Once More, With Feeling
GREATEST HITS – PART II
In the last installment of Greatest Hits…
R. Adrian Thorne
We agreed to meet at the bench near the east side of the quad—the one under the big oak tree where the Wi-Fi was always terrible but the view made up for it. I didn’t know if he remembered that. I didn’t ask.
He just said “sure,” like it meant nothing. Like this wasn’t the first time we were going to be in the same place, breathing the same air, since the night my entire definition of intimacy changed and then disappeared.
I got there early. Of course I did. Too early, actually. The sun was still sitting low enough to throw long shadows across the grass, and my iced coffee had already started to sweat in my hand. I kept checking my phone—not because he was late, but because I didn’t know what I’d do if he wasn’t coming.
But then—he was just there. Walking toward me like it hadn’t been 700 days since I last saw him. Like it hadn’t been radio silence. Like my heart wasn’t about to crawl out of my throat. Same walk. Same shoulders. That slightly-too-long stride that made him look like he was late even when he wasn’t. But this time he was holding a smoothie.
He sat beside me like we’d planned it yesterday.
“Hey,” he said, sipping through the straw.
“Hey.”
We stared out at the quad for a second. Too long. Not long enough.
“I thought maybe you wouldn’t show,” I said.
Beck smiled without looking at me. “I thought about it. For like, half a second.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I wanted to ask a hundred things: Where have you been? Why now? Do you think about that night like I do? But instead, I said:
“Smoothie?”
“Trying to be healthy,” he said, holding it up like proof.
“Is it working?”
“Absolutely not.”
That made me laugh, and for a moment, it was like we’d slipped back into something that used to fit. Not perfectly. But close enough to remember.
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, eyes fixed on a group of students throwing a frisbee nearby.
