Page 34 of Friends to Lovers

chapter twenty

I spot Ren before he spots me. He’s leaning against a wall near the departure board, arms folded across his chest as he scans the crowds, and I swear I can already smell his faded, sage green T-shirt.

When I’m halfway to him, his eyes find me, brightening, his tall figure stepping easily around a family, each of their five kids on one of those ridable suitcases, all of them coordinated in neon shirts, The Baileys Take Bahston! emblazoned across the backs.

When we reach each other, he hugs me to him. “There you are,” he says softly.

Ren was on a work trip during the week at the beach house this year, and even that extra month made our time apart feel longer.

So much of our friendship has been defined by these types of moments the last few years: transitional spaces filled with hustle and bustle, the hopeful, excited hello when our time together stretches ahead of us and the comedown on the goodbye.

I squint at the scruff on his cheeks. “Are you growing a beard?” I ask.

Ren rubs his knuckles over his jaw. “Just didn’t have time to shave before my flight this morning.”

“I bet you could totally rock a beard,” I say, holding my hands just away from his face like I’m styling him. “Or a mustache?” I straighten my index finger above his lip. “Love a mustache moment.”

He lowers my hand. “I’m shaving as soon as we get back to the hotel.”

We drop our things at the hotel, where Ren does indeed shave, and I change out of the wrap dress I wore to a pitch meeting this morning and into a black, denim overalls dress.

We bought tickets for a music festival weeks ago when we realized it coincided with the wedding of a friend from the art school.

“A bummer Sasha and Alex don’t live here anymore,” I say as we wait in a line for beers.

The heat of the late August day is just creeping out, replaced by a hint of crisp evening air.

“How are they settling in in LA?” They moved there three months ago, when Sasha’s company decided to open a West Coast branch, to be closer to family, including the adorable baby girl Thad and Gemi adopted.

“Great, as far as I know,” Ren says, hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Busy planning the wedding.”

“A New Year’s Eve wedding.” We inch forward in line. “How very Sasha.”

After Charlene’s wedding, I worried our friendship was forever changed.

It had nagged at me intermittently growing up—that at some point, there was the possibility he and I wouldn’t be the same us we’d always been—but the idea never really stuck until it happened.

I had built a life of my own in New York, knew that I could be okay without Ren by my side, and yet, I didn’t want that. Life was better with him in it.

We still texted each other, but I’d begun to accept the distance between us for what it was. Growing up, maybe.

But then late one night, Ren called me out of the blue. He had texted a few weeks before to tell me he and Amanda had broken up, and he was fine, and we had continued on with our scattered texting, tiptoeing around the subject.

I’d been making boxed and mac and cheese when my phone rang.

“I see you’re still burning the candle at both ends,” he said, his voice filling in spots in my body I hadn’t realized were empty.

“Actually,” I’d said, turning off the burner, heart swelling at the sound of his voice. “I’m just getting home from an event.”

“An event?” Ren had said, like it was something I’d forgotten to tell him. Like we’d talked two days ago. “Wait,” he continued. “I didn’t say hi.”

A smile pricked my cheeks. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he said. I felt it down to my toes. “Tell me about this event.”

He called me the next night too, slightly earlier, and then we talked every night after that.

Even when we were busy. Even when we were tired.

On more than one occasion, when he could tell I was struggling to stay awake, he’d tell me stories from our lives, his perspective making them new for me, and I fell asleep with his voice in my ear.

A few months couldn’t erase a lifetime.

I head to one of the stages to claim a spot, respond to a text from my mom that yes, I am here safely, and another from Ramona about the meeting this morning about a new movie proposal.

Ren joins me, handing me a cup of beer. “Here,” he says, then reveals a baseball cap with the classic Red Sox B on it from under his arm. He works the brim before putting it on my head, settling a hand on top as if to make sure it’s on correctly.

“Where’s yours?” I ask. “It can’t be a trip souvenir if we’re not—”

He produces another from under his other arm, puts it on.

“—matching,” I finish, smile spreading. I reach up and flip his hat around so it sits backward. Some of his dark waves stick out, curling near his ears. “There you go,” I say. “Have to show off that handsome face of yours.”

He tugs the brim of my own hat down in response.

As the sound check continues and people fill in around us, I ask him the question I’ve been holding off on for the past eight months.

Ren is always harder to read over FaceTime, so it felt like something that needed to be addressed in person, where I could try to gauge his real feelings, comfort him accordingly.

“Ren,” I say.

He turns to me, mimics my serious expression, drops his voice. “Joni.”

“How are you doing?”

He side-eyes me, a confused smile on his face. “Aren’t we a couple hours too late to be asking that?”

I wave away his question. “I mean Amanda. How are you doing?”

“Ah.” He studies the stage, nodding once. “How am I.”

“So?” I ask, after he’s been silent for what must be a full minute.

He looks at me like he already answered the question and I just missed it. “I’m fine.”

“You’re fine ?”

“It was eight months ago,” he says, eyes fixed on the stage again. “I’ve moved on.”

“It’s okay if you haven’t,” I say. I know he might not tell me if he was still hurting, but I want to make sure he knows that he can .

“You’ve moved on from Collin, right?”

“Yes,” I say, feeling a little guilty at how quickly I answer.

I broke up with Collin not long after Charlene’s wedding, my conversation with Ren about his relationship with Amanda shamefully in my head the entire time.

