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He leaves.
It’s inevitable, and she knew it would come and it’s not exactly his fault. One cannot in this economy with these tuition rates turn down a full baseball scholarship-even if it’s in Texas.
They’re friends, it happens easily the way you become friends on a playground. They’re all friends, her best friends, Farkle, him and Riley. But the difference is that they know what it’s like leaving, they both know the resentment and the anger of having what you know disappear. But they’re different too; he swallows his anger, lets it simmer in his belly-there’s nothing he can do about moving across the country at thirteen. She lets it fester, paints it on her face and wears it on her soul. She’s been left and she wears the cuts deeply. They understand each other and they understand that Riley who doesn’t know what an unhappy ending is and Farkle who knows leaving doesn’t mean you’re not loved are to be protected.
But the thing is she knows he would leave; he is a new boy one who left Texas unwillingly and wove himself into the tapestry that is the naivety of Riley, the awkwardness of Farkle and the teeth of her. He’s not a pseudo daughter to the Mathews, or the son of a classmate. He’s a new entity and new entities don’t stay around.
He’s not a New Yorker-he tries, and sometimes she can see the tire treads of what growing up in New York does someone when he walks past the homeless begging for money to get a fix instead of stopping like he used to.
But the thing about New York is not everyone is a New Yorker; a lot of people live in New York, but it’s pit stop, they all leave and at cocktail parties, or in coffee shops when they talk about their wild window years when they could be anyone and anything, drunk on youth. But New York is cold, it’s harsh lines and teeth cut on apathy, and it’s not for everyone to weather.
She knew he would leave, and it’s not her who is heartbroken. Lucas and Riley spend the entire summer making plans about how everything will stay the same. How the distance between New York and Austin is really nothing because of Skype, of phone calls and FaceTime.
She doesn’t have the heart to tell Riley that high school romances don’t usually become true love; Riley is less naive now, but she’s still innocent. She believes in love and first love, raised on the stories of her parents. She’s the daughter of Cory and Topanga Mathews-how could she not spend forever with the boy she met in seventh grade?
She doesn’t tell Riley about the Turkey Dump, instead she lets them be.
High school happens like a teen movie. He’s captain of the baseball team, dating the newspaper editor since they were fourteen and he gets to be prom king.
It’s a surreal feeling, like everything is mapped out and he can see in Riley’s eyes she’s got the future all planned. That scares him, because he loves Riley-he does- but he doesn’t think he loves her the way you spend Saturday nights and Sunday mornings and carpooling kids with.
He loves her like you love your high school sweetheart, with the innocence of a boy and the conviction of a teenager learning to fit his skin.
But he’s from Texas, and it’s in his roots, it’s where his roots are planted and while he wears New York proudly. But the heat and the sun call him back in the form of a scholarship and he can’t say no and he watches as Riley’s dreams shatter and it feels bitter like cough syrup.
But there’s also something liberating because he loves Riley but he cannot handle have his life planned out down to the neighbourhood he’ll live in at eighteen.
They make plans to keep it going, he’ll try he will. He’ll give it his all but he wonders how long they will last.
Distance is a factor, and he doesn’t see forever with this girl. But he can try.
When college starts everything changes, but the more things stay the same. Farkle is off at Harvard for business but he comes back every weekend-he’s thriving but there’s something that he misses and it’s okay.
Farkle isn’t a leaver, he’s a bird. He’s built a nest in New York, made twigs out of her and Riley and he leaves the nest to explore, but birds always come back home.
Riley is busy, journalism at NYU is fats pace, hard and stressful and she exists on coffee and take-out because there isn’t any time and she waits for the inevitable break down.
She gets into NYU too-for fine arts, oil painting and it’s freeing.
Riley and Lucas are still going strong, but she sees the cracks in the foundation. Tiny hair line cracks but they’re there. Skyping every week has become every two weeks, pushed back because of assignments and midterms.
He comes back for Thanksgiving and they all act like nothing’s changed but it has. Farkle is busy, and he talks about trips to Paris or Rome, talking about conferences and a year abroad. Riley drinks her coffee black now-it takes too much time to add cream and sugar, and she asked why now. She still wants to save the world, but she wants a reason and she can’t find one to tell her best friend. He comes back with an accent stronger, a smile kinder and three months at college that he edits as he tells stories.
They aren’t strangers-no not now, not with all their history; but they could be.
It’s not hard falling back into Austin. In fact it’s like coming home after a long trip and sleeping in his own bed.
He wears his New York like a tattoo though, when he’s more sarcastic than the others; his words come out faster and he sees everything with a jaded eye.
Everything is new but it feels old. There are new people, new friends, new girls who smile like sweet ice tea and say everything in honey words. He doesn’t do anything though, there’s a pretty girl in New York who still believes in fairy tales and a best friend who would kill him if he did.
