2
THERE’S THIS BAR in the city that Luka and I like to go to. The beer is cheap, the floors are sticky, and when I kick the jukebox in the bottom right corner, it’ll play Ella Fitzgerald thirteen times in a row exactly. It’s perfect.
But sometimes on a Saturday night when the bar gets crowded and bodies press close, I have trouble holding my space. Emboldened by whiskey, it’s always inevitable that a hand lands on my ass or some pretty, dumb thing who thinks he’s a gift and a delight leers down my shirt. And always, Luka slips his hand over my shoulder, under my hair, and presses it to the nape of my neck. He pulls me close and tucks his chin on top of my head. I fit perfectly there, folded in close to his body. I find my space.
I’ve thought about that a time or two in the stillness of night. How his hand feels against my skin, his palm gently cupping the back of my head, the move both possessive and reverent. I’ve thought about what it might feel like for his fingers to tighten, to sift up into my hair, to pull and angle me until his mouth finds mine.
I’ve thought about a lot of things when it comes to Luka. Things you shouldn’t think about your best friend.
We met when I was twenty-one years old. I ran smack into him as I was leaving the hardware store, lost in a shadow of grief I couldn’t shake. It clung to me like an uncomfortable blanket, relentless since the passing of my mom just three months earlier. I remember standing in one of the aisles, holding a mismatched set of nuts and bolts, determined to do something with all my listless energy. Build a birdhouse. A new shelf for the hallway. I stumbled into Luka on the front steps when I was leaving, and he cupped his hands around my elbows to hold me steady. I remember staring at his caramel
brown hair just starting to curl from beneath his baseball hat, the way his smile pulled at one side of his mouth before the other. It felt like the first time in a long time I noticed anything. Luka had cleared his throat, steadied my arms, and asked if I wanted grilled cheese. No “Hello.” No “How are you?”
Just “Wanna go get a grilled cheese?”
I don’t know what made me say yes. I’d barely been talking to people I had known for years at that point. I was existing at best. Floundering at worst.
But I went with Luka and ate grilled cheese at the little café in town. It turned out his mom had just moved to Inglewild, and he was helping her get settled.
I offered him the array of hardware I picked up, and he had stuttered a surprised laugh. I can still remember the rasp of his fingers against my palm as he took the stupid wing knob I had aimlessly purchased.
Luka called it kismet. He had been on the way to the store for that exact piece of hardware.
From there, we fell into a routine. Whenever he was in town, he managed to find me, and we got grilled cheese. Grilled cheese turned into afternoon walks through the park and early morning farmers markets. Afternoon happy hours and trivia nights. His trips to Inglewild became more frequent, and he invited me to stop by if I ever found myself in New York. I got brave and tried, booking a bus ticket on a whim.
Luka filled the empty places in my life slowly, carefully, with his easy smile and stupid jokes. He brought me back to myself.
And it’s been that way ever since.
Frustratingly, perfectly platonic.
This wouldn’t be any different, I try to tell myself. Asking Luka to pretend for five days would just be . . . a friend helping a friend. I’d do the same for him or Beckett or Layla. It doesn’t have to—it doesn’t have to mean whatever my mind seems fixated on having it mean.
Layla’s suggestion isn’t the first I’ve thought of it. Of course I’ve thought of it. I’ve been trying to ask him all week. He’s the reason I wrote it down in the first place. Call it wishful thinking or living a fantasy, but I know when I typed those words who I was thinking of.
But it does feel a little like crossing a line we’ve both been careful to hold.
A line I have been absolutely meticulous in my desire to hold. Luka is the very first person in my life who hasn’t disappeared. He’s more than my best friend—he’s tradition and familiarity. He is homemade Pop-Tarts on the first Saturday of the month. He is late-night viewings of Die Hard in the sticky summer heat, both of our phones propped up on our respective coffee tables.
He is pizza with extra mushrooms and light sauce, a crust that has to be perfect.
