MOM SAYS IT’S TRAGIC THAT THE BAY AREA DOESN’T HAVE seasons. She says it screws with our circadian rhythms or something. But I’ve never known any different, so it feels like fall to me, even if it is seventy degrees during the day. There are a few trees here and there with leaves changing color. Night has been coming a little sooner each day.
I have a big project due in my Political Science class before Thanksgiving break and I’ve had to work with a partner, which is something I would have usually detested, but it hasn’t actually been that bad. James is pretty cool. I’ve gotten to know him since I stopped sitting at the lunch table with the stoners and started sitting with him and a handful of guys who are all pretty different in mostly interesting ways. They’re not “cool,” but they’re not losers. They’re the kinds of guys who fly under the radar in high school because their focus is elsewhere, on the future, on becoming bigger versions of themselves.
I’m riding in James’s car. We’ve been mostly working at his house in the Berkeley Hills, but today he wanted a change of scenery. He’s probably sick of his mom checking on our progress every half hour.
“Where should we go?” he says. “Somewhere on Piedmont? College?”
“What about Telegraph?”
“Berkeley or Oakland?”
“Oakland, obviously.”
I don’t know what I’m thinking. It’s like there’s a beacon inside my head, blinking, beeping, telling me my destination, opening my mouth and speaking the directions to James. Another part of my brain says Are you crazy? but I can barely hear it.
James parks in front of the yoga studio and we get out of the car. A tilting man with bloodshot eyes stumbles in front of a perky, ponytailed woman pushing a stroller and talking on her cell phone. What a strange place this is, all these worlds bumping into each other and barely even noticing.
As James opens the door to the café, I stop dead in my tracks.
“Dude, are you coming?” James says.
It’s then that I know. I just know. I feel it in my bones. Evie’s here.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m coming.”
There is no feeling of surprise when I see her standing at the counter with Cole. Just a warmth that starts in my feet and moves up into the center of me. But it is heavy and I can’t move. I stand there, staring at her, watching her easy laugh, feeling both like I know her, all of her, but we’ve barely met. It’s been months since we’ve seen each other, months of my trying to let her go. I’m a different person now. She’s different. Everything’s different.
James approaches the counter and orders his drink from Cole, who hasn’t noticed me yet. I count quietly to myself, one, two, three, and then Evie’s eyes meet mine like I knew they would, as if we are driven by the same timing. The dopey grin spreads across my face. Her smile is warm, pure, radiating.
I don’t know how long we stare at each other. I don’t know how long James has been elbowing me in the side, saying, “Dude. Dude. Dude.”
“Oh,” I say. “Hey, James.”
“Are you going to order something or just stand there?”
“James,” I say, “I’d like you to meet my old friend Evie.”
“Hi, Evie,” he says suspiciously.
“Nice to meet you, James.” Her smile is soft. Peaceful.
“Yeah, um,” James says, “I’m going to sit down now.”
“Marcus,” Evie says, “this is my friend Cole.”
Cole smiles warmly. “Hi, Marcus.”
“Hey,” I say. “We already met,” I tell Evie.
“Oh yeah.” She laughs. “I forgot you came here snooping on me a while back.” She says this playfully, with no trace of anger.
“It’s been a while,” I say.
“Yes,” she says. “It has.” She smiles, and I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing I am, that maybe it has been a perfect amount of time that has passed, that maybe now is a perfect time for it to be over.
“It’s good to see you,” I say.
“Yes,” she says. “It is.”
Or maybe not. What if we’re still bad for each other? What if we’re still poison? She said before that I inspired her recklessness. I know now that I turned her into an extension of David, that I let her self-destruction define our love. That can’t be what we are to each other. Not anymore. Not ever again.
So what if we start over from the beginning? What if we start by telling each other everything?
We stand there for a long time, staring at each other. There’s so much to say, we are only capable of silence.
“Hey,” Cole says, and it’s only then, when the coffee shop suddenly explodes with movement and noise, that I realize time had paused in those short moments—everyone had stopped moving, the espresso machine stopped steaming, the coffee grinder stopped grinding, and the only thing that existed was the space between me and Evie, the energy passing between us, the question we were asking each other with our eyes: Should we try this again?
“Evie and I were talking about going to a movie later,” Cole says, and his voice calms me. I hardly know him, but something tells me I want to.
We both look at him. I notice a quick glance between him and Evie, a playful glint in Cole’s eyes.
“Want to join us, Marcus?” he says.
I look at Evie, searching her face for apprehension, for a sign that this is not what she wants. I feel a moment of panic. Is this what I want? But it is only a moment, small and fleeting. “Really?” I say.
“Yeah,” she says. “The more the merrier.”
What could our relationship look like when neither of us need saving?
My heart is beating so fast I think it might fly out of here. I look at Cole, who seems amused by the whole awkward situation. “Will that be weird for you?” I ask him. I think I am sweating.
He throws his head back in a big laugh. “I think I’m probably going be the most comfortable of all of us.”