tiny fiction №4: her former-student

because you’ve always needed me more than I’ve needed you

Nantucket Window #2 (oil on double linen panel), created by Zoey Frank

The trees are blooming and I don’t think I’ve noticed them until now. Until I began walking under them almost every day, marveling at how quickly they change. At how fleeting this moment is. At how the wind carries the pink pedals up and away.

And maybe I want to be angry at the part of me that didn’t notice yesterday.

Or maybe I want to dare her to go ahead and notice today.

Notice anyway.

HER FORMER-STUDENT

Outside, it’s raining lightly. Inside, the café is packed full of people talking to each other in hushed tones, while I tear my paper napkin into tiny pieces. “But how do you know if letting go is even the right thing to do?” I say, turning on my stool to face Del, who perches next to me, hands wrapped around a generic-looking coffee mug.

“First of all, there is no right thing to do, and second, I think you already know how I feel, so I’ll say it again if it’s going to be comforting, but I won’t if it’s going to make you feel worse than you already do, because Jo, I promise you that this is not something you should be blaming yourself for.” She gives me one of those sideways smiles and I watch as she glances at her phone, wondering if it has to do with the plans she has in roughly 30-minutes. The plans she pushed back after I had called her with a sob stuck in my throat. It was selfish for me to call, I know that now, but selfishly, I’m glad that she’s here.

“Jo,” she says, gently touching my elbow, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for that to come across as rude or anything, I just don’t want this to have so much power over you, and I worry that me talking about it will only give it more power—power it doesn’t deserve to have.” I can feel the soft thrumming of her heartbeat in the hand that still touches my arm, just as I can feel her eyes on my face. On the tears that threaten to overflow.

She scoots off of her stool to lean against me, tucking her arm into the crook of mine, “I wish I could cancel my other plans without feeling like a complete—” I’m drawing her back, “I don’t wish that, and neither do you because I know how much you’ve been looking forward to this, so please don’t feel bad. I can be ok and not ok at the same time, which makes no sense, I know, but maybe it doesn’t need to.”

It’s Thursday, which means that I’ll work until 6:30pm, giving me just enough time to swing by the stationary store on my way home to grab a new notebook. And Del has plans with someone who took piano lessons from her a year or so ago. And as of last month, being a piano teacher is officially Del’s full time job. We celebrated by making homemade mac and cheese, watching Pretty Woman, and devouring a bag of popcorn while horizontal on my couch.

“How are you feeling about today?” I ask, giving her shoulder a gentle nudge. “I’d say more nervous than excited, but I’m hopeful that the excited part will come later. Once I’ve had words with my nerves.” She blushes and looks at me, “do you think I’m...too eager or needy or something, for asking out a former-student of mine?” Her hands covering her eyes. “Not even a little bit! You might be those things when it comes to caffeine and cats, but definitely not in the way that you get to know people. And besides, you were very considerate in waiting until after their lessons had ended to ask them out. So yeah, just two beautiful adults going on a date.” I prop my chin on my hands and grin, watching as her eyes crinkle into what I can only hope to be the beginning stages of excitement.

“Promise that you’ll text me if you start to feel really not ok?” She looks up at me as I shove my sweatshirt into my tote bag. “I’ll only promise if you promise to thoroughly enjoy yourself on your date with your former-student.” She snorts out a laugh, “maybe we should stop saying former-student.”

Adjusting the strap to my tote bag, I glance at our reflection in the window—the window of the café we were just sitting inside of. “Fair point, but it’s not like they were ever your student-student, just someone roughly your age, that in the past, has paid you for piano lessons.” She snort-laughs again, “yeah yeah, or something like that,” before wrapping me in one of her Del-hugs (and I make a mental note that she’s now probably the only person in the world that can get away with hugging me this much).

“Have I said thank you yet?!” I yell to her back as she walks toward her car parked on the other side of the street. “Only twenty-two times, which isn’t nearly enough if you’d like me to make you that mac and cheese again,” she deadpans, giving me one of her overly exaggerated winks and mouthing just-kidding-I-love-you, before ducking out of the rain. I stand there, watching as she drives away.

A few blocks later and the rain has stopped, the spring air cool against my bare arms as I dodge fellow pedestrians on my way to work. A woman wearing a red blazer tries to wipe away tears as she steadies her voice for whomever is on the other end of the line (or maybe for herself). A man wearing a navy blue suit with white tennis shoes dances along to whatever is playing in his headphones. Then I zoom out, watching as a young woman in a white shirt and denim overalls, takes quick steps and has red-rimmed eyes and hair that is short, very short. Hair that she buzzed while standing in front of the bathroom mirror two-weeks ago, gaze fixed on something just behind her. Something both real and imagined.

