s quantum entanglement experiment that has pressed on my mind for years is what about the people between acquaintances and family? People who knew each other but weren’t close dimly felt the other person thinking about them. Family members deeply felt the other person thinking about them. But what about the people in between? What about the people in love with someone who didn’t feel the same way? Would their atoms go wild as they felt the person think about them? Would the unknowing person barely feel the depth of what the other person’s atoms felt?
Sure, I’ve always wondered about what would happen in those unrequited cases. But in this second, right now, as I pretend that my parents are in their room asleep, and that Regina isn’t lying awake, wondering if Harry has known all along, I realize that it really doesn’t matter at all. Because, like in the case of the atoms, it has never really mattered whether or not I was with Harry. On a microscopic level, our lives have always been completely and utterly entangled, and I don’t think that I would ever want it to be different.)
“I know,” Harry says, and kisses me again. I decide that, for the time being, this is the most pressing matter on my mind (it’s not). I have a lifetime to deal with my parents and college and what I’m going to do next. For now, I’m allowed to enjoy the bits of what I have left. And after a boy I love has driven down 280 in the middle of the night just to see me, I think I’m entitled to spend some time forgetting.