the grand gesture
Elise Bryant
Playlist: “Fifteen”
This hot glue gun isn’t working, and it needs to start working, because this is my last hope to fix my life.
And I know, I know, that’s a lot of pressure to put on a hot glue gun. I know it would be a lot more practical to consult my mom or, like, at least a sentient being. But we’re talking desperate times here. And this hot glue gun and pink foam poster board and all the glitter and paint I could afford from the craft store with the last of my birthday money are the desperate measures.
“I hate you,” I say to the hot glue gun. It’s been either scalding, so the little tubes of glue drip out of the sides as soon as I stick them in, or weirdly cold, which is truly a feat if you consider the fact that it’s summer in Long Beach and we don’t have air-conditioning. What it hasn’t been is helpful at all in gluing the letters that I carefully cut out of the white cardstock—the letters that make up the message I need to deliver now, tonight, if I want things to go back to the way they were. If I want to be forgiven.
A string of burning glue drips onto my fingers, and I throw the damn thing on the ground. “I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU!” “Harriet?” My mom’s concerned voice drifts in from down the hall. “Are you okay?”
She’s a worrier. I feel like she’s always feeling my forehead or checking my location or consulting hardcovers that the TODAY show tells her to buy about how to raise teenagers the right way. But I guess the concern is valid this time. Because I am in here talking to a hot glue gun.
Also, I haven’t left my room since the last day of school, except to blow all my money at the craft store. And I’ve been listening to the same song on repeat, pretty much cosplaying Bella in that one scene in New Moon when Edward peaced out of her life, leaving her all alone and questioning who she even is anymore if she’s not half of that whole. Which . . . yeah, relatable. Except it’s a lot less cute without that Twilight filter and with the smelly, unwashed reality of all that blank stare chair-sitting.
“It’s nothing! I’m fine!”
I am fine. Really. Now that I have a plan. A mission. See, I’m going to do a grand gesture.
Grand gestures are my favorite parts of romance books and movies. When someone realizes their mistake in letting their one true love go and rushes through the airport (which for some reason doesn’t have TSA) to get them back. Or hires a marching band or a skywriter or an acrobat troupe to share all the feelings they should have confessed long ago. And then every mistake that was made is immediately forgiven. And the music swells, the credits play. The reader clutches the book to their chest and sighs in contentment. Happily ever after.
Now, I’m not racing to Italy like Bella, and I definitely can’t af-ford a marching band. But the grand gesture I’ve got planned is still perfectly respectable: Rocks at the window. Holding up a big sign. It’s a classic. And it’ll work—I know it will. It has to.
But first, I have to finish the sign, and if this hot glue gun is go-ing to continue to be an asshole, then I need to move on. Maybe I should just paint it? I’m shaking my head as soon as the possibility pops up in my head, because that’ll look awful. Gaile always says (or always said, I guess) that I have serial-killer handwriting, and she’s not wrong.
Oh, but wait. Double-sided tape! I know I have some double-sided tape somewhere around here, left over from when we moved last summer and I covered every inch of these boring beige walls with posters from those movies with grand gestures: To All the Boys, Always Be My Maybe, and Rye Lane . . .
My eyes catch on my bookshelf and the stack of cream fabric bins on the top. My mom bought them at one of those stores that basically only sells cream fabric bins and left them in my room as a hint that the shoeboxes I kept things in weren’t good enough. I pull a chair over from my desk to help me reach the top, and I put one foot on the third shelf from the bottom to anchor myself as I reach up for the bin that I think has the double-sided tape. But then I accidentally knock over another bin that looks exactly the same. And of course it’s the worst one. The one I never wanted to open again. The one I should have burned instead of keeping it on top of my shelf, making it possible for this to happen.
Everything that’s in the bin tumbles to the floor, all the artifacts of my relationship with Oliver. All the things I boxed up because I couldn’t look at them without crying but also couldn’t bear to throw them away.
