Chapter Eighteen

eighteen

My eight-minute drive home is set to the soundtrack of my phone dialing over and over. After a graceless exit from the Meyers house, I’ve barely taken my foot off the gas or my thumb off the call button below Ellie’s contact in my phone.

Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail of Ellie Meyers. Please leave a—

I smash my thumb against the end call button and try again. It rings for the final few blocks of Ellie’s neighborhood and keeps ringing as I turn back onto the main drag. Outside my window, the elementary school smears into the park smears into the houses of my neighborhood, and Ellie’s voicemail message starts up again just as the car bumps back into my driveway, launching me a solid three inches off my seat. God, I better slow down. It’s a miracle I wasn’t pulled over for going 40 in a 25. On any other day, I might call that good luck, but I don’t feel particularly lucky at the moment. I’m hurt, but more than that, I feel stupid. If it hurts this bad, I care more than I should.

I throw my car in park, hanging up on Ellie’s voicemail greeting for a third and final time. I don’t even know what I would say if she picked up, but she doesn’t, so it doesn’t really matter. She could be away from her phone, but more realistically, she’s giving me the silent treatment. We’re too old for this shit.

I snatch the tepid chaicoffski out of the cupholder and pop the lid before dumping it on the lawn. The awful sloshing noise it makes as it hits the icy grass is about on par with how I’m feeling. Inside the house, I kick off my shoes and ditch the cup before taking the stairs two at a time up to my room. I resent whatever leftover teenage instinct cues me to slam my door. Mom and Dad are still in Florida; I have no one to keep out.

I don’t even bother taking my coat off before crawling into bed, where I pout my way through drafting a text to Ellie. Everything I type reads as too angry or aloof or apologetic. After starting and deleting one too many drafts, I frisbee my phone to the end of the bed. In less than forty-eight hours, Ellie Meyers has gone from distant memory to fake girlfriend and back again. Maybe that was the truest version of her all along. A friend of convenience better left in the past.

I blink up at my ceiling and make a wish on a glow-in-the-dark star: I wish I were much younger or older than I currently am. Young enough for someone else to tell me what’s next or old enough to have figured it out already. Not just with Ellie; with all of it. Work and school and what comes next. I’m twenty-one years old and still stuck in the same pattern as sixteen-year-old Murphy, dumb and directionless in the face of shattered plans. Maybe I’m still the same clueless girl with the torn rotator cuff and no next steps. I still have the same decor, that’s for sure. Tie-off blankets, middle school softball trophies, a hedgehog ornament that became a year-round fixture—little testaments to bygone hobbies and interests and a time when you surrounded yourself with the things you liked as evidence that you liked them. I don’t even know how I’d replicate that now. I like the Cubs. Coffee. When my direct deposit hits. I like FaceTiming Kat and watching stupid videos that my mom doesn’t laugh at when I try to show her.

My breath skids and tumbles down my throat, like the air tripped over its shoelaces. I like Ellie. I’m ready to admit that. By some miracle, she’s into me too. If that’s all that mattered, we’d be golden. But that doesn’t mean our lives line up or that she’s ready to think about us instead of just her—and the truth is, I’m not either. We barely know each other. But we don’t even have the time to change that, to figure out us , especially now that she’s icing me out. I draw a breath and hold it there as I picture us back in the garage, throwing pitch after pitch, inching closer and closer to something warm and magnetic and real. Being with Ellie felt like being back on the softball team: I had a place and a role and a future that made sense. Without it, what do I have? A job, I guess. A best friend I see sometimes. And…weed. At least I’ll always have weed.

I roll out of bed and straight to my dresser to dig my stash bag out of my sock drawer. It’s a shitty black fanny pack with a bank logo on the front, a freebie I snagged at Pride a few years back. It’s ugly as hell and the frayed strap could fall off at any second, but it does what it needs to. I dump it out on my desk-turned-rolling-station and assess the usual lineup: a bright-blue grinder, papers, a Zippo lighter, cut-up pieces of note card for folding into filters, and a Mickey Mouse pencil that’s never been used for anything but stuffing weed into joints. I twist the grinder open and inspect what’s left. It’s a pretty pitiful amount, but it’s enough to get by until I can stop at the dispensary for pre-rolls tomorrow. No more rolling joints inside once Mom and Dad are back, unless I’m interested in an evening of stern looks set to the tune of “we’re not mad, we’re just disappointed.” They know I smoke, but at some point, we all silently agreed that “don’t ask, don’t tell” still flies as a good policy when it comes to drugs, even legalized ones.

