Hazel eyes looked back at me as I peered over the ceramic tile-covered tabletop. In the distance, a seaside city was bathed in the saturated colors of the sunset. The sounds of a typical bustling coffee shop surrounded our patio seats.
I reached across the space between us and swept a piece of hair from Dimitri’s face.
“You would look better with shorter hair,” I said and he smirked.
“But then, how will I look like the guys on the covers of those trashy novels you read?” he asked, and I playfully poked his cheek in return. He laughed before grasping my hands, placing them down on the colorful tiles between us.
“I miss you,” he said.
My eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “I’m right here,” I said with a soft smile, trying to both comfort and understand him.
“Why can’t I see you anymore?”
“You’re seeing me right now,” I said, more confused than ever.
The scene changed. We were no longer sitting in a seaside cafe. Instead, I was kneeling over Dimitri’s lifeless, bloody body in the forest. I stared in horror for a moment, then started doing chest compressions.
“You’ve already forgotten me?” I heard his voice echoing around me, but his lips didn’t move.
“Dimitri?” I called out, ceasing my compressions and looking around.
The scene changed once again, this time to a backyard behind a large house, in which a party was raging. I was kneeling in the grass alone now, Dimitri’s body nowhere to be seen.
“Need help, Priya?” I looked up to my right and saw Aaron reaching his hand out for me to grasp, but his face was different. He didn’t look like himself, but I still understood him to be Aaron. I instinctively reached up for his hand, but another voice came from my left.
“You’re already moving on?” Dimitri’s voice made me jump. I turned to see him standing at my left.
He was wearing a navy t-shirt, black pants, and white sneakers.
There wasn’t a single drop of blood on him.
“Don’t you love me anymore?”
My eyes snapped open. I blinked a few times as my vision adjusted to the light streaming in through the blinds of my bedroom window. I looked around the room at my myriad of posters depicting movie stars and musicians and art pieces. The sound of my whirring fan filled the air.
I pushed the sheets off my body before looking to my right and stretching. Elli was still out cold, but at least she was breathing.
I turned my head down toward my desk, saw the mess of papers that adorned the dark wood and the clothes piled on the desk chair, and knew I would need to clean it up before my mom got back from her trip.
I miss you.
Dimitri’s words rang in my ears. My dream was fading quickly from my memory, but Dimitri’s words and sentiments were forever burned into my brain.
Am I moving on too quickly? Is there a proper time frame when it comes to moving on from a hallucinated husband? Are there even such things as baby steps in this case, or do I just have to dive in headfirst and hope I swim?
Do I even want to dive in and swim?
My body heated up, and my heart palpitated with anxiety.
I didn’t want to answer those questions so early in the morning—or at all—honestly. I wanted to just run away from my problems and never look back.
But I knew I couldn’t just run away.
I turned on my side to face Elli’s motionless form.
Her medium-length wavy hair was tousled and spread around her face. Her mouth was hanging open, exuding warm, alcohol-scented air in my direction. Her breathing was heavy, bordering on snores. She looked so peaceful, but I desperately needed to talk to her.
I nudged her legs with my foot.
She didn’t respond.
I nudged her harder. Still no response.
“Hey,” I said loudly.
Silence.
You leave me no choice.
I reached out, grabbed her shoulder, and shook her violently. Her breath caught, almost in a gasp, and she opened her eyes.
“Fucking shit!” she exclaimed, picking up her head and looking around. She groaned, gripping the sides of her head and shutting her eyes again.
“Fuck, my head hurts.”
She sounded like she was in pain, but I just laughed, knowing she probably had a pretty bad hangover.
“What time is it?”
I turned over and reached toward my bedside table, quickly checking my phone.
“Ten.”
“It feels like six,” she mumbled. I laughed and she groaned again before opening her eyes. “How was your night?” she asked, blinking a few times.
“I saw Aaron there. The guy I met in cross-country who’s in my AP Psych class.” I was unable to stop the small smile spreading across my lips.
“Oh, yeah. Was he the guy you left me for?”
“Yeah. We talked in the front yard, and it was… nice.”
“So what do we think? Do we like this boy?”
“I don’t know about we, but I…” I paused, not wanting to answer that question yet.
