Sebastian
Saanvi is laying on my bed, her thick black hair hanging off the edge of my twin-sized mattress. It's so long that the ends of it, dyed a bright electric blue that reminds me of the quarry waters, touch my ancient wooden floor.
She's holding her phone up above her head, scrolling through people's stories on Snapchat. I'm not much better off, doomscrolling through the Dartmouth 2026 page. I'd been avoiding it as much as I could, because it was such a temptation while I was trying to study for my APs. Dartmouth doesn't take all of them, like my now-useless 5 in AP Bio and 4 in AP Chem, but I was working hard to get some of them in, like Calc and Comp Sci.
But now that we've officially graduated, I don't have to hold off any longer. I'm in Instagram stalking heaven. Most of the people seem fine, whatever. Some of them are exceptionally nerdy-looking, but others seem kind of dude-bro-ish. I keep showing the screen to Saanvi and asking for her feedback. She knows me well enough to guess the point that I'm about to make before I can even get the words out.
"Hey, Sanv," I say, "thoughts."
The phone screen is a brooding boy with nutmeg hair and a stout but muscular frame. His photos are a bunch of hiking and one of him holding a trombone, the last one with a giant robotic LEGO structure.
Saanvi doesn't roll over, so I turn the phone screen upside down. She holds her pointer finger out to scroll, biting her lip in concentration. "Ummm, I'm gonna say he looks like the type to play ping pong using laptops as paddles."
"Oh totally, yeah."
She swipes to the next photo. Her eyes go wide with surprise, and a little bit of intrigue. "Ooh, shirtless pic? That's thirsty."
"Is it thirsty, or confident?" I ask, leaning back to look at the picture in question. The guy is cute enough, but the six pack really is kind of doing it for me. He's on a cliff's edge, poised like he's about to jump. Fuck, it's reminding me of my idiotic little jump last night. I don't know why I did that, but ... well. Yeah. I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe I wanted to cool down and figured I couldn't back out if I just jumped. Fifteen feet. Live a little. Fuck you, me.
"In his case, probably both. He looks like he would condescend to you about Marxism."
"Like he thinks nihilism is the hottest shit," I add, "but probably also thinks social Darwinism is a valid concept."
Saanvi snorts. "He looks like the type to tell you all about poverty in America from his dad's hot tub, and then turn around and say if people were more educated, they could get out of it."
"Oh, like Brady Evans?"
"Oh, fuck Brady Evans. But yeah, totally like Brady Evans."
I scroll up to the next pic. This one is a cute guy in a flannel, with floppy blond hair and an easy-going smile, poised in front of a corn field.
"Ooh, Midwestern Heartthrob Boy," Saanvi says, finally rolling over. I readjust my phone. She swipes over to the next picture—a happy little border collie that's licking his face while he laughs and tries to shield himself. Fuck, okay, cute.
"He's cute," I offer (redundantly).
"That's your type?" Saanvi asks, rolling over. "Little goofy blond boys who mix flannels and athleisure wear?"
Huh. "Maybe."
She gives me an incredulous look. "So ... then, do you think Harrison McCammon is cute?"
"What? Absolutely not." But I pretend to balk a moment too soon, and she gives me a knowing glance. "What?"
Her eyes widen. "Stop, you do think he's cute!"
"Saanvi—"
"Sebastian! Seb. Seb. Harris McCammon? C'mon."
"What?" It's almost as if I can feel the beads of sweat beginning to appear on my forehead, a cartoonish representation of my discomfort. I actually don't know what she's going to say to this one.
Her hands are clutching my dark blue comforter. "Stop, stop, no, no, nope."
"What?"
"I cannot believe this!"
"What?"
Inexplicably, she shrugs. "I'm just ... flabbergasted."
If she's flabbergasted now, I don't want to know how she'll react when I tell her that Harrison and I seem to be becoming friends with benefits.
"Can you blame me?" I ask her. "He's hot." I let my head flop back against the mattress, lolling over to the side to look at her. She stares back. Saanvi has these wide almond shaped eyes that always seem to shine, especially when she adds this subtle little smidge of champagne-colored eyeshadow on her inner corner. She's actually really pretty, something I think is easy to forget because she acts like she doesn't think about looking attractive, and she's also too smart for people to know what to do with, so she gets overlooked too often. But, between the two of us, she's definitely the pretty best friend.
"You're simping for fucking Harrison now?" she asks. "I just cannot wrap my brain around this."
"I—"
"Actually, no, no, I take that back. When he ran after you last night, I was surprised, but then he jumped off a fifteen foot cliff for you, no hesitation. Now that's kinda hot. I get it."
That's never not going to be embarrassing to me. "Yeah, no that's ... that's hot."
She gives me a downright bombastic side eye. "Did you guys hook up?"
I groan and sink down to the floor, lying there in a jumbled pile.
Saanvi gasps. She practically soars off the mattress and lands next to me, just to deliver unto me a sharp swat to the arm. "You did! Oh my god, what did you guys do? You, and Harrison? Fuuuuck, Seb, fuuuuuuuck! And you didn't call me immediately after?"
I roll onto my back and cross my arms across my chest. "How do you know we did anything?"
"Shut up! Shut up, you did, and you're being weird, and this is precisely how I know you did hook up with him. You hooked up with Harrison McCammon, you saucy boy!"
I wrinkle my nose. "Ew, let the words 'saucy boy' stay in Capulet's mouth, please."
