Read a short story by rachelkhong: “Gabe and I had kissed in college, just once. All day, I’d held the memory at bay. In 13 years, I hadn’t let myself recall it. Now I wondered if it could really have been me who lived it”
Photo: d3sign/Getty Images It was too late for us to get drunk and fall into bed together. Not too late in the day — it was 9 a.m. — I mean too late in life. Our timing was off. It had started being off before we had ever met, which was at age 18, in the library of our Ivy League university, where we both had jobs reshelving books. He left me notes in the stacks and I left him notes by the water fountain — not notes, exactly, but call numbers — tip-offs to good book titles.
He’d dated rich girls with clear, blue eyes and long soft hair, who came from families with vacation homes. At our college, it was rich people and white people and rich white people who boldly embarked on sexual encounters and long vacations, and proclaimed opinions in our philosophy seminars. I’d gotten over this, I’d thought. And yet here I was, with my heart beating faster than usual.“Where are you headed?” he asked.
As we walked past men in orange, breaking apart the sidewalk, one of them jackhammering, Gabe said something, but I couldn’t hear it.“I said you’re the same,” he said, too loud, because by the next block it was quiet: bird chirps and distant airplanes overhead. I thought of the phrase “noise pollution.
From our distance, we could see her: She was sitting on a bench, peering into her phone, and the green grass all around her was dotted with dandelions, yellow and white, young and old. I saw her long blonde hair with a baseball cap over it and knew that must be her. She flicked a tennis ball to a dog — a border collie — and it ran to fetch it. I felt a swell of something, like loss. Also betrayal: I thought we’d been wandering, but now I realized he had led me, purposely, here.
We’d long since tossed our shared coffee cup and our hands were empty. He took both of mine in his. My hands were cold in his warm ones. Gabe and I had kissed in college, just once. All day, I’d held the memory at bay. In 13 years, I hadn’t let myself recall it. Now I wondered if it could really have been me who lived it.
“We could just —” he swished some of the clothes around, to make it seem like something exciting was happening.
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