“Well?” Elli probed.
“I had a weird dream about Dimitri last night.” I changed the topic to the true reason I’d woken her up. My voice came out quiet when I spoke Dimitri’s name, little waves of pain coursing through me. My heart felt like it was breaking again, though not as badly as it would have a few months ago.
“What was it about?” Elli adjusted her position on the bed to face me entirely. She was attentive and present, which was more than I would have expected from her in her current state.
“I don’t remember the details, but I remember Dimitri just… saying things that made me feel guilty for… possibly liking someone else. And then Aaron showed up, and it was like I was back at the party last night. But Dimitri was there, too, and it was just very confusing. It was almost like… like I was being forced to choose between the two.”
Elli hummed and nodded. “So do you feel guilty for choosing someone else over Dimitri?”
I paused and thought about her question. I felt silly for even hesitating. But at the same time, were those thoughts valid?
“Do you think… Do you think I need to move on quickly? Because he never existed? Like…” I rolled to my back and looked at the ceiling. My eyes traced patterns in the stucco as my mind raced with ideas and explanations. “Like, okay. Are my feelings for Dimitri valid? He never existed; so, therefore, my feelings shouldn’t be valid. Meaning I should move on quickly, right?” I turned my head back to Elli to see her reaction to my words.
Her eyes were downcast as she gave her answer serious thought. “Well, just because he wasn’t real, that doesn’t mean your feelings aren’t real, right? I mean, how do you feel? Do you feel ready to move on?” She looked me in the eye, and I held her gaze.
Was I ready?
“Honestly, I feel both ready and unready at the same time. I think a big part of me is scared. But another part of me is just ready to enjoy my life. Those two parts are kind of at war with each other, like the crazy side of me wants to hold on and the sane side of me is like, ‘get your shit together, Priya.’ But that means dating, and honestly, who would want to date me?”
Elli scoffed at me. “Priya, you’re kidding, right?”
“I’m really not. I’m not like you, Elli. I don’t have guys throwing themselves at me. Even last night at the party, that guy you introduced me to early on? He just completely ignored me and even tried to push me out of the way to talk to you,” I said.
She frowned. “So what? Evan is a dick. But you know who did want to talk to you? Aaron,” she said, matter-of-factly.
I stared at her and thought back over the night, replaying the way he acted, the things he said, and the way we interacted. I remembered the way he laughed with me, the way he was sweet and gentle and paused to analyze how comfortable I felt around him.
“I mean, yes. Yes, he did, but—”
“No buts, Priya. If you keep that attitude, you will for sure never get a guy because you’ll only push them away. If you don’t even let yourself like a guy, then you never will date. If you don’t try, you’ll never know.” She followed up that speech with a small burp. She closed her eyes and scrunched up her face.
“How much did you drink last night?” I asked, desperate for a change in topic.
“I think I only had five shots? I can’t remember after the third one, but I’m usually fine after just three, so it was definitely more than that.”
She’d certainly developed quite a tolerance for alcohol. “You’re a beast,” I said and she gagged.
“I’m also nauseous.” She turned to her back.
“Do you need anything?”
“Pedialyte.”
“What the… why?”
“It helps with hangovers. Do you have any?”
“Why the hell would I have that?” I said before lifting myself out of bed. “I’ll go buy some, though, so just hang tight. And if you need to throw up, use the trash bin. It’s on my side.” I rolled out of the bed. Elli simply groaned and gave me a thumbs up, making me laugh.
The Safeway was pretty dead, considering it was a Saturday morning. I scanned the aisles until I found the Pedialyte. It took so long to find I ended up spending twenty minutes on Google, searching if any other sort of electrolyte-filled drink would be fine. But, no, the short answer was Gatorade would not suffice.
I stared at the selection of Pedialyte options. There were different flavors of powders and liquids. I picked a strawberry-flavored liter, wondering if that would be big enough for Elli. She was a pretty small girl, but I figured she would need a lot of the fluid to replenish herself.
“Rough morning?”
I jumped and clenched the bottle to my chest before looking to see Aaron standing next to me, a smirk on his face.
“I swear, all I do is scare you,” he said.
