Chapter 9: Jay stumbles through an off-key rendition of Emily's favorite song, his eyes locked on hers across the strobe-lit room, both pretending not to remember the last time they were this close was when she pressed his college submission button.
The text from Lisa came through on a Thursday afternoon. Jay was in the parking lot, leaning against his now-functional car, trying to remember where he’d left his history textbook.
Hey. Emily’s birthday. Surprise thing at my house tonight. Don’t tell her. She’d kill me for doing this but whatever. You should come.
He stared at the screen. He hadn’t spoken to Emily much since the night of the application, the sweet wine. There had been a stiffness in the hallways, a mutual avoidance. It was as if they had opened a door neither knew how to walk through.
He typed a reply. She invited me?
The dots bounced. No. I’m inviting you. She thinks you’re busy. Are you?
He wasn’t. He had no plans. The emptiness of his house yawned before him.
What’s the address? he sent.
Lisa’s house was bigger than he expected. A white colonial with a wide porch, paint peeling at the edges. Music pulsed from within, a bass line he could feel in his teeth. Through the large bay window, he saw blurred shapes moving in the warm light.
He walked up the drive. The front door was unlocked.
The inside was a curated chaos. Mismatched sofas buried under people. A vintage lamp with a fringed shade. Posters for bands he didn’t recognize. The air was warm, thick with the smell of spilled beer and vanilla candle wax.
He didn’t see Emily at first. He saw Lisa, who waved from across the crowded living room with a beer in hand. She pointed toward the kitchen.
He moved through the clusters of people. They were mostly faces he knew vaguely from school, but not his crowd. They were art kids, band kids, the quietly smart ones. Emily’s world. A few glanced at him with open curiosity. The popular guy, the project, intruding.
The kitchen was brighter, louder. A game was in progress. A circle of people sat on the linoleum floor, hands raised. In the center was a pitcher of something murky and brown, and a spinning empty bottle.
Emily sat with her back against the oven door. She was holding a red plastic cup. Her cheeks were flushed. Her hair, usually perfectly arranged, had strands stuck to her temple. She was laughing at something the guy next to her said, a guy Jay recognized as a cellist from orchestra.
He stopped in the doorway. This was a different Emily. Unanchored. Tipsy. Her shoulders were loose, her expression open in a way he’d never seen in a classroom or on a rooftop.
“Never have I ever…” said a girl with blue hair, grinning. “... kissed someone I actually hated.”
Groans and laughs. Four people put fingers down, including the cellist. Emily didn’t. She took a sip from her cup, her eyes sparkling.
“Your turn, Em!” someone shouted.
Emily bit her lip, thinking. She scanned the circle, her gaze drifting past the doorway without landing on him. “Okay. Never have I ever… submitted a college application while having a panic attack.”
The group erupted in confused laughter. “What? Specific!” someone yelled.
But Jay felt the words like a physical touch. She was talking about him. To them. She was sharing it. It was theirs now, a party anecdote.
Two people put fingers down, claiming their own panic stories. Emily smiled, a private, wry smile, and took another drink. Her eyes lifted then, and finally caught his.
The smile froze. The laughter around her seemed to recede. She blinked, as if trying to clear her vision. The flush on her cheeks deepened.
Lisa appeared at his elbow, handing him a beer. “You made it. She has no idea.”
“I see that,” Jay said, his voice barely audible over the music.
Emily was still staring. The game moved on, the bottle spun again, but she was disengaged. She watched him as he crossed the kitchen, leaned against the counter away from the circle. He popped the beer open, the sound a sharp hiss.
A few minutes later, she extricated herself. She stood, a little unsteady, and walked over. She smelled like citrus and cheap beer.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. There was no malice, just genuine confusion.
“Lisa invited me.”
“Why?”
“It’s your birthday.”
“You remembered.”
“You mentioned it. Once.” He had. Months ago. In the computer lab. She’d said she didn’t want a thing. He’d filed it away.
She leaned against the counter next to him, their arms not touching. She watched her friends play the game. “I feel ambushed.”
“You look like you’re having fun.”
“I am. That’s what’s weird.” She took a long drink from her cup. “I didn’t think you’d come to something like this.”
“I didn’t think you’d be playing drinking games.”
“I’m full of surprises.” Her words were slightly slurred, soft at the edges. “Like you.”
