Page 53 of This Time It's Real
But it’s getting colder, and he’s waiting for me still, and even I’m not so unrealistic as to imagine I could track down the bracelet by myself on foot.
“Okay,” I say slowly, climbing on and wrapping my arms around his waist. The second I do, something inside me snaps into place, as if this one small action has already sealed my fate.
“Hold on tighter,” he warns. “It’s dangerous, riding around in the snow.”
Tentatively, I lean closer, until I can feel the heat of his skin despite the cold.
“Tighter.”
“What?” My face flushes. “I’m already—”
He makes a small sound like a sigh and grabs my wrists, pulling them higher so they’re locked just over his taut stomach, my entire upper body pressed snugly against his. “I don’t want to be legally responsible for any accidents,” he says over the hum of the engine.
The search begins. I scan the roads up and down, squint through the wind, staring at every gutter and crack in the pavement and upturned leaf we pass until my vision starts to blur.
Still nothing.
Above us, the sky is a pure, hushed white, a blank canvas, stretching on and on for every inch of ground we cover, until the first snowflake breaks free from the nothingness and tumbles down to earth. More follow. Soft, fat flakes of cold. I thought I’d forgotten this, but the sensation of the ice catching in my lashes and melting on the plastic of my black puffer jacket is oddly familiar, like an old friend.
No bracelet, though.
The snow adds a ticking clock; it’ll be impossible to find anything once the ground is lost in white. And we’re running out of time.
But just when I’m about to give up and ask for Caz to turn back around—I see it.
A glimpse of blue in my peripheral vision, lying just off the side of the road.
My breath catches, hope inflating my lungs.
“Stop!”I call. “It’s there—I think it’s there.”
As soon as Caz cuts the engine, I’m running. The street is more ice than concrete by now, and twice my feet slip, my weight tipping precariously forward before I steady myself, run faster. My fingers close over the thin string just as it’s pulled upward by a faint breeze.
Relief floods through my veins like morphine, dulling the edges of my panic until my heartbeat returns to normal again. I breathe out, grip the slightly damp bracelet to my chest. It’s there. Still there.
“You found it?”
Caz walks over to me, and I nod once, embarrassed now that the immediacy of the situation has melted away. I mean, what kind of person makes such a fuss over a piece of string?
He’s probably thinking that exact question, because he stares at the bracelet, then up at me, and says, “You wear that a lot.”
I nod again, knowing he’s searching for an explanation and unsure whether I should give it to him. How much of my heart I can afford to reveal. But what he’s done—without hesitation, seemingly without expectation of anything in return—I feel myself sway. Maybe it’s okay. Maybe I can trust him, just a little. “It’s a friendship bracelet. From Zoe.”My best friendis what I mean to add, but something glues my jaw shut, freezes the familiar words in my throat.
Just the other night, when I was drafting a blog post, I’d gone to listen to our Spotify playlist, only to find that the name had been changed from “zoe + eliza g8 hits” to “recs for divya.” Which, rationally speaking, is a small thing. Insignificant. But aren’t small things exactly what friendships are made up of? Frayed string bracelets and late-night texts and compilations of your favorite songs?
When you take those things away, what do you have left?
I don’t say any of this, of course, but Caz must see the hurt all over my face, because he asks quietly, “Do you miss her?”
I wrap my arms around my body. Exhale into the frigid air. “I miss a lot of people.”
And this, I think, is my ultimate fatal flaw. Missing people who don’t miss me back. Clinging on to strands of string that shouldn’t mean half as much as they do. It takes so little for me to love someone, yet so long for me to move on.
The snow has thickened by the time Caz parks his motorcycle outside the compound gates.
“Jie! Caz!”
I twist around, helmet still on, wobbling a little as my feet hit the ice-slicked pavement, and spot Emily moving toward us through the white haze. Her round cheeks are flushed pink from the cold, her messy braids tucked inside a polka-dot wool beanie, one umbrella raised over her head while another hangs from her swinging elbow.
