Thanks

It was July 2023. The time period was strange, in-between summer after graduation when everything felt half-real. The boxes were unpacked, the goodbyes mostly said, and yet somehow we were all still orbiting the same people we swore we’d outgrown. Nights stretched long, like the world was giving us one last lap before adulthood officially started.

“Nope,” he says with this dry finality, head resting against his bedroom wall.

“Women don’t like me.” 

I roll my eyes. “That’s so false.”

He glances over, one eyebrow lifting, slow, like he’s about to argue but wants me to sit in it first. “Okay.”

“Well, there was this one chick at Ithaca." 

Here we go. 

“We were talking for maybe two weeks,” he says. “I took her to this diner after a long night, and she tells me she needs to talk about something. Then she reaches into her bag and pulls this thing out.” He clicks his tongue for effect, pantomiming the scene as he pulls an invisible paper from behind his back. “And she starts reading it. ‘Tyler, I’ve never met anyone like you… you’re so funny, so charming… I want to be more than friends.’”

He clears his throat, holding up a finger. “And then she hands me the note. Handwritten.”

I blink, then laugh. “You got a love letter.”

He lifts his wine and takes a slow sip, like this is the most casual trauma in the world.

“So what did you do?”

“I said, ‘thanks.’”

“And then what?”

“What do you mean?” he says, calm as ever. And that’s what gets me.

“Just… ‘thanks’? You didn’t —” I stop myself, shaking my head. My eyes drop to the beige carpet between us. I trace invisible loops into its texture, anything to keep from looking at him.

“I haven’t talked to her since,” he says finally. “I didn’t like her like that. I didn’t know what else to do.”

There’s no point arguing; he doesn’t get it. He couldn’t even see her feelings, let alone meet them. No flicker of empathy, no pause to realize she’d just handed him something fragile and real. And he dropped it without blinking.

“You didn’t even want to stay friends?” I ask, my teeth gritting around the words. “Ghosting is so bad, Tyler.”

He rolls his eyes, takes a long swig of wine, then pushes himself up. He wobbles slightly, steadying himself with one hand against the wall.
“Want me to take that?” he says, nodding toward my empty glass.

I nod back. He gathers one tucked in his armpit, the other dangling loosely from his hand and heads for the door.

“What she did was insane, Marissa.”

I bite my tongue. “Sure,” I manage.

His cat squeezes through the crack in the bedroom door and, without hesitation, hops onto the navy comforter beside me. The door swings wider.

“Hey, out,” he says lightly, scooping the cat up with one arm. With a gentle toss, he sets him back on the floor. Then, without looking at me, he slips out again — the glasses clinking softly as the door clicks shut behind him.

I’m left alone in his room. Just me, the cat pacing in small circles, and the pile of thoughts sinking into the carpet.

My mind keeps looping back to that Ithaca girl. And just like that, I’m seventeen again, sitting cross-legged at my desk, scribbling lines I thought were genius, trying to package up feelings I couldn’t say out loud. A haiku for Honors English. I can still see the big red A at the top, that rush of pride when I posted it for everyone to see.

Then the thought hits me: Did he see it?
Oh no.
Did he ever realize it was about him?

My brain won’t stop spinning. Does he remember? Does he want me to say something now?

God. Maybe I was even dumber than the Ithaca girl. At least she had the guts to read hers out loud. Me? I wrote about him in secret, then dropped it on VSCO like it belonged in a museum. But I mean, at least I got the grade.

The cat shifts beside me, purring against my leg, a tiny vibration breaking through my storm of thoughts. I run a hand over its fur. “Aw,” I whisper. Maybe to the cat. Maybe to that version of me.

His footsteps drag across the soft white carpet outside the room. Around the corner, his shadow stretches long across the wall, growing larger until he’s back in view.

“Do you ever think about how wild it is that everyone has an inner monologue?” he says. “Like — we’ll never actually hear anyone’s voice inside their head.”

I straighten up from where I’ve been leaning against the bedframe, head snapping toward the door just as it swings open. He steps inside, socks gliding over the carpet, and crosses toward me. Without warning, he scoops his cat from my lap and sets the black furball down on the bed, a little too rough, like he’s tossing a pillow.