The faded Velvet Underground T-shirt, the Art Theatre ticket stub. Pressed flowers from my spring formal corsage, a passed note, and stacks of photobooth pictures from the Mode. My neon green all-access wristband.
And each artifact takes me right back to before. Before I was beefing with a hot glue gun and climbing furniture and clinging to a grand gesture as my only hope. Before I ruined everything.
$
artifact 1: his t-shirt
I didn’t expect the first day of high school to be the best day of my life. Like, I wasn’t completely delusional.
But I guess I did think it might work in my favor, moving to a brand-new town and starting freshman year at a brand-new school. I could be the mysterious, intriguing new girl. I could decide exactly who I wanted to be, free from all the versions of who I was before.
Except the people at Willmore Prep were nothing like the people I left behind at my old middle school in Fresno. And I don’t know if it was middle school’s fault or Fresno’s fault, but I walked through the doors and immediately felt ridiculously unprepared, like everyone else crammed for an exam when I didn’t even know I was enrolled in the class. The girls wore put-together outfits and knew how to apply mascara without it getting all clumpy and walked with their shoulders back like they were totally comfortable in their bodies and not at all consumed with anxiety about those bodies in relation to other bodies. They looked like they had skin care routines and strong, correct opinions about capitalism and the patriarchy. They were cool, effortlessly.
And everything about me just felt immediately too effort . . . full. I put hours of thought into my outfit the night before—the perfect jeans, the perfect T-shirt—and now I could see they were all wrong. It was clear I was never going to fit in no matter what I did. So, by the time my lunch period rolled around, I had decided that my best course of action was to stay out of everybody’s way and keep my head down—that way, they wouldn’t notice that I was all wrong, too.
But then Gaile came along.
She had an afro of auburn curls and an explosion of freckles across her light brown skin. Her outfit was an overdose of dopamine: a pink-and-red squiggle-patterned dress, shiny yellow satin ballet flats, and wrists full of rainbow beaded bracelets.
She didn’t fit, either, but it wasn’t in the same way as me. She was like a baby swan in a crowd of ducklings, and even as a fresh-man, I could see she would be vindicated eventually. Because the way she carried herself, it was like she was trying not to fit. Like she had figured it all out already and was just waiting, impatiently, for the rest of us to catch up.
“So, high school?” She plopped down where I was hiding at the edge of the quad behind a concrete pillar, like we had previously arranged it. “What’s your rating?”
“My rating?”
“Yeah, like five stars? Two thumbs? You could even do a grade scale if you need room for more nuance.”
My stomach felt tight as I searched for narrowed eyes or a snarky smile—any sign that she chose to sit next to me because I looked like an easy target to mess with. But her dark eyes were kind and open, and she was smiling like she was genuinely interested in what I had to say.
“Zero. Stars or thumbs.”
She nodded. “Please expand.”
And now that I had her attention, I felt this intense need to keep it. I wanted to say just the right thing, to sound smart, so she didn’t regret picking me to talk to.
“I guess . . . I guess I just thought high school would be something new, you know? But it’s like we’re in the same race we’ve always been in? And I . . . I tripped. I tripped and I fell right in the beginning, so I have no hope of catching up now.” Instantly, I wanted to gather the words right back up. This girl wasn’t looking for a simile. My whole body flushed with embarrassment, and I said a little thank you to the melanin that kept the physical manifestation of my mortification a secret just for me. “God, that sounded so dramatic. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not dramatic. Like, girl, preach! That is exactly the right way to put it.”
“Oh. Um, yeah . . .”
“I just always thought it would be like in the movies. Like, you know in the first Twilight movie—”
“I love Twilight!” My skin flamed again. Too loud, Harriet. Too much. But I was just so surprised to hear her reference the thing I would have referenced if I wasn’t trying to sound smart and cool. “I mean, I know it’s campy. And problematic.”
