Page 81 of Unnecessary Drama

‘It did not go well.’

I pull out the mug. It has a face on it, a terrifying face that looks kind of distorted and almost clown-like.

‘Who is that? Is that me?’ I ask.

Jesse is laughing, almost too hard to answer.

‘It was supposed to be, yeah. And then I smudged it, and tried to fix it, and it got worse. And then I thought, why would she even want a mug with her face on it? So I tried to make it look more generic, just an anonymous person on a mug, which seemed even weirder, so then I tried to make it look like Harry Styles because you loved his song, and that’s when it started looking really bad.’

I am laughing hard now too.

‘So you painted the mug, and then what?’

‘I gave up. I put it all in a box under my bed and told myself I would figure it out on the weekend, and then I kept putting off thinking about it because I was so anxious about it, until it was too late to give you anything, and then we just never spoke again.’

A part of me wants to travel back in time and hug fourteenyear-old Jesse.

‘So why did you dig it out now?’ I say.

‘Because I want you to know. I felt so bad back then, Brooke, for what I did and then losing you as a friend. I want you to know I didn’t just move on with my life. I really wanted to fix things, I just didn’t know how.’

I smile at him.

‘I’m glad you told me. It does make me feel better about everything. And I can’t wait to use the mug.’

‘We don’t need to actually use it.’

‘Are you kidding me? This is my number-one mug from now on.’

He smiles, and we drive in silence for a moment.

‘You can trust me,’ he says, suddenly. He says it so calmly, so matter of factly, that it gives me a little jolt in my chest.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You can trust me. With your writing. As a friend. With anything. With everything.’

‘I don’t think I really trust anyone,’ I say, with a small laugh, even though it’s not funny. It feels like something I should be saying to a therapist, write in my journal, put in a dramatic letter to my father on his deathbed with the addendum and it’s all your fault! It’s a fundamental truth I don’t want anyone else to know, but here I am, saying it out loud at 9 am on a Sunday morning in the car with the boy I have never trusted.

‘You can trust me,’ he says again. ‘I know, with our history, you think you can’t, but you can now, you can.’

I want to believe him. Every time he says it, I feel it, in my chest, a rumbling. My heart, pricking up its little ears like a hopeful puppy.

‘Okay,’ I say finally, because I want to, I really do want to.

33

Harper and I are making soup together in companionable silence, chopping and slicing vegetables for a giant pot that we’re planning to eat for the next three days. She turns to me.

‘I have something to tell you.’

‘Okay.’ Her tone is making me nervous. It’s an I-Have-Bad-News tone.

‘I’m setting Jesse up on a date,’ she says.

‘Oh.’ I work very hard to keep my face still and unresponsive, which is hard because I’m chopping onions and my eyes are burning. ‘As part of your matchmaking strategy with Penny?’

‘Yes, we need one more dataset. And we want to give the straights one last chance before we deem them unworkable in our business model.’