4/28/2017, first entry in my new notebook

The conversations that take place in my mind often take up just as much space as the conversations that take place in-person, the only difference being: it’s much harder to address the conversations in my mind with the same kindness and spaciousness and understanding, as the ones that I tend to in the earthly realm. And though I don’t know if writing any of this down does anything beyond providing me with a private space to feel (and without the expectation of it needing to make sense), I will carry on with it anyway. 

Work was fine, nothing in particular stands out to me now. The books were just as enjoyable as they always are, and seeing as I was the only one on shift today, the quiet was both welcoming and confusing, still unsure of whether or not I am looking for distraction or company or solitude—or something else entirely.

Oh, and I’m writing in my new notebook, which means that I did have time to stop by the stationary store on my way home. It’s getting late now and Del hasn’t texted me, likely due to how much she’s enjoying herself (fingers crossed). I’m going to try and get some sleep tonight, even if that means leaving my phone somewhere where I can’t reach it without having to climb out from under the covers. 

I haven’t bothered to get up to turn on the lights and the living room is now dark and it’s getting harder to see what I’m writing, but there’s something about borrowing the light from the street lamps that comforts me and I’m not sure why. I’m not sure why and when the thoughts that form under the glow of something that was never promised to me, brush up against the sharp edges of the memories I hold close, too close, I shake my head and look up at the streetlight. Firmly planting myself in this moment, not that one.

Or at least I try. Either way, I know it’s not about the empty space that used to be our 15-year-long friendship, and more about how I choose to use what’s been newly emptied. About how I want it to feel. But now that she’s somewhere else, living another life that I don’t know anything about, I forget how to breathe until I realize that I want that breath and I want this life and had I not used that boiling over point as an opportunity to say, “I don’t know how to be friends with you anymore…” there would have never been the silence. The silence that screamed and screamed and said everything and nothing at all. The silence before the bitterness that carved out her every word, “what is it that you’re trying to prove? Just wait until you have to live life without me. I’ll bet you can’t. I’ll bet you can’t because you’ve never been able to. Because you’ve always needed me more than I’ve needed you.” 

And then the door slams and I’m on the floor, her vanilla scent clinging to the air where she stood seconds ago, or maybe it was hours…I can’t remember how long I stayed there like that. How long I waited. Waited to see if she would come back. If she had changed her mind. If she needed me just as much as I needed her.

And now I’m here, almost two-months later, and I’m writing about it in my new notebook, feeling like it’s too close and not close enough. But I know I want to feel it. I want to feel it until the hold it has on me lessens and I can breathe deeply again. Until I can sleep through the night, waking up to the hum of life that stirs just beneath my ribcage, reminding me that I am getting there. Albeit slowly. Learning that it is ok to feel both loss and relief in her absence. And that maybe while I make my way there, I'll get a cat. I think I want a cat. I know Del would like it if I got one. Then we could have movie nights with it curled between us and now I can’t think of anything else.

A gentle buzz pulls me back into my living room, the glow from my phone lighting up the few feet around me. I rub my eyes and stretch before setting down my notebook and picking up my phone: I’m really glad I got to see you this morning. Please send me a picture of your stationary store finds! And oh, I’m pretty sure I’m in love with my former-student.

EPILOGUE

I’m writing this while crouched on the ground, reading the same sentence over until I begin to question my reasons for Del or for Jo and for the beginning of new friendships and the endings of others that are still too difficult to make sense of. The choppiness of their emotions being the only thing that asks us to stay with them. To be patient. To trust that they’ll get there, even if the story ends before their happily ever after.

It’s a week or so after I said I would publish this piece, my mood like the wind and the the all-too familiar sadness that creeps under my jacket, cooling my skin. To pull me away from where I stood before, looking up at the pink blossoms that now float to the ground. To pull me somewhere dark and familiar, so subtly that I’m already there before I can object. Before I can say, but wait, there was something else I wanted to do. But there’s always something I want to do, and I’m beginning to understand that I’ll get there when I get there. That eventually I’ll find whatever it is I was looking for in the blossoms that float. In the treasures I glean from the darkest corners of my mind.

Similarly to my process in writing big sister, my most recent tiny fiction, I’m still reading a lot of fictional short stories—anything that will encourage me to think differently to how I did before. To maybe try something I had previously told myself I couldn’t do, even if it doesn’t end up working its way into the story.

The Selected Stories, by William Trevor, was a gift from a fellow short-fiction reader, and is the collection I’m currently using to inspire (and challenge) my own fictional experiments. I’m not finished yet, but what I’ve read so far has given me a lot to think about.

As always, thank you so much for being here.

With Love,
Chloe

FOR EVERYTHING ELSE…

When not writing for freshly squeezed, I create digital spaces that nurture ambitions, support overall well-being, and re-inspire a sense-of-self. And when you subscribe to this newsletter, you’ll gain access to the Notion template that I use to organize and inspire all of my creative projects and ideas.

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