“Everything is problematic.” She shrugged. “But, so, yeah. You know how everyone is obsessed with Bella immediately? All the boys want to date her. All the girls want to be her bestie . . . and maybe date her, too. It’s that whole not-like-the-other-girls thing. And here I am, actually not like the other girls, and no one at this school appreciates it.” She gestures to her outfit with a playful, self-deprecating grin. “So I agree. Zero stars. Negative stars! I begged my parents to send me here, to a normal high school, so I could make some friends. I was homeschooled before—I know, big surprise. But I dunno. I might have gotten this wrong.”
I eyed her stacks of bracelets. They looked like the kind you exchange with friends.
She followed my gaze. “Oh, I made these for myself. You want one?” She took it off without waiting for my answer and slipped it onto my wrist like it was nothing, even though it felt like everything on that lonely day. “What’s your name, anyway? That’s probably important to know if we’re going to get through this together.”
“Um.” It took me a beat to remember my name because I was still caught on her last sentence. Does that mean . . . ? “Harriet. I’m Harriet.”
She laughed, big and loud, but it was like she could see my secret blush. She reached and grabbed my arm, squeezing it reassuringly. “No, Harriet, good name! Just, I have an old lady name, too. Gaile.”
“Gaile and Harriet. We do sound like we’d be roommates at Leisure World.”
“Oh my god, truly, what were our parents thinking?”
I laughed, too—loud, like her. And it didn’t make me immediately want to shrink. “To be fair, I feel like old lady names are perfect for not-like-the-other-girls girls.”
“You’re right. Our high school fates were chosen,” she said, deadpan. “So hopefully the rest of these teenagers they sent over from central casting realize what that means and start properly worshiping us soon.”
Of course, no worshiping ever went down, but with Gaile, it felt a lot less important to fit in. We fit with each other. We spent lunch periods talking about our favorite movies and passing back and forth our favorite romance novels by Becky Albertalli and Julian Winters. We spent weekends trying to follow complicated hair tutorials on YouTube and drinking rose milk teas at the Merchant and shopping for more books at Bel Canto.
And without her, I probably would never have looked up from the ground long enough to notice Oliver noticing me.
“Don’t look now, but Edward alert at twelve o’clock.” We were sitting on the edge of the quad behind the pillar like usual. “Twelve o’clock? Where is twelve o’clock?”
“I don’t know. I just always wanted to say that. Uh, up next to the coffee cart? Kinda near the table where they play Magic? We got company. I’ve always wanted to say that, too.”
I knew I should play it cool, but I was already glancing up, right into blue eyes that were, yes, looking directly at me. He was tall and lanky, but with broad, strong shoulders. Even from where I sat, I could see their definition, could probably trace the path of them with my fingers through the thin gray T-shirt he was wearing. The shirt had a yellow banana on the front, which I didn’t know was from a Velvet Underground album at the time but was already plan-ning on googling that night. Dark wavy hair tumbled over his eyes, which really were the most perfect shade of blue, and his full lips lifted on one side, just slightly, like they stayed ready for a smile. And it made me wonder what’d happen to me if he did smile, like how I’d continue to function, because just that slight upturn directed at me made butterflies start flapping away in my belly—no, pterodactyls—and how do you ever go back to normal after that?
“Hoa-hoa-hoa-hoa-hoaaaaa!” Gaile whisper-sang, but it might as well have been shouted through a megaphone.
“Shut up,” I said through clenched teeth, swatting her arm. My eyes dropped quickly, firmly back to the ground. “But also . . . who is that?”
“That’s Oliver from the football team. He’s one of the seniors in my geography class.”
I raised my eyebrow at her, because the guy was gorgeous—and possibly created in a lab somewhere based on my exact, specific tastes—but he definitely wasn’t a football player.
“Not the football team, the Football Team—capital F, capital T. The band. They play at the Mode a lot, which I haven’t actually been to because, as you know, my parents think live music will cor-rupt their precious youth, but I’ve heard of them.”