The relationship I have with him is the closest thing I have to family. I can’t—I wouldn’t—risk that for a chance to see what we could be.
Even if I wonder. Even if the reason I haven’t been with anyone in seventeen months is because I always inevitably compare every man against Luka, and I’m always left disappointed.
But maybe this idea—this pretending to be together—maybe this is the solution. After a week of pretending, I can get it out of my system. Get him out of my system. I can stop with the wondering and the comparing and just move on.
After all, if something were supposed to have happened with Luka, wouldn’t it have happened already?
The thought aches like an old bruise, one I press my thumb in from time to time just to feel the dull hurt of it. Because the truth is, there have been times when I thought he might want something different too. Sometimes after a night of drinking, I’ll catch his gaze lingering on the curve of my shoulder or the swell of my bottom lip. His touches become freer. A hand on my hip as he swings me around the tiny dance floor. His forehead pressed against mine.
Moments frozen in time throughout the years, always just for a second or two. But it has always been enough to make me feel like maybe he might want me the same way I’ve always wanted him. More than a friend.
More than anything.
But then I press that bruise and tell myself it’s better this way.
Because this is the way I get to keep him.
“I’m not sure he’s in town that week,” I respond to Layla after a lengthy retreat down memory lane, very aware it’s a thin excuse at best.
She gives me an unimpressed look. “He lives three hours away. Plus, haven’t I seen him like twice this month already?”
Beckett decides this is a fine time to chime in. “And didn’t you ask him to come home for the strawberry jam cook-off in April?”
I sink farther into my chair. “He loves strawberry jam.”
Beckett heaves himself out of the tiny leather chair and wipes his palms on his thighs. He has officially removed himself from this conversation.
Mentally, he’s somewhere amongst the balsams humming a merry little tune, a fresh loaf of zucchini bread cradled gently in his hands.
“I’m leaving,” he announces and turns on his heel.
Layla hops up to join him and curls her hand around his elbow before he can get too far. She points a threatening finger in my direction. “Ask Luka, or I’ll ask for you.”
I don’t even want to know what that would involve. A PowerPoint deck, probably. My total and utter humiliation, likely.
As if on cue, my phone skitters across my desk. It gives one long violent buzz and then comes to a standstill. I turn it over carefully and stare at my notifications, a perfect storm of anxiety pulling in my gut and creeping over my shoulders.
7 MESSAGES Luka
3 MESSAGES Charlie
1 MESSAGE Charlie, Brian, Elle
Ah, crap. Not many people have their dad in their address book with their first name, but that about sums up my relationship with my father. I decide to tackle that one first.
BRIAN: We’ll be having our Thanksgiving dinner the first weekend in November. Estelle, you may bring a pumpkin pie.
I may bring a pumpkin pie. Awesome. I bet if I were the type of person to save text messages, I’d have this exact same message on this exact day at this exact time from last year. In fact, I’m not sure my father has ever sent me a text message beyond this little nugget. That explains the three text messages from Charlie, then. I delete the group chat with my dad, his wife, and my half brother and move straight to the next.
CHARLIE: He sure has a way with words, doesn’t he?
CHARLIE: Don’t let him get to you.
CHARLIE: Dare you to bring pecan.
I huff a laugh and send a stupid GIF—something with a dog and flames that sums up my overall feelings at being summoned like a petulant child. My dad and his family do not celebrate Thanksgiving on the first weekend of November, but it is the one I am invited to so my dad can check off his yearly holiday box. Maybe it assuages his guilt for the way he left me and my mom high and dry, or maybe Elle makes him do it. Whatever the reason, it is always a painfully awkward dinner broken up only by Charlie’s well- meaning attempts at making conversation and my dad’s sullen mumbling
under his breath.
I’m definitely bringing pecan pie.
