The silence was heavy as if a black hole was forming inside this 1988 Nissan Sentra. Both Eddie and Viv knew that they should talk to each other, but neither wanted to start. Eddie occupied himself by wadding up old fast food napkins that Viv kept in the glove compartment for emergencies. Viv concentrated on the road. It had been like this since Springfield, over three of the longest hours in Eddie’s relatively short life.

Eddie opened his mouth to break this interminable quiet but thought better of it. Why should he talk? If he never spoke another word for the rest of his life his actions would have spoken enough. He turned on the radio instead. 

Alicia Keys’ voice filled the car. “I keep on fallin’ in and out of love with you” 

Nope. 

They both lunged for the dial at the same time, touching hands, then pulling back. It was the sort of awkward exchange that neither of them ever thought they’d experience with each other. Just one more sign that everything was different all of a sudden. The toothpaste was out of the tube. Viv got the radio dial, finally settling on “Hash Pipe” by Weezer to keep the tension from ripping the two travelers apart like those old crash test dummies commercials. 

Viv couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Why?” The tension came out of her making her shake with a combination of embarrassment and anger for and towards her friend. “Why would you do that” 

“Do what?” Eddie crumpled up another napkin. He wasn’t ready. 

“Kiss me! Why would you kiss me?” She flashed back to that gas station. Eddie had said something to make her laugh. She couldn’t even remember what. Then he touched her arm. She felt the goosebumps. He must have felt them. The next thing she knew his lips were on hers and she was swimming in the summer heat as her mind seemed to summersault. The sky was down. The ground was up and she seemed to be flying… before logic brought her back to reality. Back to the gas station and the oppressive heat that seems to sit in the southern Midwest. Back to that feeling that she spent months wrenching herself away from. She couldn’t go through that again. She pushed the feelings and Eddie away, and got into the car without a word. 

Eddie had run out of napkins to crumble. “I don’t know. I just . . . it felt right. I’m really sorry if I was off base.” 

“Eddie, we’ve been friends for years. Why now? Was it the romance of the Shamrock station that you couldn’t overcome, or was it the man with the confederate flag that created the right ambiance?” 

“I don’t know, man.” Eddie let out a sigh. If she wanted to do this, fine. It couldn’t get worse. “If I’m being honest, I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”  He looked out of the passenger side window as they passed a sign that said “Tulsa 22 Miles” 

Viv pulled behind a semi-truck carrying huge sewage pipes. “Are you kidding me?” She put on her blinker to pass. “Where was this two years ago. When you wanted to ‘play the field’ and ‘experience the college life’” She made air quotes taking her hands away from the wheel more than Eddie was comfortable with. 

“I was dumb. Is that what you want me to say? I thought that was what I wanted. I thought that it was a right of passage or something. We were at a party at that very moment. I was living the college life, kegs coeds, beer pong, all of it. I really thought that that was the dream. Like I was in a movie. But it was the wrong movie. It was a stupid thing to say then and it was obviously a stupid idea to kiss you.”

Viv was still silent. 

“It wasn’t planned if that makes you feel any better.” 

“Well, I’m glad that you didn’t plan your grand romantic gesture outside of a store that sells tiny fake roses in meth pipes. You’re a regular Richard Curtis.” Viv’s American Cultural History Through Film course was paying off sooner than expected. She pulled up right behind a pickup truck and laid on the horn. “Get out of the left lane, asshole.”

“Woah!” Eddie grabbed ahold of the oh-shit-bar. “Viv, chill. We’re in Oklahoma. Some redneck is going to pull a gun on you if you keep that shit up”. Viv screamed in frustration, threw on her blinker, jerked the car to the right lane, and then off to the shoulder, finally pulling to a stop. Eddie’s mind fought between confusion and relief and eventually settled somewhere in the middle. 

