Page 25 of Best I Never Had

Natalia: Maybe a solid six. While taking off with only the wind behind you sounds obscurely enigmatic, I think you’d get bored once you master a sword balloon. There’s only so much one can do with a foot long piece of rubber.

Me: I guess you’re right. So I should stick with regular person college?

Natalia: Sounds like the safer option.

There’s a pause in our back and forth before she sends me another message.

Natalia: Just promise that you’ll learn how to make an orange balloon poodle. Those are my favorite.

I chuckle a little to myself, not even bothering to resist the smile spreading across my face as I stare at my lit-up laptop screen. The ball of frustration that was wound up so tightly has now dissolved into this warm gooeyness melting my insides.

Me: And how do you suggest I do that if I’m giving up my dreams to go to Jester’s University?

Natalia: Uh, YouTube? Duh…

Hayden: I don’t know. I’m pretty busy with football practice and those lab assignments you desperately need my help with. I don’t know when I’ll find the time.

Natalia: How about a deal? I’ll give you until, say…Thanksgiving to master balloon animals, and I’ll promise to visit you when we’re back home.

Me: You would visit me?

Natalia: Of course. Who else would I share war stories with about the trenches of Coolidge View High? We’re barely going to make it out of AP Bioalive.

Me: It’s a deal then.

She responds with a smiley face, a colon mark and the closing side of a parenthesis, and I stare at it with a smile that matches the animated grin on the screen. I haven’t really thought about after graduation, whether or not we would stay in touch, but suddenly, I can’t imagine us not. How can Inotlook forward to seeing her annoyed yet amused smile as she peers over at me in her seat in class? Or the pensive look she has when she stares at the reading assignment for photosynthesis and cellular respiration? How can I go the year after high school without talking to her about whatever aspirations that I have to bury deep in order to avoid conflict with my dad? Relief pours over me, realizing that maybe I’m not going to have to wonder that at all.

Maybe it’s one goodbye I won’t have to say.

present

“Enough about me and my tragic love life. How about you? Anything ailing your heart at the moment?”

I smirk, taking a sip of my beer before shaking my head. Not to answer her question but to find a way to get out of talking about everything wrong in my life.

“Come on, Marshall,” she says, lightly punching my arm. “Give me something so I don’t feel like such a loser.”

“You’re not a loser,”I dispute.

She raises her brows and pinches her lips in a small smile, waiting for me to give her something.

I smirk again, half amused and half surrendering. “No heartbreak or crappy ex-girlfriend to cry over.”

“Obviously.” She gestures toward my phone.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“With a roster like that? I can’t imagine any woman breaking through that playboy bravado of yours.”

I frown as I turn away from her.

“But…” she encourages.

My frown deepens, and her face mirrors mine, her smile slipping. With her empathetic eyes and soft face, she encourages me to share. All without feeling ashamed or misguided. So I spill my heart out, every qualm resting on my shoulders ready to be lifted just an inch.

“I haven’t talked to my dad in almost two years.” The words sort of tumble out from my lips. When I don’t say anything else, she doesn’t prod. Instead, she patiently waits while her fingers lightly bob the cocktail straw from the glass tumbler in her hand.

“When I quit school and moved to France, my dad was…upset, to say the least. We already had so many differences before I left for college, like whether or not college was even in the cards for me or what major I should choose, and then I laid a bombshell on him when I decided to quit school. So I stayed away from home because of that, moved to Chicago and only visited for holidays and stuff. And two years ago, on Thanksgiving, things kind of blew up. We yelled, said things to each other…and I haven’t talked to him since.”

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