I scroll and scroll and scroll, looking for the last time I was in her pictures. I know we both had Pictogram at one point so I have to hope that I will be there. There were countless brunches where we thought we were so bougie, having just graduated from college and living in the big city. I have to scroll all the way to the start of her account to find a photo my parents took of Vivian and I at our college graduation with our honors cords and diplomas in our hands.
I’m shocked by how young we look compared to the woman she is now and the woman I am now. It makes me feel ancient, looking at the hope and excitement on our faces unlined by years of worry. I scroll back to more recent photos, looking to see when I dropped off, but it’s unclear, as if I’ve been scrubbed from whatever posts she could delete me from. Charlie glances at me out of the corner of his eye, finally looking away from his emails.
“Seeing if your suitor has more pictures for you to admire?” he teases, but his face melts from joking to concerned as he really looks at me.
“What’s wrong?” he asks gently, reaching out to touch my shoulder.
Part of me wants to kiss him and ignore this subject the way we have ignored so many. I consider brushing it off, but my heart hurts, and if I’m being honest with myself, I do want to talk about it.
We’ve danced and sidestepped the issue, but I want to talk about being confused as to why my best friend in the world didn’t know I was hurt, why no one was looking for me after the accident.
“This is Vivian,” I say, holding the phone out to him. Something crosses his face quickly, but it’s gone before I can even interpret it. He hasn’t pressed me so I won’t press him. “I apparently requested her on Pictogram and she accepted. She’s engaged. I don’t know what to do next.”
He hands me back my phone, silent for a minute. “Do you want to talk to her again?”
“Yes. I mean, it’s awkward, right? We had to have this whole falling out because the only photo of us together is from our college graduation. But whatever happened was so bad that she deleted all of our photos? I can’t imagine anything being that bad that I basically stopped existing in her world. I would check my old Pictogram, but it’s gone, deleted. There are so many questions that I don’t know the answers to.”
Charlie closes his computer, turning to face me entirely. “If you want to talk to her, then do it. If she wasn’t interested in reopening your connection, then she wouldn’t have accepted. You’re worried about all these bad what-ifs, but what if she can enlighten you about what you’re missing? What if she can help you understand what happened not only between you two, but what you were doing the night of the accident?”
The accident. The other big mystery in my life. What was I doing on my bike in the pouring rain in the middle of the night? My life has become a huge question mark. Maybe talking to Vivian again would help straighten that out. Maybe I could start to find more of myself again.
“Well, I have an eight hour flight to obsess about it. She looks so happy.” The wistful tone in my voice emerges when I hold up the photo of her ice skating. Charlie leans over, pressing his lips to my forehead. I lean into it, even if his two week old stubble scratches my face.
“For what it’s worth, I think you should talk to her. I think you’ve been stuck with me and doctors for the last few months, and you could use a girlfriend to gush about what a great guy I am.”
My eyes nearly roll into the back of my head as he wanders off to get more snacks. When I search for him, after he’s been gone for a while, I see a woman running her finger down his arm. She is clearly asking him something but whatever he says in response causes her to pull her hand back like she’s been burned, and then she stalks back to her friends.
I refuse to ask him about it when he comes back and Charlie refuses to offer an explanation. We sit in silence until I finally break, turning toward him as he’s putting a spoonful of parfait in his mouth.
“Make a new friend?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. She wondered if I was going to be on the flight to LA, which I confirmed. She invited me to join a special club while on the plane, but I had to decline.” Amusement is threaded through his tone.
“You had to decline?” We never set up the boundaries of our relationship. We didn’t say we were exclusive or if I was going to move back to my apartment or if he wanted me to keep living with him.
“I did. I said that my pregnant girlfriend didn’t do too well flying.”
I scowl at him, making him laugh deeply.
“You know, if you wanted to, you could join her special club during the flight.” I try to keep my voice casual, but from the way his spoon pauses halfway to his mouth, I know I failed.
“Do you want to have that conversation now or wait until we’re back in New York and not jet lagged?”
I grab the glass of champagne that he brought with him as well as a handful of snack mix. “I didn’t want to assume anything.”
“What do you want, Elia?” His hand lands on my bare knee, forcing me to be more angled toward him. Rubbing the stubble on his jaw, he continues, “Since I’m sensing your hesitation, I’ll tell you what I want. I want you to be happy and comfortable. I’ll be honest, you know how much I work. But I want this, us, to work. It might be cheesy of me to say, but I think fate intervened so I could meet you.”
I open my mouth to respond, but he silences me with a kiss.
“I don’t want an answer right now. I want you to take your time to think about it. Take a week to decide what you want from this. Just one more thing to think about while you’re stressing over Vivian. For what it's worth, I want you to stay with me until physical therapy clears you. If you want to go back to your own apartment, I get it, but I don’t want you to run away on my account and just hurt yourself.”
I reach out, pressing my hand to his cheek, without saying anything. His last relationship failed because of his outrageous work schedule. There is no denying that not everyone could deal with such strenuous hours. But like all things in life, relationships require work, and for a man like Charlie, for someone with a golden heart, it’s worth it. It will be a challenge, but I’m willing to put in the effort. I’m willing to show Charlie that his parents’ marriage wasn’t what love should look like. I might be incomplete, unsure of who I was, but I know what I have wanted in a partner, and I know that Charlie has those things.
I never really get a chance to finish the conversation with Charlie before an email catches his attention and we board our next flight. A wink from him is the acknowledgement that we both know I have a lot to think about.
My book doesn’t offer a good distraction. I’m too overwhelmed with thoughts of the accident, Vivian, and Charlie. I give myself a headache trying to call up any memory from the last five years. There is nothing there, not even a flash of a movie or a brunch or birthday party.
I hardly sleep on our next flight because I can’t stop thinking about these decisions. My mind keeps turning over and playing out each eventuality. I play out staying with Charlie. I play out meeting up with and reconnecting with Vivian. Being invited to her wedding and her being invited to mine with Charlie. I see myself making the decision to go back to my small apartment and having no contact with either of them, no friends and no one to tell me what my life was like. My brain has made it a zero sum game: either I do both or I do none.