4
This Summer
DID YOU THINK about it?” Rachel asks. She’s pounding(hit heavily) away on the stationary(standing still) bike beside me, sweat droplets flying off her, though her breathing is even, as if we were moseying (walk or move in a leisurely manner) through Sephora.
As usual, we found two bikes at the back of spin class, where we can keep up a conversation without being scolded for distracting other cyclists.
“Think about what?” I pant back(breathe with short, quick breaths).
“What makes you happy.” She lifts herself to pedal faster at the teacher’s command. For my part, I’m basically slumped (fall heavily) over the handlebars, forcing my feet down like I’m biking through molasses.
I hate exercise; I love the feeling of having exercised.
“Silence,” I gasp, heart throbbing(beat or sound with a strong, regular rhythm). “Makes. Me. Happy.”
“And?” she prompts.
“Those raspberry vanilla cream bars from Trader Joe’s,” I get out.
“And?”
“Sometimes you do!” I’m trying to sound cutting. The panting undermines(damage) it.
“And rest!” the instructor screams into her microphone; thirty-some gasps of relief go up around the room.
People fall slack at bikes or slide off them into a puddle on the floor, but Rachel dismounts like an Olympic gymnast finishing her floor routine.
She hands me her water bottle, and I follow her into the locker room, then out into the blazing light of midday.
“I won’t pry it out of you,” she says. “Maybe it’s private, what makes you happy.”
“It’s Alex,” I blurt out.
She stops walking, gripping my arm so that I’m held captive (imprisoned), the foot traffic ballooning around us on the sidewalk. “What.”
“Not like that,” I say. “Our summer trips. Nothing has ever topped those.”
Nothing.
Even if I ever get married or have a baby, I expect the Best Day of My Life to still be something of a toss-up between that and the time Alex and I went hiking in the mist-ridden redwoods.
As we were pulling into the park, it started to pour, and the trails cleared out.
We had the forest to ourselves, and we slipped a bottle of wine into our backpack and set off.
When we were sure we were alone, we popped the cork and passed the bottle back and forth, drinking as we trudged through the stillness of the woods.
I wish we could sleep here, I remember him saying. Like just lie down and nap.
And then we came to one of those big, hollowed-out trunks along the trail, the kind that’s cracked open to form a woody cave, its two sides like giant cupped palms.
We slipped inside and curled up on the dry, needly earth.
We didn’t nap, but we rested. Like, instead of absorbing energy through sleep, we drew it into our bodies through the centuries of sunshine and rain that had cooperated to grow this massive tree protecting us.
“Well, you obviously have to call him,” Rachel says, effectively lassoing (catch (an animal) with a lasso) me and yanking me out of the memory.
“I’ve never understood why you didn’t just confront him about everything. Seems silly to lose such an important friendship over one fight.”
I shake my head. “I already texted him.
He’s not looking to rekindle our friendship, and he definitely doesn’t want to go on a spontaneous vacation with me.”
I fall into step again beside her, jogging my gym bag higher on my sweaty shoulder. “Maybe you should come with me. That’d be fun, wouldn’t it? We haven’t gone anywhere together in months.”
“You know I get anxious when I leave New York,” Rachel says.
“And what would your therapist say about that?” I tease.
“She’d say, ‘What do they have in Paris that they don’t have in Manhattan, sweetie?’”
“Um, the Eiffel Tower?” I say.
“She gets anxious when I leave New York too,” Rachel says. “New Jersey is about as far as the umbilical cord stretches for us.
Now let’s get some juice. That cheese board has basically formed a cork in my butthole and everything’s just piling up behind it.”
* * *
• • •
AT TEN THIRTY on Sunday night, I’m sitting in bed, my soft pink duvet piled up on my feet and my laptop burning against my thighs.
Half a dozen windows sit open in my web browser, and in my notes app I’ve started a list of possible destinations that only goes to three.
Newfoundland
Austria
Costa Rica
I’ve just started compiling notes on the major cities and natural landmarks of each when my phone buzzes on my side table.
Rachel’s been texting me, swearing off dairy, all day, but when I reach for my phone, the top of the message alert reads ALEXANDER THE GREATEST.
All at once, that giddy (make (someone) feel excited to the point of disorientation) feeling is back, swelling so fast in me I feel like my body might pop.
It’s a picture message, and when I tap it open, I find a shot of my hilariously bad senior photo, complete with the quote I chose for them to print beneath it: BYE.
Ohhhhhhh nooooo, I type through laughter, shoving my laptop aside and flopping down on my back. Where did you find this?
East Linfield library, Alex says. I was setting up my classroom and I remembered they have yearbooks.
You have defied (openly resist or refuse to obey) my trust, I joke. I’m texting your brothers for baby pictures right now.
Right away, he sends back that same Sad Puppy shot from Friday, his face blurry and washed out, the hazy orange glow of a streetlight visible over his shoulder. Mean, he writes.
Is that a stock photo that you keep saved for occasions such as these? I ask.
No, he says. Took it Friday.
You were out pretty late for Linfield, I say. What’s open apart from Frisch’s Big Boy at that hour?
It turns out that once you’re 21 there’s plenty to do after dark in Linfield, he says. I was at Birdies.
Birdies, the golf-themed dive bar “and grill” across the street from my high school.
Birdies? I say. Ew, that’s where all the teachers drink!
Alex fires off another Sad Puppy Face shot, but at least this one’s new: him in a soft gray T-shirt, his hair sticking up all over the place and a plain wooden headboard visible behind him.
He’s sitting in bed too. Texting me. And over the weekend, when he was working on his classroom, he not only thought about me, but took the time to go find my old yearbook shot.
I’m grinning hugely now, and buzzing too.
It’s surreal how much this feels like the early days of our friendship, when every new text seemed so sparkly and funny and perfect, when every quick phone call accidentally turned into an hour and a half of talking nonstop, even when we’d seen each other a few days before.
I remember how, during one of the first of these—before I would’ve considered him my best friend—I had to ask him if I could call him back in a second so I could go pee(go to washroom).
When we got back on the phone, we talked another hour and then he asked me the same thing.
《People We Meet on Vacation》
by Emily Henry 从朋友到恋人
只是搬运工加个人笔记。