MAYBE IT had been naive to assume that Jason being back meant he’d be back at BAYS, too. But I’d assumed it anyway—I’d thought things would be better then too, that I would be able to play again—and when he didn’t come, I was anxious all through rehearsal and the music sounded tinny and chaotic to my ears.
We didn’t want to seem pushy, so we didn’t ask him, but we speculated about it. Grace thought maybe it was physical-therapy- related, and Brandon thought maybe Jason was under orders to take things slow. But I was worried it was more complicated than that.
I didn’t know how to explain it without telling them about Juilliard, though. The four of us were standing in the parking lot after rehearsal; it was winter and dark already, and freezing, and when Serina Kim, a junior from Monta Vista who played flute, stopped on her way out to say hi to Brandon, I wondered if, when she left, I should tell them.
It had been hard for me lately to be at BAYS in a way it never had before. I could play as directed, the requisite notes at the requisite times, but if I ever tried to take it past that, I went hot and shaky and a hardness crept over me. I had always been able to find a way inside the music, but the few times I tried that now it felt like a physical rejection, like trying to join the opposite ends of a magnet.
It made me feel like someone else. I didn’t know what was wrong with me.
“I just don’t know how you all have time to do BAYS senior year with college apps,” Serina was saying. “My parents think I should quit.”
“You weren’t planning to, like, sleep, were you?” Brandon said, grinning at her. “What do you think this is?”
If I didn’t know him, I would’ve believed in his smile, I think. Probably to an outsider, to someone like Serina, who didn’t go to our school and maybe hadn’t heard about Jason yet, it didn’t look like anything was wrong. But maybe it was easier for people to hide things than you’d ever expect.
I shouldn’t tell them about Juilliard yet. Not telling anyone was the one thing Jason had asked of me, and besides that, maybe we wouldn’t be asked back to audition; I was still waiting to hear. And anyway, Jason was here, so I told myself to be reassured by that.
Until then he wasn’t. The day we were supposed to all go off campus for lunch together for the first time after break, Jason didn’t show up for school. We all tried messaging and calling him, but he didn’t respond.
All day, I kept my phone on in class, which you weren’t supposed to do, and by lunchtime I was frantic. Grace and Sunny both thought maybe Jason had appointments and had forgotten to bring his phone, and Brandon was uneasy but certainly nowhere near my level of panic. Somehow that was the opposite of calming, like those dreams where no one believes you that the building’s burning.
“You think we should just stay here?” I said. “What if—”
“They wouldn’t just leave him alone if they didn’t think it was okay, right?” Brandon said. “I mean—he’s seeing a psychologist regularly and stuff, right?”
“But that means you trust his parents?” My voice was shaking. “And we thought he was fine before, too, and—”
“You know,” Sunny said, “My friend Dayna said people who survive suicide attempts almost never try again. When the impulse passes, everyone wants to live.”
“But they’ve never even met him,” I said.
The bell rang. “Let’s see if he’s answered one of us by the time school’s out,” Brandon said. “And then if not, maybe we can go over there. Or I can go over, or something.”
“I think even that might be overreacting,” Sunny said. “But yes, okay, sure.”
I walked with them as far as the library, where we always parted ways, and then I found, all at once, that I couldn’t keep propelling myself toward the science wing. The thought of being trapped in the classroom made me want to peel off my own skin. I would be useless in there, I would be basically locked inside, and I couldn’t go.
It took me nearly half an hour to walk to Jason’s house. His car was parked in the driveway, but no one answered when I knocked.
My vision was blurring, and I thought I might pass out or have another panic attack. Maybe both. But I tried again, and then a few moments later I heard footsteps.
When he opened the door, it was a palpable relief to see him. He was wearing sweatpants and glasses and an old baggy T-shirt, and he looked a little disoriented, but there he was. I willed my heart to slow back to normal.
“Beth,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“Did I wake you up?”
“Ah—”
“I didn’t mean to. I just—I wanted to make sure everything was all right.”