He keeps talking. “What if we could hear what people think out loud? Wouldn’t that be crazy?”

“It can be nice to have privacy sometimes,” I say, watching the way his shoulders move. “There’s power in keeping your own thoughts to yourself.”

He’s rubbing the cat’s belly now — at first gentle, then faster, rougher. The cat lies on its back, paws half-extended, caught somewhere between bliss and endurance.
“I mean… I guess,” he mutters.

I shift onto my heels, studying him. My fingers fidget with the edge of a blanket. “Okay,” I say. “Can we talk about that Ithaca chick?”

He flops backward onto the bed with a dramatic sigh.

I roll my eyes. “This just proves my point. Girls do like you. Actually, they love you, apparently. If you want a girlfriend, maybe you should just hit up ‘Love Letter Girl.’”

“Love Letter Girl,” he repeats with a laugh. He drags his hands down his face, fingertips pulling everything with them — eyelids sagging, cheeks sinking, the corners of his mouth drooping — until his arms fall and smack hard against the bed at his sides.

“No, like I said, she’s crazy. It was fine until she said ‘I love you.’” He pauses. 

“Maybe I just like women who hate me.”

“Oh my god. Shut up.” 

By the time we wander back into the kitchen, hours have melted together. The buzz in my head’s soft now, warm around the edges. One minute we’re sharp and snappy, tossing jokes back and forth like it’s a game. Then he’ll throw something out of left field and I can’t tell if I’m supposed to laugh or defend myself.  

“It’s wild,” he starts, leaning against the island. “They don’t teach you how to fold a fitted sheet, but they expect you to pay taxes.”

Meanwhile, a piece of his navy t-shirt is flirting dangerously close to a frying pan handle.

I open my mouth to say something, but before I can, he jolts forward, the pan clattering just enough to make us both jump.
“Jesus —” he catches it midair, wide-eyed, trying to play it cool.
I’m laughing before I can stop myself.
“Yeah,” I agree, still giggling. “I guess we’re all just winging it.”

He’s still funny. That comment from ten minutes ago drifts back into my brain about traffic. How if cars were invisible, it’d just look like a herd of heads bulldozing down the street. Who even thinks like that? The image hits me again: rows of bald heads jammed into invisible driver’s seats, flying down the highway. And I lose it. I’m laughing all over again.

He notices immediately. “What?” he asks, smiling, curious. “What’s so funny?”

I must look like a total lunatic, laughing to myself in the middle of the kitchen. He doesn’t look away though. Just stands there, amused, like he’s a little proud to have caused it.

I try to hide behind my hand, shaking my head. “It’s that stupid thing you said about traffic,” I manage between breaths.

The more I try to stop, the worse it gets. My chest tightens, my shoulders start shaking. Great. Any second now, I’m going to get the hiccups. Just like high school.

I press a hand to my stomach, breathing through the ache. Each exhale comes out in short bursts, brushing his shirt when I lean forward. For a second, the laughter fades into that quiet afterglow. Like, what was I even laughing about in the first place?

I can’t remember the last time I felt this light. It’s stupid, how easy it feels. How easy he feels.

A thought crashes through:
God. I still love him.

“Tyler —” I start, then stop. No. Bad idea.

“Yeah?” His eyebrow lifts. 

Panic claws up my throat. The words that were about to hurl themselves out get yanked back at the last second. I force a laugh instead, thin and wobbly, scrambling for something safer. Backpedaling so hard I can feel the heat in my face.

“I… I really, really liked you in high school.”

His grin is wide and almost boyish. “Yeah?” he says, leaning forward just a little, bending his knee as it brushes lightly against my leg. 

My mouth stays shut. Past moments flicker through my mind. The times I pushed him away. The times he let me. Love and irritation tripping over each other like siblings fighting for the same chair.

I want to tell him. It’s this impossible itch right between my shoulder blades — just out of reach. No angle works.

I shake my head, exhale. “No, I mean…” My voice cracks on the way out. “I really, really liked you.”

Something shifts in his face. Not shock, just… recognition. His shoulders drop. A tiny smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah,” he says again, softer this time. A small nod.
Like he’s known all along.

