Tristan’s right. Of course he’s right. This is just one paper in one class. And even if it’s the whole class. Even if I get a C in the whole class (the very thought of that makes my body shiver), so what? What does that matter in the grand scheme of things?

My thoughts make sense to me on an intellectual level, but not on the innate, instinctual level, which lives somewhere in my gut.

“I know you’re right,” I say. “But...”

“Agh, the kiss of death!” Tristan jokes.

“Okay, okay, I know. But I still have these doubts, you know?”

“I know. You’ve had them since you were a kid. And you’ve wanted to be a writer since you were a kid.”

“Agh, you’re so annoying.” I throw my hands in the air. “Why do you have to know me for so long?”

Tristan smiles. “That’s right, baby. You can’t hide your true self from me. I know you too well.”

I roll my eyes. I’m secretly enjoying this. This banter. It feels like we’re in 10^th grade. When we were still friends. Before we started dating and everything got so much more complicated.

“Okay, what? What was the ‘but’ all about?” he finally asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know. I just think that maybe I should go back to pre-med. I mean, being pre-med is a good option, right?”

“Yes, being pre-med’s a good option. The world needs more doctors,” he says with lackluster.

“But?” I fill in where I know he’s headed.

“You can definitely become a doctor. Of course you can. But, in my humble opinion, the world will miss out.”

“Miss out? Don’t doctors save lives?” I ask.

“Yes, they do,” Tristan says, leaning close to me. So close, for a moment, I feel like he’s going to kiss me. “But doctors don’t save as many lives as writers.”

“What?” I pull away.

“Alice, if there were no art, no movies, no books, what would be the point of living? What would we be all living for, exactly? Just breathing in and out isn’t enough, you know.

I smile. “Wow, is this really coming from an Econ major? And I thought you were a realist.”

Tristan tosses his hair and opens a can of soda. “A realist?” he asks with a twinkle in his eye. “Never. I’m an Economics major, darling. If the stock market isn’t an adventure in fiction and an indulgence in fantasy, I don’t know what is.”

* * *

Tristan’s words make me feel better and we hang out together all afternoon. We watch trash TV and eat junk food. We make inside jokes about people from high school that I haven’t thought about in ages.

“Oh my God, I’ve never seen you two like this,” Juliet says when she comes into the living room for some rest and relaxation after a long afternoon of breathing classes. She’s actually taking a class on breathing! Can you believe that? And, according to her, it’s actually hard. She doesn’t have to read The Invisible Man and write a 5,000-word paper on race and class struggles in 1960s America. Maybe I should major in acting!

“Like what?” I ask, still laughing about Tristan’s comment about someone from the Jerry Springer show and our 9^th grade History teacher.

“Like you two actually like each other,” she says. “Dylan, have you ever seen them like this?”

Dylan looks up from his cereal bowl. “No, not really. Though Alice and Tristan as friends is a nice change of pace from Alice and Tristan as former lovers who can’t stand each other.”

“Hey! We never couldn’t stand each other,” Tristan says. “Things were just…complicated.”

“Yes, very complicated,” I say. “But we were always friends.”

Dylan and Juliet exchange looks. “With friends like that, who needs enemies,” she says.

“We weren’t that bad,” I say.

“You were impossible,” Dylan says. “But, honestly, this is much much better. Much more fun for us, at least,” he says about him and Juliet. She nods her head.

“Hey, so do you all want to go out and celebrate this new development? I was thinking drinks somewhere on Amsterdam Ave.?” Juliet suggests.

“Sounds good,” Dylan and I say at the same time and crack up laughing.

“Tristan?” Juliet asks.

“I’d love to, but I actually have a date tonight. Rain check?” he asks.

Date. Of course. I had completely forgotten about Tea. How could I’ve forgotten about Tea? Tristan was still seeing Tea. And Tea and I were still not talking. I really liked her, but I haven’t talked to her since that day that I discovered that she and Tristan were a thing. It wasn’t entirely my fault. She started sitting on the other side of the classroom and leaving immediately after class. She started working with someone else as a peer partner and everything we seemed to have vanished in an instant.

“Oh, that’s cool,” I say quickly, though I fear that it wasn’t quick enough. “Rain check? Yes, definitely.”

Again, just as I expect for things to get weird between us again, they don’t. Surprisingly. Juliet and Dylan fill in the gap in the conversation and we all break out in laughter. It’s amazing how much dark energy one laugh can suck up and morph into something else completely. I hope that Tristan and I continue to laugh together for the rest of our lives. We didn’t for more than two months and that was two months too long.