Text messages become once a day, instead of continuous conversation, skype stops happening and so does the poke war.
It’s sad, but it feels inevitable and maybe the worst feeling comes from the feeling of failing Riley.
Riley and Lucas break up in January, well after Christmas and well before Valentine’s Day. It’s perfect timing, something she would find commendable if not the fact she spends her nights holding a crying Riley who just doesn’t understand how a high school romance doesn’t stretch into marriage like her parents.
She doesn’t give statistics, she doesn’t tell Riley she was half way delusional. She just hugs her.
Part of the heartbreak is Riley feeling like she’s failing. Corey and Topanga are a hard thing to measure up to and Auggie and Ava are going strong still.
When he changes his Facebook status to single, it feels weird. For almost five years it has always been “in a relationship” and now it’s not.
It feels a bit empty.
Riley doesn’t defriend him, but she doesn’t talk to him and neither does Maya for a long while. He figures its loyalty. Farkle and he keep their weekly video game nights, and Farkle tells him of all the things that go on. Maya’s taken up smoking, something he thinks was passed on to her by her latest boy thing (it’s never a boyfriend because Maya doesn’t do labels) who lasted three whole months and Riley is moving on.
That’s good.
He moves on too; there are girls who keep looking and he’s ready to stretch his wings.
He stays away from brunettes with dreams in their eyes-he’s broken dreams before that he’ll carry around for a while more.
By July things are better; she’s got some pieces in some small shows and it’s going over well. Farkle is back for the entire summer, and they spend it in shitty jobs, with ice cream and nights on the fire escape. Riley finds a new love, a boy with green eyes and a half smile who says why not. He doesn’t come back; he has a job working at a vet clinic.
It’s fine.
They lived thirteen years without Lucas; they can live without him again.
He gets an unpaid internship, so he stays.
He watches surgeries and how a clinic is run. Doctor McGuire has red hair and kind eyes and tells him to call her Rachel says she reminds her of a girl she used to know in college.
He hears about this girl Angela, who moved cities in high school because of a military father. She was a good friend, and they fell out of touch in their twenties. She loved art and chased her dreams leaving behind a boy who loved her.
Rachel talks about her time in the Peace Corps, and how she went with a boy named Jack who knew the city and was scared of a horse rather than a cockroach.
It takes him several months before he realizes that Doctor McGuire’s boy from the Peace Corps is the business man Jack as in the guy who insists on Maya calling Uncle Jack even though he’s her step-dad’s brother.
He really can’t leave New York behind.
Farkle keeps up with Lucas, while Riley doesn’t. Farkle and Lucas are best friends, and even when Farkle joins a fraternity they are still talking almost daily.
She jokes once to Farkle, when Riley is in the bathroom, that Lucas is his Riley. Farkle doesn’t disagree. It sometimes feels like there’s a hole the six of a six foot two Texan on these nights where they get late night pho and dance on the subway because no one cares, but it’s a blink and you miss it sort of thing. She knows what to do with people who leave and it’s so much easier when there’s no relation.
There’s a girl named Mary with pretty brown eyes and smile that screams sinner, and she kisses him like she’s drowning and takes him to an underground art show. She’s here not because she likes the art, but because the guy who owns it has the most delish green and she has plans for that when it’s done.
All he can think of is how this blonde girl from New York who has sinner on in a different way would love this. There’s no cameras allowed but he stares at each piece, committing them all to memory so he can tell her about it all.
She’d never come to Dallas, never leave New York if she could because it bore and she loves it like something strong. She’d never come to Dallas and so there’s a world of art she’s missing and maybe he can give it to her to show how her world can be bigger than three friends, a family and skyscrapers.
Around March of second year, he starts messaging her. She thinks he’s drunk but she knows him well enough that he’d never do something like this drunk.
And it’s not anything important. It’s just links to article about art shows, pictures of street art he finds. All of it is harmless and sporadic.
She doesn’t ask him why, she knows why. He feels guilty for leaving, for Riley, for anything and everything. He doesn’t need a reason and she doesn’t want one.
Reasons give hope, and she stopped having hope for him on a Subway when they were kids.
She responds sometimes, sending him links to animal videos. Baseball games when New York wins. Country music and a picture of whoever she sees wearing a cowboy hat.
The difference between being left by a father before you are eight and a friend who came when you were thirteen, is that she can barely remember any happy moment and father is tarnished in heartbreak and disappointment. A friend who wove himself effortlessly into all her teenage memories hurts a bit more, cuts a bit deeper because she was happy then and she remembers those feelings like neon colours. But she’s not worried, high school will become a faded memory when she’s thirty. He will become forgettable that Mister Perfect.
