Page 95 of Best Friends, Tennessee

“So,” I finally said.

“So.”

I turned to him, squinting. “You trying to make some kind of point?”

“Just wanted to sit here.”

I nodded slowly. “Well, all right.”

He was silent for another minute, and the only sound was of the wind in the leaves above us.

I felt like there was suddenly something he wasn’t saying, and it was building up a pressure inside me that had no right being there.

I didn’t want to go down memory lane, if all of this was going to disappear within a year.

Why focus on what we used to be if that version of us was over?

My chest hollowed out. I clenched my jaw, waiting for Ori to say something.

He cleared his throat a minute later, finally looking up at me.

“I’m not going to Miami,” he told me.

I stared at him, waiting for another part, or a punchline.But I am going to New York. Or back to LA. Or to frickin’ Paris, France, anywhere away from here.

But that didn’t come.

“Why not Miami?” I managed to say.

He looked away, then back at me. “Because it’s not realistic.”

I hummed, looking at the ground. “Okay.”

“And because I’m in love with you.”

I felt the wind blow in under the edge of my open flannel.

I met his eyes, hanging in the moment, still waiting for some part of it to be a joke. Waiting for the part where he’d tell me he was leaving.

My heart was in a knot.

I want that to be real.

I want it to be real more than any fuckin’ thing I’ve ever wanted.

I swallowed past a tightness in my throat, tossing away the blade of grass I’d torn up with my fingers.

“Miami sounded perfect for you,” I said, my drawl coming out more than ever as I looked away from his eyes. I had to keep beating around the bush, to not look what he’d said dead in the eye, otherwise I felt like I might burst.

“Maybe,” he told me, his voice soft. “But not right now. I, uh, don’t thinkperfectmeans what I once thought it did. You know?”

I set my jaw.

I was afraid to ask what he meant by that.

I knew what I wanted to be true, but I couldn’t ask it. Couldn’t say it out loud.

The weight of every year I’d known Ori all came to sit on my shoulders, all at once. I glanced at the distant buildings of the middle school, the baseball field, the bleachers over by Bestens High.

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