The cellist called over. “Emily! Your turn again! We’re losing you!”
“In a minute!” she called back, not looking away from Jay.
“You should go back,” he said.
“Why did you come?” she asked again, persistent in her tipsiness.
He considered the safe answers. Lisa asked. No other plans. Instead, he said, “The house was quiet.”
She nodded, as if this made perfect sense. She understood quiet houses. “You submitted four more applications.”
He was startled. “How do you know that?”
“The portal. We used my email as a backup, remember? The receipts come to me too.” She tapped her temple. “Spreadsheet. I keep track.”
He’d forgotten. He felt exposed, seen in a way that was both irritating and comforting.
“I’m trying,” he said, the words simple.
“I know.” She looked down into her cup. “The panic attack one was about you.”
“I figured.”
“I didn’t say your name.”
“They don’t know me. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” she said, her voice dropping. She looked up at him, her brown eyes wide and unguarded. The alcohol had stripped away her usual caution. “It was a big deal to me. That night. In the lab.”
The memory hung between them: her finger over his, the click, the confirmation screen.
“It was a big deal to me too,” he said.
From the circle, the blue-haired girl shouted, “Emily! If you’re ditching us for Jay Tanaka, you have to drink!”
Laughter. All eyes were on them now. Curious, teasing.
Emily didn’t laugh. She held Jay’s gaze for a second longer, something fierce and sad in her expression. Then she pushed off the counter.
She walked back to the circle, picked up the pitcher of murky punch, and refilled her cup to the brim. “I’m ditching you for another drink,” she announced, and drained half of it in one go.
Her friends cheered. The moment was broken, absorbed back into the party’s noise.
Jay stayed by the counter. He finished his beer. He watched her re-enter the game, her laughter a little louder now, a little more forced. He watched the cellist say something that made her throw her head back, exposing the line of her throat.
This was her world. He was a visitor here. A anecdote. A panic attack punchline. A guy from a quiet house who showed up uninvited.
He set the empty bottle down on the counter. He didn’t say goodbye. He just turned and walked out, weaving through the crowded living room, past Lisa who gave him a questioning look, out into the cool, clear night.
The silence outside was immense. He could still feel the bass in his chest.
He got in his car but didn’t start it. He sat in the dark, watching the shapes move behind the bright window. He thought about the sweet wine on her kitchen floor. The submission receipt in his email. The specific, piercing look in her eyes before her friends called her away.
He had wanted to ask her what it meant. To ditch them for him.
But the question was too heavy for a birthday. It required a different kind of quiet.
He started the car and drove away, the party’s glow shrinking in his rearview mirror until it was just another pinpoint of light in the dark, swallowed by the distance.
He drove until the streetlights became sporadic, then nonexistent. The two-lane road curled behind the school, up toward the bluffs. He parked at the overlook, the engine ticking as it cooled. The valley spread below, a diorama of light and shadow. His phone screen was the only illumination in the car.
The quiet here was different. It was vast, not hollow. He could hear the wind. He watched a constellation of lights that might have been Lisa’s house, or any house.
He didn’t sleep much. The image of Emily, flushed and unguarded, replaying against the backs of his eyelids. The cellist’s hand on her arm. Her defiant gulp of punch. Her saying, It matters to me.
Morning came, gray and damp. His head was clear, uncomfortably so. He made coffee in his silent kitchen, the microwave clock reading 9:17. He scrolled through the meaningless notifications on his phone. The silence had texture again. Compressed wool.
He thumbed open his messages, to the thread with Emily. The last exchange was weeks old, logistical, about a calculus problem set.
He typed, deleted, typed again.
Jay (9:24 AM): how’s the head
He waited. Three minutes. The dots didn’t appear. He put the phone down, gulped the too-hot coffee. It scalded a path down his throat.
The phone buzzed on the counter. A soft, seismic vibration.
Emily (9:28 AM): it’s a cathedral of pain. why.
Jay (9:28 AM): birthday hangover ramen. my treat. the good place.
He didn’t remind her it was their old bribe. She would remember. The ramen for the completed quiz, the first transaction in their uneasy economy of potential.
The dots appeared. They vanished. Reappeared.
Emily (9:31 AM): i’m in sweatpants. i look like a ghost.
Jay (9:31 AM): me too. i’ll be the guy in the gray hoodie. table in the back.
