Priya Meets Zara
Watching your best friend fall in love is one of the most terrifying and beautiful things you will ever see.
Priya || Zara || Love || Joy
She texted me on a Saturday: Zara Osei asked me to study together and I think it might be a date. I am not certain. I need your assessment capabilities immediately. I called her. She answered before the first ring finished. “Tell me exactly what she said,” I said. Priya read the text verbatim: Hey, do you want to study for the Lit midterm together? I know a good coffee place. Saturday? “That’s a date,” I said. “I need more data,” Priya said. “She said she knows a good coffee place. She could mean it practically.” “Priya. She wants to take you to coffee. On a Saturday. She specified a good place. That is a date.” Silence. Then: “I’m scared.” This, from Priya Sharma, who had come out to me in the school cafeteria at normal speaking volume, was the bravest thing she’d said yet. “I know,” I said. “That’s how you know it matters.” More silence. “What if I — what if I’m not good at — what if she doesn’t — ” “Hey,” I said. “You are the most capable person I know. The only thing that could go wrong is if you overthink it so thoroughly that you prevent it from being what it is.” “I overthink everything.” “I know. Stop.” She let out a slow breath. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. It’s a date.” She said it like she was trying on a word that belonged to her.
Saturday afternoon she sent me a text that was just a string of specific emojis — sun, coffee cup, star, heart — in that order, which required no explanation. I was at the library with Jamie when it came through. I smiled at my phone with the specific warmth of someone whose best friend is okay, more than okay, beginning something good. “What?” Jamie said, looking at my expression. “Priya,” I said. “First date.” Jamie’s face did something warm. “Is it going well?” “The emojis suggest yes,” I said. We both looked at our notebooks. We were supposed to be working on the second constructive speech, which required both of us to stop smiling at our respective things, which took a moment. “Can I ask you something?” Jamie said, when we’d gotten back to work. “About Priya? About — being the friend in this situation?” I looked up. “About watching your person be happy?” “About watching someone be brave,” Jamie said carefully. “About what it looks like from the outside, when someone does the hard thing.” I thought about Priya’s voice on the phone: I’m scared. About the emojis that followed. “It looks like the bravest thing and the most ordinary thing happening simultaneously,” I said. “Like watching someone decide to breathe normally in a room where they’d been holding their breath for a year.” Jamie looked at me for a moment with the careful expression. “That’s exactly how it looks,” they said. “From the outside.” They went back to their notes. I went back to mine. I did not ask what they meant by that, because I was not sure I was ready for the answer, and there was still a significant amount of work to do on the second constructive.
Priya came to the restaurant that evening glowing in the specific way of a person whose day had been exactly what she hoped it would be. She ordered horchata and told me everything — the coffee place that Zara had known, the conversation that had covered four subjects without effort, the moment when Zara had reached across the table and moved Priya’s study notes aside gently, not urgently, to look at her while she was talking. “She moved the notes,” Priya said. “Who moves someone’s notes? That’s — ” “That’s interest,” I said. “That’s being interested in you more than in the agenda.” Priya’s face did something I had never seen it do before — it went completely unguarded. All of Priya’s considerable competence and strategic intelligence dropped away for a moment and underneath it was just a girl who was in the beginning stages of something new and was frightened and delighted by it in equal measure. I looked at her. I thought: that is what it looks like when you let someone see you. I thought about the third index card. I thought about the library and the photograph in the drawer and the question that kept arriving from different directions. I thought: I want that. It was the most terrifying thought I had produced in three years, and also the most honest.