“This,” I interrupt. “This is what I’m talking about. This insistence that we’re suddenly such good friends.”
“But…” And here he looks genuinely confused. “Sorry, I don’t understand. I thought we were friends again.”
“We were. We are.” I wonder how many times we can utter the word “friend” before it ceases to have meaning. “But you don’t need to constantly remind me of that. Calling me ‘friend,’ ‘pal,’ all this enthusiasm… It isn’t you.”
Unless it’s his way of keeping me firmly in friend territory to stave off any latent feelings I might have for him. To remind me that’s what I am.
“Maybe college changed me.” Now he’s talking to the floor as the boat sways us back and forth. If I look anywhere near as grotesque as I feel, with my clothes sticking to me in all kinds of uncomfortable places, I don’t blame him.
I shove a strand of hair out of my face, though all I want to do is hide behind it. “That email I sent you. That thing we’re not talking about, or the thing we’re talking about without actually talking about it. I put it all out there. And I don’t just do that. Like… ever. And maybe we’ll have this great, fun summer together as friends and then you’ll go to California again at the end of it, and we won’t talk for another year.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“You don’t know what it was like, being ignored like that for a whole year. I know what I said about that boat gesture, about your relationships, wasn’t my finest hour. But was it so awful that you didn’t want to be friends with me anymore? Because we could have talked about it. All you had to do was tell me. Whatever it was that happened last year, it hurt me, too. I felt terrible for months.” I try to meet his eyes, willing him to look at me. “But I also don’t want to push you if this isn’t something you’re comfortable talking about.”
Finally, he faces me. It’s unfair that the heat has turned me into a sweat-monster and made him somehow look… better? What the hell. The darkest tendrils of hair closest to his head are damp, and his tie is loose, wrinkled, like it’s had a rough night too. What’s changed the most, though, is his expression. The cut of his jaw is sharper, his brows twin thick slashes.
“And yet here you are, pushing me.” This annoyance is the most real he’s been all day.
“Because I don’t know what else to do!” I say, his annoyance rubbing off on me. “Being friends again, sure, it’s awesome in theory. But I don’t know how to be friends with someone who’s still holding so much back. Which makes me wonder if we were ever that close to begin with.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” he says, “that maybe the reason I’m holding back isn’t about you at all? That it’s not about the fight or that boat gesture? Which I didn’t even fully go through with after you left, by the way. You were right. It was pretty fucking ridiculous.”
“Of course that occurred to me.” There’s not nearly enough space in here. I’m suffocating. “I assume it’s not about me, or you would’ve had the decency to send me a text longer than four fucking words all year. And—I didn’t realize you hadn’t gone through with it. I couldn’t tell, since you and Elisa are still… close.”
“Elisa?” He sounds perplexed. “Elisa Dawson? What does Elisa have to do with any of this?”
“A not-insignificant amount!” I force myself to take a few too-shallow breaths. “I see you laughing with her and the other waiters, or her telling you that your cake is like—like an orgasm, and I’m just—” I break off, regretting my word choice, even though I was only borrowing hers. “I’m just wondering who the real Tarek actually is, because I sure as hell don’t think I’m seeing it.”
“Are you jealous?” He takes a step closer, curiosity quirking his mouth. Still upset, but now there’s amusement mixed in.
I can’t decide how I feel about it. I press my feet firmly into the floor, wishing it didn’t feel as rocky down here. “No,” I say in a small, unconvincing voice. A lift of his eyebrows confirms he knows I’m bluffing. “Fine. Maybe I am a little jealous. I’m jealous because you and I used to have that. And now what we have—it’s weird, Tarek, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”
At that his eyes turn to steel. He lets out a half laugh, like he knows this isn’t funny, but he’s so frustrated that he doesn’t know what else to do. “You want to know why I didn’t answer your email, Quinn? It’s not because of the fight, or the email. It’s because I nearly flunked out of school.”
“You… what?”
“I wanted to write you back. I was going to. I swear. But I knew it wasn’t the kind of thing I could dash off in a few minutes. I—I wanted to take my time with it.” He exhales deeply, as though letting go of the anger, and what’s underneath is a vulnerability I’ve never seen from him. His shoulders droop as he shrinks back against a washing machine. “But the time… It kept slipping away from me. I would get so tired, and then I’d wake up and all I’d want to do was go back to sleep. I slept through a couple of classes, and I thought, ‘It’s okay, I’m adjusting.’ Then I slept through a couple more—a full week. And there were all these events for freshmen, and I couldn’t bring myself to go out to any of them.”
Tarek alone in his dorm room is nothing like how I imagined him spending this past year. It’s staggering, how wrong I was.
“Sometimes, going downstairs to the dorm cafeteria felt impossible,”