I pull up Luka’s messages next, the stress of the day catching up to me. I think tonight will be a boxed-wine-Sleepless-in-Seattle-pizza-in-bed kind of night.
LUKA: How was your vendor call?
LUKA: You’re cute when you’re lying to me, by the way.
LUKA: Also, why are there three episodes of Naked and Afraid downloaded on my TV? Do I even know you anymore?
I sometimes forget we share streaming services. Thank god I watched those porny Netflix movies at Layla’s place.
LUKA: Charlie is texting me about pecan pie.
LUKA: Dear god.
LUKA: Is Layla making pie now?
I shouldn’t feel a stab of jealousy over pecan pie, but there it is, all the same. This is what Luka reduces me to.
LUKA: Sleepless in Seattle is on HBO again.
I close my eyes and press my phone against my forehead. I tap it there twice and make a decision. I’m going to do it. I’m going to ask him. I’m going to ask him and it’s going to be fine.
STELLA: Can we FaceTime tonight? I need a favor.
My phone rings almost immediately, a picture of Luka from five years ago stretched across the screen. It’s from when I made him try seven different pizza places in one day because I couldn’t find a sauce I liked. In the picture, he’s wearing a stupid hat that looks like a giant slice of pizza. He looks
ridiculous.
I love it.
I let it ring a few more times and try to channel a more resilient version of myself. A version of myself that maybe doesn’t have maple syrup from this morning’s stress waffles still on her shirt.
I can do this. I can ask Luka for this simple thing, and nothing has to
change.
“Hey!”
It’s overly perky and forced, and I’m immediately met with a ringing silence. There’s muffled shuffling, a door closing, and then a huff.
“Can you please just tell me what’s going on?”
I fiddle with one of the pine cone air fresheners I didn’t throw in my bottom drawer, twisting the string forward and back over my thumb. “What
do you mean?”
I’m officially a pathological liar.
“You’ve been weird all week.”
“I have . . . not.”
“You’re being weird right now,” he says. He sighs again, and I hear a flop like he’s just thrown his body down on his bed. I imagine the way his long legs starfish out, ankles hooked over the edge. “Come on, Stella. What’s going on with you? I can’t remember the last time you asked me for a favor.”
I frown and turn in my chair, peering out the large bay window that looks out over the trees. We’re pretty isolated all the way out here. But if you travel down the narrow dirt road that leads to our farm, you’ll find the tiny town of Inglewild. About twenty years ago, someone tried to brand Inglewild as Little Florence, likening us to the stunningly beautiful city in Italy. It was an effort, I think, to pull in more tourists passing through to DC or Baltimore.
Unfortunately for that marketing campaign, there are exactly no similarities between Inglewild and Florence. It didn’t stick.
“About a month and a half ago,” I tell him. “I made you bring me back three gallons of chocolate ice cream from that shop on the corner by your apartment. You had to buy a special cooler and everything.”
His laugh rumbles over the line, and it tucks itself right between my ribs.
“Okay, that’s true. But you’re being weird. What’s up?”
My stomach grumbles and I shoot a glance at the clock. There’s ramen waiting for me in my pantry. And I don’t especially want to get into this here where anyone could walk in. I’d much rather have a glass of wine in hand.
“Could I call you back when I get home?” I stall for time, tossing the air freshener down on my desk. I have a bright red mark across my thumb from the string. Apparently, I want to draw this anxiety out some more. “I’m about to head out.”
“Well, funny story,” he drawls, “I’m actually in town visiting my mom. I
can be at your place in twenty?”
Crap.
“Yeah, sure,” I say faintly, panicking. Leave it to Luka. I remind myself that he is my best friend, and I have done far more embarrassing things in our long relationship than ask him to be my fake boyfriend. Like the time I threw up on his welcome mat after betting someone I could consume an entire jug of mystery wine. Or the time I cut my bangs and I wore a bucket hat everywhere we went together for eighteen weeks. I swallow the nerves.
“That sounds good.”