I fold my crutch tight and pinch it against the paper, dismissing the thought that this might actually be the thing I’m best at. Kat’s refusal to learn how to roll a joint has given me years of practice. I wonder if Daniel can roll them or if she’s back to smoking bowls or, worse yet, not smoking at all.

By the time the Mickey Mouse pencil has been put to use, I’ve half forgotten the day behind me. It feels like any other ordinary day, and I don’t care to decide if that’s settling or sad. I should be celebrating Sip’s successful reopening, not moping over the one person who didn’t show up for it, but I don’t think there’s an ounce of celebration within me right now. There is, however, a deep loneliness, and only one person I want to call who might actually pick up. With Daniel still in town and dinner plans on their agenda…it’s a long shot, but it’s not zero. I dig my phone out of the comforter and hit dial on Kat’s number. Come on. Pick up pick up pick up.

“Heyyyyyyyyy!” Just the sound of her voice is stronger and more fast acting than a Xanax. “Heads up, you’re on speaker! Daniel’s here. We got ice cream.”

“Hi Murphy!” Daniel’s voice is faint, but enthusiastic.

“Hi Daniel.” I mindlessly flip open the lighter, then close it again. Open. Close. Open. Close. “Did you end up grabbing dinner downtown?”

“If ice cream from 7-Eleven counts as dinner, then yes. We were going to see if there were any tables at…Wait, turn left here! No, not the parking lot, the next one.” The squeal of tires on pavement is just as rattling through the phone as in real life. “Sorry.” Kat clicks her tongue. “Daniel’s driving.”

“I figured.”

“Did you end up swinging by Ellie’s?”

“Yeah.” I sink another inch lower into my comforter. “I’m home now.”

“And? How’d it go?”

“Um.” I swallow hard. Not a push back the tears kind of a swallow, but a do I really want to have this conversation in front of Daniel kind of swallow. The words are cramping up in the back of my throat. “Bad. It went bad.”

“Fuck, really?” Her tone shifts into sport mode. “What can I do? Do you need me?”

“Um. Kind of? I don’t know. Can you just call me back when you’re home?”

“No, I’m just gonna have Daniel drop me off. Whip around in the parking lot of this vein clinic, honey.”

I set down the Zippo and pick up the joint, something fresh to fidget with. “You really don’t have to do that.”

“Do you want me to?”

Of course I want her to. That’s why I’m calling. But it’s also selfish.

“You there, Murph?”

“Yeah,” I whisper. “I’m here.”

“Do you want me to come over?” Kat asks again, speaking a little slower this time, giving the question room to breathe.

“I, uh. I don’t want to take you from Daniel.”

“I’ll be fine,” Daniel says, and it doesn’t sound like he’s lying either. “Whatever you need to do.” It’s the best possible thing he could say.

“Um, yeah then, I do. I do want you to come over.”

“Cool,” Kat says. “See you in five.”

We hang up, and exactly five minutes later, the garage door growls open. I smile to myself. Good to know she still remembers the code.

“Murph?” Kat’s voice bounces off the vaulted ceilings, along with the sound of her shoes hitting the baseboards as she kicks them off. “You in your room?”

“Yup.”

“Coming.” Moments later, the shuffle of her socks across the hardwood turns to echoey thuds up the stairs and, finally, the squeal of my door being nudged open. “Knock knock?” Kat walks in, bringing the smell of both Ben and Jerry with her. Some sort of cookies and cream ordeal, if I had to guess.

“Did you bring your ice cream?”

“Nah, I scarfed it in the car,” she admits. “I didn’t want to be the asshole showing up with only a pint for myself.”

“We could’ve shared,” I point out.

“Yeah right. Cool if I borrow shorts?” I’m not sure why she bothers asking, and before I can respond, she’s tugging open the bottom-left dresser drawer, digging for her favorite—a worn-down pair of shorts with my parents’ alma mater printed across the butt. Luckily, they’re clean, and she shimmies out of her jeans and tugs them on before plopping down next to me, my fluffy white comforter giving a puff of air. “It smells like weed in here.”

