Page 52 of Given Our History

After a heavy pause, he speaks, his voice gravelly. “You keep calling me Teddy. No one’s called me that in years.”

It’s not quite the response I was looking for. I stare at my hand, curling my fingers in the fabric of the apron. “You know what they say about old habits.” I try to force my voice to sound light, airy, but it comes out a bit shaky. I’m nervous. I’ve just put myself out there a little and it feels like he’s trying to change the subject. I shouldn’t have said anything.

His hand moves and his fingers brush against mine. “I like it,” he says. “I’ve missed hearing it.”

Our fingers intertwine. I tear my gaze from our hands and meet his eye, my blood pumping. Without his glasses, he seems more exposed, in a way, nothing between me and his emotions, which are on full display. Right now, his pupils are wide, brown swallowed up by black. He shifts, angling his body closer to mine. I give him a tiny nod, permission, and he bends to kiss me.

It’s slow and longing at first, remembering each other, trying to find our footing. There’s something so surreal about this—kissing him again. It’s not like it never crossed my mind, but I’d filed it away as an impossibility. But this is happening. His hand finds my lower back and drags me against him so that our bodies are flush. His tongue moves against mine and a whimper escapes me.

Desire crashes through me like water broken from a dam, a hard rush of something I’ve held back for years. I reach for him on instinct, my hands raking over his chest, broad and firm beneath his T-shirt. The hand around my back tightens, crushing my hips against his. It’s almost too much, the flood of emotions and lingering questions and just pure need. Maybe we should stop and think this through, but instead, we’re stumbling, and then the cold steel of the prep table presses into my backside. Teddy hoists me up onto it and I spread my legs, dragging him between them. He’s hard, straining against his sweatpants where his hips settle into the apex of my leggings.

Any semblance of coherent thought is ripped up and scattered to the wind. I should scramble after the pieces, try to make sense of them, but Teddy’s hands are skating up my sides, over my ribs, brushing against the thin cotton bra beneath my shirt. He groans into my mouth as I move my hips against him, wanting him closer. I reach for the hem of my shirt to tug it over my head, needing to feel his hands on me—

And then the back door bangs open.

It’s as though we’ve been doused in a bucket of cold water. We spring apart—or rather, he springs back, almost crashing into the gas range stove. I slide off the prep table, tugging my shirt back down, my pulse still pounding through me.

“Made it three blocks before I realized I left my purse,” Dimitra calls from somewhere, her voice echoing off the tile. Her movements are partially obscured by the heating lamps hovering low over the prep tables. “Don’t mind me.”

I’m not sure she saw anything, but I’m flooded with embarrassment anyway. It’s like I’m experiencing déjà vu, transported to a night thirteen years ago, when we were similarly interrupted. Compelled to busy myself, I snatch the apron off the table and go to hang it by the freezer. My stupid leggings are caked in flour now, like I’m bread dough someone rolled around to give a good dusting. Dimitra bids us good night again before stealing away through the back door.

“I should probably get going,” I announce, without looking at Teddy.

He clears his throat. “I’ll walk you out.”

I wait outside while he double-checks that everything’s put away in the fridge and shuts off the lights. It’s a cold, clear night and the moon is a small sliver like a fingernail. I hug my sweatshirt close, lost in thought. Teddy steps outside and gives the handle a good tug to make sure it’s locked.

“I’ll text you when I’m heading down tomorrow,” he says as we walk around to the front of the building, where we parked our cars.

I manage a tight nod. “Sounds good.”

He lingers, frowning off into the middle distance. The traffic lights at the intersection change from yellow to red, but there are no cars. “Something’s bothering you,” he says finally.

I’m not sure I want to talk. But there’s this feeling, words bubbling up in my throat. Less word vomit and more confessional, because if tonight is a night for getting things out in the open, then I want to do it right. I want him to know the truth.

“I loved you.”

The words spill out, the circumstances so different from all the times I’d imagined telling him. I never said those words to him, not even as friends, but they were always there, just beneath the surface. In the little things: phone calls at Christmas and counting the days until summer. Long drives to meet up in the middle of nowhere and history books with annotations in the margins, neat square handwriting beneath my own slanted scribbles. Drinking Pepsi because it reminded me of him, of that first summer, skipping stones by the lake with crutches tucked beneath my arms.

But the whole is lesser than the sum of its parts. There’s nothing to show for it, all this wasted love with nowhere to put it.

He just looks at me, his eyes sad.

“Why didn’t you follow me?” I ask. “Stop me? That day in the sandwich shop. You let me walk away.”

He bows his head, staring at the ground. “I was seeing someone. You know that.”

“We could’ve been friends,” I say with a weak shrug.

“You didn’t want me to follow you. Not as a friend.”

I hate how well he knows me, that he could read me like that even when we’d gone years without talking. But there’s more to it than that, more that I wanted out of him, then and now. “I know that I hurt you,” I continue, trying to keep my voice steady, “and I’m sorry for that. I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life.” I pause. I want to give him time to absorb the words, to feel the full impact of what I’m telling him. Because I can’t let myself fall for him again until I get it out in the open. Lay all the cards on the table, so that we both can make an informed decision.

I take a deep breath. “But I need you to understand that you hurt me, too.”

He reaches for me. “Clara—”

“No, don’t ‘Clara’ me right now.” I step out of his reach. “You were supposed to be my best friend. And you abandoned me, like I was trash, like I didn’t mean anything—”