Of course he’s in a band. The pterodactyls let out a cheer as they did synchronized loop the loops.
I risked another glance up, and he was still staring right at me like I was the only person here in the quad to look at. Like he was a magpie and I was something shiny instead of dull.
And then he smiled, oh my god, he smiled. And it was even better than I anticipated—straight white teeth and deep dimples. I felt like I sprouted wings myself and was fluttering up into the sunshine.
“Oh, Harriet, he liiiiikes you.”
It was a moment just like the ones I read about in books, just like I saw happen to other girls in movies.
But it was happening to me, finally me.
$
artifact 2: ticket stub from the art theatre
“You need to wear this dress.”
“I can’t wear that dress. I can’t wear a dress at all. It’s too try-hard.”
“Why do you even have this dress, then? If you’re not going to wear it.”
Gaile stood at my closet, holding up a puff-sleeved minidress that there was absolutely no way I could wear on my first date with Oliver.
He didn’t come up to talk to me that first day, letting the smile simmer in my mind for almost two maddening weeks. But he eventually slid in next to me at the library, whispering a hey that made goose bumps ripple across my skin. He picked up my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, said it was his favorite, and I agreed even though I was only reading it for Freshman Lit Comp and I wasn’t actually sure how I felt about it yet.
He kept finding me on purpose, offering a thick book with an important-looking cover, a link to a sad, important-sounding al-bum. I didn’t love them, or even really like them, but I loved the way he looked at me as he excitedly waited for my opinion like it was the only one that mattered to him. I knew what to say to keep that smile on his face, to keep the flying, fluttery feeling I began to crave. And now we were finally going on our very first date—which felt so serious and grown-up, because who even got asked out on dates anymore? An official date, and not just a hangout or a group thing.
“Girl, this dress is like the red dress in She’s All That . . . or the equivalent of, like, a whole-ass Princess Diaries Paolo transformation. Not putting on this dress—that’s basically spitting in the face of the canon. It’s blasphemy!”
Gaile’s and my mutual love of all things swoony had become our friendship shorthand.
“Okay, but I really hate that in those old rom-coms they have to change themselves to get the guy. What did they have against glasses, anyway?” I noticed that Gaile raised an eyebrow at me when I said this, but I didn’t clock it for what it was then. I assumed she was just annoyed I wasn’t taking her fashion advice. So I grabbed the dress and put it on, taking care not to mess up the lip gloss and mascara I spent forever getting just right.
“Now, are you going to be taking notes? Or wait, maybe you should just put me on FaceTime and carry me along in your pocket so I get it all live?”
“I don’t know, I was thinking you could just hide in the bushes outside the theater?”
She laughed. “For real though, you’re like the Christopher Columbus of dating, without the murdering and, I don’t know, syphilis... Well, I guess maybe Christopher Columbus is the wrong comparison. Who’s someone who actually discovered something?”
“Gaile, you lost me with the syphilis.”
“Oh, you know what I mean! You’re the first one of us to go on a real high school date, and we’re about to gain valuable intel here. We can only learn so much from secondary sources. And after you have the best night ever with Oliver and see how these things really go, I’ll know what to do when James finally asks me out, if he ever asks me out.”
“He will!” My eyes caught on my phone, lit up on my bed.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. He’s so nice, and he asks me so many questions when we’re DMing, but at school, it’s like I might as well be anyone else. And I just don’t get it, because . . .”
I was listening. I was. But I was also scrambling for my phone, reading the text that was there waiting for me, from him.
“He’s here!” I squealed, cutting off something about James’s rising sign. But Oliver was here. “It’s happening!”
“Oh, um, okay. Yay!”
I squeezed Gaile tight and grabbed my jean jacket for the cool November night air, blowing kisses behind me and promising to pick up the conversation about James later. Then I ran to the door so my mom couldn’t notice Oliver outside and get there first. I nodded at her rushed reminders to make sure my location was on and to be back by my embarrassingly early nine o’clock curfew and something else probably just as cringy that I didn’t hear because I quickly shut the door, and there was Oliver. Leaning on his car, glowing in golden-hour light—like a dream, like a scene from a movie, my movie.