“You want to fucking drive? Then fucking drive.” Viv opened the door and got out of the car. The late afternoon sun bore down on her as she fought back tears. She took a few breaths to calm herself down and leaned against the driver’s side fender. A hot breeze blew at her back as she turned around to look at the landscape. They were beside some of Oklahoma’s seemingly never-ending pasture land. The heat robbed the scene of what should have been beautiful green grass below a blue sky. What was left was yellowed grass covered by a yellow sky. Dark clouds were on the horizon and visible heat waves stretched as far as the eye could see. She heard the passenger side door unlatch and the warning ding from inside the car.

“It feels like it needs to rain.” 

Viv didn’t need to hear Eddie’s opinion at that particular moment but her anger had subsided enough that she could at least feign politeness with a dry “Yeah.” 

“Vivvy . . .” 

“Don’t call me that. Not right now” She had always hated when people called her Vivvy. Viv or Vivian was fine, but why pick something in the middle? It was endlessly annoying, except when Eddie did it with that wry half-smile only he was able to pull off. It was the kind of smile that only confidence could make work. Confidence that Eddie had ironically found when he went to college. She didn’t want that smile or that irony right now. It’d just set her off again. 

“Sorry. Viv.” Eddie shut the door and the dinging ceased. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted to upset you. You’re my best friend for God’s sake” 

“Do you kiss all of your friends?” Viv couldn’t keep the acid out of her voice. “I don’t know if Roger would be into that?” (Little did Viv know that Roger Partridge had dreamt of Eddie Yu kissing him since the day they met in Mass Comp 102, but that was neither here nor there.)

“Well you’re not just one of my friends are you?” Eddie took a cautious step towards her. “You know me more than anyone else. You’ve known me for years.”

“So has your mom, you don’t kiss her like that.” 

“Fair, but my mom didn’t sit through Attack of the Clones for me, did she?” A smile crept into the corner of Viv’s lips. He pressed forward, dropping his voice into the throaty monotone of emo Anakin Skywalker. “I don’t like sand.” Viv’s smile grew. Eddie continued. “It’s coarse and it gets everywhere” He pronounced everywhere in that peculiar way Anakin did in the movie with the lilt on the final syllable that had sent them into a fit of laughter in the movie theater. Viv couldn’t suppress a cackle. 

“You know, if you’re going to continue to try to project this Mr. Cool Guy routine you should lay off the Star Wars. It’s unbecoming of a grown man who just wants to ‘experience life’.” Viv made sure to put a little English on experience life, just to drive the point home. 

“Hey, that’s not fair.” 

“Why not? Isn’t that what you want, to grow up, to get drunk with your bros, date some coeds, get a job in finance and move to the suburbs?” 

“You know what I think?” Now it was Eddie that was having some trouble keeping some cool. “I think you’re mad because I am growing. I’m not the same little nerd I was when we were in high school. I’ve found my voice. I’ve started working out. I hit a growth spurt.” 

Another one Viv’s signature cackles burst out, this one filled with astonished pity. “Do you think that’s what it means to grow up? You get a year older, hit the gym, and voila you’re a big boy now? Listen, you may have found your voice in the last few years but you lost your . . .” Viv trailed off marveling at her way with words. 

“Whatever.” Eddie’s gift of gab had apparently decided to take a day off as well. “The storm’s getting close. Let’s just get home. I’ll take a driving shift. Toss me the keys.”

Viv patted her pockets. “I don’t have them. They must be in the car” 

Eddie jiggled the door handle to no effect. “Shit” The first drop of southern summer rain exploded on the windshield. 

“What do you mean ‘shit’?” Viv could feel that familiar feeling moving into her chest. A panic attack may be imminent. The rain started to soak through her red scoop-neck Hollister T-shirt. This was just perfect timing. 

Eddie jiggled the handle “What do you think it means? Do you have your cell phone?” Viv checked her pockets, brought out her Nokia, and inspected it. “No bars” 

“Goddamnit!” Eddie smacked the hood of the car. “What is the fucking point of those things?” The rain had flattened his hair that he liked to keep spiky against his forehead. His clothes were soaked. He pointed to large corrugated metal equipment shed about a quarter of a mile away. The rain was coming down in sheets now. Viv pushed the hair out of her face and nodded. They both ran towards the building. 