“Sorry, I’m pretty skittish.”
“I even tried to walk very loudly toward you.” He mimed stamping his feet on the ground, and I gave a sheepish smile.
“Oops?”
He laughed. “No worries. Is that for your friend?” he asked with a nod toward the bottle in my hands.
“Yeah. She woke up feeling like crap. What about you?” I asked, looking at the basket in his hands and noticing a liter of the same liquid resting at the bottom, although he had the original flavor. “Did you finally have fun after I left?”
He followed my gaze with his eyes before vigorously shaking his head. “No! I mean, yes. But I mean…” He was tripping over his words. I looked at him curiously, wondering what had made him lose his cool demeanor.
“This is for my friend,” he said finally, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Ah.”
“But honestly, I didn’t have that much fun after you left. I had, uh, more fun talking to you.” He coughed a little at the end of his sentence.
Butterflies took wing in my stomach, and my face warmed with a blush. I looked down at the ground, trying to hide my reaction.
“I liked talking to you too,” I said, and when I looked up again, I saw his face had lit up with a bright smile that I couldn’t help but mirror.
The moment was broken when I felt my phone ring and reached into my pocket to find a text from Elli, wondering where I was.
“I gotta go. Elli is demanding her Pedialyte, but I’ll see you on Monday?” I said, already starting to walk past Aaron.
“Wait!” Aaron’s abrupt outburst made me pause in my tracks. I turned back to him and saw he was fidgeting with the basket in his hands.
“Would you… uh…want to maybe, like, go out for dinner? Tonight? Or… whenever.”
My jaw fell open slightly, and I stared at Aaron, shocked that he would ask me, of all people, on a date. I quickly made a show of coughing into my arm to mask my open jaw and put it back in place.
“Ummm…”
You’re already moving on?
I couldn’t silence Dimitri’s voice from my dream. My heart and mind started to race, and my skin felt clammy, hot, and tingly, like a bunch of needles were pricking my skin.
I stared at Aaron and tried to think beyond my past and the horrors it included. I thought back to my checklist, to the very last item that I had tried to remove from the list entirely—getting a boyfriend. I thought about the fourth item, liking a real boy.
Was I ready for this? Could I do this? What about my baggage?
If you don’t try, Priya, you’ll never know. Elli’s words echoed in my head.
Don’t you love me anymore? Dimitri’s voice responded, the memories from my dream still vivid, almost real, as if Dimitri had spoken the words into my heart while I was sleeping.
I closed my eyes momentarily. Then I opened them again and focused on Aaron, and the anxiety I had felt slowly melted away.
Aaron looked nothing like Dimitri. Where Dimitri was muscular, like a weightlifter, and towered over me with his golden blond hair and hazel eyes, Aaron was lean from running, tall but not a giant, and while his demeanor was cool, his brown eyes, dark black hair, and single adorable dimple on his left cheek gave him a look that was still young and almost innocent. Dimitri was very flirtatious, far from innocent, and could be obnoxious in the most lovable way. He was shameless and bold, and he had been from the first day I saw him.
Aaron was sweet and gentle. He was friendly, but not loud, and I could tell he wasn’t confident in himself when it came to asking me out. He was very much a teenage boy. In fact, this all felt very high school, like we were just teenagers, unsure of how to approach someone we liked. I could feel his uncertainty and his bashfulness, which the twenty-something Dimitri had lacked. Aaron’s insecurity, which was so unlike Dimitri, was refreshing. It was obvious that we were both insecure around each other, and that made the moment, the feelings, and the person in front of me feel very real. This was supposed to be awkward.
Maybe this was my first step to having crushes and feelings for guys who were real—and my age.
When I snapped back to the present and out of my head, Aaron looked almost dejected.
“Hey, you know, never mind. I can see you’re trying to find a way to let me down easy, so—”
“Yes!” I said, panicking and stopping him too abruptly. “I-I mean, no, I’m not trying to reject you. I’m trying to say… yes, I’d like to get dinner. Sometime. Tonight doesn’t work.” I couldn’t believe I’d been so stuck in my thoughts that it had almost cost me a date with Aaron. I needed to think less and act more.
Aaron’s face morphed from surprise to relief, then to complete joy.