“Are you surprised?” I hold up the joint in one hand and my Zippo in the other. “Wanna smoke this?”

Her shoulders bounce up an inch. “Sure, I’m not driving. Inside or outside?”

“Inside.” I throw back the covers and swing my feet over the side. “It’s too cold.”

“Your parents won’t mind?

“They would, but they’re not here. We can just blow out the window or whatever.”

I flip the lock on the window and muscle it open a few inches, bristling at the cold air leaking in. “We better smoke fast.” I crouch down, blocking the wind with one hand and holding the Zippo in the other till the joint drooping from my lips crackles and burns.

“God, I missed the Zippo.” Kat shakes her head at half tempo. “I need to buy one. I get so annoyed when the wind keeps blowing it out and you have to…” She mimes flicking a lighter again and again, her thumbnail scraping against the bend of her pointer finger. “You know?”

“Yeah, you need a Zippo,” I agree through the sides of my mouth, lips rolled in and joint firmly in place. When I exhale, I press my mouth as close to the window screen as I can, release the smoke into the twilight, then pass to Kat. “This shit makes me feel eighteen again.”

Her eyes hang low and unimpressed. “You say it like it was so long ago.”

“It feels like long ago.”

“I guess. Things aren’t that different though.” Kat looks me up and down, the lit joint dangling between her fingers. “I mean, you’re still the same.”

“Yeah,” I grunt, glaring at my softball trophies. “I’ve been feeling that a little too much lately.”

“No, it’s a good thing,” Kat reassures me. “And I think I’m the same in most ways too, right? I mean, I think we both changed, like, a little. But in similar ways? And another—”

“You gonna talk or you gonna smoke?”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” She takes a long drag and practically kisses the screen when she exhales. “Anyway, when we were eighteen, we were already smoking in my basement. So this is more like seventeen.”

We’re not stoned yet, but we laugh like we are, then smoke like we desperately need to be. In less time than it took for Kat to get here, we’ve burned this thing down to the filter.

“All right, I think it’s done,” Kat says, coughing between every two syllables. “All right.” Cough . “I think.” Cough . “It’s done.” Cough .

I make the gimme motion, tapping four fingers against my open palm until Kat passes it back.

“Yeah, that’s pretty roachy.” I grind the barely lit end into the only spot in the house my mother won’t notice ash: the little gap of space between the sill and the screen. “Don’t tell Susan.”

“Oh, I’m calling her immediately,” Kat jokes, pressing buttons on an invisible phone and holding it to her ear. “Hello, 911? Your daughter put a joint out in your window.”

“Wait.” I choke back a laugh. “You called 911, not my mom.”

Her eyes stretch to their limit, bouncing between me and her invisible phone. “Uhhhh. Sorry, wrong number.”

A unison THC-fueled cackle explodes out of both of us, loud enough that neighbors several doors down would be within their rights to actually call 911. I don’t care. Not right now, not with Kat.

“Oh my God, close it.” She bats a limp wrist at the open window. “We’re so loud. Plus I’m freezing.”

“You’re the one who put on shorts!”

“They’re the best shorts!” she shrieks and slaps her palms against her thighs, standing up and model-twirling to show off the letters on the butt. When she whips back around, there’s an exaggerated amount of sternness on her face. “Murphy, dear,” she says in her best RuPaul head voice, “your collegiate shorts made the grade. Con drag ulations, you are the winner of this week’s challenge.”

I topple to my side, wheezing out laugh after laugh. I’m stoned. She’s stoned. We’re stoned.

“Okay, seriously, I’m closing this.” She pushes down on the window till it seals shut with a soft, almost squishy thunk , hiding our sins. “I’ll go grab snacks, and then you’re filling me in,‘kay?”

“I bet you wish you still had that ice cream now.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she scoffs. “I still wouldn’t share if I did.”

While Kat runs to the kitchen to scrounge up something to curb the munchies, I crawl back into bed, tugging the comforter up to my chin. She returns with a box of fiber cereal tucked under one arm and a container of blueberries in her hand. “I’m remembering why we started smoking at my house.”

