He obviously hadn’t even noticed the information session ending, and the flush I felt when Matt texted through the presentation returns to my cheeks. This guy is completely checked out, finding whatever is in his book more important than the information he’ll use to make the decision on which his future hinges.
I bet I know what he’s thinking. Because I bet it’s no different from the perception of college I’ve watched form for countless classmates. There’s an interchangeability to the college experience for them, the impression they’ll be content with whatever universities check a standard series of boxes. Football, parties, degree. They consider college nothing but doing what they’ve been doing, being who they’ve been.
They’d rather read, or text people back home, than look at what’s ahead.
I walk out onto the tour, carrying my coffee-scented cardigan, and put the boy from my thoughts.
Juniper
THE T RUMBLES toward Park Street. The view of the river explodes through the glass of the windows when we emerge from the tunnel, the ice reflecting the oil-paint oranges and pinks of the sunset.
It’s nearly five. I’m packed between students with headphones and university sweatshirts and moms corralling children on the crowded train. Matt and I grabbed sandwiches when the BU tour ended around noon. After, I changed my shirt and took the T into Cambridge on my own for the Harvard tour I had scheduled for three. I’d planned to tour both schools today knowing I could cover each in a couple of hours.
The Harvard tour was breathtaking—the wrought-iron gates and brick buildings, the new dusting of snow on the courtyard where poets and presidents walked, the towering library. It felt intimidating, though, even unfriendly, if inspiring. I’d pitched the idea of touring Harvard to Matt weeks ago, but he wasn’t interested. Over our sandwiches today, I tried again on the off chance he’d changed his mind. Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t. We made plans to meet in the North End when I was done.
While I’m changing trains in the Park Street station, I find myself imagining what Matt’s doing now. I know with incontrovertible certainty he napped in the hotel room. Every chance the boy gets, he dozes. Traverson family trait, he told me once, which is a bullshit excuse. I’d guess when he woke up, he wandered to the closest coffee shop to grab a matcha because coffee is “gross” to him. It’s nice just thinking about it—he’s probably befriended half the baristas by now. There’s a tender pride to envisioning the person you love when you’re not there, being funny with friends, being charming with classmates, having interests and inspirations. It’s different from imagining yourself with them, and differently wonderful.
The river of my thoughts reverses course, and I think back to the day he and I began. The hallways of Springfield High were empty, everyone having headed to the cafeteria for lunch. I had doubled back to grab the heavy AP US History textbook from my locker, and I was on my way to rejoin my friends when Matt walked past me.
He was wearing his white Adidas, and his jeans bore grass stains, probably because he’d been sitting in the courtyard with his friends in the mild September weather, no longer summer and not quite fall, instead of in the cafeteria. I remember his confident stride—which hasn’t changed—and how he’d recently cut his hair.
Of course, I blushed.
This was Matt Traverson. Baseball co-captain, big man on campus—whatever big means in our class of one hundred—and the crush of one Juniper Ramírez. Wholly and completely. One year of sitting next to him in sophomore English, trading eye rolls and glances behind Mr. Ward’s back, and I was done for.
He walked past, and I fought down the pink in my face, knowing my friends would call me on my rosy cheeks and discern exactly who’d caused them.
I had nearly succeeded when I heard my name called behind me.
“Hey, Juniper.”
I found Matt grinning unevenly and running a hand through that neat blond hair, his bicep the stuff of dreams. I focused on the Celtics logo on his shirt, and this time I failed to keep the blush from my face.
“Hey, Matt,” I said with a nonchalance I thanked god I’d practiced in the mirror. “How’s it going?”
He jogged up to me, energy in his every movement. Without warning, he ducked down to retie his undone shoelace. When he stood back up, his eyes fixed on mine. “So Tory told me you have a crush on me,” he said. His voice betrayed nothing, neither flirtatiousness nor disinterested cruelty.
It was brutal. He knew exactly what he was doing.
In the moment, I figured he’d reduced my crush to hallway chatter because it was trivial to him. Probably just an everyday occurrence. The blood drained from my face, and I vowed to reap revenge on my best friend—ex-best friend—for her tactlessness.
It felt like a bad dream, one I wanted to escape. “Don’t let it go to your head,” I said, hurried and defensive.
I turned to leave, but his hand found my shoulder. Grudgingly, I waited.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Matt said fumblingly, and I was struck by the oddity of seeing him off guard. “I just—it’s true then? You do like me?”
The hesitant inquisitiveness in his voice eroded my defensiveness, and hope fluttered open in my chest. It was funny, I thought then, how a whole year of yearning and imagining could narrow down to a single moment that had come out of nowhere. I leaned on the locker behind me, looking up at him through my lashes. “I do,” I replied, feeling bold. “What do you think of me?”
His eyes widened. I could have sworn I saw my flush mirrored in his cheeks. I took his hand, pulling him closer. He swallowed.
“I think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” he said. “And I have a feeling you’re smarter than everyone in this school. Teachers included.”
I smiled the kind of smile lit with a thousand smiles saved up for right then. When Matt returned it, I stepped in closer, my chest meeting his. “Let me get this straight,” I said softly. “I’m smart, I’m beautiful, you know I like you. Why haven’t you kissed me yet?”
He laughed, lowering his mouth near mine, closing the distance between our lips.
The crazy thing isn’t how wonderful the kiss felt, the blinding rush of heat racing the highways of my heart. The crazy thing is how that’s the way every kiss has felt from then until now. For fleeting instants, they erase complicated choices, and inescapable uncertainties.
The train hurtles into Haymarket Square. I follow the crowd onto the platform, then up the escalator into the fading daylight. Pulling on my scarf in the cold, I take in the street corner. The taxis in front of slush-piled gutters, the pubs with EST. 1826 and A.D. 1795 signs over the doors. I’m walking toward the North End when I feel my phone ringing through my coat.