The building itself was locked. A large awning around the back provided their only shelter. The rain on the corrugated tin created a din that was loud but steady, like a tv static at full volume. Viv checked her cell. Still, no bars, and the battery was dying. She silently chided herself for wasting a full battery trying to beat her high score on Snake. Eddie cleared random scrap metal, tools, and dirt off of a storage box and gestured for Viv to take a seat. She thought about standing out of protest. The rain had not washed away her irritation at his all-encompassing cluelessness but she had just sprinted a quarter-mile and while she wasn’t out of shape she wasn’t so big a glutton for punishment that she’d force herself to stand. She was just enough of a glutton for punishment that she’d sit next to her unrequited (until recently) love that she’d gone through hell and back to get past. It didn’t help that Eddie was soaked and the rain had made his Abercrombie ringer tee cling to his newly developed upper body. He really had gone through a growth spurt. 

“Well, that came out of nowhere.” Eddie Wu, king of the obvious. 

“Welcome to my world.” Vivian Evans, queen of not letting things go. 

There it was again, that divide. They’d known each other through the most evolutionary moments of their lives. They’d seen the awkwardness of a child slowly turning into an adult and then the awkwardness of turning into a functional adult. Change upon change upon change and they weren’t done yet. This metamorphose is always scary but they always had each other. Now they stood on opposite sides of a canyon all because Eddie had shitty timing. Someone had to build a bridge. 

Both of them spoke at the same time—“I’m sorry.” (This tended to happen to them at times of high emotion like when that time they watched City of Angels together.) They spent a good thirty seconds with an awkward, “You go first.” “No, you go first,” before Viv finally claimed victory.

“I’m sorry I got mad.” 

Eddie interrupted “No, I’m sorry”                                                           

“Let me finish.” 

Eddie obeyed.

“Getting mad wasn’t the right call. But, like, it was frustrating.” She paused for a moment thinking back to that moment at the gas station. “And good. But, like frustrating, you know” 

“I’m sorry. I obviously wasn’t going for frustrated when I kissed you.” 

“What were you going for? Do you even know? Did you think through the process?”

Eddie sat silently. Staring at Viv with that quiet intensity of his, like his mind was tethered to hers. 

“Eddie, I’ve loved you since I met you . . .“

Eddie breathed a sigh of relief.

“But, you told me a year ago that this isn’t what you wanted. You said you were scared to lose a friend. It took a lot out of me to respect your decision. I nearly quit school. Did you know that?” (Once after a particularly bad night when he’d worn that old pair of boot-cut jeans that fit him just so to their weekly study session she ran to her dorm and played the Titanic soundtrack so many times that the RA had to do a well-being check.)

“No, I’m so sorry” 

“It’s fine. Well, not fine, but it’s fine now. I got through it. It took a lot of Smirnoff Ice and I think my roommate will be turned off Celine Dion forever but I got over it. Then you. Today.” She grunted in frustration. Why couldn’t she get the words out? 

The rain continued its rhythmic pounding like that one friend who can’t stand awkward silences. 

Eddie shifted in his seat. It turns out an old wooden tool bench next to someone who’s heart you’d inadvertently kicked around like a hacky-sac wasn’t super comfortable. 

“I never lied to you.” He saw Viv’s jaw set and her back stiffen, her go-to defense position. He quickly pivoted. 

“I mean, I really felt like that then. Well, I thought I did. I was stupid.” Viv’s shoulders relaxed. She liked being right. “These last few months have shown me that” 

“Eddie, these last few months have been the same as the previous fifty.” 

“Are you serious? Viv, these last few months have been some of the hardest of my life.”

This caught Viv off guard. 

“Yeah, it’s been awful. I’ve been on the verge of a nervous breakdown all semester.” 

Viv shifted towards him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know” 

“That’s because I didn’t tell you.” Eddie stood up. “I guess I knew deep down that I hurt you and I thought that meant that I couldn’t talk to you about stuff anymore like, that was my—” Eddie searched for the right word. “Penance. I felt, like really alone all the time.”