She passes me the blueberries, which are without a doubt the better snack, and settles onto the bed. We’ve spent a decade and a half of friendship in nearly this exact spot—me, propped up by too many throw pillows, snuggled beneath the covers; her, lying on her belly, chin propped up in her hands. This is how we were when I came out to her, and when she told me about her first kiss with her only high school boyfriend, the guy she dated almost exclusively so she’d have a date to senior prom. It’s where we first plotted our college experience: two years at community college to get our gen eds out of the way, then U of I, then an apartment in a cool neighborhood on the outskirts of Chicago so we could commute downtown together for work: her at some swanky hotel and me at one of the hundreds of ad agencies in the city. All our most important moments have happened just like this, parallel to each other on my unmade bed, only with varying amounts of acne and bangs and stuffed animals piled next to us.

“So.” She sets aside her box of cereal and claps the crumbs off her hands. Goofy Kat has stepped out, taking her RuPaul impression with her. What’s left is a quieter, gentler Kat with a squint of concern in her eyes. “What’s going on? What happened with Ellie?”

My shoulders deflate. Where do I even begin? The timeline is short, but there are so many points on it, and I want to pause on every single one, to paint each scene with the sort of detail that only Kat would care about. I want to relive every stroke of Ellie’s thumb against my hand, every laugh and uncomfortable dinner table silence. I want to tell her how I started dreaming, the way I never do, about months down the line with Ellie. About next semester. About next year. But I know I have to start with the end.

“She left, Kat,” I mumble, unwilling to even hear myself say it. I tug at a loose bit of comforter stitching and the fabric around it puckers. “Ellie left.”

Kat’s nose scrunches. “What do you mean left ?”

“I swung by her house, but Ellie had gone back to U of I already, and now she’s not picking up or texting me back.”

Kat chews her lip. “Okay, go back. We still haven’t talked through Thanksgiving.”

“Thanksgiving was mostly fine,” I say. “I think Professor Meyers actually likes me now. She invited me back for Christmas.”

“Nice.”

“But Ellie and I got in this big fight after I talked to you on the phone yesterday.” I scrape my pointer finger against the side of my thumb, peeling back a strip of dry skin. Talking about it makes it more real, and I feel a little stupid for being this shaken up by a fight with my fake girlfriend of less than a day, especially after calling Kat’s two-month relationship the equivalent of twelve seconds. She graciously hears me out anyway.

“What was the fight about?” Kat asks.

What was the fight about? “Priorities, I guess?”

“Okay? Say more.”

I mine my memory for more concrete details. “Well, she was really weird about me and you.”

Kat flinches. “Weird how?”

I place a blueberry between my front teeth, biting it in half as evenly as possible. “She, like, accused me of being in love with you.”

“Oh.” Kat blinks off toward the window for a moment, then cocks her head back toward me. “Are you?”

I lob a pillow at her head, and she doesn’t even try to dodge it.

“I’ll take that as a soft maybe,” she laughs.

“Do you want to talk about this or not?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Kat resituates, wedging the pillow beneath her forearms to prop herself up. “I may also be a little stoned.”

“A little? You’re stoney baloney.”

“Stogna bologna,” she whispers, pronouncing the silent g ’s and ushering us both into another laughing fit. “Fuck,” she wheezes as we both catch our breath. “I’m sorry. I suck. Please keep going.”

“I would if I remembered what we were talking about…”

“Ellie. The fight.”

“Right, thank you.” I shuffle my mental note cards and pick up where I left off. “I don’t know. Ellie thinks we’re, like, weirdly close.”

“Me and you?”

“Yeah.”

Kat hums in thought. “I mean, yeah, we’re close. But I wouldn’t say it’s weird.”

“Maybe it’s weird by some people’s standards,” I say.

“But I bet Ellie wouldn’t think it was weird if we were sisters,” Kat points out.

A warm, easy feeling settles through me like honey. “Exactly,” I say. “You get it.”

In a brief bit of silence, I almost convince myself this conversation is done and we can go back to being stogna bologna, but when Kat speaks up, the warm honey feeling crusts over. “So that was the fight?” she asks. “It was about me?”