An almost-imperceptible flicker of annoyance shifted over his face. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I just—” It seemed like he should know how terrified I had been. It shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise, really, to see me there. “I just wanted to see if you needed anything.”
He watched me for a moment, and then he sighed. “You want to come in?”
Inside, he made us both tea. His kitchen was messy, dishes in the sink and on the counter, stacks of papers and bottles of vitamins scattered across the table. He didn’t say anything as he boiled water, and I could feel my heart rate picking up at the sense of unwelcome.
He set the two cups on the kitchen table and motioned for me to sit. He’d chosen jasmine tea, which was what I usually ordered when we all went to get boba together, and I felt my eyes well up at the gesture. He was still himself, I reminded myself. He was still the same person, and our history was still what it was. This was a new layer, but it didn’t erase everything else.
That meant, though, also, that I should be able to do better than this—I should have more to offer him than my silent and unsolicited presence in his kitchen.
I sipped my tea, trying to think of something I could say, but the inadequacy of everything I came up with made the words choke in my throat. After a while, he said, “What class are you ditching right now?”
“AP Bio,” I said, although he should know that.
“What’s happening in it?”
“Nothing important.”
“Are you going to get in trouble for cutting?”
I could call in and leave a message excusing it, pretending to be my mother. “It’ll be okay.”
He drank the rest of his tea, then looked at the clock. “You want to watch something?”
As far as I knew, Jason barely watched TV. Most of us didn’t have time. “If you want.”
“Okay,” he said, but then he didn’t make a move toward the living room, where the TV was, and sitting there with him I could feel the past weeks roiling through me and my skin felt too tight for my body and I felt like I would implode.
I wanted to know why. I wanted to know what had happened and whether it was going to happen again; I wanted a promise that it never would. I wanted to know how specifically we’d failed, how I’d failed, and what to do next time. And maybe it wasn’t fair, but I wanted him to know what this had done to me. I wanted him to understand all the ways I wasn’t going to be the same again and to understand the depth of what I felt for him.
“I didn’t mean to bother you,” I said. “I just wanted—I just got worried.”
“There’s no need to worry.”
“Isn’t there?”
“No.” He reached over, stretching his arm out and balancing on the back two legs of his chair, to drop his empty cup into the sink, where it clattered against the other dishes piled there. “I’m just not having a great day.”
I sat up straighter. “What do you mean not having a great day? Are you—do you need—”
He pushed his glasses aside and rubbed his eyes. “I’m not—just relax, Beth, okay? It’s just been a shitty day, that’s all.”
What would it be like to admit that aloud—that you were angry, that the day had worn on you, to say those things, and to feel them, without worrying how they might look to whoever you were talking to? To let the ugly emotions you harbored, your anger and dissatisfaction and irritation, seep into your words without censoring them. That was unlike him, though; usually he was so much more careful. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“But you—”
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” he said. His voice was sharp, and tears came to my eyes. He saw, and he closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not trying to be a jerk. I just kind of wanted to be alone right now, that’s all.”
That was worse, I think, hearing that—among the worst things he could’ve said to me.
“I’ll leave you alone, then,” I said quietly. I stood up. My eyes were stinging. I took a few seconds gathering my bag and then bringing my cup to the sink. I wanted him to tell me he hadn’t meant it, to ask me to stay. But instead he followed me out of the kitchen in silence.
I could hardly breathe. At the door, I felt him hesitating. I said, “Jason—”
My voice came out more defeated than I meant it to. And when he looked at me, in that moment our eyes met, there was a tenderness in his expression that I don’t think he consciously intended but that all the same I could feel trained on me, something that reached beyond all those ways he was tired and guarded and sad. And I thought how no matter what happened around us, and no matter what happened to us, it would always be like that for me, too, that underneath everything else would always be the way I felt about him.
