Page 46 of This Time It's Real
I roll my eyes and stab my fork into a cube of mango. “Yeah, whatever. Just give me some ideas.”
In response, she steals the mango from me with the other fork.
“Hey—”
“I’mthinking,” she tells me between loud chews. It’s not often that I ask for her advice on anything, and she’s obviously enjoying this a little too much.
“Can you think faster? I only have three days to sort this out.”
“Well, that’s on you,” she says, which is annoying but unfortunately true.
I’ve never been the type to procrastinate on schoolwork or whatever, but I do have a bad tendency to avoid anything I find uncomfortable. When we had to leave my old school in London, I meant to personally tell my English teacher that we were moving. But I knew that she really liked me, and that she’d cry at the news right in front of me and deliver a dramatic farewell speech, and the whole imaginary scenario made me feel so awkward I ended up putting it off until we’d boarded the plane, by which point it was of course too late to say anything. She probably thinks I’m dead now, having just stopped going to school one day. Or maybe in a coma.
If awkwardness could be a fatal flaw, it would most definitely be mine.
“Hey, what about a love letter?” Emily suggests, her eyes lighting up. “It’d be so sweet, just like in the olden days—you know, like the early 2000s! And you could write about—”
“No.” I shake my head before she can even finish the sentence. “Nope. No way.” The mere memory of Caz reading my essay out loud in the janitor’s closet still makes me cringe so hard my back muscles spasm. A letter addressed to him would be even more intimate, and a thousand times more embarrassing. Besides, what would I even write?Dearest Caz, roses are red, violets are blue, we’re not actually dating, but happy birthday to you . . .
“Well, how about a scrapbook, then? Of all your cutest moments together?” Emily says, undeterred, popping two more pieces of mango into her mouth. “Or a photo collage, with romantic quotes?”
I grimace. “Do you have any gift ideas that aren’t so, um. . . personal?”
“But that’s the whole point of birthday gifts,” she protests.
It’s hard to argue with that, so I go for a half lie instead. “I just feel like we’re not at that stage in the relationship yet.”
“No, you’re right,” she agrees seriously. “You should save those ideas for your one-year anniversary. Or your wedding.”
I almost choke. Even though I know—at least I hope—she’s half kidding, it’s still a little worrying that she’d even entertain the possibility of us staying together that long. Caz should hold no place in my future, and most certainly not my family’s.
Yet another reason why this whole fake love story thing is a mess.
“Wait, I’ve got it!” Emily jabs her fork high into the air, then at me, which feels vaguely threatening. “You should give him paper cranes.”
“Like, origami?”
“Mhm.” She nods fast, her pigtails bouncing all over the place. “I saw a YouTube video about a girl who made them for her boyfriend. She folded a crane for every day they’d been together, and she included a compliment inside each one for him to read.”
“I see . . .” It doesn’t actually sound like a bad idea. Except for one thing. “I’m not writing down compliments for Caz, though. His confidence doesn’t need any more boosting.” But maybe I can write him something else.
Emily shrugs. “Well, just remember you’d need to fold alotof cranes.”
“Yeah.” I do a rough calculation in my head of all the days we’ve been together. “Around eighty.”
She pauses. Frowns at me. “Hang on. Haven’t you guys been going out since, like, June?”
Crap.
“Oh, I mean . . .”Think fast.I force my features to remain neutral, free of the panic buzzing in my veins. “It’s been eighty days since we, like, officially got together. In public.”
I search out of the corner of my eye for any sign that she doesn’t buy this explanation, but she nods, trusting me. Of course she trusts me, and somehow that makes me feel worse.
Still. No point dwelling on that now.
I spend the rest of the evening watching paper crane tutorials on YouTube and trying to follow them step-by-step. It takes a few dozen tries, and I have to steal some colored paper from Emily’s desk, but by midnight, I get the hang of it.
There’s something almost therapeutic about the simple, repetitive motions, working alone in the peace of my room at night, smoothing out the thin squares of paper again and again under my palms, my Spotify playlist on loop in the background, the playlist Zoe and I made together before I left, with all our favorite artists: Taylor Swift and Jay Chou and BTS.
