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I bite back a smile. “You’re not playing the game right. I’m not an Avenger.” He’s about to counter, but I interrupt him. “You should’ve come out sooner. We could’ve had squad chats like this.”
That vision doesn’t feel wrong: talking about dudes with Theo and Wade, as normal as a group of straight guys talking about which girls they like. Maybe this kind of talk is what Theo was hoping for when he brought Jackson around earlier this year. It was never going to make sense for me in the place I was in. Things are different now.
“Screw Captain America, screw Black Widow, and screw Tony Stark and all his money. I want to be Team Griffin,” Wade says. “When are we giving that a shot?”
That vision of Wade and me doesn’t feel wrong either. A little blurry, yeah, because I definitely still have feelings for Theo, but they’re not as strong as they used to be. Moving on feels weird. Moving on with someone who used to be Theo and mine’s third wheel feels even weirder. Things have changed over the past couple of months. I’ve spent less time hanging out with Wade because Theo indirectly sent me running there and more because it’s where I want to be.
“I want to talk to Theo about it first,” I say. I have a lot I need to get off my chest. Some of it includes Wade, but not all of it. “You cool with that?”
Wade nods, untangling his legs. “I can wait another day.”
We hang out for a little bit longer before I slip on my new winter boots—it felt weird wearing the ones Theo bought me—and kiss Wade at the door. “I’ll call you later.”
“You better or I’m off Team Griffin.”
I walk around my bedroom, knowing I’m pretty much saying goodbye to the future I’ve been imagining for myself for the past couple of years. I don’t feel super confident in a future with Wade just yet, and there’s a chance I never will, but I’m not feeling as hopeless. Theo is with Jackson, and I’m going to try things out with Wade. If Theo and I are meant to get back together, then it’ll happen in its own way. But I’m not waiting anymore. Wade was right.
I call Theo and it goes to voice mail. “Hey, Theo, it’s Griff. I sort of need to talk to you about something big. It’s not about us, I swear. That’s a little bit o
f a lie, it involves us a little, but not what you think. Anyway. Call me back.”
TODAY
Saturday, December 17th, 2016
There it is, Theo.
I was hiding history from you. Maybe this blindsided you. Maybe you suspected this all along. But here’s what I bet you didn’t count on, because it took me by surprise, too: I see myself falling in love with Wade. It’s a twist in our own love story that has my head spinning and my heart pounding. I thought I would use him as revenge for you moving on, but I never thought I would be actually moving on too.
I wanted to do this right by being honest with you the way you were with me when Jackson entered your life. Please believe me when I tell you now that I’d actually found the strength to officially shelve our endgame plan when you missed my call.
You died four hours later.
When I got the news, I didn’t cry just because it meant we’d never get to be in love again, but also because my best friend would no longer share this universe with me. I don’t know what you would’ve thought of me with Wade, but it doesn’t matter now. I was in love and love died and the pain you’ve left isn’t pain I can see myself having the strength to face again.
But this doesn’t stop me from entering Wade’s building. This doesn’t stop me from hoping he’ll be home and hoping he won’t turn me away. I get into the elevator and it’s miraculously going nonstop between the ground level and the twenty-seventh floor, but it still somehow feels like it’s taking forever, even longer than the time the three of us got stuck on the seventeenth floor for the longest twenty minutes of our lives.
It’s weird to think about how much has changed and gotten messy, almost as if our friendship was a one-thousand-piece puzzle being put together by a one-year-old who got everything wrong. Sometimes this universe feels like an alternate, but maybe you already knew that.
I step out of the elevator, and if I was thinking about changing my mind and running home, I’ve lost my chance. Wade walks out of his apartment carrying a garbage bag in each hand. He’s wearing nothing but his bright orange basketball shorts and white ankle socks. My heart drops, like I’m back in the elevator and the cables have snapped. It’s not just because his body is beautiful without the abs he desperately wants or the way his eyes narrow whenever I surprise him, like he’s trying to find me without his glasses. For the first time since you’ve died, I’m admitting to myself how much I really missed this guy and how strange it’s going to be to only be friends.
It’s you all over again.
“Griffin.”
The chills running through are not like the kind that come from a cold winter evening like this one. They can only come from someone calling out the name of a person they love.
“Your socks,” I say.
Wade looks down at his socks. “My socks?”
“They’re going to get dirty,” I say.
I close the space between us, doing my damn best to fight away this hollowing urge to hug him. I reach out for the bags, brushing my cold fingers against his warm knuckles for a quick, unbearable second, and I carry the bags to the other end of the hallway, smelling the clinking beer bottles, and drop them down the garbage chute. I’m expecting to find Wade waiting for me by his door—if he hasn’t ignored me or told me to go away by now, I trust he won’t at all—and he’s walking toward me, stepping through the puddles of melted snow my boots have left.
“Your socks,” I say again.
I think he’s going to kiss me. I don’t have a single muscle left in me to push him away, but instead he wraps his arms around my neck and presses himself against me. I hug him back and almost even laugh when he flinches at my cold fingers on his spine.
