I meet LD all next week at the diner. Billie still doesn’t show. LD tells me he went to Iowa for some preseason football stuff. I try not to panic, but it doesn’t help. Is he going to come back before the start of college? Is he going to see me one last time? I keep thinking back to the festival, and to how close we danced, cheek to cheek, and I hope that isn’t the last time I’ll ever see him.
“I’ll see him at reunions, right? And when he comes home for Christmas . . .” I mutter to myself, waiting at the counter to pay for lunch. LD and I flipped a coin, so I’m paying today while she steps into the bathroom to reapply her eyeliner.
Miss Maude, the waitress, asks me to give her a few minutes while she attends to Mike and all of Heather’s friends in the corner booth. The waitress looks harried—when ten people order different versions of egg whites with a side of turkey bacon, it gets a little hairy. I’m surprised they’re not waiting on Heather, who can’t come meet them until I return to the shop.
A weird twist of irony, really. I don’t mind waiting.
The diner door opens and Mike looks up. He nudges his chin behind me, and waves. Confused, I turn to the door.
It’s Micah with a bouquet of flowers. Orchids. The tips of their petals are a rosy, bright pink against his dark fur-lined coat. He hesitates at the door, looking at me, before looking down at the bouquet.
Orchids are my favorite.
“Hi,” he starts awkwardly.
“Hi,” I reply, just as awkwardly.
Oil stains his fingers, and he reeks of grease and exhaust, but really it just smells like home. Why did I have to fall in love with him? Why couldn’t I just be happy? He extends the bouquet to me. “I’m . . . sorry I was a dick.”
My eyebrows shoot up into my hairline. “You’re not mad at me?” I whisper, unable to stop myself. “You don’t hate me?”
His eyes widen. “Hate you? I—I’m an ass, Ingrid. I should’ve stopped Mike from picking on you. I should’ve stepped in. I should’ve done a lot of things. But I was so mad. When I saw you dancing with Bleaker . . .”
“Were you jealous?” I ask, oddly curious.
A small smile begins to touch the edges of his lips. I haven’t seen it in ages. It makes my belly ache. I wish things could go back to the way they were before. I wonder if some part of him wishes that, too. Maybe just a piece of him. A smidge.
He runs his first finger along an orchid. “Do you really like me? Do you?”
My mouth falls open.
“I mean, Mike could’ve just been pulling this out of his ass but . . .” He hesitates with a look up to me from underneath his long, dark eyelashes.
I’m paralyzed with what to say. “I . . . I don’t . . .”
“I mean, it’s okay if you do. I just, you know. I don’t think I can . . .” He huffs, trying to make his words come out the exact way he feels. But it’s hard—if I know one thing, I know how hard it is. “We’re best friends, Igs. You and me, it’s always been. You’re like my sister, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry you feel this way and I don’t, and I’m sorry I can’t. I just . . .”
I’m not sure what should hurt—the thought that I’m not enough or the realization that I never will be? But neither of them do, I’m realizing. I’m trying to dig down and find those flames of anger I had, those cracks of pain, but I can’t find them in me anymore.
I start shaking my head. “It’s okay—”
“It’s not okay, though, is it? You had these feelings and then I made you hook me up with—I’m an asshole, aren’t I? I’m . . .”
“I’m not mad. I’m not angry—Micah, you’re my best friend. You’ll always be my best friend. And I miss you. We miss you. That’s what hurts the most.”
His eyebrows jerk up. That, he was not expecting.
We miss you isn’t a sentence, it’s a declaration of how much of him is mixed into the foundations of our collective souls. We miss you means Come back, we’re crumbling. It means Please, just stay awhile. But We miss you, isn’t a plea to come back; it isn’t a request. It’s just three simple words stating more than the sentence can hold; it’s three simple words saying I know you won’t come back, not now, but we’ll be here when you do.
And that’s really what Grams was trying to tell me all along. What you love is the North Star that leads you home. I’m just not his home.
I never will be.
I hear Heather before I see her. The door above the diner dings and she floods in, perfume and dark silky hair and a bright smile. She wraps her arms around Micah’s middle and kisses his cheek. “Baby!” she calls. “I thought we were going to meet at the shop today!”
“I got out on lunch break late,” he replies, not quite a lie, and kisses her back. “You’re beautiful.”
“Ugh, don’t tell me that. I feel fat today—” When she tosses back her hair, she sees the orchids and gasps. “Oh, baby!” She takes them out of his hands and smells them. “You remembered!”
Micah’s face pinches. “Remembered?”
“Don’t play dumb.” She hits his chest with the orchids. My orchids. “Our one month! It’s today.”
“Uh, actually, they’re . . .”
“I really thought you were going to forget, but then I remembered how great you are. You are great, you know that?” She kisses him again, and steals away whatever he was going to say. “I have a surprise for you, too,” she adds coyly.
“A—a surprise?” he asks.
“A surprise,” she repeats, nodding, “later. Come on, let’s eat, I’m starving—oh Ingrid. There you are.”
“Here I am,” I echo.
“I didn’t know if you were coming back so I left.”
“I can see that.”
“I didn’t tell the boss.”
That . . . is a first. “Thank you?”
“Mmm.” Then she marches toward their booth at the other end of the diner, expecting him to follow.
He hesitates for a moment, glancing back at me with an apology in his eyes. “There’s a meteor shower tonight,” he says. “Do you want to . . .”
A truce. He’s calling a truce. I put on a smile. “Meet on your lawn or mine?”
“How about the middle?” he asks before Heather calls him from their booth, and he leaves for her. He doesn’t look back. I don’t expect him to.
A petal stays behind, pastel pink and darkened tip. I pick it up as LD returns, patting her victory curls. She glances at the piece of flower.
“What’s that for?”
“Nothing—c’mon.” I pocket the petals and leave. “Gotta get back to hell before Satan notices no one’s manning the counter.”