“You signed it?”
“Hope you don’t mind,” he said, his brows furrowed, maybe worried.
“It’s…” Amazing. Charming. Sweet. “Nice.”
“Let’s go play!” Lilly said in a high-pitched whine cutting through our moment. She hadn’t been allowed outside without the parents in a while, and she was probably frothing at the mouth to run wild.
I groaned. “We have to get back inside before our parents get home from grocery shopping. Have to help wipe everything down.”
Neal nodded. “Yeah. I better get home, too. Have to finish cooking.”
“Here. This is for you.” I dangled the bag in front of him so he could grab it from the bottom.
He took it cautiously. “What’s this?”
“Bread.”
He regarded me for a few seconds.
“We make a lot of bread,” I explained. “It’s our family time thing. It’s sourdough. Took lots of tries to get it right, but my dad mastered sourdough starter.”
He looked at the bag in the most unexpected, perplexed, but appreciative way. “Are your parents going to be mad that you gave away food?”
“No. We still have bread left. Besides. You don’t have flour to make your own bread because people like us hoarded it. Now you can have bread with your pasta.”
He smiled big by the way his eyes squished up above his mask. I’d do anything to see those dimples. “I’d hug you if I could.”
My belly did flips until Lilly reminded us, “Six feet apart!”
“Right. Which is why I won’t. But maybe one day,” he said, hopeful.
I bit my lip. “Yeah. One day.”
One day, quarantine would be lifted.
One day, we’d be able to get within six feet and not need face masks and I’d be able to see his dimples in person.
One day, we’d stand right beside each other, his skin brushing mine, sparks coming to life, our fingers twitching as we slowly touched pinkies.
One day, we’d hold hands and not worry about sending anyone to the hospital.
One day, we’d hug and I would feel his heartbeat with my cheek against his chest.
One day, his arms would wrap around me and I’d smell him and feel safe.
One day, we would get to hang out, go to the movies, meet friends.
One day, he’d invite me over and play the guitar.
One day, I’d tell him that his music had soothed my anxiety and our balcony romance made me feel normal, special, human again.
One day, we might even kiss and it would be beyond amazing.
“One day” couldn’t come soon enough, but it would come.
I couldn’t wait for our “one day.”
The millennials have taken over TikTok.
I don’t know who invited them, or why they came, or why they think making jokes about the phrase per my last email is so damn funny, but here they are, all over my main feed, ruining my favorite app. Can’t they all go back to Instagram or wherever else they came from?
I drop my phone onto the couch and meander to the kitchen, where I pour myself a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch for my third lunch. Eve reaches across the kitchen island to snatch some out of my bowl before I pour in the milk, and I toss her the (now mostly empty) box.
“Hands off my snacks, please.”
She grins at me, swallowing. “Respect the older sister privileges, Harper, please.”
I snatch my bowl off the counter before she can reach for it again. Since she came home from NYU when they closed because of the pandemic, we’ve been running seriously low on all the good snacks. I grab a bag of pretzels out of the pantry on my way back to the living room to squirrel it away for later.
Eve follows me, the box of cereal propped up in her arms like a newborn baby. Smush, our family’s squashy pug, tips his head up when he hears the bag crinkle. I toss him a cereal from my bowl, and he almost catches it. It lands on the floor instead, and he does an accidental backflip as he tumbles off the couch in his eagerness to go after it.
Eve runs to fix his inside-out ear. I watch her go, biting back a laugh at Smush’s confused expression.
This is exactly the kind of thing I’d use to start a conversation with Alyssa Sanderson during group work in bio. We’re the only ninth-graders in the class, so Mr. Ray always lets us be in the same lab group. I used the time wisely. I’d tell her about the way Smush flopped onto the floor, tipping myself sideways in my desk chair to try and make her laugh, to let her nose to wrinkle up as her eyes brighten.
Her laugh is really cute. Plus, she’s the second-funniest person I know, after Eve, and every time I can get her to laugh feels like a win.
But we never really got from in-the-same-class friends to texting-after-school friends, so I haven’t talked to her since school closed.
Eve looks down at me, Smush flopped in her arms, his tongue lolling upside-down at me. I boop him on the nose, and he nips at my thumb.
“You okay?” Eve asks.
I tilt my head back, groaning. “No.”
She shifts Smush’s weight against her hip so she can free one hand to tug the end of my braid. “What’s wrong?”
I shrug. “I miss my friends.”
Especially my not-quite-close-enough-to-text-just-’cause friend. My overanalyze-her-wardrobe-in-a-desperate-attempt-to-see-if-she’s-gay friend.
My wish-we-weren’t-“friends” friend.
Eve narrows her eyes at me. “You FaceTimed Anna for three hours this morning.”
“Are you suggesting I only have one friend?” I cross my arms over my chest.
She raises an eyebrow at me.
“Okay, fine, I only have one friend—starting a new high school with social anxiety is hard, okay?”
But what Eve didn’t realize is I did have a few friends who were just not in the close-enough-to-FaceTime variety. Anna and I have been best friends since elementary school. We’re so comfortable with each other that we can spend hours hanging out on video
