The Key to Happiness

Parties are really not my thing. I never planned on being out for New Year’s Eve, but Taylor always knew how to persuade me into doing things I didn’t want to do. As my best friend, she always knew the right thing to say. And it didn’t help that I’d been in love with her since the day we met. My first day at Alder Middle School, she beat me up on the school bus for taking her spot. I admired her deep blue eyes and rainbow Converse while she slammed my up against the bus window. Our moms, clearly unbeknownst to us at the time, were in the same monthly book club. When the incident got back to them, Taylor’s mom made her apologize to me over tea. We slowly became friends through the year, and eight years later, the same deep blue eyes stared up at me from my bedroom floor.

“PLEASE? It’s just a little get-together with some people from high school. Jenny Reese invited both of us. It’ll be fun! Plus, free booze!” I sat up in my bed, smoothing my hair back into a ponytail for the thousandth time since Taylor got here (a nervous habit). “And Adam Geller is supposed to be there,” she teased. I whipped a pillow at her and flopped back onto my bed, burying my face in the blankets. She caught it, cackling evilly. “I heard he’s newly single. And he’s super nice! You could stay home and kiss Iago at midnight, again, or you could shoot your shot!” 

I slowly sit back up, weighing the pros and cons. My bearded dragon, Iago, is a lot quieter company than a party, but he has worm-breath. Adam Geller, my high school “crush,” was selected carefully from all the guys in our grade. He was fairly conventionally attractive, had good personal hygiene, and was definitely not interested in me. A perfect cover for the fact that I did not ever plan on getting a boyfriend. Him just being at the party wasn’t exactly a pro or a con, but I figured Taylor would bug me to talk to him all night. Then again, she would be there, and that was really all the convincing it took. As much as I would rather stay at home eating cream cheese and red pepper jelly on crackers and watch the ball drop in Times Square on TV, I wasn’t ringing in 2020 without my best friend. I sighed a long and dramatic sigh. “I better not regret saying yes to this.”

Taylor jumped up from my bedroom floor and ran directly to my closet. “YES! You won’t, I promise! Now let’s find you an outfit!”

We walked into the party at 9pm. I looked at Taylor, panicked, my heart pounding in my ears louder than the buzz of the sub that vibrated through my chest. Not that I would’ve been able to hear the music over the screaming crowd anyway. This was a lot more than a get-together. I had already spotted Adam Geller, who was standing on a table holding some guy upside-down while he chugged beer from a funnel. Taylor looked back at me, sympathetically, before leaning in to shout in my ear. “I didn’t know there would be so many people! I have to say hi to Jenny but after that I’ll go grab us some drinks and meet you on the porch so we can head out. Don’t worry!” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it before disappearing into the crowd. I made my way back to the door, and eventually stumbled back out onto the porch. I walked past a group of people sat in a circle around a bong, and sat on the edge of the porch, as far from the house as I could get. I popped in my noise-cancelling earbuds and started scrolling through Twitter. I hoped Taylor would be out soon.

“You look like you need this.” The deep voice made me jump, and I looked up from my phone to find a lit joint in my face. Taylor was driving, and I knew it would probably help with nerves, so I hesitantly took it and turned to face the voice. The man was around my age, with long green hair which was pulled up in a messy bun. He wore all black, down to his chipped nail polish. This would have been intimidating were it not for his kind eyes. They immediately pulled me in, and I couldn’t help but trust him. “Can you even hear me?” He shouted, tapping on his ear to point out my earbuds.

“Um, yeah, they’re noise-cancelling, but all they really do is block out background noise. They actually make it easier to hear people talking to me when it’s so loud.” I held the joint in my mouth, but it was already out. The man held out a light and I took it. “I’m Emmy,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.

“Lucas. It’s cool if you’re not looking for company, you just looked stressed.”

“Actually, I’m waiting for a friend and then I’m headed out, but I’m pretty much stuck here until she gets back.” I glanced down at my phone. It was already 10pm. If Taylor wasn’t back by now, she was probably going to take awhile.

