Friend Suggestion

Why not the boy from high school with the red hair and freckled skin? Classmates said he liked you, said he was too shy to ask you out, but you knew that wasn’t true. You knew because he was a Nice Boy, an Above You Boy who was friends with the Jock Boys and the Above You Girls with their under-breath insults and switchblade eyes. You knew to look away when he picked up your fallen book, to distrust him when he said he read your poem and liked it. You knew because boys were nearly men, and you knew no men who were soft and kind. You knew because letting him lift your shell would reveal flattened pieces, shoe-printed, unlovable. It was all a ruse, you were sure, or almost sure, so you decided to prove it. You found another boy, a Not Nice Boy with careless eyes and Next Girl thoughts, and you made out with him under a tree behind the school where Nice Boy could see and the Above You Girls could say, see, we were right about her. So when Nice Boy avoided your eyes the next day and forever, it was clear you were right. You were spared further need to raise walls between you, spared but for a lurch in your chest when he passed, a battle of fragmented parts beneath your shell. And 15 years later, when his name pops up, an algorithm offering, you open his profile, search his smiling face, cheek to cheek with Smiling Girl. Red strands turned blonde, blue eyes on yours again. And you don’t look away, just hold his gaze and imagine the words you needed to hear. Imagine this time believing them.