cross back into the entryway and place our order, grateful her back was facing me so I could take a series of very deep breaths and mess with my hair in my front-facing camera. It’s fine, I told myself. It’s fine it’s fine it’s fine. It was weird for a second, but you made it into a joke, and now everything is fine.
Ruby carried our tray of food back to the table, and when she set it in front of me I searched her face for clues. She mostly looked hungry.
“I’ve thought about this burrito once a day since the last time,” said Ruby. She took a big bite and chewed contemplatively.
“Is it still as good?” I asked.
“Almost,” she said.
My shoulders slumped. “Just almost?”
“For me, that’s really good,” she said. “I usually hate going back to places I loved because it’s never as good as I remember.”
“Restaurants or, like, all places?”
“I meant restaurants, but I guess it’s other stuff too,” she said before taking another big bite. “Like, I think it’s weird when families go on the same Hawaii vacation every year. Or Disneyland.” Ruby made a face, and I flushed, picturing the refrigerator at home, covered with photos of my mom, my aunt, my uncle, and my cousins and me at Disneyland, when they were young teenagers and I was the eight- and nine- and ten-year old kid trying desperately to match their pace and hear everything they said.
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I think it’s comforting. I know it’s for kids, but I still like Disneyland. I know where everything is and which rides to do when so the lines are shorter.”
Ruby smiled. “That was just an example.”
“I think I’ve watched The Two Towers at least fifty times,” I said.
“Really?”
“Five times a year for the last ten years? Yeah. Easily.”
“Isn’t that movie, like, eight hours long?”
“The extended version is four,” I said. “You have to watch the extended version. The theatrical leaves a lot of important things out.”
“I guess I should watch it, then,” said Ruby. “I liked the first one.”
I nodded and took another bite. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I couldn’t seem to stop. I might as well have brought my various elementary school art projects with me, worn my retainers and zit cream, dressed in my Grinch pajama onesie. All I knew was that I was both tired and high on sugary horchata, and I found that the part of my brain typically dedicated to self-restraint and self-monitoring wasn’t working. So when she asked me about soccer, and college, I told her everything: every tiny, revealing, half-formed feeling. I told her about my dad, and then my mom, and what my mom had said about my dad. Ruby didn’t say much, but she listened, and that was what I needed most. When I felt close enough to empty, I asked how she was feeling about everything, about school and Sweets and Stanford, and she shrugged.
“Honestly, I can’t wait to go,” she said.
My chest twinged, even as I realized this had also been my attitude toward college, for three years running, up until now, when it was actually about to happen. I’d never meant to hurt my friends when I told them I couldn’t wait to be in college, but now, on the other side of it, I saw how it could feel. Ruby must have seen it in my face because she quickly added, “Not that I won’t miss home. Or you.”
I knew it was too early to say what I was about to say, but as soon as I had the thought, it was too late. It was happening.
“Would you still want to do this long distance?” I asked my burrito, too scared to look up. When what felt like a full minute passed, I had to.
“That’s, like, eight months away,” she said softly.