“I think partly—I think I wanted to tell you something else,” I said. What was I doing? My vision was tunneling, my hands going damp, but it was too late now to stop. And maybe part of me had come to say this; maybe this had been what I’d meant to do all along. “Thinking we might lose you was the worst thing to ever happen to me. I haven’t been sleeping or eating, and I haven’t been able to play violin. I just—I can’t imagine the world without you, and I can’t imagine us without you, or myself without you, and I never told you, but—” My pulse was thrumming so loudly in my ears I could hardly hear myself. This was the most, I think, that I had to give him. “I’ve been in love with you for as long as I’ve known you.”
Jason looked surprised. He looked stunned, even, but underneath that, where I’d hoped to find welcome or reciprocation or who knows what, where I suppose I’d left a blank space because some things are too risky to imagine, even to yourself, there was a wall.
“I just needed to tell you that,” I said. Then I fled before the silence could go on longer, and it was a long time before I heard the door close, but he didn’t call after me or ask me to stay.
That night, alone at home, it felt so unbearable to be myself that I took a Benadryl and went to sleep at seven. I hoped I’d sleep twenty hours straight. I woke up at five in the morning, though, and I curled into a ball in bed and tried to breathe past the pressure against my chest. I wished I weren’t so afraid of the idea of getting incredibly high or drunk.
After what I’d said, I was too anxious to message him—it would be unsurvivable if I did and he didn’t answer; it could mean so many terrible things. Why had I done that? If he didn’t feel the same way, and it was clear he didn’t, then I’d gained nothing by telling him. Maybe I just wanted to give him that, no matter what he’d do with it. Maybe I’d never expected anything in return. Except why had I thought that was something valuable to offer him? Why had I thought it was any kind of talisman against anything—against his pain, against further disaster?
There was still a part of me, though, some stupid, hopeful part, that thought maybe he’d just been caught off guard in the moment but that he’d tell me he had feelings for me too, after all.
We had Monday off for a teacher inservice day, and so for three excruciating days I didn’t hear anything from Jason. I made sure the others had, mostly Brandon, who went to see him over the weekend. They’d gone to work out together, and I didn’t think Jason would’ve said anything to Brandon about what I’d told him, but there was no way to know. I felt nervous and slippery whenever my phone buzzed—on some level I knew it wouldn’t be Jason, but then a part of me hoped against hope it would be, and then as soon as that range of emotions had cycled out, I worried that he’d said something to one of them, that I’d upset him, or that the others would be upset with me. Maybe this would be the thing that splintered us.
I was going to pray that my other friends just never heard, but then, abruptly, on Monday morning I couldn’t take it anymore and I told Sunny and Grace. They came over right away, Grace wrapping me in a long hug and Sunny asking questions to fill in the rest of the story. I couldn’t tell, but I thought maybe she was hurt they hadn’t known I liked him. But I’d meant for it to never matter.
“He hasn’t even messaged you since then?” Sunny said. “Not at all?”
“No,” I said. “I honestly don’t know how I’ll even look at him tomorrow.” We were sitting in my living room, and I wished I could halt time and stay here in the safety of the triangle we formed. “And I don’t know if he’s even going to want to be around me. I just—I hope this doesn’t ruin our group.”
I wasn’t crying, but my breathing was shaky as if I were. Grace leaned against me.
“That is definitely not going to happen,” she said soothingly. “Not a chance.”
“Okay, but if it does, though, you guys should go with him.” He needed them more, and anyway I’d been the one to ruin things. It was beyond humiliating that I’d ever thought anything could come of what I felt for him, that of all the people in the world I would be the one he’d choose. “I don’t know what I was even thinking.”
We talked for a long time, through lunchtime and into the afternoon, about Jason and about all of us. Sunny told me she thought Jason loved me as much as he loved anyone, and when I said, “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, “I mean—you know how he is.”
“In what sense?”
She tucked her knees under her chin, thinking. “I guess when I picture the way you give yourself to other people, I have this image where you’re like—reaching straight into your heart and holding it out to someone. Whereas when Jason does, he’s like, reaching behind his back or off to the side. I don’t know, it wouldn’t shock me if he never has a serious relationship. Not that people are supposed to, but I don’t think he’s aro or anything, I think he’s just like, nope. It’s definitely not you, Beth.”