Saanvi rolls up the sleeves of her burnt orange sweatshirt, then proceeds to playfully whack me once more. "Spill." Whack. "The." Whack. "Tea." Whackwhackwhack.
"Hmmm, I don't kiss and tell."
Her gasp is high-pitched and strangled-sounding. She all but flies backwards. "STOP, you didn't."
"What, make out?" I smile and close my eyes, shifting my arms to behind my head. "Maybe."
"Augh!" She shakes her head emphatically, sending her curly hair flying. "You're acting terribly rakish and roguish, Seb!"
"Maybe."
Saanvi runs her hands through her blown out curtain bangs, then shakes her head again. "I literally cannot believe this. Who knew he had it in him?"
"I know."
"I mean," she continues on, clearly about to go off on a Saanvi Tangent™, "I always figured his balls were too far in Liam Grande's purse for there to be any hope for him. Because, Liam is enough of a prick that I figured it would take one to be friends with one, but I guess he must be more chill than I thought. That's only partly on me though, because they get along too well for Harrison not to speak fluent asshole. But ... you had fun? You like him? Wait, are you dating now?"
"We—"
"That would be way too fast. Nope, sorry, sorry, sorrysorrysorry. Sorry. Go on."
I smile politely. "Thank you, Saanvi."
"Ey. Don't push your luck."
I roll my eyes at her before staring straight up at my slowly whirring ceiling fan. "I'm actually not sure what it is that we're doing. I think we're friends with benefits? We just agreed to keep it casual."
Without even having to look, I can feel Saanvi's frown. "Rude. Do we want me to murder him? I will gladly murder him. And I'd do such a good job too."
I close my eyes. Saanvi isn't a hookup kind of person, so this might be the part that she doesn't understand. Granted, I'm not much of a hookup kind of person myself, which only adds more to the irony that is my current situation with Harris. "No, no, it was me who suggested it, actually."
"Whaaaat? Seb, why?"
I sit up and toss my hands in the air. "I don't know! I just, I asked him what we were doing, and then he's all like, 'I don't know, what do you want it to be,' and then I was like, no way does Harrison McCammon want something serious with an asshat like me, and so I was like, 'oh hey that's chill yeah let's just keep this casual.'"
I'm standing up now and am starting to pace. Thank goodness neither of my parents are home—they'd probably be so concerned right now. "And like, Saanvi, what does that even mean? 'Let's keep this casual?' I'm new at this. I don't understand the apparent intricacies of what I signed up for. 'Casual,' Saanvi, what is 'casual'?"
"Uhhh...." Saanvi kind of just shrugs from her spot on the floorboards. "Not dating but almost? Maybe? A no-strings-attached situation? I don't know."
"Uuuuaaaauuurrrrrgggghhhhhh!"
"Okay okay, so, aside from that sound you just made—which is a totally valid sound to be making right now, no judgement, bestie—what do you think Harrison wanted this to be?"
I blink. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, like, maybe he put the decision off on you because he didn't know what he wanted. But if you had to guess, what would you say right now?"
"I don't know, ugghhh."
"Okay, well." She stands and readjusts the waist of her leggings. "I think this is an incredibly new development, and that you gotta give it a few days before you decide how you feel about this situation. Who knows, maybe 'just friends' is a perfect idea for you right now."
It certainly doesn't feel like that, honestly. It feels more like my world is about to cave in on itself, because I haven't sat down with myself to even begin processing how I feel about this. What am I doing? What is he doing? What are we doing, and how committed do I need a partner to be for that?
"What do you mean, 'just friends' might be good for right now?" I ask, sitting down on the edge of my bed.
Saanvi stands now, and which weirdly makes this feel like a study session. We both walk when we're trying hard to think. We would be walking circles around each other these past four years that we were on the debate team, going over every single possible case point and contention until we figured we were unbeatable. Half the time, it felt like we shared the same brain.
"Well, think about it like this: you've only been with Evan, who is a useless hunk of shit of a human being and I hope he rots in the deepest, coldest circle of Hell."
"It was an amicable breakup," I mumble.
She points at me. "Bullshit."
"Whatever." She's right, but like ... whatever.
"Whatever." She sighs. "Anyways, what's the point of starting a relationship less than three months before you go off to university? You're going to New Hampshire, and he's staying in Minnesota, going to Mankato or something. So that's gotta be, what, like, twenty-three hours distance or something?"
Math checks out, so I nod.
"You've never done long distance before," she says, walking around in a circle, stopping at my desk to grab my ancient glow in the dark fidget spinner. She spins it as she walks, staring at the wall, retracing familiar footsteps with bare feet on hardwood.
"Right."
"Remember you rejected that guy from Eden Prairie? All because you thought long distance would be too hard."
I wince at the mere memory. Alex Scheffers. Hot Lincoln-Douglas debater. What else was I supposed to do? "Yeah."
"So ... why start anything committed now?"
I don't answer her right away, because even though I know that she's right, it feels off somehow. "Yeah...."
"Unless, of course, you like him. In which case, I think you should say something instead of suffering in silence, like I know you have the tendency to do."
I groan.
"So, you do like him," she says, stopping her pacing to look me right in the eye.
"I mean ... maybe."
"But you're not going to do anything about it, are you?"
"Oh yeah, most definitely no."
She just sighs, shakes her head, and flops down on the bed next to me. "Harrison McCammon."
"Oh, believe me. I know." And we sigh, precisely at the same time.
a/n - not going to lie, I accidentally hit "publish" so HAVE A FREE UPDATE WOOT