Page 34 of The Getaway List
“I think I’m barking up the wrong tree, though,” says Mariella. “He clearly likes you.”
I shake my head. “Nah. He’s just so deprived of ‘writer friends’ that he decided I am one.”
Or maybe just turned me into one by sheer force of will. His enthusiasm is contagious. Tom and I have gotten into a routine where we sit on opposite sides of the couch and drink decaf coffee with our laptops every night, and more than once I’ve found myself opening a blank Google doc on my computer, some undeniable tug pulling me out of the present moment and into imaginary worlds.
I haven’t gotten as far as actually writing anything yet, but not for lack of inspiration. It’s almost like there’s years of completely repressed inspiration that if I let loose is probably all going to explode out of me like a geyser. All the scenarios and spinoffs I imagined for all the books I have downloaded on my phone, all the loose ends of stories and daydreams I used to dissociate from whatever the “keep Riley out of trouble” flavor of the week was.
Mariella pats me on the head, which is no small feat considering the difference in our heights. “Riley, that boy was looking at you with heart-emoji eyes.”
“Writer-emoji eyes,” I correct her.
“Ugh,” she says, riffling through another rack of clothes. “Why can’t I do the responsible thing and have a crush on Jesse?”
I laugh, and before I can answer Mariella’s shoulders go loose and she says, “Luca’s just so—earnest. And people I’ve been around were mostly, like, trying so hard to be all unaffected by everything.” She pauses for a moment, like she didn’t expect to say something so bare. “Also he’s only a few inches taller than I am as opposed to all the other guys I’ve dated, which, like? Ow. My ankles, my neck, my lower back. It’s hard out here when you’re fun-sized.”
“Well, have you thought about maybe asking him to hang out one-on-one?” I ask.
Mariella’s lips purse sheepishly. “I tried just now,” she says, holding up her phone. “He said yes, but then asked what time I thought would work best for the whole group.”
I wince and she raises her eyebrows as if to say, See?
“Anyway, at least one mystery is solved. I’m guessing it was Luca who sent you the flowers,” says Mariella, pulling a glitzy denim skirt off the rack and holding it experimentally to her waist.
“Actually, the mystery has only gotten deeper. Someone also sent me a hunk of cheese.”
Mariella looks suitably impressed. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. Something a girl can actually use. Although bold of them, considering you and Tom are attached at the hip.”
I’m still chafing at the disappointment that it probably wasn’t Tom, so it takes me a beat to reflexively say, “Tom and I aren’t like that. We’re best friends.”
Mariella squints at me disbelievingly. “You have actually looked at Tom, right? And also in a mirror? You’re both too hot to just be friends. I don’t make the rules, but I do enforce them.”
“You’re a hot person who’s friends with him!” I protest. “Actually, wait. Why haven’t you ever had a crush on Tom?” I ask, more out of curiosity than anything.
Mariella considers for a moment, pressing her tongue to the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know. He was closed off for so long I just never thought about it. Then by the time we were talking junior year, it was sort of like—” She sets the skirt back down on the rack but keeps her hands there, almost as if to steady herself. “We were mostly spending time together for comp-sci stuff. But I guess Tom was lonely and I was in the process of extricating myself from the assholes I used to hang out with, so the friendship part was sort of an accident? We would hang out by default. Almost more like we were life preservers more than friends. And life preservers aren’t very sexy things to be.”
“That makes sense,” I say, only because I’m scrambling to say what I really want to, which is Thank fuck he had you. Because based on this and what Tom has already told me, it seems like he needed someone to half bully, half wait him out to be friends, and Mariella is the perfect person for that. It’s not lost on me that Mariella did to Tom what Tom once did to me, and I feel such a sudden wave of gratitude for her that it takes everything in me not to hug her right now and possibly make a scene.
“Also I was so certain you two were dating that I was half expecting him to ask my opinion on engagement rings,” Mariella says casually, redirecting us to the register.
“Ha-ha,” I deadpan.
“‘Riley this, Riley that,’” she says, making a chatterbox gesture with one of her hands. “Years of silence from Tom Whitz and it turns out when you crack him open all he wants to talk about is time travel and space and his long-lost girlfriend. Thank god you’re actually real, I was this close to staging an intervention.”
We pay for our clothes and head back out into the sunshine, walking up to the open-air bazaar where Mariella assures me there will be plenty of vendor tents with snacks and secondhand clothes. Most things are out of our price range, but we find some wacky vintage Disneyland shirts and cheap matching rainbow bracelets, then get in line for kimbap and lemonade and a giant chocolate-chip cookie.
Once we’re settled on a bench in the little garden by the natural history museum with our lunch spread, my brain is unscrambled enough to say, “I’m glad you and Tom could be each other’s flotation devices.”
She smiles the same quiet smile from the tunnel yesterday. “Yeah, me, too. It sucked that he was on his own so much, but at least he missed most of my very embarrassing fall from social grace.” Then she pulls in a hesitant breath, like she can’t decide if she’s going to say more.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” I tell her.
She shakes her head. “It’s fine. Thing is I’m not just good with computers, I’m fucked-up good with them? I was practically coding before I could tie my shoes. My parents were over the moon because they were like, ‘She’s set for life!,’ you know? Not like my older cousins who were all into art and dancing and still living at home with barista jobs, heaven forbid,” she says, with an exaggerated eye roll.
“Do you not like coding?” I ask, surprised.
“Oh, no, I love it. I have a bit of a god complex when it comes to design, you might have noticed,” she says, tilting her head at our shopping bags. “And coding is the ultimate in that. You get to bring shit to life out of literal thin air and make it exactly the way you want it. No materials, no waiting around on anyone, no stopgaps. You just decide you want it to be a certain way, and it is.”
“I get that,” I say. “Wanting something just for yourself that you can control, I mean. I couldn’t code my way out of a paper bag.”
