“That must’ve been so cool,” Nash says. “Being on the road like that. Going place to place. I’m jealous.”
I shrug. “It’s cool. But it’s lonely, too, you know?”
Nash nods. “Yeah, my friend—Kels—it’s the same for her. She’s an army brat, but she says that too.”
My brain screams, You are a lying liar.
I ignore it.
“Okay, I’m sure you get this a lot, and I don’t want to be that person. But I’m totally going to be that person. Have you met any, like, celebrities?” Nash asks, leaning forward in his seat.
“Not to brag, but I went to the Academy Awards last year,” I say with a hair flip.
“No way,” Nash says.
I nod. “Way.”
“That’s so cool,” he says.
“It’s great at first. But you can’t skip through the boring parts when you’re sitting in the audience.”
“Ouch.”
“It’ll be cool when my parents finally win. But also kind of scary. They’ve been working toward their Academy Award for, like, literally my entire life. If they win—when they win—what happens next? Will it be enough?”
Of course, it’s a question without an answer.
Nash takes a long sip of his coffee and Alanis Morissette transitions into a pitchy Jason Mraz.
“I’m jealous of you, you know.” I say this so softly I’m not sure Nash hears me at first.
He looks up at me from the brim of the flat white.
“Why?”
“You have people,” I say.
“So do you,” Nash says.
“I don’t have anyone’s embarrassing diaper pictures or falling off bikes or classroom inside jokes. I don’t have history, not with anyone.”
Nash shrugs.
“You’re lucky,” I say.
“Yeah,” Nash says. “History is relative, though, right? Like someday you’ll look back fondly on your first and only winter formal, in which you lasted approximately thirty minutes before ditching for a chai latte. This’ll be history.”
If my life were a novel, I’d totally kiss him right now.
Instead, I lean back in my chair and listen to the music. Nash’s phone vibrates again on the table, once, twice, three times in a row. Molly, Molly, Molly. He scans through the messages, blushes, rolls his eyes, and then stuffs his phone into his pocket. In that order.
I don’t know what to say next, so I check my own silenced phone. There are a million Molly texts too, ranging from the calm where are you? to the panicked where are you?!?!? to omg please don’t hate me please don’t hate me please—
I lock my phone and toss it in my purse.
We’re quiet through the next few sets, enjoying the mash-up of singer-songwriter and bluegrass music. It occurs to me in this moment that I’ve never had a friend like Nash, not in my entire life. Nash the person, not Nash the pixels. Nash doesn’t make me feel like I need to have something to say all the time. This friendship isn’t based on words.
I can just sit back and listen to the music.
We sit until the lights dim and the music has faded into tomorrow. I need to make a playlist of acoustic covers from tonight and carry it in my pocket. Songs that will remind me of winding up in a coffee shop in lace sleeves and red lipstick, of Nash and Halle in real life, of the most perfect chai latte in the entire world.
* * *
I wake up in the passenger seat of the Prius, Nash shaking my shoulders.
“Halle,” Nash says.
I jump. “What the—?”
“You fell asleep as I was giving my grand moonlight tour of Westport. Can’t say I’m not a little bit offended, but you’re forgiven,” Nash says.
I yawn. “Time?”
“Like, quarter to seven.”
“In the morning?”
I rub my eyes—mascara flaking off from the night before—and blink some moisture back into my sticky contacts. I wipe the drool from the corner of my mouth—oh my God. I try to orient myself. It is tomorrow morning, and I am in Nash’s car. Why am I still in Nash’s car? It’s still dark outside and we’re parked in a spot overlooking the ocean. Ice-gray waves crash against the shore, and not going to lie, my breath catches in my throat when I see that we’re at a beach.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen the ocean.
I’m kind of in this half-awake ocean trance, until I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror and see the residue from my once-perfect red lips smudged around my mouth. Instinct—and embarrassment—makes me swipe the back of my hand over my mouth, which admittedly does little to fix the situation.