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“Doesn’t it already?” She sat up, putting some space between us.
I wanted to reach and pull her back down and kiss the words out of her mouth.
“I’m lost,” I said with a sigh.
“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to wrap my head around all this. What’s happening between us. I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I couldn’t stop thinking about her, but that was nothing new. In all the years we’d been apart, she had still consumed so many of my thoughts. Thinking about Natalie was like breathing. She was always there.
“I know how you feel,” I said.
“Do you think that we…that we could try…” I wanted her to just spit it out.
“Are you trying to ask me out, Nat?” I asked, smiling at her.
“I mean…yes? I guess?” She blew out a breath.
“Wow, I’ve finally found something that you’re not good at,” I said.
“Shut up,” she replied, blushing.
“Yes, Natalie, I will go out with you.”
“Just like that?” she asked.
“Yeah, just like that.”
“You don’t think it’s weird?” she said.
“I mean, friends have gone on to date each other before.” Dating Natalie just…made sense. I couldn’t explain it, but the moment that the idea had entered my mind, I realized that it made the most sense in the world. Why wouldn’t we date? Why weren’t we dating already?
“Emerald. A few weeks ago you still hated me. This is a really rapid turnaround,” she said. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
I tried to figure out how to explain it.
“I was so angry at you for so many years, but I never really hated you, Nat. Never. I missed you. And having you back in my life was like having the sun come out from behind the clouds. It was such a relief to let go of all that negative shit I’d been holding on to because I felt like if I was letting it go, I was letting you go, and I didn’t want to. I know that sounds messed up, but I don’t know any other way to explain it. And now you’re here and there are all these new feelings about you and I’m going to trust them.”
Natalie gazed at me for what felt like forever.
“What?” I finally asked. Was she second-guessing everything now?
“I’m just sorry, again. Sorry about all the years we lost. And I didn’t want to let go of you either. You know all those stickers we traded and the rocks we collected at the beach and pictures we took in the photobooths? I saved them all. I brought them with me to Arizona. I made sure I packed them deep in my bag when you picked me up because I didn’t want you to see them.”
She’d saved those?
I stood up.
“I’ll be right back.”
I went to my bedroom and pulled a box out from under my bed, wiping off a layer of dust.
I brought it out to her and set it on the coffee table.
On the outside, it was just an ordinary shoebox. Natalie lifted the lid.
Inside were a number of rocks, more than a few stickers, bracelets that had been bleached by the summer sun and salt water, some Polaroids and photobooth pictures, printed tickets from movies, and the ugliest little pottery bowl I’d ever seen in my life.
“Oh my god,” Natalie said, picking up the bowl. “I wondered what happened to this after the art show.”
