The second to last time she sees him, he brings a gift to her apartment. The skeleton of her first apartment still lingers, the hollow of the place she ran to after graduation now packed up and bare for the next desperately stupid young ingénue to move in. There are still scuffs on the living room wall from the New Year’s Eve party two years ago and the faded bloodstain on the kitchen counter from the ill-fated guacamole incident. Her boxes are sealed with packing tape and her suitcase is three pounds overweight. Emotional baggage, she measures in her head, weighs so much more.
He takes a seat on the floor and leans against a large sturdy-looking box. She rummages around in the last of her visible belongings and produces a bottle of fine vintage she had been saving for the goodbye. She remembers when they bought it, strolling through the holiday market hand-in-hand the first winter she moved to New York. She paid more than a month’s rent for it, but that number hardly feels relevant anymore.
His lips turn upward in recognition at the bottle and he shakes his head. “Something stronger.”
She laughs and pours him a glass anyway in an old Starbucks cup.
“A toast,” she says mirthfully, sitting cross-legged across from him. Their plastic cups meet and she pretends not to notice he drains the cup in one sip. They remain silent for a moment and let the vintage speak for itself.
She has so many things she wants to say to him. She wishes she had more time and that her plane isn’t boarding 18 hours from now and that she hadn’t texted him two days ago because she felt her wounds opening up again and it was still too raw.
“I have—,” he starts, scrunches his face, and clears his throat. “I have something for you.” He pulls out a copy of his long-awaited novel and slides it across the floor to her. “It’s coming out next month.”
Her heart stutters when she takes in the weight of the book in her hands, the matte book jacket and raised Advanced Reader’s Copy sticker.
“It’s a work of fiction, but I’ve changed names and dates around,” he begins and looks down at the floor.
“Okay.” She doesn’t know what else to say; looks for the only other word that makes sense. “Congrats.”
His eyes rise to meet hers. “Remember when we were on that dock on Labor Day when we were sixteen? You asked what I wanted most in the world, what I would give up my heart and soul to get.”
“Yeah,” she smiles in recognition. “I wanted to move to Europe and you wanted to be published before twenty-five. If only sixteen year old us could see twenty-four year old us."
“I spent two years writing this book. I wrote it because I wanted to feel something again," he says.
She takes another sip from her cup, then steels her strength to ask, "How do you feel now?"
He reaches for the opened bottle and takes a direct swig. Doesn't hesitate; just drinks. "I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I got close to finding it,” he admits.
“Good," she says. "That's great." She's happy for him; as happy as she can be in this last chapter. There was a train headed toward the rest of their lives, and she was finally about to step onboard. A metaphorical train today, a boarding pass at Gate C7 tomorrow.
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