Senior year comes and he has to make a decision. He can go pro, scout keep on coming to the games and people are calling him the best first baser in the college league. His dad wants him to; it’s setting him up for life and a Friar as a pro-athlete? Think of the prestige he could bring. Or he could continue on being a vet, work with horses on a ranch like he’s been thinking of since he was thirteen in the vague way you dream of the future. He can draw concrete lines, and put down roots.
His mom wants him to follow his heart, and that is great advice only it’s vague and non-descript and designed to make her look supportive without offering anything.
He doesn’t know who to ask and Farkle is no help because he started talking about contract fees and money and it all got too confusing.
He almost calls Riley, but hangs up before it can go through. Talking to her won’t actually help, because she will want him to be happy. She’s happy now, with a boyfriend who seems like the anti-thesis of him. It’s fine, it’s been three years and while he hasn’t been in anything called a relationship, he’s not waiting for her.
He calls Maya and it goes to voice mail. He doesn’t know if she’s screening her calls or if she’s really busy but she never lets a text go unanswered. He figures she wants to reassure people she’s still around, willing and ready to make time with them.
By the time he hangs up, he’s made his decision.
When she graduates she has a choice, continue on with her education (she’s recommended to go do her masters in art history) or paint; everyone expected her to be done with school, she’s ranted about it. But she goes on to Columbia to get her masters.
She’s got a lot of funding, and she can still paint. But this is more of an education, more knowledge and she could be someone who just paints, like every other artist in New York but she could also know the history, know the inspiration.
She could know.
Riley goes into an internship in Philadelphia, and Farkle works for his father. He keeps on getting into vet school.
Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences is hard.
It’s very hard and he doesn’t have time to do anything. If he’s lucky and passes in four years he’ll have a DVM and then who knows.
He can’t think in the long term right now, can’t think more than a few months in advance because his life is deadlines and practicums and Doctor McGuire promises him a job at her practise when he’s done, and hints that he can take it over sometime.
He doesn’t date, doesn’t have time to even though Farkle is in a relationship with Smackle and has been for almost six years and they’re thinking of getting married but aren’t sure. He likes to joke he’s living vicariously through Farkle who has managed the work/love balance a lot better than he is; but there’s a part of him that thinks he’s not even looking for someone.
All of the girls he’s with are generally short term, no one more than six months. It’s not that he doesn’t want to fall in love, it’s just he doesn’t have time.
Grad school is different than university; she doesn’t have time for boys and she barely sees Riley but she’s painting and learning and she’s showing.
She also thinks she wants to get her PhD in art history, particularly the art deco movement. She thinks she might want to teach but she doesn’t really know.
Riley gets engaged to a boy who laughs like sunset, and has a witty tongue. He’s not Lucas who treated her like a princess, or the green eyed boy who pushed her to the edge. He’s kind and steady and when Riley jumps to plot, he’s there to help her land.
He contacts her more, and she returns the favour. He sends her notes about shows in Dallas and Austin she wouldn’t go to, tells her about his favourite pieces.
She draws him anatomical diagrams of animals, mostly horses for him to study from.
He’s complained about the text book pictures enough.
When Riley gets married, he goes to the ceremony. They’re friends now after a few years of awkwardness and it’s easy to smile when she says “I do.”
It’s not the fairy tale she mapped out in her head when she was sixteen, but it’s real and she looks beautiful in the white dress. There’s not a dry eye in the house, even her best friend maid of honour in red is dabbing back tears.
He catches her eye when Riley walks down now married and she makes a face at him. He smiles back.
In the line, he shakes hands with his ex-girlfriend’s new husband, and Riley pulls him down for a hug.
‘You look happy,’ he tells her.
Riley nods, ‘You should be to.’
Happy. It’s funny he always thought he was.
He stays in the background, he’s been in the background for the better part of half a decade and there’s no reason for him to suddenly come back. He left New York for home and he doesn’t regret it. And while Farkle is still his best friend, and Smackle his soon to be sister-in-law, there’s still this air of being off.
The bride is blushing, and she and Maya are dancing to pop songs that made the soundtrack of high school. Riley’s uncle is there on the floor spinning Maya around when he can, before going back to the sidelines.
He doesn’t say anything when Shawn Hunter with some grey in his temples sits next to him.
‘You’re back,’ the older man says.
‘Just for the weekend.’
Shawn nods, drinking the fancy wine. Beer had been taken off the drink menu for reasons untold (Riley has never been able to stomach beer, not since she first tried it when she was fifteen).
‘That’s right,’ Shawn says casually. ‘You left New York.’
It’s true, but it feels like he did something wrong.