Viv felt blood rush to her face. She couldn’t believe how stupid she’d been. She was so wrapped up in her feelings that she couldn’t see what her best friend was going through. Worse, she didn’t care. Eddie noticed her embarrassment. 

“No, no this isn’t your problem. It never was. And, honestly it’s a shitty excuse for keeping you at arm’s length.” 

“Eddie, no matter what feelings I have for you, I still want to know if you’re in a bad place” Viv stood up and walked over and wrapped her arms around him.

Feeling safe, wrapped up in Viv’s arms Eddie’s guard left him. He uncontrollably sobbed on his oldest friend’s shoulder. All of the pressure to finish school, get a job and to start his adult life lifted. For the first time in months, years he was just . . . there.

“I’m so sorry.” Eddie stepped back and stared at the ground while trying to regain his composure. Maybe his dignity was somewhere down there. “I feel like an idiot.” 

“Don’t.” Viv playfully punched his shoulder. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen you cry. I was there when you first watched My Girl.

Eddie threw up his hands. “How did you watch that when you were twelve? I’m going to be seeing a shrink for years because of that movie and I saw it when I was twenty.”

Viv tried to bring up some fake tears. “Wanna go tree climbing, Thomas Jay?” 

“Stop.”

“Where’s his glasses? He can’t see without his glasses.” 

Maybe it was Viv’s terrible acting or maybe it was nostalgia for fake heartbreak, but something made the mood change. Both Viv and Eddie were overcome with that kind of laughter that takes over your whole body. They both laughed so hard that at different times each one of them genuinely thought that they were going to die. For some reason this started the cycle over again. 

Eddie sat back on the tool box holding his stomach to calm the ache from that killer laughter. “I am sorry.”

“Stop it. You don’t have to apologize for crying.” Viv sat next to him. 

“No, not about that.” Eddie turned towards her. “I’m sorry that I held that back from you. And, I’m really sorry about the kiss.” 

Oh, the kiss. The bomb that set this whole thing off. Viv scooted a few inches away from Eddie. Eddie followed her, closing the gap that she’d just made.

“I’m not sorry that I kissed you. I’m sorry that—”

“Stop it!” Viv couldn’t take it anymore. “We don’t have to talk about it right now. I can’t do that again. I get it. We—“

“Viv.” Eddie took her hand. “I just said that I wasn’t sorry that I kissed you.”

“Oh, I just thought—“

“Let me finish. I’m not sorry that I kissed you. I am sorry that I made you feel badly for so long believing something that didn’t turn out to be true. I made you think that I didn’t love you. I made myself think that.”

Viv felt her breath catch.

“I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to be this guy I thought I was supposed to be and it nearly ate me up inside. I put myself on an island and separated myself from the only person that could save me. Here’s the truth. I love you and I understand if you don’t want to open that wound again. Just thanks for being patient and being—”

This time it was Viv that made the move. Before either of them knew it she jumped up and wrapped her legs around his waist, grabbed his face and kissed him. Eddie, to his credit quickly assessed the situation and was determined not to botch it this time. He grabbed Viv’s waist pulled her closer to him and kissed back. The sky was down. The ground was up and they both seemed to be flying. This time neither wanted to return to the ground,

…

It took some doing and some light borrowing of some tools from the mystery shed but Eddie successfully jimmied the car door open.

“You shouldn’t have worried about college Eddie. You clearly could’ve gotten by on your street smarts. You could have become a criminal mastermind” 

“Yeah all I need is several borrowed tools and about half an hour. Then no late 80’s coup would be safe. Let’s just hope the battery didn’t die” 

They each held their breath as Eddie turned the key. The car started and they both exhaled. Garbage played on the radio as Eddie pulled back on the highway. They interlocked fingers as Shirley Manson’s raspy Scotish accent sang “I’m only happy when it rains.” Neither of them reached for the radio.