Ugh, Catch Up Already!

Six boys this year. That’s gotta be a new record, you tell yourself. You know the number because you've been standing nearby for all six, closer than a bystander really has any right to be, and Stella has never once asked you to leave.

Today's is from the tennis club. Tall, pretty decent-looking, holding out a canned coffee for her to grab. Stella doesn't drink canned coffee. She never has. It's the kind of detail you know without having to think about it, the way you know her shoe size, or maybe the fact that she sleeps with one foot sticking out from under the blanket no matter the season, and you find yourself almost sorry for the guy before he's even opened his mouth.

He says his piece. You don't really listen to the words, you've heard some version of them five times already this year, but you watch Stella's face while he talks. There's a flicker in it, there and gone in under a second, something that isn't quite discomfort, but isn't quite boredom either. You've never been able to name it, yet you already know it means the answer's already decided before she says a word.

"That's really sweet of you," she tells him. "But I'm not really looking for that kind of thing right now. Sorry."

He takes it better than most. Nods, forces a smile, disappears back into the current of students heading toward the gate. Stella watches him go with her arms crossed, and doesn't move again until he's fully out of sight.

Then she turns around, and whatever she's decided to feel about the last five minutes, she's clearly decided you're going to hear about it.

"Don't you say it."

You raise an eyebrow at her. "I wasn’t going to?"

"You were about to." She starts walking, and you fall in beside her out of habit more than choice. "You know I can always tell."

You let it go. It's easier that way, most days — not because you don't have anything to say, but because the thing you'd actually want to say isn't the thing she's bracing for, and you've never once been brave enough to find out what happens if you say it anyway.

The walk home takes the same route it's taken for years. Past the convenience store where you used to split a popsicle even when it was freezing out, because she insisted the cold made it taste better. Past the crosswalk where she once made you wait a full extra light cycle because she claimed, with total conviction, that the walk signal owed her an apology. You don't think about any of this consciously anymore. It's just the shape the street takes when she's next to you, and it's the shape it takes today too, because somewhere around the convenience store she announces, without asking, that she's coming over, and you don't bother telling her that wasn't a question. She still has a key. She's had one since you were both eleven and your mom got tired of her knocking.

"You know," she says, apropos of nothing, "that's six."

"Six what?"

"Six people I've turned down this year. You've counted too, don't lie."

Of course you’d counted. "…Sure. But I wasn’t gonna mention it."

"I know. You never do." She says it lightly, but there's something underneath it, some thread you can't quite get your fingers around. "Doesn't it seem like a lot to you?"

You consider several answers and discard all of them before you land on the safest one available. "Seems about right, honestly. You're kind of a lot to keep up with."

She huffs, but it isn't really annoyance. She doesn't say anything else for almost a full block, which, for Stella, is its own kind of statement.

Here is what you understand, watching this pattern repeat itself for the sixth time this year: it was never that Stella doesn't want to be wanted. It's that she's already decided, somewhere along the way, on the exact shape of the person she's waiting for, and none of these boys — sweet as they are, sincere as they try to be — have come close enough to matter.

You've never let that thought go any further than this. Not because you can't. Because you're fairly sure of where it ends up, and you'd rather not find out you're right.

What you don't let yourself consider, walking home beside her like you have a thousand times before, is that Stella isn't turning people down because she's waiting for the right version of love to come find her.

She's turning them down because she's already found it. She's just waiting on you to catch up.

Stella let herself in twenty minutes ago, and by now she's fully colonized your living room the way she always does, shoes kicked off by the door, jacket thrown over the arm of the chair she never actually sits in, phone already in hand before she's even settled onto the couch. She's already gone through your snack cabinet like she pays rent on it, which, in a sense, she does, if over a decade of showing up unannounced counts as a lease.

She's holding up a bag of chips now, unimpressed, like it's evidence of something you should be ashamed of.

"Wrong flavor," she says. "You know I only eat the sweet ones."

"I bought what was there."

"Weak excuse." She opens the bag anyway, because Stella's principles have never once gotten in the way of Stella eating. She eats sitting cross-legged, phone propped against her knee, thumb moving fast at someone who isn't you, and you end up watching her without really meaning to. The small furrow between her brows when she's typing something she's decided is important. The way she chews on the inside of her cheek when she's thinking too hard about her reply.

You've caught yourself doing this before. More times than you'd ever admit out loud, and every time, you make yourself look away first. As if there's a penalty for getting caught, like some part of you already knows exactly what would happen if you didn't.

You hear your phone buzz on the arm of the ottoman you were sitting on across from her.

NO STELLA NO LIFE

5:23 P.M.

ur

soooooo quiet today

u good?

☹️☹️☹️

You glance up. She hasn't looked away from her own phone, still typing to whoever else, but she's clearly typing this to you at the same time, multitasking the way she always does, splitting her attention across three conversations without dropping a single thread.

i'm fine, though?

lies but ok

you can tell me stuff

u know that, right?

You don't answer right away. It's a familiar offer by now, one she makes every so often, gentle and low-stakes, easy to deflect because she never pushes past a first no. You've built an entire friendship on the strength of her not pushing, and some nights you're grateful for it, and some nights it feels like the thing standing directly between you and saying something you'd never be able to take back.