At the end of the summer before senior year, my friendships with the girls I’d spent the whole summer with started to come apart. Rumors about one another grew and spread and changed until we were all constantly on edge around each other. We were a Jenga tower with too many blocks pulled, and by the time school started, it finally fell.
Swim team kept me busy at first. Then the season ended in November, and the empty evenings began to gnaw at me. I suddenly didn’t have reliable weekend plans anymore. At lunch I sat with people I barely knew, and I only spoke in class if I had a question.
That is, except in Spanish and AP Micro—where I talked to Henry.
When we first took our assigned seats next to one another, my body reacted before my mind could: the racing heart, the tight stomach. But before long, I was having so much fun breaking his old rules in front of him that I thought it was silly I was afraid in the first place. I was so untouchable now.
Talking to Henry filled some of the empty social space in my life, but it wasn’t the space I actually missed. I missed my best friends. Somewhere between the empty weekends and the lunch table, I’d stopped caring what they’d said about me, and I hoped they could forgive whatever hurtful things I’d said too. I just wanted them to be my people again.
Although I’m often quiet, there’s a bursting extrovert inside me who’s waiting to feel safe enough to chat and giggle and gossip. Around Henry, for the first time in a long time, nothing bad seemed to happen when I let her out. I was lonely, and he always asked about my day. He was being sweet.
I was surprised when my best friend Michaela, who I hadn’t spoken to since August, invited me to her birthday at the end of November. Her mom would be out of the house, and Michaela was allowed to have friends stay the night. Our old friends would be there. It seemed like they were missing each other, too.
I was anxiously looking forward to the party. I spent the school day that Friday trying to psych myself up to see my old friends, rehearsing what I might say to them. Near the end of the day while chatting with Henry in class I mentioned Michaela’s party, and that things with those girls were rocky so even though I was planning to go, I probably wouldn’t stay the night. He didn’t have any particular plans he shared with me, but he wished me luck.
When I arrived at Michaela’s house that night there were already plenty of people there. My old circle of girlfriends were all there, but there were also new people—the friends I supposed they had picked up while we were all taking a break. There was even a group of well-liked guys from our school who Michaela had apparently befriended. I watched from a bean bag chair as they laughed with one another and passed around a raspberry-flavored vape, giving the room a greasy haze with a chemically-sweetened scent. They were funny, and I liked them. I wished I was friends with them, too.
I attempted to mingle, but my old friends had new friends and even seemed to have started to resurrect their relationships with one another, though they hadn’t quite gotten there with me yet. I asked them to which colleges they applied, or where they were thinking of attending, or maybe about classes or whatever we had in common at the time, but still the interactions felt superficial.
I found myself in the corner of the living room looking at my phone’s dry inbox. This wasn’t quite the age where everyone had smartphones yet, and I still didn’t have one. Normally I didn’t mind being a bit disconnected—I liked putting some space between me and Facebook, I didn’t have Instagram, and I didn’t particularly like texting. My parents probably would’ve gotten me a smartphone if I asked, but I didn’t. Though I had to admit, that evening would’ve been a great time to have a good phone and an Instagram account so I could hide my face and scroll.
I don’t know what compelled me to do it, but I changed Henry’s name in my phone to my sister’s name, Sarah, so anyone who looked over my shoulder would be none the wiser. I texted him that I was at Michaela’s house not having a very good time.
He responded quickly, asking who was there and why I was feeling that way. I told him about how I felt like I had grown apart from these people, and how Michaela made new friends that I was intimidated to engage with. It felt good to have someone to talk to and share my internal monologue with. Eventually the idea came up that instead of staying at this uncomfortable party, I could come over to his house and we could play duets on his piano like we used to. The vibe of the party I was currently at seemed to already be nudging me towards the door, so I jumped at the opportunity and left after saying goodbye to only a few people.
When Henry and I first started dating three years ago, we were all sorts of cute, but what made our relationship truly special was that we were each other’s first musical friend. He was the best piano player I’d ever met—even in our early teen years. In a classic small town cliche, we actually had the same piano teacher growing up. Despite having the same teacher and playing for about the same amount of time, Henry was always the more talented pianist between the two of us. He had this effortless way of playing that I could never quite match.