“It wasn’t really about you,” I say, mostly just to make her feel better, but once it’s out there, it feels truer than I realized. “It was more about…how I put you first. Like, above myself, even.” I swallow hard, then in a smaller voice add, “That’s what Ellie thinks, anyway.”

Kat’s lips part on a breath. “Huh. Like when?”

“Like…when I stayed back from the family Florida trip to see you, I guess.”

“You didn’t have to,” Kat says. “I didn’t like…force you.” She glances away, but not quickly enough to block me from seeing the guilt in her eyes.

“Of course you didn’t force me. We planned that together,” I say. “And it worked out with the Sip reopening anyway.” I’m hesitant to say anything else. We could sweep all the hard stuff away and just smoke and laugh till we both doze off, like we’ve done a hundred weekends before. It’s tempting, but that’s not why I called her. That’s not why she’s here. So I keep going. “She also mentioned, y’know, how I wanted to go to the same college as you,” I say with a little less confidence than before.

“But that’s just how it worked out, right?” Kat says. “That we both wanted to do the community college and state school thing?”

I’m not brave enough to tell her that’s not quite true, that the primary appeal of my college plan was that it was the same as hers. I can’t admit that, when she transferred and left me behind, I couldn’t bear to think that maybe I needed her more than she needed me. It hurts too much to say out loud, but my face crumples, and Kat’s knowing gaze says it all. I don’t have to say a word.

“I miss you at U of I you know,” she whispers, reaching over to give my hand a little squeeze.

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I’m not just saying it,” she insists. “It’s true.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got so much other stuff going on.” My voice cracks, and I wish it wouldn’t.

“You have stuff going on too,” Kat says. “The Sip stuff is your stuff.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“What do you mean you guess so?” There’s a playful shimmer to her voice that scares off the threat of tears. “You saw the place today. It was packed. You did all the marketing for that. That was you.”

“It wasn’t all me,” I admit.

“That’s not the point. You’ve got stuff going on in your life outside of me, and I’ve got stuff outside of you too. Stuff with Daniel, with school…we’re just on different paths right now.”

I blink up at my glow-in-the-dark stars, allowing myself to remember the magic of how things used to be, back when Kat and I were building a shared path. Middle school, high school, community college—anywhere I went, Kat and I were in lockstep, and nothing was too scary when I knew we were in it together. I never wanted to build a path of my own so long as I could stay on hers.

“I guess I’m still figuring out my path,” I say.

“You were on your own path yesterday, right? When you opted to go to Ellie’s instead of doing Thanksgiving with us?”

My stomach sinks. “I know, and I’m sor—”

“Nope,” Kat interrupts, giving her head one stern shake. “No apologies. Sure, I wish you’d told me sooner that you were going, but I get it. We’re both gonna have other things—other people— who take priority too.” She pauses, smirks, then adds, “Unless this is all part of your long con to turn me gay and live happily ever after.”

I know she’s only joking this much to keep me from crying, but it’s working, so I play along. “Be for real,” I tease, giving her and those worn-out sleep shorts a once-over. “You know you’re not my type.”

“I know who is, though.”

There’s a tingle in my chest, like rain falling on the roof of my shaky heart. “I know,” I say. “It was supposed to be fake.”

“But you seemed genuinely happy,” Kat says.

I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, trapping my breath behind it. I heard somewhere that it’s supposed to stop you from crying. In my whirlwind twenty-four hours with Ellie Meyers, there were so few moments where it was just us, no lying or schemes being hatched. Whether we were sneaking into Sip or stumbling through a pitching lesson, those moments—rare as they were—absolutely shimmered. I was happier than I remembered I could be.

“Kat,” I finally sigh, “she’s… wow .”

Kat’s eyes glisten, then cloud over with a dreamy look. I recognize that look. It’s the same one I saw from her on Wednesday night when she was staring across the bar at Daniel. “Murph,” Kat says, “you deserve someone who’s wow .”

“I know. You do too. And I’m glad you have Daniel. It’s just…” A sigh leaks between the gaps in my teeth as I shift upright and meet her gaze. “I miss you, Kat.”

She wiggles her fingers in a tiny wave. “I’m right here.”

“I mean all the time. I feel like we’ve hardly talked the last three months.”

