I FINISH MY DINNER when everyone else is only halfway done—except Robbie, who’s probably two-thirds there.
In other circumstances, I would’ve savored Mom’s mac and cheese, the warm smell of which fills our kitchen. Right now, however, I’m close to jumping out of my seat. My knee bounces under the table, and I’m expecting the glare I receive from Mom when I check my phone.
My dad, who’s giving the mac and cheese the respectful pace it deserves, eyes my plate in confusion. “Did you guys not eat before you drove down?”
“Nope,” I reply quickly. In fact, Joe, Lacey, Reed, and I had lingered in Flagstaff until the last moment we could without risking heavy traffic on the way home. Reed dropped me off outside about an hour ago. The trip was perfect with the exception of the mild discomfort between Joe and Lacey when we got there, which gradually disappeared over the first day spent walking in the wilderness while sunlight glittered through the trees. Joe and Lacey settled into respectful friendship, helped by the collective understanding this might be the last time the four of us hang out like this. I want to believe we’ll remain close through and after college. But I also know people change.
Mom frowns. “Would you like more potatoes?”
On other nights, I really, really would. They’re the kind she’s roasted into crispy, salty wedges. “Nope,” I say. “I’m good. I really want to go unpack, so I might just head to my room.” I push confidence into my voice, hoping I sound convincing despite inventing this on the spot. In reality, I couldn’t be less interested in unpacking right now.
It was the wrong thing to say, I realize quickly.
While Mom’s expression hardly changes, I detect the new suspicion settling over her end of the table. “Plans tonight?”
“No,” I reply.
Yes. I do have plans. Plans currently returning life to the butterflies in my stomach, including some I’ve never felt before.
“You just spent a whole week with your friends,” my dad says. “Can’t we have more than twenty minutes with you before you go do whatever it is Reed has planned tonight?” He sounds less stern than disappointed, which is sweet and makes me feel guilty.
“I’m not going to Reed’s,” I say honestly.
Mom, however, is never one to miss an evasive response. “Who do you have plans with, then?” she asks, her voice still light and insinuation still sharp.
Finally, frustration starts to cut into my excitement. My knee stops jumping under the table, and I meet my mom’s stare. “I’m not going anywhere,” I reply firmly and again not falsely. Robbie quietly reaches for more salad.
“Then tell us more about your trip,” Mom counters.
I check the clock on my phone. There’s no way I’ll get out of this discussion in time if I keep debating my mom. Instead, I stand sharply. Part of me wishes I could explain why I can’t explain what I’m leaving to do. It’s not that I don’t want to tell my parents what my plans are. I just . . . don’t know what my plans mean yet. “I’ll tell you tomorrow,” I say measuredly. “I have a call right now.”
Mom blinks. Genuine interest flits over her features. “With who?”
I can’t stifle my groan. “Does it matter?” I shoot back. I’m certain I have, like, fifteen seconds to get to my room and open my computer.
“I’m just curious,” Mom replies.
I feel a flush rising into my cheeks. This was not the discreet exit I’d envisioned.
“Oh, come on,” Robbie says. “It’s obviously with Patrick.”
The room goes still, except for Robbie, who finishes loading lettuce onto his plate. With gusto, my brother spears his salad with his fork.
“She’s been texting him under the table for weeks,” he elaborates past his bite.
Suddenly, the passing seconds feel like my second-most-important problem. I give Robbie the most vicious glare I can muster. Once a traitorous little brother, always a traitorous little brother.
“Patrick?” Mom and Dad repeat in cartoonish unison. They sound pleased—too pleased. This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell them. The hopes I’ve held on to for this call feel fragile enough that the prodding of one person—let alone four people—could crush them.
Honestly, I ought to have known someone in my family would notice. Patrick and I have continued our casual texting over the past weeks. Even in Flagstaff, I found myself sending him pictures from our hike while Patrick kept up a steady stream of questions and conversation. In moments, I was hit with such intense déjà vu—when I was sneaking glances at my phone while surrounded by friends, or waking up to find a message from him waiting for me. Sometimes it hurt. Sometimes it felt like flying.
While I would often have to remind myself we weren’t together, the new ebb and flow of our conversation made it easier to remember, if not effortless. There were times when we’d text for hours on end, others when we’d go days without hearing from each other. Always, though, we’d find our way to the conversation again.
It feels healthier, in a way. While there’s no pressure to communicate every little thing, our connection is still undeniably strong. Our steady back-and-forth is its own sort of loving. I don’t know what it means. This call is supposed to help me figure it out.
“You’re talking to Patrick?” Mom’s curiosity has converted fully into enthusiasm. “Are you two . . . ?”
“No,” I reply immediately. Then I remember exchanged photos, new jokes, and déjà vu, and the picture complicates. “I don’t know,” I amend.
“They won’t be anything if you don’t let Siena leave,” Robbie interjects, in what I need a second to recognize is actual helpfulness.
Mom is silent until she abruptly smooths her napkin. “Well, what are you waiting for? Go! Say hi for us.”
While she practically shoos me out, I catch Robbie’s eye, knowing we’re sharing the same internal eyeroll. I walk quickly to my room before I’m waylaid by any further questions. Grabbing my laptop, I sit down on my bed with my earbuds. My heart pounds. I can’t name the emotions coursing through me. I just know they’re there. With the rush of feeling intense and everywhere, I move my finger to click Patrick’s name on the screen.
He picks up immediately.
