Things are going better than I had ever thought they would.
Even Ms. Eliot knows by now, smiling at us as she passes our tests back. Everyone knows, and it of course caused an obvious stir for a day or two, but then the news died down and fell into the background as new gossip came to light, replacing it like clockwork.
Marissa and I were a couple. And people don’t really seem to care that much.
Biology still feels the same. It’s still my favorite class of the day, and Marissa and I spend the hour in the same way, tossing inside jokes back and forth, flirting, and playing hangman when we turn in our lab early. So what if our lives don’t meld together seamlessly, if our friends only treat our relationship with polite, flat acceptance. We’re in love, we’re practically lit up with it from the inside out, and nothing else really matters.
We spend weekends cuddled up on Marissa’s basement couch, aimlessly watching the worst movies on tv, and I smile at Marissa as she’s dozing off in my arms. These are the moments that should be perfect, right? But I find myself bothered by the fact that they’re not…not really. Here in the basement, we’re safe, and we’re hiding. Come tomorrow morning, we’d both be back in the hallways at school—not pretending, but tense…and not completely ourselves. The way Marissa’s friends treated me the other day hurt my feelings, but it was fine. They were cool with it, and so were my friends…it was just that none of them got on very well. And so what? We didn’t have to sit together at lunch. It wasn’t a relationship requirement.
I hold Marissa closer to me, burying my nose in her hair so I can smell her shampoo. I should enjoy this, shouldn’t I? I mean really enjoy it, one-hundred percent. I had a girlfriend, and not just any girlfriend, one who I was completely and madly in love with. Why couldn’t I just calm down?
“Hey,” Marissa says, smiling up at me sleepily, and she kisses me on the cheek. God, she’s perfect.
I still feel like this is too good to be true.
It’s nearly Christmas, and the whole city is buzzing with excitement and the stress of people running around to get last minute gifts. A time for joy, and time for family, all that crap.
A time for feeling like a heartbroken idiot.
I had calmed down in the past few days…I had woken up to a remorseful email from Marissa, drenched in apologies. She was truly sorry, and I believed her…it was just hard to imagine that such an incident wouldn’t happen again.
I had bought Marissa’s secret Santa gift weeks ago, a tiny ruby necklace. I had remembered on that night so long ago when the two of us had sat lying in her backyard that we had talked about our birthdays…and she had mentioned that hers was in July.
“The month of the ruby,” I could still remember her saying, gazing up at the stars that night…and I could remember thinking of course it was. I had thought of rubies…beautiful and bold, and thought well how could it have been anything else.
The necklace was still nestled in its velvet box, tucked into a pocket of my briefcase…I wondered if I would be returning it in exchange for a coffee gift card, after all.
I was walking through downtown, on break from work and occupying myself with running some last-minute Christmas errands. I turned into a coffee shop and ordered a latte, and decided to sit down to collect my thoughts.
I’m contemplating whether I should order a pastry when my phone goes off, and my heart races when I see it’s Marissa. It’s a text, and there’s a link to an Instagram photo. I tap the link nervously, and my heart races, time slowing down significantly in the short seconds it takes to load.
It’s a photo she uploaded to her account about a day ago, her massively popular account with hundreds upon hundreds of followers. It’s the photo of the two of us that she took at Tim’s, where we’re huddled next to each other at the table, sitting together with the movie posters in the background. The caption simply read “Date Night xoxo” and I was surprised to see the photo had already garnered over a hundred likes. I clicked through the names…and a lot of them I recognized from high school.
I understood now. She was telling the world. She was deciding not to care.
She was letting go.
I laid down my coffee cup and sighed. I thought back to the first time we broke up, ages ago. Yes, both of us would agree it was primarily Marissa’s doing, but wasn’t a small part of it mine? That time, she had wanted to be forgiven too, and in my stubbornness, I had turned away and refused to listen, had refused to accept her apologies. Maybe it was my turn to change too.
I looked out the window and sighed. They had set up an ice rink in the middle of the city square, filled with couples gripping each other’s hands and children bundled up like Eskimos. Okay, I decided. I knew what I wanted, and I knew what I was going to do.