A longer pause. He could see her thinking. Weighing the awkwardness of last night against the pull of broth and spice, against the habit of them.
Emily (9:33 AM): give me an hour.
The good ramen place was steamy and loud at eleven a.m. on a Friday. Condensation blurred the windows, turning the outside world into a watery smear of color. Jay sat at the back table, his gray hoodie up, hands wrapped around a mug of green tea.
The bell above the door jangled. Emily walked in. She wore dark sunglasses and an oversized sweater. She slid into the booth across from him without a word. She kept the sunglasses on.
“You look like a recovering celebrity,” he said.
“I feel like a crime scene.” Her voice was gravelly. She signaled for a water. When it came, she drank the entire glass in one long, desperate series of swallows.
A comfortable silence settled, forged in mutual misery. They didn’t need to fill it. The server came. They both ordered the tonkotsu, extra pork, extra egg. It was their usual order. The ritual of it was a relief.
“So,” she said finally, pushing the sunglasses onto her head. Her eyes were puffy. “The party.”
“It looked fun,” he offered.
“It was. Until I saw you in the doorway. Then it was… confusing.”
“Why?”
She poked at the pickled ginger with her chopsticks. “You were a snapshot from a different life. The spreadsheet life. The calculus life. It didn’t belong there.” She looked up. “But then you were just you. Standing there. And I was… I’d had that punch. And I said that thing.”
“The panic attack.”
“Yeah.” She winced. “I shared it. I shared us. It felt like a betrayal after.”
He considered this. The idea that their private moments in the lab were something sacred to be protected. “It’s just a story,” he said, but it felt hollow.
“It’s not.” Her response was immediate, sharp. “It’s the only real thing that’s happened this year. For me.”
The words landed, heavy and true, between the condiment trays. He had no reply. Their food arrived, steaming bowls that fogged their faces. They ate for a few minutes, the only sound the quiet slurping of noodles.
“The cellist,” Jay said, not looking up from his bowl. “He likes you.”
Emily paused, a noodle suspended. “Ryan. He’s nice. He’s going to Berklee.”
“Of course he is.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means he’s nice and he’s going to Berklee. It’s a statement of fact.” He bit into his egg. The yolk was perfect, runny and rich. “Are you going to see him again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Is that okay?” Her tone wasn’t defensive. It was curious, testing.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know.” She mimicked his earlier evasion. “You left without saying goodbye.”
The air tightened. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “I felt like a tourist. In your life. I didn’t know the rules.”
“There are no rules, Jay.” She put her chopsticks down. “That’s what you don’t get. You think my life is this controlled, ruled thing. It’s not. I get drunk on terrible punch. I kiss people I might not even like that much. I have panic attacks helping my friend submit college apps. I’m a mess, just a different kind than you.”
He stared at her. This was the second breach. First the wine, now this confession. His anchor was adrift, telling him she was just as lost.
“You hide it better,” he said softly.
“I have to.” Her eyes glistened, but no tears fell. “No one’s checking my homework. No one’s waiting up. If I don’t hold it together, there’s no one to catch me. So I hold it. Always.”
He understood then. Her control wasn’t superiority. It was survival. His was a different decay; his was letting the emptiness consume everything because there was no witness. Hers was a relentless, lonely maintenance against the same void.
“I’m sorry,” he said. The words were inadequate, dust in the ramen-scented air.
“For what?”
“For making you my anchor. That’s a shitty job. No benefits.”
A small, broken laugh escaped her. She picked her chopsticks back up. “The benefits were supposed to be watching you succeed. That was the deal. The bribe.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know.” She ate a piece of pork, chewing slowly. “The four more applications. That’s trying. Showing up last night… that was something else. That wasn’t for a grade.”
He felt exposed, the way he had in the computer lab. “The house was quiet,” he repeated, his only honest vocabulary.
“Mine will be quiet later,” she said, not looking at him. “My parents are going to a play in the city. They’ll be back late.”
The implication hung in the steam. An invitation. A choice. Not a party with a crowd, but a different kind of quiet.
“What would we do?” he asked, his voice low.
She finally met his gaze. “I have that terrible sweet wine. We could not drink it. We could just sit. We could not talk about college or panic attacks or cellists.”
“We could just sit,” he echoed, the concept feeling foreign and desperately needed.
“Yeah.”
