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“Last day of finals senior year,” he starts. A sigh lingers in the air between us as my heart stops. “You had bangs back then.” He looks at me and smiles. “They were auburn, like a shelf across the top of your eyebrows. And you were at your car.”
My emotional foot hits the brake pedal in my memory bank as the conversation he’s describing comes into full, blooming relief in my mind.
“When we went outside? To get textbooks out of our cars for the government final?” Plaintive and soft, he’s practically pleading with me to remember, as if the tables are turned and we’re in high school but he is trying to impress me.
I remember thinking it was a strange coincidence, that Will left his book in his car, too, and walked down the long vocational education wing with me, his voice so serious, his conversation almost existential.
“Yeah. When your friends decorated your car.”
“The ‘Most Likely to Become a Porn Star’ glitter paint on my windshield was the most authentic conversation in your life?” I goggle.
A sound of mocking comes out of him, self-deprecating and sheepish. He looks at his palms. “That magenta glitter crap was all over my hands for days. My friends and parents gave me so much shit for it.” He looks at me. “Not that, though,” he says, suddenly terse. “The rest.”
And then I know.
I know.
I know why he’s bringing that moment from ten years ago into our now.
“You asked me about Brown.”
His eyes light up. “Yes.”
“And why I’d reject Harvard for that.” I say the words verbatim. Teen Will’s revulsion came out loud and clear back then: Why would you reject Harvard for that?
“I didn’t understand.”
“No kidding. I felt like your eyes were burning me. You were so disgusted.”
“You thought that?”
“I felt that. Words are connected to emotional states for most of us, Will. What you said back then mattered.”
Still does.
“Ooof. I’m sorry.”
“And you considered that conversation to be the most authentic interaction you’d ever had?”
“You were the most authentic person I’d met.”
“Me?”
“Don’t you get it? You rejected Harvard. Harvard, Mallory. You said no to the top school in the country.”
I know what he’s really saying. He didn’t get into Harvard.
I did.
“Dartmouth wasn’t exactly a bottom-tier school, Will.”
“I’ve done fine. Dartmouth, Rhodes Scholar, the whole bit. I succeeded on the hamster wheel of academic success.”
Here it comes.
“But you made your decisions based on what you wanted. Not based on what other people told you you should do.”
Blink.
