Page 37 of Twice
There were so many incidents like this that my composition book was full of dates and scribbles, a zigzag record of our encounters and reencounters. (My notebook collection wasnow so huge that I kept the ones from childhood at home, in boxes in the basement. I started anew at college.)
Sometimes I leafed through the pages and was taken aback at how many moments I had repeated with Gianna. I remembered what Yaya had said about love:You’llthink you can make everything perfect. You can’t.I wondered if this was what she meant.
I tried getting to know other girls, Boss. I had two roommates. One of them, Elliot, was a good-looking guy in the theater program who felt sorry for me and would drag me to parties where he chatted up women, then brought me into the conversation. I tried to engage with them. I really did. But within minutes I would start comparing them to Gianna, and they always fell short. No chemistry. Not as funny. Not as compelling. It seems silly, I know, dismissing potential romances because they didn’t match a fantasy. What was I saving myself for? Gianna didn’t even like me that much.
Then, one night during finals week of my freshman year, I was heading up the library steps when I saw Gianna curled on a bench. Her arms were wrapped around her knees, as if she were trying to make herself as small as possible.
“Hey, are you OK?” I said.
She glanced up quickly. Her face was tear-stained.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing.”
“What does nothing look like?”
Even crying, she managed to throw me.
“Can I help?” I asked. “I mean... I want to help... if there’s something I can... you know...”
“I’m fine, Alfie.” She sniffed. “Oh, God. This is something I swore I would never do.”
“What’s that?”
“Cry over a guy.”
I figured she meant Mike. But I didn’t want to say his name.
“Yeah. OK. Well, I guess—”
“He’s graduating,” she blurted out. “So he decided we should break up. Just like that. He said he ‘doesn’t see any future in it.’ Like I’m a stock or something.”
She lifted her shirt collar and wiped tears off her cheek. “How does anyone know what the future is anyhow?”
I resisted the urge to tell her it was easy.
“You should leave me alone, Alfie,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m embarrassed.”
Embarrassed? I wanted to tell her how embarrassed I felt around her constantly. How embarrassed I was that her green eyes, even crying, froze me when they flashed my way. How embarrassed I was that her voice right now, hoarse from crying, sounded so seductive I wanted to lose myself inside it.
I couldn’t verbalize such thoughts. Instead, I said the only thing that would come out of my mouth:
“He’s a fool.”
She tilted her head and squinted, as if not sure what she just heard, and for a moment I thought,You have to undo that, right now, go back, say twice.But before I could, her expression melted into a soft smile, and I don’t know how to describe it, except to say that I felt the earth shift.
“Alfie,” she said, lightly touching my hand, “you’re sweet.”
And that was the start of everything.
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