I didn’t care about Collin like I should.

I try with Ren one last time. “What happened?” I ask him. “You still haven’t really told me.”

At this, the fingers Ren has been drumming against his cup still. He looks over at me, something unreadable on his face. “I just wasn’t the boyfriend she needed me to be.”

It’s an answer that doesn’t compute. I scoff, wave a hand in his direction.

“What?” he says.

I don’t know how to explain to him without sounding crazy that I don’t believe for a second there’s a single world in which he isn’t the best boyfriend, so I just say, “You have to be a great boyfriend. You’re perfect.”

One corner of Ren’s mouth twitches, tongue just slipping between his lips before he leans down to me, breath against my ear.

“How do you know that, Joni? I’ve never been your boyfriend,” he says.

He pulls away, but not very far, our faces inches apart.

For a minute, I can’t hear the cheers around us.

But I can see every shade of brown in Ren’s eyes: chocolate and almost black and hints of amber where the light hits them.

The slight smirk on his mouth as he straightens away from me has me shifting away too, bringing my cup to my lips. “Fair enough,” I say, before I take a long drink.

* * *

After an hour, Ren leads us in the direction of a gate.

We weave our way through tour busses and vans, past a white catering tent where Ren grabs two water bottles and hands me one.

Technically, he’s also here with Sublimity, who asked him to keep an eye out for new talent, and our VIP passes get us past security.

While Ren heads back to the artist hospitality area to meet with a couple acts, I make my way over to the main stage to catch a singer I used to listen to in college, all poppy beats and dreamy guitar.

Stevie got a job writing for a culture publica tion in Portland as soon as she finished her degree last December, and I know she would kill to be here for this. I’ve missed her since she moved.

I’m near the outskirts of the crowd when he finds me again.

“How’d it go?” I shout over the music. “Did you close the deal?”

Ren chuckles. “No deal to be closed, yet. But there are a couple acts I think they’ll set up meetings with back in Portland.” He nods toward one side of the stage. “There’s one more band I need to check out.”

He takes my hand and snakes us through the crowds over to one of the side stages, glancing over his shoulder every now and then to make sure he still has me.

Backstage, he navigates us around groups of people to a small space at one edge.

He positions me in front of him, my shoulders warming where they meet his chest.

“She’s good,” I say, craning my neck back up at him when the singer is halfway into her next song.

There’s something vaguely familiar about her feathery vocals, the indie-pop synth, and I wonder if Ren has included her music in one of the playlists he began sending me again the past few months.

I’d missed them; another line of communication between us that had been cut.

As the crowd cheers at the end of a song, the sun dips toward the horizon, the world becoming golden.

“There’s a friend of mine here tonight who’s a big part of the reason I get to play to a crowd like you,” the singer says into her mic.

“He convinced some people he works with to give me another go, and I told him if he ever needed a favor to call me. If phoning it in for a Joni Mitchell cover is his big favor, then I think he got the short end of that stick. So I can sing it, but—” she unslings her guitar from around her neck “—I need someone else to play it for me.”

She casts around like someone might volunteer until her eyes land on us and her face lights up. I look up at Ren, confused. His lips are parted and he’s staring out at the stage, communicating something to the singer I can’t follow.

“I’ll be right back, okay?” he says, at last.

I nod, but I’m still lost as he steps around me and the singer extends her acoustic guitar toward him.

He reaches the stage and loops the strap over his head, the crowd cheering as he adds a capo and tunes it.

The singer is talking again, but I’m too mesmerized by the sight of Ren up on that stage to hear what she’s saying.

I’ve seen Ren play many times, but always in casual settings: when he first learned how to play when we were kids; when I would lie on the floor of his bedroom in high school and college and he’d mess around with some chords; when he helped with sound check at Sublimity.

This is something different. He plays the opening notes of “Cactus Tree,” my favorite Joni Mitchell song, and the pieces click into place. As the song continues to build, Ren smiles over at the singer, a layer of boyish joy underneath it.

I feel his quiet confidence square in the chest. My eyes get stuck on the way his fingers glide over the frets, how his body moves with the music.

The way his shoulders shift under the arms of his T-shirt, how he watches the singer then looks back down at the guitar.

Everything that isn’t him goes blurry, but he’s clearer to me than ever.

Having Ren more firmly in my life again these past months has slowed me down in a way I hadn’t realized I’d needed, made me appreciate each day.

I leave work at a more reasonable hour, wake up excited to greet the day, and for him to wake up on the West Coast too so he can tell me how his night was.

Our conversations have brought some part of me back to life, reminded me I’m a person outside of Novo.

He inquires after my cranky neighbor, wants to know what books I’m reading, has more than once sent me locations for shows he thought I’d like.

I’ve gone to a few, but it’s not the same without him next to me.

Talking to him every day again has brightened the colors that had faded for me, and I swear to myself now that I will never let it get that way again.

Onstage, the singer is finishing out the song, pausing so the crowd can sing along with the last verse.

Ren turns toward me for the final notes, soft smile never leaving his face, and my heart starts doing something that feels vaguely familiar, but new, like I’ve finally pulled it off its shelf and blown off the dust, cracked its spine again, and opened it up to my favorite page, the one I thought I had memorized, only to discover there are so many things I may have missed.