He chuckles. “You’ll be too busy to call me every day.”
He starts to pull away and I tighten my grip because I don’t want that Ren right now, the one who tries to hide behind levity, who never asks for anything. “We’ll talk every day. Promise?”
He brushes a thumb under my right eye where a tear has escaped, lets it linger as he scans my face. “I promise,” he finally says. He loosens an arm to reach into his pocket and withdraw his phone, taps on the screen before he pockets it again. “I made you a playlist.”
I reach for my own phone, but Ren stops me.
“Look at it once you’re through security.” His fingers slip through mine and he squeezes, once, before he lets go. “Let me know when you land, okay?”
It feels unceremonious, like I should say something profound, but all I can manage is a nod.
When I’m next in the security line, I turn back, hopeful he might still be there, that he might give me one last boost of confidence. He’s standing right where I left him, watching me. He smiles reassuringly, lifts a hand, and I wave back, big and exaggerated, because our last moment can’t be a sad one. Ren and I will be fine, but I still hate the burn at the back of my nose, the way my stomach sinks. I keep waving until he laughs, mirrors me.
On the plane, I add the playlist to my library. It’s long, as Ren’s playlists tend to be. I take off to Death Cab for Cutie’s “Marching Bands of Manhattan,” observing Portland and all the greenery surrounding it shrink below me.
I smile to myself when “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” comes on next, the image of Ren in his suit in my bathroom doorway flashing across my mind. He was right: the song feels more appropriate now.
The mood picks up from there, numbers that we loved in college, in high school, ones we’ve listened to in his car with the windows down and bands we’ve seen live together.
Then halfway through the flight, it changes again. “Where’d All the Time Go?”, Langhorne Slim’s “Changes,” and “The Only Living Boy in New York”—Ren seems to have intuited the melancholy I would feel spreading down to my toes as the distance between my old life and my new one began to grow.
I sift through all the ways things are about to change. Learning a new city, new job, my whole routine shifting, of course, but also things like a new neighborhood coffee shop, time zones, not knowing that Sublimity is where I’ll be going on a Friday night.That there’s a boy waiting for me there behind the bar.
By the time we’re an hour out, the songs are upbeat again, and I spend the rest of the flight vibrating in my seat, reading through the emails my boss has sent about our first month in the new space once, then again, then scroll through the pictures Stevie sent me of our new place.
We land, and I rush out of the airport with my two giant suitcases and an unfounded air of someone who’s actually been to New York before. I get in the back of a car and watch through the window as my new city flies by.
I call Ren and tell him all about it.
tuesday
chapter six
Ren is nowhere to be found when I move my things to the screen porch after a fitful night of sleep.
He’s taken his usual bed, which is closer to the doors into the house. It’s flawlessly made, also as usual, and I make a mental note not to let mine turn into the tangle of blankets it normally would be this week. Things like that were fine when we were close. Now I feel a sudden need to behave around Ren like I’m sharing a room with a colleague.
The same small dresser stands against the opposite wall, a row of hooks beside it where we would dry swimsuits and towels when we were kids. A black hoodie hangs on the farthest hook, the rest of them empty.
As my hands hover over the dresser, wondering if Ren left the top two for me like he used to, the door to the front yard clatters and I jump, letting out a small yelp.
“Sorry,” Ren says as he removes his earbuds. He’s just back from a run in a pair of exercise shorts and a T-shirt. He nods at the dresser. “I left you your usual drawers.”
“Thanks.”
“Did you sleep well?” he asks politely, inserting his earbuds into their case.
I stare at the middle of his chest, the rise and fall of it. “Sort of. You?”
He shrugs, casually grabs his water bottle from the windowsill above his bed, then sits on the edge, dangles it between his knees. Maybe I should do the same thing. Sit down, let him set the pace.
I opt to pick at the flaking paint on the corner of the dresser. “How’s—” I begin, but Ren says something at the same time, and I wave him forward only for him to do the same.
“Were—” he says, gesturing toward me.
“No,” I say. “Were you going to say something?”
Ren shakes his head.