He nodded. A slow, single dip of his chin. “Okay.”
They finished their ramen. He paid the bill, waving off her half-hearted attempt to reach for her wallet. “Birthday present,” he mumbled. They stepped out into the sharp, midday air, the world coming back into focus, crisp and overly bright.
They walked to their cars, parked a few spaces apart. The normalcy of the parting felt absurd.
“Seven?” she asked, digging for her keys.
“Seven,” he confirmed.
He got in his car. She got in hers. They didn’t wave. They just drove off in opposite directions, the rendezvous settled, the afternoon now a tunnel of time to be passed through before the evening’s uncertain quiet.
Jay drove nowhere. He ended up at a park, watching kids on swings. The silence in his car was no longer wool. It was electric, a live wire humming with the promise of seven o’clock. He thought of the sweet wine in her fridge. He thought of just sitting.
He had spent so long filling silence with noise. The idea of sharing it, intentionally, with someone else, was terrifying. It required a different kind of courage.
At 6:58, he stood on her porch. The porch light was off. The house was dark except for a soft glow from the living room window. He knocked.
She opened the door. She’d changed into different sweatpants and a soft-looking sweater. Her hair was down. She held two glasses of water.
“I poured wine,” she said. “Then I poured it down the sink. It really is terrible.”
He stepped inside. The familiar smell of lemons and paper. The quiet was deep, textured. It was her quiet. He followed her to the living room. The same lamp was on. The throw blanket was folded on the sofa.
She sat on one end. He sat on the other, a careful cushion of space between them. She handed him a water glass.
“So,” she said.
“So,” he said.
They sat. They didn’t turn on the TV. They didn’t put on music. They just existed in the quiet room. The furnace kicked on with a distant rumble. A car passed outside, its headlights sweeping a brief arc across the ceiling.
He took a sip of water. The ice cubes clinked.
“This is weird,” she said, but she was smiling a little.
“It’s really weird,” he agreed.
And then, slowly, the weirdness settled. It became a container. He let his head fall back against the couch, staring at the ceiling. She curled her legs under her, sipping her water. Minutes passed. Not empty, but full of the subtle sounds of a house at rest, and of two people breathing.
“I’m scared I won’t get in anywhere,” he said to the ceiling. The words just came out. They weren’t planned.
“I know,” she said to her water glass.
“And I’m scared I will.”
She turned her head to look at him. “Why?”
“Because then I have to go. And be there. And be a person there.” He closed his eyes. “What if I’m just this? What if this is all there is?”
Emily was quiet for a long time. He could feel her thinking.
“Then you’ll be this there,” she said finally. Her voice was clear in the quiet. “And you’ll figure out the rest. Or you won’t. But you’ll be somewhere else. The quiet will be different. That’s something.”
He opened his eyes, looked at her. She was already looking at him. The careful distance on the couch felt immense and negligible all at once.
“You should kiss me,” she said. The statement was simple, direct. Not a question. Not an invitation. A declarative fact.
He didn’t move. “Why?”
“Because we’ve been building to it for a year. Because we’re both scared. Because I want you to.”
He sat up. The space between them collapsed. He reached out, his hand finding hers on the couch cushion. Her fingers were cold. He laced his with them.
He leaned in slowly, giving her every chance to stop him. She didn’t. She met him halfway.
The kiss was not dramatic. It was not a culmination. It was quiet, like the room. A soft press of lips, a shared breath. It tasted like water and the faint, lingering mint of her toothpaste. It was a question and an answer held in the same gesture.
He pulled back just enough to see her face. Her eyes were open, searching his.
“Okay?” he whispered.
She nodded, a small, sure movement. “Okay.”
She leaned in again, and this time the kiss deepened, lost its hesitation. Her hand came up to cradle his jaw, her thumb brushing the line of his cheekbone. He let go of her other hand to touch her waist, feeling the soft wool of her sweater.
It was not a frenzy. It was a slow, meticulous discovery. A mapping of new territory. The only sound was their breathing, gradually deepening, synchronizing in the lamplit quiet.
When they finally parted, they didn’t go far. Their foreheads rested together. Her eyes were closed.
“That changes everything,” she whispered.
“It changes nothing,” he whispered back, and he meant both statements were true.
They stayed like that, in the altered quiet, the future a shapeless thing outside the warm, dim room, for a long, long time.