Within/Without

chapter one.

Simon

She is meeting me for the first time. I have known her for ten years.

The diner is sleepy and smells like chicken grease and neither of us should be here. I have my journal open in front of me, ink marks already decorating my fingers, smudges across my palms and on the still mostly blank page before me, when I hear the little bell ding above the door—and there she is.

Even under the oversaturated light buzzing from the overheads, there's something magical about her. She moves like a shadow in her oversized sweatpants and the equally oversized BU sweatshirt. Her curls are down and she casts her mismatched eyes briefly about the room and they entirely skip over me and for a second I forget.

She has met me as a blond surfer type that forgot her birthday once. She has met me as the nice, slightly nerdy black guy that took her to prom in junior year. She has met me as the skittish black-haired kid who helped her open her locker on the first day of the middle school, and she's met me as many other people many other times after that.

But she hasn't met me, here, as Simon St. John: literature nerd, ginger who could likely use a haircut, farsighted and a bit too gangly and definitely too pale.

I'm wondering if this is a mistake. More so, I'm wondering what I would even do if it did turn out to be. Start over again, I guess.

Val seats herself a booth away from me and rests her head on the table. She must be so tired. I remember a time in high school, our senior year, when she'd been so stressed about college admissions that she hadn't eaten. I had brought her lo mein from Li Huang's, her favorite Chinese place in town. I'd told her, "Just a piece of chicken, please?" and she had smiled sheepishly and agreed.

As far as Val knows, this weird guy in the booth just down from hers has never bought her Chinese takeout. It's an odd feeling, knowing but not being known. It is a feeling I've never gotten used to, either.

Kimmy, the only waitress still working at the sprightly hour of one in the morning, swings by Val's table. She looks up. Orders coffee, black, and a waffle. Now I know she's really tired. Val only eats waffles when she has given up.

She's not looking at me. She's not going to look at me. I have a poem to write.

I glance down at the yellow-tinted page underneath me. It's an old leather-bound journal, a warm mahogany brown, that Noah bought for me two years ago when he studied abroad in France. The pen in my hand is nothing special. A flimsy plastic one I found, oddly, in the silverware drawer back at the apartment.

Nevertheless, I set pen to the paper, but the words don't come.

and somehow I keep/coming back to you./the sea could swallow me whole...

I still haven't found the right words when I hear her voice: "I swear, ma'am, I just had it. It's in my purse somewhere."

"You keep looking. You eat, you gotta pay."

I look up. Val's frantic, rummaging around in her purse, her face ridden with worry. She's tired. She's so tired. "I know," she says to Kimmy, who's standing at the end of the booth, her hand on her hip. "If you'd just—"

I'm standing before I know what I'm doing. "I'll pay for her, Kimmy."

Both Kimmy and Val look up, Val with relief, Kimmy with dubiety. I exhale and snatch ten dollars from my pocket, fold it into Kimmy's palm, and watch as she sighs and slips off toward the register.

I'm shaking. I can't remember when I started shaking.

"Thank you," Val says, sitting back against the booth seat. "I'm just exhausted. Can't remember my own phone number right now, let alone my wallet."