The photograph appeared on my phone at 10:17 on a Thursday night, and for several seconds I honestly thought I had opened the wrong account.
Chapter 1
Felix Harper had posted a picture of himself with a girl I had never seen before. His arm was around her waist, her cheek rested against his shoulder, and beneath the photograph he had written, “I’m not good with words. I just want to see you.”
Within seconds, my phone exploded.
Claire, who is she?
Claire, isn’t Felix basically your boyfriend?
Did something happen between you two?
I stared at the screen until the words blurred.
Everyone we knew had assumed Felix and I would eventually end up together.
Everyone except Felix.
Before I could decide whether to laugh, cry, or throw my phone through the window, a message from him appeared.
So? What do you think?
Another arrived.
She’s pretty, right?
My hands began to shake.
Then came the message that finished the job.
My girlfriend knows we’re close, so maybe don’t contact me much for a while. I don’t want her getting the wrong idea.
I read it three times.
Felix and I had known each other since we were toddlers. Our mothers had been friends. We went through elementary school, middle school, high school, and eventually the same university.
I knew everything about him.
He hated cilantro.
He liked eggs without scallions.
He never bought hooded sweatshirts because he complained the hood pulled against his neck.
His running shoes were half a size larger than his regular shoes.
I had edited his English papers since we were thirteen. I had helped him study for exams, chosen his first suit for college interviews, remembered his mother’s birthday when he forgot, and stayed up until two in the morning listening whenever his life went wrong.
For years, I had considered my place in his life almost permanent.
I believed I was simply waiting for the moment when friendship would naturally become something more.
I had never imagined he was waiting for someone else.
Felix kept messaging.
Mia loves cilantro, he wrote.
Apparently I’m learning to like it now.
Then he sent a picture of himself wearing a hoodie.
She bought this for me. I love it.
A minute later came another photograph.
New sneakers from her. Wrong size, but cute, right?
I sat on my bed feeling as though somebody were erasing twenty years of memories one message at a time.
Things he had rejected from me became charming when they came from her.
Preferences I had memorized suddenly did not matter.
Then his final request arrived.
Claire, Mia says if we’re really only friends, you won’t mind helping us out.
A second message followed.
Can you bring condoms to the hotel? We forgot them.
An address appeared beneath it.
I stared at my phone.
That should have been the moment I told him to go to hell.
Instead, I went.
That is difficult to admit now.
But if you spend long enough teaching someone that your love has no limits, eventually they stop seeing those limits as something that could exist.
I drove across town with the bag on the passenger seat.
Felix opened the hotel door wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants.
“Finally.”
He snatched the bag from my hand.
“What took you so long?”
Before I could answer, I saw Mia behind him wrapped in a white hotel towel, her wet hair hanging over one shoulder.
Felix glanced back at her and smiled.
Not the smile he gave me.
Something softer.
Something eager.
Then the door shut in my face.
I stood in the hallway listening to the latch click.
For the first time in more than twenty years, I understood exactly where I stood in Felix Harper’s life.
Not beside him.
Not almost beside him.
Behind him, carrying whatever he forgot.
I made it to the elevator before I started crying.
By the time I reached my car, I was shaking.
I opened our message thread.
Felix, I typed, I won’t bother you anymore.
Then I blocked him.
When I got home, I opened the photo gallery on my phone.
More than thirty gigabytes of pictures.
Birthdays.
School dances.
Road trips.
Christmas mornings.
College orientation.
Felix sleeping on our couch after prom.
Felix laughing at the beach.
Felix making faces behind me at graduation.
I deleted every one.
Then I removed the old photographs from my social media.
It took almost an hour.
When I finished, there was an emptiness in my phone that matched the one inside me.
The next afternoon, Felix cornered me outside the economics building.
“What is wrong with you?”
His irritation almost made me laugh.
“Nothing.”
“You blocked me.”
“Yes.”
“You deleted everything.”
“Yes.”
“Mia thinks she caused some huge fight between us.”
I kept walking.
Felix followed.
“Claire, seriously. You’re making this weird.”
I stopped.
Something in me had finally grown tired of pretending.
He threw his hands up.
“What? Are you jealous because your best friend got a girlfriend?”
I said nothing.
He scoffed.
“Don’t tell me you actually like me.”
The old Claire would have lied.
Instead, I turned around.
“What if I do?”
Felix froze.
For the first time in years, he had no answer ready.
His fingers rubbed nervously together.
“I was kidding.”
“I wasn’t.”
His face changed.
Not with recognition.
With discomfort.
“Uh… I have to go.”
“Of course you do.”
“We’ll talk later.”
But we didn’t.
For two months, Felix disappeared from my life.
And somewhere during those two months, something strange happened.
I stopped waiting for him to come back.