“How does… tomorrow sound?” I asked, and Aaron nodded vigorously.
“Sounds great. Can I… uh… Can I get your number?” Aaron asked, reaching for his phone, and I laughed with relief.
“I mean, I guess,” I said with an eye roll, surprising even myself with my show of sarcasm. Usually, my sarcasm was reserved for only family and Elli. But Aaron didn’t seem to mind it. He laughed, and we traded phones. When I got it back, I saw that he’d included a heart next to his name.
“Cute,” I said as another text from Elli popped up—dramatic as ever.
“Thanks. I don’t actually get that a lot, so keep it coming.” I looked up at Aaron, and he winked.
“Okay, now I really have to go. But I’ll see you tomorrow?” I asked, confirming, and Aaron smiled.
“Wouldn’t miss it for anything.” He smiled and showed off that dimple. After a quick goodbye, I rushed off.
You’ve already forgotten me? The words floated through my head again, and I sighed as I paid for the drink and walked out of the store.
I love you, Dimitri. But I have to move on.
When I arrived back at the house, Elli was sitting in my living room watching TV on mute with subtitles on.
“Jesus Christ, took you long enough. What were you doing?” she groaned, and I rolled my eyes before setting the Pedialyte down on the couch next to her.
“You’re welcome,” I said sarcastically. She smiled meekly before cracking open the bottle and taking a few chugs. “And if you must know, I saw Aaron. And we have a date tomorrow.” My face broke into a smile.
Elli’s eyes widened. She stopped downing the Pedialyte and squealed, “This. Bitch. Said, and I quote: ‘Who would want to date me?’ And what did she just say? She has a date?”
I tried to contain my laughter at her obnoxious screaming, but when she finished with a wince and immediately set the closed bottle of Pedialyte down, holding her head and groaning, I couldn’t help it.
“Serves you right for screaming at me,” I whispered, and she sighed, ignoring the pointed remark. It was so like her to not apologize. Even when we were kids, she would never apologize with her words, although she always did with her actions.
One time when we were in the second grade, we fought over a math problem.
We were sitting at the counter in her kitchen, eating our usual snack of pepperoni and mint chocolate chip ice cream. Her house had an open floor plan, so the TV in the living room was easily visible in the kitchen. But our trivial fight rose above the noise of the TV.
“I hate you! You’re wrong!” she’d yelled at me.
“Well, I hate you, too, cuz I’m right!” I’d yelled back, feeling the tears sting my eyes.
At the time, I thought our friendship was over forever.
Elli’s family moved a few neighborhoods away earlier that year, so I couldn’t just pick up my stuff and walk home like I used to. I had to sit at the counter doing my homework until my mom was done with work and able to pick me up. Tears had splattered down in staggered droplets onto my homework while I tried to keep solving multiplication problems.
Five minutes later, I was about to give up and call my mom, even though I knew she didn’t like to be bothered at work when it wasn’t an emergency, but then my quiet sobs were interrupted by a folded paper sliding over the counter toward me. I hiccupped and looked over at Elli, who was looking down at her homework. I looked at the folded letter, picked it up, and opened it. Then I let out a sigh of relief.
“You were right” was written in Elli’s curlicue handwriting.
I looked at her, then back at the paper before writing down my response and sliding it back to her.
“Hey, don’t cry, okay? You were right. Now help me with this other problem.” She shoved her homework into my face after reading my note and I laughed.
The memory flitted through my mind, in my head one second and gone the next, and I smiled at Elli.
“Do you want to watch reruns of The Nanny?” I asked, earning me a slow nod.
We got comfortable on the couch, cuddled up next to each other, and settled into a comfortable silence.
“Are you staying over for dinner?” I asked groggily after the sixth or seventh episode.
“Yup.”
“What do you want to eat?” I asked as I rubbed at my face and stretched.
“I don’t know.”
“All right, you have two options. Pizza or bean and cheese burritos,” I said, and she hummed as she thought about her options.
“Burritos, please.”
I smiled, knowing she would choose that option. I hated those burritos, but I’d offered to make them anyway because she loved them like no one else.