“Hey,” I say, failing to sound nonchalant. My voice is tight, breathless. “Sorry I’m late.”
Patrick is in his room. It’s searingly familiar despite my having only seen it on my one visit to Texas, and I have the sensation of peering into a dream. He’s sitting at his desk, the light from his lamp illuminating his face. “No problem,” he says. “It’s good to see you.”
They’re trivial words, but somehow, their lightness lends them weight.
His eyes roam over the screen, taking me in. He looks slightly different, his hair a little shorter and a little lighter from the summer sun, his nose perhaps a tad sunburned. But his eyes—his eyes are as warm as I remembered. The feeling hits me square in the chest. It’s some strange relief to have him in front of me again. Like coming home.
I grin, and it does me in a little. Tears prick my eyes. I’ve shed plenty of them over Patrick in the past few months, but never this kind. I want to cry from how good this feeling is.
Patrick is feeling the same. I see him, pixelated over the mediocre Wi-Fi, and I know he is. He’s grinning one of his unrestrained, ebullient grins I used to love so much. His eyes are watery, glinting in the lamplight. When he laughs, I know it’s not because this is funny. It’s out of pure joy.
I laugh with him, wiping a tear from my eyes. “It’s really good to see you, too,” I say.
The joy in me changes into a warm ache, one I identify instantly, effortlessly. I love him. I never stopped. Not over weeks and months, over silence and sporadic conversation, over new starts and old rhythms. In all that time, it hasn’t dimmed. I settle into my cushions, content just to know this, to have him on my computer screen in my lap.
“How’s your family?” Patrick asks. It’s a nothing question, yet from him, right now, it’s everything.
I fill him in with enthusiasm, catching him up on Robbie’s antics and my mom’s lovingly overbearing inquisitiveness. I ask him the same, and about his friends, and about his summer. And the minutes pass, and the hours. Suddenly, my computer is nearly out of battery and I’m reaching for my charger, not wanting this to end.
Patrick doesn’t want it to end, either. It’s obvious from how he hasn’t stopped smiling pretty much the entire time.
I’m coming to appreciate that one of the luckiest things in the world is never running out of things to say to someone. Patrick and I don’t, the entire night. When my throat begins to hurt from talking, I check the clock on my computer screen—then recheck it. It’s nearly one in the morning. Which means it’s even later for Patrick.
“Crap, it’s late,” I say. “You should get some sleep.” I hope he hears I’m only being considerate. I certainly don’t want to hang up.
Patrick’s eyes dart to the clock in the corner of his screen, widening a little when he sees the time. “I probably should,” he says reluctantly. “But . . . this has been a lot of fun.” He doesn’t say it like he’s closing something off. It’s half of an invitation.
“It has,” I agree, ready to supply the other half. “We should do it more often.”
I feel something unfamiliar when the words leave me—the constraint of distance. If there weren’t thousands of miles between us, I would ask him out on a date. I hope he knows, though, that another call wouldn’t be as friends.
I’m on the verge of clarifying when he speaks up. “Actually, Siena, I have a question for you,” he says, just slightly louder and faster, a spring-loaded sentence.
I straighten up, nerves and excitement rushing into me. I should be exhausted, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never been more awake.
He meets my eyes in the camera. “You asked me once why I liked you. I didn’t give you a good answer.”
“I remember.” It was Thanksgiving, when I doubted we were going to make it. I was searching for a reason to stay instead of finding that reason in myself.
“I didn’t give you a good enough answer because I didn’t have a good enough answer.” Patrick rubs his palms together. In the gesture, I know he’s nervous just like me, one of infinite details of him encoded in my mind probably forever. He goes on. “I just liked you for obvious reasons—you’re kind, you’re smart, you’re pretty. I think I took liking you for granted.”
I say nothing, not hiding from how this hurts. While Patrick’s and my relationship is over now, it’s difficult to hear it was founded, in part, on just because.
“Siena, what I know now is how incredibly insufficient, lazy, and just plain wrong I was,” he says.
His words are once more an electric current.
“I should have liked you for your constant curiosity, for the way you find opportunity everywhere. I should have liked you for how you helped me realize what was exciting in my life here. I like you for your courage, Siena—the courage it takes to not know yourself yet and find the question inspiring instead of intimidating. It’s incredible. It hasn’t been easy since we split up, but it’s let me see you—us—more clearly.”
My reply jumps out of me. “You said like. Present tense.” It’s not as if everything he’s just said didn’t nestle itself into the most precious part of my soul. Just, the one word stood out.
Now Patrick smiles, eyes brimming. “I said like.”
Heart thudding, I feel my expression match his. “Well. You don’t need my forgiveness. I should have been better to you. I regret things, too. But I’m glad we’re doing this.”
“I’m really glad,” he agrees. “So glad that . . . Well, Siena, do you—would you want to get back together?”
It’s indescribable, hearing my hopes out loud. While he continues, the happy haze of what he’s said wraps over me with the warmth of desert sun, the cracked-soda fizz of sweet delight, and the hugeness of canyon nights.
“I know we’re going to different states for college, and it would mean more long distance,” he says. “But I don’t care. I want to be with you. However I can.”
Now I’m crying for real. Tears spill down my smiling cheeks. I’m nodding, unable to speak just yet. When I find my voice again, it comes out choked with joy. “I’ve tried a lot of new things this year,” I muster, telling the story of a year in nine words. “But, Patrick, by far the worst was being without you.”
Patrick’s smile touches me through the screen.
“So yes,” I say. “Yes, I’d like that.”