Our piano teacher had been absolutely delighted when she found out Henry and I were dating. She quickly became one of the first adults to show me her unwavering approval of him. She lived on his street, and sometimes we’d stop by to watch her teach my younger sisters piano. Once, we even brought her banana bread. It was one of those strange coincidences that felt meant to be—we unknowingly lived out this part of our childhoods side by side, playing the same piano in the same living room every week for years. I felt like our lives just fit together, like puzzle pieces clicking into place.
Henry and I would spend hours at his house sitting together at his piano–singing and playing duets, mimicking cover bands and artists we’d find on YouTube. My friends would always tell me how cute we were, like Troy and Gabriella from High School Musical, they’d say. We were that couple. The ones who couldn’t get enough of each other. The ones who were made for each other.
Most weekdays after school, we’d walk the few blocks to Henry’s house to spend time together and play piano. We’d talk, laugh, and hold hands the whole way there. Sometimes, though, instead of heading straight to his place, we’d look for a piano at school. We’d usually find one in the choir room, the orchestra room, or a practice room that was free. My choir teacher would slow her pace as she walked by us, smiling approvingly. Our classmates, bustling in the hallways as they headed out of school, would occasionally pop in to listen for a minute or make comments like, “Can I be invited to your wedding?”
A few times, instead of hunting for an available piano after school, we’d sneak into the school’s auditorium. We’d leave the lights off, rendering the window-less room thrillingly opaque. We’d move slowly through the auditorium, holding on to each other and feeling our way through the rows of seats. He’d drop my hand just so he could sneak up on me a few moments later and send me giggling. We’d sit face-to-face in the pitch black and he’d run his fingers through my hair, our tactile senses heightened without our vision, and I’d feel his warm lips press up against mine. It was one rush after another. Being with him gave me the stomach filled with butterflies that teen magazines had been selling me for years. I was absolutely thrilled to be experiencing it, finally.
Henry’s house was a short drive away from Michaela’s, and I was greeted by his parents when I arrived. They asked me how I was doing, and I said it was nice to see them. I followed Henry to the living room and took a seat next to him on the piano bench, just like we used to. His living room was softly lit by candles, lamps, and the glow of his desktop computer. His house always smelled like cinnamon; the familiarity of the smell somehow both comforted me and set off alarms in my head. I commented on the familiar smell, and we joked about how I remembered he used cinna-mint toothpaste and how I always thought that sounded disgusting.
Seated to the left of me at the piano, he began to play a delicate and familiar melody in A-minor… my song. He was playing the song that I wrote on the bus ride home from the basketball state championship trip in Madison our freshman year.
Back when we were together, on my piano at home I used to write what I called in my head, “secret songs,” as a way of coping with my sadness and loneliness. I’d play them for Henry sometimes, but he didn’t know that the songs had secret lyrics about how broken I was.
I thought back to how toxic we were, how much time we eventually spent just sitting at the piano in silence. How he was always mad at me. He would play songs in minor keys, his back hunched, his expression stern—emoting disappointment. I would silently sit beside him as he played, with tears brimming in my eyes and every so often slipping down my cheek.
I shouldn’t be here, I thought. The alarms that had already been sounding in my head all semester were now blaring. But still, part of me wanted to stay. Maybe my interest in playing duets trumped my unease? I don’t particularly remember my mental reasoning, so it’s hard to say for sure why I stayed, but I did. I didn’t tell Henry that the song he was playing had secret lyrics about how isolated I once felt. Instead, I started playing easy Adele songs, and then an upbeat jazz scale that he once taught me. He smiled at my remembering, and his approval gave me a tiny rush. I ignored the alarms in my head, allowing them to fade away into the back of my psyche.
We listened to songs by cover bands on his desktop computer and learned how to play them. I had always been the better singer between the two of us, and I happily took this opportunity to demonstrate how I had only improved since we last met at the piano bench. I sat on the floor and he sat at the desk chair with his guitar as we slowly fumbled through “Jar of Hearts” by Christina Perri, and then we alternated singing verses to “Hey, Soul Sister” by Train, stopping to laugh when I loudly and proudly sang the line, “My heart is bound to beat right outta my untrimmed chest.” He re-introduced me to Boyce Avenue, one of his favorite cover bands that he initially showed me years ago.
I was swept away by the autumn nostalgia. The apple-cinnamon candles, the soft piano—it was like stepping into a long-time faded dream, one where I was fourteen and falling for my first love all over again. I knew we weren’t meant to date, but it got me thinking that maybe we were meant to be friends. I eagerly brought my hands right back to his black-and-white keys, and started to play.