Angela

“It’s the right thing to do,” Angela’s best friend Carmen tells me as she sips her matcha. 

I didn’t order anything, hoping this coffee shop bombardment wouldn’t last long, but now I wish I had a drink to look at instead of Carmen’s pouting face. 

“It’s the right thing to do,” she repeats. “I know you love her, but she’s starting a new life. Do you really want to tie her down?”

Carmen has never liked me, no matter how many times I’ve tried to show her that Angela and I are right for each other. 

I don’t have anything to say. Doesn’t Carmen know she’s stabbing at my deepest fear? It doesn’t look like it. She’s leaning back in her chair, eyebrows raised, the morning sun glinting off her huge sunglasses as she digs through the ice in her cup for the last sip of matcha.

The silence stretches longer than an evening shadow, but no words form in my mouth.

Carmen realizes she’s got me cornered and leans it. “Look,” she says. “I know you don’t want to hear this from me, and I know it’s not my business, but Angela is my best friend, probably my only real friend, and I know she won’t do this for herself. It has to be you. You have to let her go, okay? For her?”

I open my mouth, then close it. My throat burns, but I will not cry in front of Carmen. 

She gives me one last sympathetic smile and stands, shaking out her long hair. 

“Good to see you, Marcus,” she says. “I know you’ll do the right thing.” 

As Carmen walks away, her words spin around my head. Do you really want to tie her down?

Do I really want to tie her down?

On Friday, I go to Angela’s apartment to help her move. She doesn’t trust my organizational skills so while I make a pot of coffee in the kitchen, careful to use the right settings to create Angela’s perfect cup, she lists tasks for me on a whiteboard and sets out labeled boxes for me to fill.

“You don’t need to do this,” she reminds me when I bring her a steaming mug. “You don’t have to help me.”

But then she kisses the taste of coffee off my lips, and we both wonder for the thousandth time if we’d be moving my own boxes in instead of packing hers out if she hadn’t taken that amazing job on the other side of the country.

We kiss into the kitchen where we slide our coffee mugs onto the counter. We kiss until they are cold. Then we stare at each other, breathing each other’s air, our faces so close that her eyes merge into one in my vision.

Angela is the first to break. 

“C’mon. There’s too much to do today even without distractions,” she says. Then with a wink she adds, “welcome distractions.”

But before I can pull her in for another hug, she jumps off the counter and gets back to work.

“Start packing the photos!” She calls from the other room.

Angela’s photo collages cover almost every wall in her apartment. Some pictures are framed, others polaroids or prints, all puzzle-pieced together into epic memory installations. 

Oh boy.

I start in the kitchen, taking too much time placing the photos in rows in the box so I don’t have to go into her bedroom. I procrastinate with ridiculous organization until Angela comes back to check my progress and scolds me for dilly-dallying. 

“I thought you came here to help,” she says into my ear, her lips brushing against my skin.

So I speed up my pace and by noon I’ve packed up all the photo walls except the one in the bedroom.

I walk in slowly, made uncomfortable by the gripping familiarity of Angela’s room: the sheets I’ve tumbled into so many nights, the citrus-candle smell seeped into the wood of the dresser, the woven rug at the foot of the bed that always makes my socks fuzzy. And the wall behind the bed, covered in photos of Angela and I.

Shit. 

I haul the box with the rest of the pictures onto the bed and climb up, kneeling on the pillows as I face the wall of everything I have to lose. 

Angela and I, our heads thrown back laughing at the beach.

Angela and I, our hands intertwined around a mug of coffee.

Angela and I, our noses pressed together, our smiles reflected in each other’s eyes. 

Angela and I, my arm holding her close in the photo booth at the carnival.

Angela and I, Angela and I, Angela and I. 

I start pulling the pictures off the wall, one by one, tossing them into the box beside me.

“Marc,” Angela says from the doorway. 

I don’t want her to see the tracks of tears weaving down my cheeks. 

“Marcus,” she says again gently, entering the room and crawling up the bed until she reaches me. She hooks her legs around my waist from the back, wrapping her arms tight over my shoulders. I can feel her steady breaths on my neck, and I try to match them.

“Do you even want to keep these?” I ask, gesturing at the pictures of us. It’s easier than asking if she wants to keep me. 

We should’ve talked about this sooner. 

“Yes I’m keeping them,” Angela says. “I’d leave everything if I had to, but not those.”

“You are leaving.”

“I know,” she says. “And I’m terrified I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. I always thought if I got this opportunity I’d take it without a second thought. It’s what I’ve worked towards since college. But now I don’t even know what I want, or what I’m doing.”

I feel my shoulder dampening as Angela’s tears soak into my t-shirt.

“This is what you’ve worked for,” I say, turning around to face her. I think about what Carmen told me: Angela wouldn't do anything for herself. “You give so much, Angela, to everyone. This is the one thing you’ve worked towards for yourself.” I’m realizing the truth in my words as I speak them. “And of course it’s terrifying. You’re moving across the fucking country, but you can do it. You’re ready.” 

“Come with me,” Angela says, and my heart drops into my stomach. 

I imagine a photo wall of us twice as big and growing, full of our life and not just our lives. My chest swells. Then I imagine Angela handcuffed to me, smiling without her eyes and wishing she’d never met me. But I’d followed her like a stray dog and now she really couldn’t let me go.

“Come with me, Marcus.” 

She presses her forehead to mine and strokes my cheek with her thumb. 

“What we have is what I’ve worked for. You. Just the thought of you makes me grin in the middle of the day like an idiot. You’ve flipped my world around so it’s hit by the sun instead of the shadows. I never knew I could be this happy. Come with me, please.” 

And isn’t that everything I’d ever wanted to hear, that Angela loves me almost as much as I love her? My heart splinters.

Do you really want to tie her down? 

“Marcus?” Angela is waiting, her eyes sparkling through her tears. My chest burns.

“I love you,” I say.

I never can do what’s right.