Page 76 of Old Acquaintances

I expected my roommate the next day, so I spent the first night in my dorm alone. I had brand-new sheets and a brand-new comforter, but I couldn’t bring myself to put them on the bed. I didn’t get my clothes put away or my decorations out, I just laid on my bed and sobbed.

I’d never been home alone before. I never even spent the night in my house alone. I went off to ballet intensives for several weeks every summer - to Joffrey, to Ballet West, San Francisco Ballet - but I was always immediately thrust into a world of dance with other people around all of the time. School hadn’t started yet. I didn’t know anyone in North Carolina.

I went to sleep alone for the first time in my life.

The next morning, I woke up in a quiet, strange space, lying on a blue mattress. My sweatpants shed lint on the scratchy plastic surface, my arms against my chest under a Pine Place High School Baseball sweatshirt. Tucker gave it to me to wear months ago when I was cold one day at Johnny’s house. I lay on my bed for a little while before I needed to be somewhere comforting. I thought of my car. It felt like home, it smelled familiar. I grabbed my keys and went outside.

In the parking lot, I made a motion toward my car and then stopped. The hood of a muddy black truck shined in the sunlight. My first thought: that looks like Tucker’s truck. It hurt to think so, made me miss home, then I realized the boy sleeping in the driver’s seat, with his head tilted back and his mouth open, looked just like Tucker.

Because it was him.

Flooded with immediate relief and confusion, I’d never been so happy to see someone in my life.

I ran to his door and knocked on the window. He rattled his head and opened his eyes. When he saw me, his mouth curved up into a smile.

“What are you doing here?” I yelled through the glass.

He rubbed his rumpled face and opened the door. “Hey, Ella,” he began, stepping outside.

I repeated, “Tucker, what are you doing here?”

His mouth opened, it closed. He looked at my sweatshirt, probably my reddened teary eyes as well, then reached back into his truck. “Um…I…I wanted to give you this back.”

“A hair clip?”

He looked at the chunk of black plastic in his hand. “Yeah, you know, you left it in my car a few months ago. Since you moved, you might need it.”

“You drove four hours this morning to bring me a hair clip?”

“Well,” he squinted. “I actually came last night. Just in case you were - I mean, Johnny said you were going to be all alone - I didn’t know if you’d need anything and I just wanted to…to be around in case…in case you…”

He trailed off. His throat became red and blotchy, and the emotion plastered on his face was one of reproach. Tucker’s hand shook. He grabbed mine and pressed the clip in it.

“So, you’re okay?” he said, quickly. “I should probably go now that you have your -”

“Elijah,” I interrupted. I started to cry. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

His face softened. He thought he’d made a mistake, but my reaction said otherwise.

I bowled into him, just like I’d done when he rescued me on prom day and pressed my crying face into his chest. Tuckerwasn’t hesitant this time. He hugged me back. Tightly. He knew I needed that.

He muttered into my hair. “How was your first night?”

“Lonely,” I mumbled.

“Let’s go get breakfast,” he said, pulling back. He looked at my attire. “Do you want to change, or -”

“I don’t want to go back in there.” I wanted to stay out here, holding onto his shirt, back where I was home and safe.

Tucker’s eyes dropped. He looked at me like he did prom night, when everything went wrong, and he begged me to tell him. He wanted to fix it. “Okay.”

He held my hand and walked me around to his passenger seat. Tucker drove me to iHop, and I ordered my childhood breakfast – banana waffles with a side of chocolate chips. When I made it at home, I called it Waffles a la Ella and my mother called it unhealthy.

We sat opposite each other in a red, ripped booth. The table had coffee stain circles and our waitress had gray hair that reached her hips. Piano jazz music played overhead. I knocked over the plastic flower beside the metal napkin holder and Tucker righted it. I’ll remember everything about that day, every minute detail, for the rest of my life.

While Tucker talked about emailing his new roommate and Gavin’s upcoming bachelorette party, I couldn’t stop staring at him. My chest bubbled. I couldn’t stop smiling. The urge to cry came in waves. Every time I started to, he would reach across the table, wipe the tears away, and keep talking. He never spoke this much, but I wasn’t talking at all. Tucker could always sense what I needed. At that moment, I needed to just sit and soak it in.

I wanted to hold his hand. I wanted to thank him for this, but no gesture would ever match.How did he always know? I wondered. I last saw him two nights before. The three of us had gone out for a last meal. To annoy him - and because I wantedto taste it - I took two bites of his burrito when he went to the bathroom. When he came back, he said, “Fuck you,” cut his burrito and gave me half. He tried to stick a black bean up my nose.

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