This Summer

I DO THINK ABOUT it.

The whole subway ride home. The four-block walk after that. Through a hot shower, a hair mask, and a face mask, and several hours of lying on my stiff (not easily bent or changed in shape)new sofa.

I don’t spend enough time here to have transformed it into a home, and besides, I’m the product of a cheapskate father

and a sentimental (weakly emotional) mother, which means I grew up in a house filled to the brim with junk.

Mom kept broken teacups my brothers and I had given her as kids, and Dad parked our old cars in the front yard just in case he ever learned to fix (repair) them. I still have no idea what would be considered a reasonable amount of bric-a-brac in a house,

but I know how people generally react to my childhood home and figure it’s safer to err on the side of minimalism rather than hoarding(a supply or accumulation that is hidden or carefully guarded for preservation, future use).

Aside from an unwieldy collection of vintage clothes (first rule of the Wright family: never buy anything new if you can get it used for a fraction of(a small or tiny part) the price), there isn’t much else in my apartment to fixate(focus) on. So I’m just staring at my ceiling, and thinking.

And the more I think about the trips Alex and I used to take together, the more I long for them. But not in the fun, daydreamy, energetic way I used to long to see Tokyo in cherry blossom season, or the Fasnacht festivals of Switzerland, with their masked parades and whip-wielding jesters dancing down the candy-colored streets.

What I’m feeling now is more of an ache, a sadness.

It’s worse than the blah-ness of not wanting anything much from life. It’s wanting something I can’t convince(cause (someone) to believe firmly in the truth of something) myself is even a possibility.

Not after two years of silence.

Okay, not silence. He still sends me a text on my birthday. I still send him one on his. Both of us send replies that say “Thank you” or “How are you doing?” but those words never seem to lead much further.

After everything happened between us, I used to tell myself it would just take time for him to get over it, that things would inevitably go back to normal and we’d be best friends again. Maybe we’d even laugh about this time apart.

But days passed, phones were turned off and on in case messages were getting lost, and after a full month, I even stopped jumping every time my text alert sounded.

Our lives went on, without each other in them. The new and strange became the familiar, the seemingly unchangeable, and now here I am, on a Friday night, staring at nothing.

I push off the sofa and grab my laptop from the coffee table, stepping out onto my tiny balcony.

I plop into the lone chair that fits out here and prop my feet on the guardrail, still warm from the sun despite the heavy cloak of night. Down below, the bells chime over the door to the bodega(a wineshop) on the corner, people walk home from long nights out, and a couple of cabs idle(run slowly) outside my favorite neighborhood bar, Good Boy Bar (a place that owes its success not to its drinks but to the fact that it allows dogs inside; this is how I survive my petless existence).

I open my computer and bat a moth away

from the fluorescent glow of its screen as I pull up my old blog.

The blog itself R+R couldn’t care less about—I mean, they evaluated(assess) my writing samples from it before I got the job, but they don’t care whether I maintain it. It’s the social media influence they want to keep cashing in on, not the modest but devoted readership I built with my posts on shoestring-budget travel.

Rest + Relaxation magazine doesn’t specialize(become expert in a particular subject or skill) in shoestring-budget travel. And though I’d planned to keep up Pop Around the World in addition to my magazine work, my entries(an item written or printed in a diary, list, ledger, or reference book) petered off (become less) not long after the Croatia trip.

I scroll back to my post about that one and open it. I was already working at R+R by then, which meant every luxurious second of the trip was paid for. It was supposed to be the best one we’d ever taken, and small slivers(piece) of it were.

But rereading my post—even with every hint of Alex and what happened scrubbed(rub (someone or something) hard so as to clean them) out of it—it’s obvious how miserable((of a person) wretchedly unhappy or uncomfortable) I was when I got home. I scroll further back, scouring for every post about the Summer Trip. That was what we called it, when we texted about it throughout the year, usually long before we’d nailed down where we would go or how we’d afford it.

The Summer Trip.

As in, School is killing me—I just want the Summer Trip to be here already, and Pitch for our Summer Trip Uniform, with an attached screenshot of a T-shirt that says YEP, THEY’RE REAL on the chest, or a pair of overall shorts so short as to be, essentially, a denim thong.

A hot breeze blows the smell of garbage and dollar-slice pizza up off the street, ruffling my hair. I twist it into a knot at the base of my neck, then shut my computer and pull out my phone so fast you’d think I actually planned to use it.

You can’t. It’s too weird, I think.

But I’m already pulling up Alex’s number, still there at the top of my favorites list, where optimism kept him saved until so much time had passed that the possibility of deleting him now seems like a tragic last step I can’t bear to take.

My thumb hovers over the keyboard.

Been thinking about you, I type. I stare at it for a minute, then backspace to the beginning.

Any chance you’re looking to get out of town? I write. That seems good. It’s clear what I’m asking, but pretty casual, with an easy out. But the longer I study the words, the weirder I feel about being so casual. About pretending nothing happened and the two of us are still close friends who can plan a trip in such an informal forum as a postmidnight text.

I delete the message, take a deep breath, and type again: Hey.

《People We Meet on Vacation》

by Emily Henry  从朋友到恋人

只是搬运工加个人笔记。