I watch Kat’s eyes wander from the comforter to the Wall of Fame, stopping on pictures of us in Girl Scouts, at homecoming, at Six Flags just last year. “I know,” she says. “I’m sorry. But we’ll be together again next semester, right?”

My stomach plummets. I guess we have to have this conversation eventually, and now is as good a time as any. I take a deep breath and blow a raspberry into the air. “I, uh. No,” I choke out. “No, we won’t.”

Kat’s attention snaps back toward me, her eyebrows scrunched together in suspicion. “I thought you said Thanksgiving went well. You don’t think Professor Meyers will pass you?”

“She might,” I say, “but it won’t matter. I missed the deadline for the transfer application.”

Kat looks down at the sheets in front of her for a moment, presumably doing some light mental math. “That can’t be right.” She shoves off the bed and digs her phone out of the pocket of her jeans. Whether she’s referencing the U of I website or just her calendar app, her thumb scrolls with purpose. “Those aren’t due until…”

“October.” I wish I could stabilize the wobble in my voice. “I was so bogged down with everything at Sip and I thought I’d need my final accounting grade to send in my application.”

It’s quiet again, but I’m too stoned to know if it’s an awkward silence or not. They rarely are with Kat. “Well, fuck,” she finally says, and I’m sort of relieved to hear her voice wobble too. “That…that really sucks.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “It does.” I hold my breath in anticipation of more follow-up questions about my backup plan or whatever, but Kat’s mind isn’t there yet. She tosses her phone back on the floor with her jeans and perches on the edge of the bed. Another few seconds pass, and she scrapes the last bit of air from her lungs with a final shaky sigh.

“God, I’m so sorry.” There’s heartbreak in her eyes, but I barely see it before her gaze falls back to the floor. “That, like, really, really sucks. Like, I don’t even want to go back now.”

“Shut up. You don’t mean that.”

“I mean, no,” she admits without looking up. “Of course I’m going back. I love U of I, but I would love it a lot more if you were there.”

“You’ll be fine,” I say. “You have Daniel.”

“Daniel’s the best,” she admits, “but he’s my boyfriend. It’s different.”

“Better, even. Because you get to make out with him.”

Kat’s chin doesn’t budge from her chest, but her eyes lift up to mine. She looks unimpressed. “Different.”

“You just said he’s the best,” I point out.

“It’s not a contest, Murph. I’m not choosing Daniel over you.”

“You sure? Because you did this weekend.” The words tumble out before I realize I’ve said them, and they’re too heavy to hang in the silence for long. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“No, no, you’re right.” Kat’s voice is small, but honest. “I know I sprung the Daniel thing on you last minute and brought him to the bar without running it past you. That was uncool of me.”

My shoulders relax an inch. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

She’s quiet for a moment, either unsure of her answer or unwilling to share it. “I was scared.” Her voice pitches up, like it always has when she’s talking but doesn’t want to be. “Because, um. Because I didn’t want you to be sad.”

“I wouldn’t have been sad to meet him at Thanksgiving, but Wednesday was supposed to be about us.”

“I know, I know.” She’s staring down at the floor again. “I should’ve just had him drive out on Thursday instead of bringing him to the bar.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because…” I watch her lips open and close, searching for the shape of the right answer. She settles on the truth. “Because I think he’s wow ,” Kat says. “He’s my boyfriend, Murph. I want him around. Not all the time, but most of the time. That’s kind of how it goes.”

I swallow twice. The truth didn’t sound as good as I had hoped.

When I don’t speak up, Kat does. “If you and Ellie were together, like actually together, wouldn’t you want her around too?”

I picture a table with Kat and me next to two empty barstools. When Daniel is seated at one of them, it makes sense that Ellie is there too. When Daniel gets erased, Ellie goes with him, and it’s just me and Kat again. Like it used to be.

“Sometimes,” I say quietly. “But not all the time. I like when it’s just us.”

Kat reaches across the bed and gives my arm a squeeze. “Like right now?”

“Yeah,” I say, “like right now.” I try to bottle up the moment in all its quiet joy. Who knows when it’ll happen again. “Where is Daniel, by the way?”

Kat smirks, and her gaze bounces to the window and back. “He’s, uh. He’s in the driveway.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I didn’t know how long we’d be, and it’s not like he wants to go home and hang out with my parents. He swore he didn’t mind.”

