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Relying On Ben and Jerry: After All This Time

I punched him in the shoulder and laughed, shaking my head. Needless to say, the two of us hadn’t grown much at all since high school.

Well, okay, that is a lie—Quinton went to Yale and did smart-person things and I went to UMass like a normal person. We had our ups and our downs like every couple, but we just seemed to have more ups. Quinton was still a sweetheart, but now just a sweetheart with a fancy law degree and better dress sense. Our parents still lived next door to each other and my brother was still a total idiot with a tumultuous off-and-on-again relationship with my ginger best friend. Everything felt the same, but I knew it wasn’t.

I stopped dressing like a circus escapee about eighteen times after I had been misidentified as one. I grew up and matured a little bit, but I still did too many dares and didn’t own a matching pair of socks. I got a degree, but I still got distracted by tin foil and other things that are shiny.

We all have to grow up sometime, I guess. I think I had done a good deal of growing up over the last several years.

But I still use Marvel. I mean, come on.

I jumped when I realized Quinton was waving a hand in front of my face, dangerously close to karate chopping my nose. He burst out laughing when I vaulted back a step, throwing his head back with the force of his laughter.

“Earth to Mallory,” he paged in a goofy voice. “Come in, Mallory.”

I pushed his hand away, scrunching up my nose as he reached out to touch me again. He smiled at me, but there was this funny look on his face, like he was about to be sick or something. I frowned.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded, concerned, reaching up to touch his forehead but coming back with a negative on the fever. “You look a little green, Quinton. Do you feel okay?”

“I’m perfect,” he told me with a smile, but I wasn’t convinced. “I’m just thinking.”

“Well, try not to think too hard, alright?” I teased him, smiling. “What are you thinking so strongly about?”

“About us,” he said slowly, waiting cautiously for my reaction. My eyebrows show up.

“Yeah?” I asked, biting my lip nervously. “So thinking about our relationship makes you look like you’re going to be sick?”

“With adorableness,” he blurted out, making us both crack up. “But no, really, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.”

My stomach flipped a little. It was probably because his mind was subconsciously realizing things and finally catching up with his common sense as he came to the conclusion that he was too good to settle for someone like me. That I was still the weird girl from high school and he was the super cute boy next door and sometimes that wasn’t always the ideal combination.

He said that he wouldn’t let what happened with Mathieu and Kline happen to us, but what if he had been lying to me, to himself?

I grimaced a little, my good mood edging away.

Quinton didn’t even seem to notice as he stared down at our entwined hands, playing with my fingers in a way that usually made my tummy all jumpy and goopy, since I’m an English major and all. He looked thoughtful again, making me wonder if he was always thinking about us when he made that face, since I’ve been noticing that he’d been making that face a lot lately.

“We’ve known each other for a long time,” he started his speech, and then the end was suddenly in sight. “We’ve been dating almost as long, and it’s been amazing, Lena. I’ll never want to forget it, ever. It’s just—after all this time, I started to realize something—I started to realize—”