We’re less than a breath apart — that charged in-between space where it would take almost nothing, just a tilt, just a second, for our lips to meet. I can feel the warmth of his breath slip from his nose, brushing my skin.

And all I can think about is Love Letter Girl, how saying your feelings out loud can make you look a little unhinged. How easy it is to tip from honest to foolish.

I glance down at the kitchen tile, pretending to study the grout lines like they’ve suddenly become fascinating. From the corner of my eye, I see him tilt his head, lowering it a little, trying to find my gaze. My hair falls forward, a curtain I don’t bother to move. He leans in, searching for me, but I stay hidden, tucked behind it, pretending that counts as composure.

Eventually, the conversation runs out of places to go, and we end up in his room. Moonlight slips through the window to the left, where the navy curtains billow forward and back with the pulse of the AC.

He moves around the bed, pulling off the neatly stacked pillows and setting them beside his legs. I help without thinking. He tugs the dark comforter loose from where it’s tucked under the mattress, the white sheets folding open beneath it.

He looks at me then — feet angled my way, a quiet gesture for me to get in first.

I climb in, sliding to the far left side, the cool sheets brushing my knees. He follows, adjusting a pillow under his head, one hand tucked beneath it.

I curl on my side, facing the window. 

We’re drunk enough that our heads hit the pillow and the room tilts. Everything moves in uneven waves.

I start thinking about this post-college version of us. But my mind won’t stay here. It flickers through a hundred others: Ithaca, Boston, Love-Letter Girl, the stupid haiku from high school. Each version feels the same as every other, and sorta real, like film frames overlapping. Nothing ever really changes, does it?

I thought seeing him again would feel different. He’s older, maybe even steadier, but he still has that way of undoing me without trying.

And maybe that’s what gets me.

If he’s still the same, and I’m still the same, then what happens when he’s back in Ithaca finishing his internship and I’m in Boston starting my job, six hours and a hundred what-ifs between us?

Maybe every version of us folds into the same truth: I’ll always love him a little.

But that doesn’t mean I can.

“We can’t date,” I blurt out.

A rough groan slips out of him from the sheets, somewhere between frustration and disbelief, his eyes squeezing shut like he can’t even deal with me. His head lolls toward me, sluggish with sleep.

“Why not?” 

“Because you’re going to Ithaca, and I’m going to Boston. It wouldn’t work.”

“Then come to Ithaca.”  

I snap my head toward him, blinking hard, my hair whipping close enough to nearly smack him in the face. “Do you hear how insane that sounds?”

He exhales through his nose, a little laugh, a little sigh, sending the strands right back at me.

“Why is it crazy?” he asks, his voice light, almost childlike. But the glint in his eyes gives him away. He already knows. He’s baiting me. 

“Because I have work. My family. My friends. It’s not realistic.” 

He shrugs, a small, tired smile tugging at his mouth.  “Okay.” His voice cracks, eyes heavy now. “Then what do you want?”

I pause. Roll my eyes, mostly to buy time, and flop back onto my side to face the window.

The answer that slips out is quieter than I mean it to be.

 “I don’t want you to just never talk to me again.”

He wraps an arm around me, pulling me closer until our legs tangle. His hand finds my hip, thumb tracing slow, absentminded circles against my skin.

“I said I’ll come visit you,” he whispers.

My heart is pounding. The words are there, burning a hole in my throat. I love you.

I open my mouth, take a breath —
He catches me.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” I whisper. My voice shakes, betraying me.

“Say it,” he murmurs through his teeth, low and steady. It’s not a demand, not quite a plea. 

I shake my head. “No. It’s nothing.”

He exhales, frustrated. “You’re lying.” His hand tightens against my side. “Just say it. I don’t even know what the hell correct thinking is anymore.”

That line cracks something open in me. It’s messy. Him letting me see a piece of what’s really going on underneath. For a second, I almost say it again.

But then another image hits: that girl from before, the one who told him how she felt and got nothing but a flat thanks in return.

So I can’t do it.
Not after six years of knowing him.
Not if it ends the same way.

“I’m not going to tell you,” I say, eyes now fixate on a random photo frame on his bedside dresser.  

He exhales, frustrated. “You’re impossible, Bird Girl.”