I picked up my phone and typed out a quick text to Marissa:
“Meet me at the coffee shop near the ice rink in an hour. I’m your secret Santa!”
I held my head in my hand, hoping that I had made the right choice. Marissa texted back a quick “okay,”and now all I had to do was wait.
I bought a newspaper to read in the corner of the coffee shop, but I could barely focus on the words in front of me. All I could think about was what I was going to say to Marissa once she got here.
I wasn’t going to try and deny it: I was excited to see her. The days since our fight had been excruciating, and I craved the peace, I craved her.
After an hour that seemed to stretch into days, I saw Marissa walk in carrying a cardboard box. She was dressed in a stunning Christmas ensemble: one that included her over-the-knee boots, her red pea coat, and a purple cable-knit sweater with jeans.
We met eyes as she came in through the door, and the pained look on her face made my heart sink…she really was sorry.
“…Kirk,” Marissa said, reaching my table and setting down her box. “I’m so sorry, I’m horrible, I know, and—”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I forgive you.”
Marissa sat down next to me and I wrapped her in a hug. “I really do,” I whispered. “For all of it. And it was my fault too, I was being stubborn.”
“Don’t say that,” Marissa said. “It was a hundred percent me, me and my stupid need to have everyone like me, even stupid girls from high school who were never even my real friends in the first place.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“No,” Marissa said. “No, it’s not. And I never properly apologized for what happened in high school, either. But I’m done. I get it now, and I swear it won’t happen again.”
I smiled down at her, and I believed her.
“Back then, Kirk, I think you were my only real friend,” she said softly, staring down at the ground. “And you’re the only one I’m keeping, too.” She squeezed my arm and smiled. “By the way,” she said. “I’m your secret Santa too.” She pushed the cardboard box towards me and grinned.
I opened the box to find a microscope inside, an older looking one with a sticker bearing the name of our high school on it.
“No way,” I said. “How did you get this?”
Marissa blushed. “It might be stolen…”
“Marissa!” I laughed.
“It was supposed to be your birthday present, all those years ago,” she said. “I remembered you said in Bio how much you wanted to have a nice microscope like the ones at school to play around with…so I might have asked some guys from the football team to steal it while they were doing their senior prank, and it’s been sitting in my parent’s shed ever since. I asked them to ship it over from Buffalo.”
I couldn’t stop laughing. “Unbelievable,” I said. “Literally unbelievable.”
I reached into my briefcase and pulled out the box. “And this,” I said, sliding the box across the table. “Is for you.”
Marissa opened the lid of the box and beamed when she saw the delicate ruby surrounded by the chain of gold. “It’s beautiful,” she said, and then looked up at me, “Oh my god, did you remember my birthstone?”
“Maybe,” I said, and grinned. Marissa came over and hugged me.
“I love it Kirk,” she said. “And even more, I love the fact that we’re okay.” She looked up at me with honest eyes. “I don’t think I could ever bear losing you again.”
“Me either,” I said, finally kissing her again. Marissa took the necklace out of the box and I helped her fasten it around her neck. She looked lovely in it, and as radiant as ever.
After another hour of sitting in the coffee shop, warm with the peace of our reunion, we went outside to rent skates and spend some time circling around the ice rink. The crowds had thinned out, giving Marissa room to skate across the rink in wide, graceful circles as I followed awkwardly behind. We held gloved hands as we made our way around and around, finally relishing our relationship, the version of it that was free of the tension that had always threatened it.
We stopped by the side of the rink to buy hot chocolate from a vendor, and smiled as large, fluffy flakes of snow began to fall down. Acoustic versions of Christmas carols rung out from the loudspeaker, and the tree next to the rink glowed with tiny lights.
“It’s almost too perfect, isn’t it?” Marissa said.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” I said, and leaned down to kiss her. “By the way,” I said. “It is Christmas in a couple of days, so, I was thinking…you want to attend my family dinner?”
“As your proper girlfriend, this time?”
“Oh, definitely,” I said, and kissed her again as the snow fell.