“You deserve to be cherished,” Grace said. “Jason knows that. And you have us no matter what. Everything really will be fine.”
I could tell already that as soon as they were gone, it would be impossible to believe. But for now they were here, and what had happened wasn’t without its one gift: We’d obliterated the distance between us; they knew everything about me again.
Late that afternoon, before my mother got home, someone rapped on our door. I opened it thinking it would be a package delivery, but it was Jason. An invisible fist rammed into my throat.
“Oh,” I said. I steadied myself and held the door open wider. “Hey. Um—did you want to come in?”
“Yeah, sure, is that okay?”
“Of course.”
I led him inside. The kitchen was a mess, so I went into the living room. He sat down on the recliner by the fireplace, on the very edge of it, and he stuck his hands into his pockets, which looked uncomfortable while he was seated.
I couldn’t imagine what he was here to say. It was difficult to swallow or breathe.
“I just wanted to—look, I wasn’t trying to ghost you.”
I looked away. “It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not fine, it’s—” He made a face, then took his hands from his pockets and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “It was a dick move, Beth, and I didn’t mean—it’s just been a lot lately.”
“Of course. I understand.”
“Yeah, but—I don’t think anyone really understands. Everyone’s been really easy on me, which I appreciate, but I also—everything feels so fucked up now, and I wish I could just have everything go back to normal. Anyway.” He looked back at me. “Did you mean what you said? At my house?”
It was tempting to try to deny it, to say the moment had gotten the better of me, but it wouldn’t be the truth, and anyway I’m sure he would’ve known that. “I meant it.”
“Maybe we could—um.” He smiled sheepishly. “Whenever I imagined this—which, for the record, I definitely have—it, uh, went a little better.”
My heart had taken off and was thundering in my ears. “What are you—saying, exactly?”
“I’m saying—obviously very eloquently—I’m saying if that’s how you feel, I don’t know, I think maybe we should give it a shot.”
“You mean like—”
“I should’ve like—brought flowers or something, maybe.” He jammed his hands into his pockets again and exhaled. “I didn’t do the greatest job thinking this through.”
There had been moments in my life that had felt surreal, a little detached from reality, but this was somehow the exact opposite. This time I was hyperaware of all those banal, everyday things that rooted me in reality, like the humming of my fridge, the frayed throw pillow that was propped up next to me, the way the cuffs of my sweatpants brushed against my bare ankles—and in the midst of all that: Jason saying this.
“If you mean it—” I said, and my voice came out squeaky. I tried again. “I mean, obviously I’d—yes, I’d love—if what you’re saying is—”
“Maybe let’s spare ourselves this part,” he said. “Let’s just skip ahead to the part where we both say yes? Or—what do you say exactly?”
“That sounds—that sounds good.”
“Okay.” He stood up then, and he crossed the room and came and sat down next to me on the couch, and then he took my hand in his, and that was the moment when everything else around me stopped. “So—we’re doing this?”
“We’re doing this?” I repeated, and I stared at our hands together. This is happening, I told myself. This is happening, this is—
“So if I’m being honest, this isn’t exactly how I pictured it,” he said, smiling a little. “As in, when I imagined it in my head, I didn’t sound like I’d never spoken a complete sentence in my life, but, um—wow. We, uh—we should’ve done this a while ago, maybe.”
“Should we—I mean, we should tell people, right?” I said.
“You want to?”
“Did you not want to?”
He was still smiling at me, his eyes trained on me in a way that felt transformative. I was a different person now. I could feel myself expanding. All this time—all this time!—I had been so wrong about myself. I had thought I could never be enough. “Whatever you like,” he said, and he reached out and brushed his fingertip very gently against my cheek.
I felt electric; I felt lit up from the inside. Let it be like this forever, I prayed, and I’ll never ask for anything else ever again.