“I’m going to go shower, and I’m stealing some of your clothes,” she said when she finally lifted herself off the couch. She hobbled across my view and up the stairs.
A few minutes later, my phone rang with its text tone.
Aaron: How does sushi sound for tomorrow?
I immediately became alert and sat up straight on the couch, staring at the phone screen as I thought about what to say in response.
Does “Sounds good” work? Should I add an exclamation mark? Will I sound too excited? Why is this so hard? It’s literally just responding to a text.
“Elli!” I yelled as I got up off the couch and ran up the stairs to my room, taking them two at a time. I burst into my bedroom and tested the knob on my bathroom. When I found it unlocked, I cracked the door open slightly and let my face peak through the crack, keeping my eyes closed.
“Elli!” I moaned, making Elli yelp.
“Shit! Priya. What the fuck?”
“Aaron texted me! And I don’t know what to say,” I groaned, and Elli groaned with me.
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘How does sushi sound for tomorrow?’” I repeated the text back to Elli, and there was a tense pause between us.
“You are unbelievable! Just fucking reply to the boy.”
“But… but… it’s not that easy!”
“Yes, it is. Just act like he’s not the boy you like and reply to him. All you have to say is ‘Sounds good.’” I sighed.
I left the bathroom door ajar and slid down the outer wall next to it, trying to get a grip on myself.
Priya, you’re acting stupid. He’s just a boy. Stop acting like he’s a celebrity or like you don’t know how to speak properly.
I quickly sent a text to Aaron letting him know sushi was great, and I threw my phone across the floor toward my bed.
“Elli, what’s wrong with me?” I asked when I heard the water shut off. The shower door opened, and the metal towel rack screeched as she pulled a towel off of it.
“Other than your lack of regard for personal space?” she asked rhetorically before sighing. “It’s okay to be nervous. You’re new to this. Whereas most of us have had years of practice talking to boys by our sophomore year of high school, you had a strict mom who didn’t even let you speak a boy’s name in the house who wasn’t family or a celebrity. It’s okay to not know how to talk to a boy.” The bathroom door opened further, and Elli stepped out in a towel and walked over to my closet.
“But doesn’t talking to Dimitri count as talking to a boy?” I asked quietly, and Elli poked her head out of my closet.
“Baby girl, no. I don’t know how to explain this to you. I feel like you and Dimitri had a lot of firsts, but they weren’t representative of how real life is. Yes, they were real to you, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t acknowledge what you felt, but I wouldn’t count them as real experiences. It’s like counting dreams as real experiences.” Elli’s soft tone did not prevent a bit of anger from rising in me.
But why shouldn’t he count? Why shouldn’t I count our experiences? So what if he was like a dream?
I brought my legs up toward my chest and wrapped my arms around them, hugging my knees. The anger and pain simmered steadily. I knew I was thinking irrationally, but I couldn’t help it. Elli was right, but it still felt painful to acknowledge. And what made it even harder was that I was also upset with myself that I was so begrudgingly accepting the truth. Why was it so hard? Why couldn’t I just always think rationally?
Did I need to increase my medication dosage? Would that help?
Probably not.
Somehow, I knew it wasn’t a matter of medication.
Elli’s legs appeared in my line of vision as she walked over to where I was sitting and plopped down in front of me, wearing a pair of pajama shorts and a t-shirt. She sat cross-legged and pulled her wavy hair up into a messy bun.
“What’s going through your head, Priya?” she asked.
I paused for a few seconds as I gathered my thoughts in a way that could be shared coherently. “I just… feel hurt and angry over this situation, you know? I think the hardest part is convincing myself to let go of unhealthy habits, like believing that Dimitri is real, or was real, or could be real. But it’s hard when the enemy of your own happiness is yourself.”
“It’s okay to feel what you feel, and if you need to let the unhealthy thoughts out, if you need to let the crazy out, then do that. Let it out. But don’t ruminate over it. Just let it out and move on from it. Give yourself the permission and the space to be crazy. Like a grace period.”
I mulled over her words, then nodded. “You’re right. I’ll just let the crazy out whenever I need to, then go back to being… me, when I’m ready.” I sighed.
Elli unfurled her body and stood up. “Good. Now let’s go make some burritos. I’m starving.”