I shove back the comforter and head for the window facing our driveway. Sure enough, there’s Kat’s Honda Civic idling with the lights turned off. If I squint, I can just barely catch the outline of an enormous man shoved into a tiny car, his face lit up blue by the light of his phone.

“Oh my God, I feel so bad.”

“He’s got games on his phone,” Kat says with the sort of nonchalance of a mom talking about her iPad child. Meanwhile, someone’s going to have to hire a crane to lift my jaw off the floor. To be blunt, I’ve never seen this kind of selflessness from a straight man. I scrape the last bit of air from my lungs with a sigh.

“I think you’re right,” I admit. “I think he’s wow .”

Kat’s smile is almost too big for her face. “You’re the best for saying that, you know that?”

“I mean it. I’m glad you brought him home.”

She frowns. “Okay, now I know you’re lying.”

“I mean, yeah. But not about him being great. Way better than I thought he’d be.”

She squints at me, suspicious. “What did you think he’d be?”

“I don’t know, he’s a straight guy! My expectations were low!”

Kat’s laugh must be loud enough for Daniel to hear, or else he just sees us in the window. Either way, the lights in the car flip on, and Daniel gives us a big goofy smile and a wave. We laugh and wave back, and once we do, he kills the lights again and goes back to his phone.

“I like him,” I say.

Kat stares out the window with a familiar warmth in her eyes. “Yeah,” she sighs, “I like him too.”

A question takes shape in my chest, and I’m barely brave enough to ask it. “Do you think you might…love him?”

Kat’s head snaps to face me, those two vertical lines between her eyebrows back out in full force. “It’s only been two months.”

“Do you think that matters?”

“I…I don’t know.” She heads back to the bed, hugging a pillow against her chest. “Maybe I love him already. But like, I wouldn’t tell him I love him yet, you know? Because that’d be too much too soon, and I don’t even know how to know. You know?” She pauses, looks at me, and asks, “Do you know?”

The only thing I know is that she’s speaking in riddles. I guess we’re both still a little high. I sit next to her on the edge of the bed and match her question with another question. “How do you know you love me?”

Her eyes slip from mine and drift back toward the Wall of Fame. I can’t tell what picture she’s looking at, but she steadies her gaze there as the words start to come. “I know I love you because I want to be around you even when we’re not doing anything. Because just having you around makes everything better. And I’d drop everything and make my boyfriend wait in the car when you need me. No matter what happens between you and me, I know we’re gonna work it out.”

I squeeze Kat’s hand, and when she squeezes back, there’s a prickle at the end of my nose, threatening tears. “Do you feel that way about Daniel?”

She looks back toward the window, back toward the dark that’s swallowed our view of the car. “Almost,” she whispers, then clears her throat and speaks a bit louder. “Do you think it’s the same?”

“What do you mean?”

“Friend love and love love,” she specifies.

I blink back at her. An answer doesn’t come to me. “Do you think it’s the same? You’re closer to knowing than I am.”

Kat lifts a shoulder. “I always assumed love love would be just a little bit better. But maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just…different.”

“Different,” I agree, “but definitely related. Otherwise we couldn’t have stayed friends this long.” I trace back my gaze to me and Kat as Girl Scouts. I can’t help but think of Ellie, whose longest running friendship isn’t half as old as Kat and I are in that picture. “We’re lucky,” I say. “Most people don’t get to have a Kat in their life.”

“And hardly anyone gets to have a Murph,” Kat says. “Which sucks for them because one of the coolest things about my life is having you in it.”

“Me too.” I barely smile. “About you, though.” I pull her tight against my hip and lean my head onto her shoulder. “I love you, Kat.”

“I love you too.” She rests her head on top of mine. “And anyone else I love, I’ll know how to love them because you taught me first.”

“I think you’re right,” I say, and Kat’s shoulder shakes with a laugh.

“Of course I’m right,” she says. “Can’t remember a time I’ve been wrong.”

I don’t remember Kat leaving, I don’t remember falling asleep, and I don’t remember which happened first. What I do know is when I wake up, squinty-eyed and searching for her, all that’s left are the shorts, folded neatly on the dresser for the next time she comes by.