“Cool! Do you want to go somewhere quieter?” I shrugged and tapped an earbud. “Right. Well, I heard Grubby’s has free coffee and cocoa until midnight, want to check it out?” he asked, standing up. Gubby’s Diner was known for their sub-par service, greasy food, and generally sketchy atmosphere, hence its affectionate nickname. It was right around the corner, and the cold was starting to get to me.

I texted Taylor a quick “wya? meet me @ grubbys,” clipped the joint I was still holding, and we started to walk down the sidewalk. After about five minutes of walking in silence, I took out my earbuds and glanced at the man beside me. He was already staring back, inquisitively.

“So your friend ditched you?” I glared at him, hoping that going with him wasn’t a mistake.

“She didn’t ditch me. She probably just got sidetracked by a conversation. In fact, she’s probably on her way out now.” I glanced at my phone again but Taylor hadn’t responded. I was trying not to get worried, but Lucas’s comment was not helping. We walked silently the rest of the way to the diner.

Grubby’s was basically empty, but we sat down in a booth that was basically duct taped together. We both ordered hot chocolate with whipped cream. The waiter, clearly disapproving of our apparent cheapness, huffily stormed back to the kitchen.

“Sorry for what I said before,” Lucas said sincerely, looking me in the eye. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“It’s just that I was out on the porch and I saw you guys walk in. You looked so lost once you were without your friend.”

I blushed, looking down at the table. “I don’t like parties. I get really anxious when it gets too loud. She kind of keeps me grounded.” I could feel Lucas’s eyes on me, but I was too busy picking at the paint that was peeling off the edge of the table to look back at him. We sat in silence for a few moments.

“Do you love her?” My head snapped up to look at him, my face turning from pale pink to beet red. Perfectly timed, the waiter reappeared with our cocoa, slamming it on the table and swiftly walking away before we even got the chance to thank him. I wrapped my hands around the mug, my fingertips still thawing from the hour or so I spent out in the cold.

“How...how did you know that?” He had asked so confidently that I didn’t bother denying it. I had never told anyone, in eight years. I only admitted it to myself four years ago! In a little over an hour, this man had somehow managed to figure out a secret I had been trying to hide for almost a decade. Lucas smiled at me, and instead of the embarrassment and anxiety I expected to feel, I felt like I had been holding my breath my whole life and had just finally exhaled.

“Tell me about her.”

I talked about my best friend all the time, but finally, I could say everything I felt about her, without holding back. I grinned at him, and tried to think of how I would even start. “She’s my best friend in the whole world. That comes before anything else. But she’s always been more than that. She’s always there for me, a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear, the one person I can always rely on, that protects me from the rest of the world. Every time we aren’t together, I’m waiting to see her again. She helps me grow as an individual, and always supports me, but she’s also my other half. I never had to wonder who my soulmate is. We just fit so well together. And she’s so incredibly beautiful. She has these deep, dark blue eyes, exactly the color of the ocean. When she’s upset they turn gray, and when she looks at me, it’s like I could just sink right into them and never look away. She understands what I mean before I can say a word, and she makes me laugh so hard my sides ache for hours. I don’t know what I would do without her, and I don’t really remember what life was like before her. And...I love her. I love her more than anything.”

“You know, my girlfriend and I were best friends for years, too. I always had a crush on her, but I was always too afraid to say anything about it. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. But closing off that part of myself was too hard. I ended up hiding other things from her, small things, and then bigger things. It got to a point where I was hiding everything from her. Because I so badly wanted our relationship to stay the same, it was changing for the worse. Instead of becoming closer, which was what I truly wanted, hiding my feelings for her just pushed her away.

Eventually, the whole thing blew up. She got frustrated that I was being so closed off with her, and told me we couldn’t be friends unless I talked to her. Instead of saving our friendship, not being honest ruined everything.”

