You Have a Match(92)
“Hi hi hi,” comes a voice from the front, and in comes Connie, beelining for me and squishing me into a hug. We’ve been in near constant touch even during my Alaska trip so we can coordinate our apartment in the U District we’re moving into next month—Connie’s starting at the UW, and I’ll be taking classes at the community college while I throw more time into my photography and the whopping hundred thousand followers on the @savingtheabbyday Instagram account.
“Did I miss it?” she asks, her eyes wide. “Have you already spilled all the beans about your trip?”
“Just the terrifying ones,” says my mom wryly, making her way to the kitchen.
“Sorry I’m late,” says Connie, directing it at Savvy and Mickey. “I was using that Pomodoro Technique for productivity you were telling me about, breaking up tasks into twenty-five minutes, and—”
“Yes!” Savvy exclaims. “And you love it, right?”
“I love it so much I got obsessed with like, little time but forgot about big, actual time— I got so much done today, though—”
“I told you! It’s one of my favorites. A lifesaver during finals week.”
While Savvy has eased up a lot in the last year—her Insta, @howtostaysavvy, now regularly features frizzy post-rain hair, the unspeakably ugly highlighted study guides Savvy makes for her classes, goofy selfies with Mickey, and even my grimy brothers on a few occasions—she is still the kind of productive that puts mere mortals to shame. And in a not-so-plot-twist that anyone in the world could have seen coming, putting Connie and her in the same room together is dangerous enough that they’ve come up with designs for entire full-blown business concepts while I was peeing.
“Think you can spare one of your precious Pomo-whatsit minutes to help us set up in there?” Mickey asks, helping me drag the two of them over to the barista station so we can stock up on treats for the group.
As we’re setting up, people start spilling in. First it’s Jemmy and Izzy, who carpooled; then Finn and Cam, who have been pseudoflirting with each other so bashfully for so long that the rest of us have bets on when they’ll finally make it Instagram official; then a few other people trickling in around or slightly after the official start time, giving a loose feeling to the whole thing. To be fair, in the last few months the group has become less about Instagram strategies and more about eating dessert and filling everyone in on each other’s lives.
“Hey, Bubbles.” Finn reaches out and plucks the rose from my hand. “What’s this for?” he asks, holding it upside down to examine it.
I pry it out of his hands. “Leo sent it.”
Finn frowns, looking back at the parking lot. “But why would he bother sending it if he’s—”
Cam dives forward and claps a hand over Finn’s mouth. His eyes bulge, whatever he was going to say muffled incomprehensibly into Cam’s palm until she pulls it away, cackling. “Did you just lick me?”
The door opens again, the bell jangling. My heart leaps before the rest of me does—there in the doorway is Leo, grinning broadly, a backpack slung over his shoulder and a bouquet of roses in his hand. He has to abruptly deposit them both on the empty table by the window, though, when I start running for him with the kind of speed that would incite terror in anyone else.
I collide with him so forcefully that he ends up lifting me up from the ground and spinning me to absorb it, my legs wrapping around his torso and my arms so tight around his shoulders that I’m probably about to suffocate him. I lean back, grinning into his grin—the kiss tastes like cinnamon and warmth and Leo.
He sets me down, his hands on my shoulders, my whole body dizzy with joy.
“You’re here,” I say, grabbing his face between my hands to anchor myself. I kiss him again, ignoring the catcalls from Jemmy and Izzy and the throat clearing that sounds suspiciously like my mom. “How are you here? I thought—”
“We ended up shifting everything a week earlier so Carla could get back in time for cheer conditioning,” he says, his hands moving down to my waist. “We got in this morning.”
He pulls me in closer, and I rest my head against his chest, hiding the most ridiculous smile I’ve ever had. It isn’t the first time we’ve surprised each other like this, with him coming home for an unexpected weekend or me flying out to New York for spring break, but somehow the thrill of it never wears off.
“Happy one-year anniversary, you dweebs,” says Connie, pulling me and Leo into another hug, one just as sloppy and silly as the hugs we were giving each other ten years before.
When we pull away I look around the room, and I feel the full force of what happened a year ago, and a staggering appreciation for everything that has happened since. For the way my days then look almost nothing like my days now; for the little things that snowballed into big things that gave me the life I have today.
It’s been a year of wandering all over Seattle with Leo on the weekends he comes to visit and cinnamon-soaked kisses in the rain. A year of our parents leaving me and Savvy to babysit my brothers during their monthly double-date nights, and my brothers essentially declaring shared custody of Rufus. A year of watching this place slowly come to life, shifting from Bean Well to Magpie with every new installation, every new couch one of us found at a thrift shop, every light fixture Mom and Pietra chose. A year of hearing all these stories spill out of my parents—from my dad’s illness to law school mishaps, from the years they were inseparable from Dale and Pietra to the new memories they’re making with them now.