Page 7 of Best I Never Had

“Hey,” he calls, lacking any form of energy.

“Do you have any plans tonight?”

“I’ll probably get off this couch at some point.” He exhales loudly, groaning as he sits up from his too comfortable position. “And walk over to Pepper Thai for some food. You?”

“I got invited to a party.”

His brows perk with interest. “A party? By who?”

“I ran into this girl I went to high school with,” I say softly, still unbelieving that the encounter happened at all.

“Is she cute?”

I ignore his question. “You want to go?”

“Sure,” he says with a casual shrug while tossing his phone onto our cluttered coffee table.

“We’ll leave in about an hour,” I say before I walk into my room.

I strip from the grease-infused jacket and the stiff polyester pants, tossing them into my hamper before stepping into my shower stall. The scent of coq au vin and chocolate soufflé dissipates into the stream of hot water as I lather cedar-scented body wash into my hands and wash away the remnants of the day from my body.

As the heat melts the tense muscles in my neck and shoulders, the expectancy of seeing Natalia starts to grow in small flutters.

Suddenly, senior year feels like an entirely different time. I know both myself and Natalia aren’t the same kids we were back then, but the need to revert back to being those imperfect seventeen-year-olds fills me. As if I can swipe the last eight years of my life and somehow transport back to that small classroom with Natalia by my side.

I don’t have very many friends, only a handful that I’ve made since my arrival to the city this year. Dexter is one of the oldest friends that I have. We met during our freshman year in college when we were assigned as roommates that first year before I never returned. But there’s no friendship like the one I had with Natalia, all of it revolving around memories, secrets, and inside jokes. Like how if I were to reference “Starbucks lovers,” Natalia would smile at the vivid image of our guidance counselor, Mrs. Geiss, incorrectly singing along to the very Taylor Swift song during a pep rally before spirit week. Or how if I were to say “mind the gap,” we would both think of Mr. Walton, with his fake British accent, bellowing at every student that ran through the threshold of each classroom more than ten seconds after the bell rang to announce each tardy arrival.

Showered and in the gradual process of air drying, I wrap a towel around my waist and search my closet for something to wear. I find that more than half of it is filled with chef’s jackets and the same uncomfortable polyester pants I wear every day, just in different variations of gray and black. Once I settle on a casual dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and worn jeans, I walk into the living room to find Dexter dressed in an outfit almost identical to mine.

“Well, one of us has to change,” Dexter jokes.

3

Natalia

senior year

The petri dishesclink on the counter with our samples freshly smeared on the agar plate, waiting to be grown into disgusting blobs of bacteria. We start stacking our plates, gently securing the lids and flipping them upside down like we were instructed to by Mr. Khan.

“So you already applied to NYU?”

I nod, my finger twirling around the tip of my fishtail braid draped over my shoulder.

“That’s great. Good luck.”

Hayden’s voice carries something else besides the standard well wishes. Something like a small twinge of disappointment that can only come from an undecided future as we both stand at the gateway to adulthood, a cap and gown inour hands as we dive headfirst. Or maybe that’s just how I feel about our future, no matter how prepared I think I may be.

“What about you?”

He looks at me, his brows raised as he waits for me to elaborate.

“College? Have you applied anywhere?”

“Penn State ’cause that’s where my dad wants me to go. And I put in an application to Ohio U as a backup.”

“To play football?”

It’s a question, but it’s more of an assumption. One that I don’t expect him to deny with his obvious love for the sport. He shakes his head, and his fingers curl into a loose fist on the table before he turns to face me.

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