When she’s done her Masters and is about to start her PhD, she has a show. It’s not under her name, but May Clutterbucket and she’s doing that because it’s not oil, but photography and no one knows about it.
Shawn gave her a camera for her fifteenth birthday and while she’s not bad, she’s not good like him either (but then again he’s Shawn Hunter and he’s won a Pulitzer prize for his photography).
The collection is called Girl Meets New York and it’s been about ten years in the making. There are serious shots of New York, of her city. There are Polaroids taken drunkenly of her friends, of her family.
It’s homage to her family, of the childhood she had and of who she has become.
It’s personal and raw and she doesn’t want anyone to know about it so she doesn’t show it in New York because someone will see and then everyone will know.
It shows in Dallas.
He graduated from school not top of the class, but near there and he can breathe now. He works with Doctor McGuire, and specializes in horses.
He puts a down payment on a townhouse in Dallas. He’s got roots, and it feels nice. He can start thinking about dating because he’s twenty-six now and everyone is all paired up and sleeping alone is getting tiresome. Though he has a dog.
It’s just hard to find someone, because he went to high school in New York where football wasn’t as big as baseball. He never went to field parties; he went to roof top parties and raves when he went. He’s been back for nine years, and has spent more time in Texas than New York but he’s still too sarcastic, still a bit jaded.
It’s a weird mix and there aren’t many girls who want to go see movies with subtitles because half the fun is the way it’s translated and making up their own story. There aren’t many girls who’ll eat sushi and go to art shows and ride horses.
He doesn’t show up at the airport because while they aren’t not friends but they’re not at the pick up at the airport level anymore. She remembers one time when they were sixteen and he spent the summer at his Dad’s, that Riley made her and Farkle pick him up from the gate with handmade signs. She brought him a cheesy I heart New York shirt and he wore it with a cowboy hat for the entire day.
She knows if she had told him she was coming, he’d have picked her up and had probably with a cowboy hat and horse just to prove a point.
Instead she hails a cab, goes to the hotel and goes to sleep.
The minute he gets the email he knows he has to go. Somewhere along the lines he’s become signed up on a newsletter that lets him know about art shows in Dallas and Austin; it’s a stress relief he wants to call it.
But one of the artists is a brand new up and coming photographer named Clutterbucket, and the artist in question will be at the show. She’s afraid of planes, hates leaving the city and he’s one hundred percent sure she broke into hives when she’s crossed state lines.
He doesn’t know this new grown up twenty-six year old Maya Hart besides Facebook messages, but he wants to.
Especially if she left New York.
The thing about shows is that you end up staying around waiting for people to look and understand, or maybe not.
She sulks in a corner, not wanting to be there. It’s weird.
But she sees him there, all six foot three of him. He looks older, but the same. He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and he has a yellow legal pad in one hand and he’s staring at the photographs and writing notes every few minutes.
She follows him through the show, and she’s pretty sure he knows.
He stops at every photo, staring at it like he’s reliving a memory. He’s there out of focus in a lot of them, but also very much in focus in photos with Riley and Farkle.
The last photo he is in is a Polaroid from the Christmas at first year; it’s the only one of him that includes her. It’s four of them squished grinning with youthful smiles, staring up at the camera he’s holding because he has the longest limbs. Riley is tucked under his chin, and she’s on Farkle’s back but holding onto his collar to keep steady.
‘There’s no test Sundance,’ she tells him. ‘Don’t need to write anything down.’
He doesn’t startle; he’s seen her, and he turns slowly, the smirk she knows like a second skin on his face.
‘Just want to be prepared ma’am,’ he tells her.
It’s a timeline of New York, a love letter in snapshots and he can see his teenage years played out before him. He sees Riley and him baby faced in love that he knows goes nowhere, but immortalized as ideal in these photos.
He sees Farkle grow up and into his skin, getting real confidence and kindness. He sees Katy become more focal as they grow older, and Mr. Matthews and Mrs. Matthews a constant presence.
He sees himself, pretty boy with a chip on his shoulder trying to shrug into New York and wearing it well but too kind where being aloof keeps you surviving.
He sees Maya not in the photos, but in the reflection of the glass trailing behind him. If thirteen made her gorgeous, and sixteen taught her the smoky eye than twenty-six brings the sunrise and this feeling of standing on the edge of something very, very high and knowing in a few seconds he’s going to step off and enjoy the freefall.
‘For what?’ she asks him, her hip jutted out and her blonde curls pulled back. She’s got khol around her eyes and red on her lips but she’s wearing a leather jacket she found at the vintage thrift store when they were thirteen and he knows who she was and he wants to know who she is and he thinks he’ll be there when she finds out who she will be.
He smiles and steps off the edge. ‘The rest of my life I’m betting.’