I knew that I was supposed to be honest with Taylor about how I felt. She had told me that herself a million times. I tried to be honest with her about almost everything, just avoiding the obvious lie by omission of truth, that I didn’t have romantic feelings for her. But Lucas said he started with small things...I still hadn’t even told Taylor that I’m not actually into Adam Geller. It seemed silly, but I thought of the other times I had hidden things from her. Sometimes Taylor would make jokes that hurt my feelings. She’d definitely apologize and understand if I told her I was hurt, but I didn’t want to make a big deal about it. And she had a habit of disappearing for hours, the way she had tonight. I don’t mind her going off to have fun, but sometimes I wished she would text me before, just to let me know. Were these small issues that I was hiding from Taylor really pushing her away?

“So what happened? You said she’s your girlfriend, how did you work things out?”

He laughed, and reached up to hold a charm on the necklace he was wearing. It was hidden in his shirt, and now concealed in the palm of his hand, so I couldn’t tell what it was. “Well, she didn’t speak to me for two weeks. I spent the whole time figuring out what to say to her. I figured our friendship was already ruined, so I might as well ruin it further. I told her we really needed to talk, and that I needed to apologize. We met up and I told her that I had loved her since the day we met. Then I gave her this necklace.” Lucas opened his hand to reveal a small key. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a basic silver key on a leather cord. He closed his hand again and held it close to his heart. “I told her it was to represent how I would be from then on. I wouldn’t lock away my feelings about anything anymore, because she would always be able to unlock them anyway. I know it’s incredibly cheesy, but it helped me find the courage to be honest with her, no matter what. She loved it, and wore it every day.”

I was starting to feel sick. Lucas kept referring to his girlfriend in the past tense, and if he was wearing the necklace, clearly his girlfriend was no longer wearing it every day. I didn’t want to pry, but I figured we had both already spilled our guts about extremely personal things. “So why are you wearing it now?”

Lucas glanced from me, to the empty diner counter, to his mug of cocoa, and back to me. “Let’s walk and talk. They won’t miss these mugs, right?”

I looked at my full mug of cocoa and then at my phone. Taylor had texted me a thumbs up emoji and no other details. It was already 11:40pm. Maybe if we walked back, she would be outside, waiting for me. I looked at Lucas, who was already standing, ready to run with his mug in hand. I stood up, but as we started to walk, the same, grumpy waiter reappeared. “GO, GO!” I yelled. We sprinted out of the diner and down the road, both of us laughing like idiots. The waiter ran after us, but gave up after running only a few feet.

Once we were a safe distance from the waiter, we fell into pace, walking quietly beside each other. Both of us had spilled most of our cocoa in the chase, but neither of us commented on it. The mood had noticeably shifted back to being quite serious. “A year ago today, we were driving home from a New Year’s party. There was a drunk driver. I shouldn’t have survived the crash. I think of her every day.” We walked silently.

“I’m so sorry, Lucas.”

“It’s not fair. But I’m thankful for the time we had together. And I know we’ll be together again someday. But you can’t give up on your friend. You need to tell her you love her, before it’s too late. Life is so much shorter than you think. You don’t have time to waste hiding your feelings.” We walked the rest of the way in silence. 

We reached the street that the party was on, and there she was. Taylor was standing on the porch, looking right back at me. I didn’t even stop to think, I just ran. She ran to me too, and when our bodies collided, I held her closer than I ever have before. “Perfect timing,” she whispered. “It’s almost midnight.”

“Taylor, I-”

“I love you too, Emmy.”

The music coming from the house was suddenly overpowered by voices, screaming “TEN...NINE...EIGHT…” but I couldn’t wait until midnight. I kissed her, and it felt like everything fell into place. This was exactly where I needed to be, and everything was right in the world. “HAPPY NEW YEAR!”

“Happy New Year, my angel. Let’s go home.” We walked hand-in-hand to the car.

My feeling of complete and utter bliss was interrupted by an eardrum-shattering shriek. A woman had gotten out of her car and was kneeling over something in the middle of the road. “He’s not breathing,” she screamed. “Someone please help!” I reached for my phone in my pocket to call an ambulance, but instead, I discovered a small, silver key.