His focused gaze felt like heat on my skin, but it was nothing like the familiar burning flush of embarrassment. It was like being bundled up in a blanket that just came out of the dryer or sipping a cup of chamomile in front of a roaring fire. The way he looked at me, it was the way I always wanted to be seen. My face cracked into a smile so wide my cheeks instantly ached.
“You’re . . . wow. You’re gorgeous,” he said, and I grinned as he held the passenger door open for me and guided me inside with his hand on my lower back.
We drove across Long Beach to a tiny art deco theater I’d never been to before, tucked in between cute vintage shops and bright murals on Fourth Street.
“This film has gotten really good reviews. It’s not A24, but it’s, like, A24-adjacent, you know what I mean?”
“Oh, I love A24.” I had no idea what A24 even was, but it sounded like something I should know about. Like everything Oliver liked and I had to learn to like by googling the way I was supposed to feel about it later.
Anyway, I got the general idea after it started. No characters to root for. No moments to make you swoon or giggle. No budget for any lighting, for some reason. No point . . . Well, I’m sure there was a point, but I missed the point because what I was really focused on was Oliver’s hand.
It rested on the edge of his seat, and even in the dark theater, I could see it flex, his pinkie reach. Just that tiny movement made my body tense, made my stomach stir and reach back.
So instead of whatever this guy in a turtleneck was monologuing about on the screen, I was thinking about how to casually, in a totally-not-a-big-deal way put my hand on my seat, too, face up. So he’d know it was available.
And after that, when he did reach for my hand and his pinkie brushed against my thigh, exposed by my short dress, I was making a mental note to thank Gaile later because she was so right about this dress. And I was trying not to float right on up to the ceiling or hyperventilate or spontaneously combust, because our hands were touching! Our fingers were intertwined! I was memorizing every guitar callus, composing sonnets in my head about every guitar callus, and trying to plot a way to hold his hand forever because it made me feel so warm and chosen and present. It made me feel like this was what my hand was meant to do, that it was just killing time until this very moment.
Except, then the movie was 75 percent over, and I started to panic that I had no idea what it was about and Oliver would probably want to talk about it after, like he always did with the other things he recommended, and I wouldn’t have the cushion of a night to google and figure out the right thing to say. And if I didn’t have anything to say, he might realize that this was all a mistake and never hold my hand like that again.
“The bathroom. I’m gonna go—um, yeah,” I said, pointing to the back door and reluctantly unthreading my fingers.
Under the cover of a stall, I scrolled a movie review site and Reddit, but it all was just so . . . esoteric, cryptic, and convoluted just for the sake of it. And honestly, scrolling through the essays people wrote online about why this movie was good, why it was important—it seemed as if the people who liked it only liked it because of that. Because it set them apart as the people who got it. And it was just so different from what I liked—movies that can inspire big feelings, unashamedly, pleasurably. Art that gets right to the truth, plainly, of what we all can understand—and connects us in the process.
But I knew I could never say that to him. At least not yet. I definitely was not gonna make a great argument about why When Harry Met Sally is actually better than, like, Citizen Kane when my brain was all scrambled from touching his hand and wanting more.
So I texted Gaile.
Help! I hate this movie even though I have no idea what it’s about and he’s going to expect me to love it and get it
Also, we held hands!!!!!!
And, of course, she was there for me instantly.
Just tell him you thought it was really profound, what it had to say about the ephemeral nature of life. I feel like that’s what all those boring-ass movies are about
Also, 💃🏻💃🏻💃🏼!!!!!!
I took her advice when Oliver and I were sitting in his car after the movie, and he smiled and reached across the console, cradling my chin like I was a treasure.
“God, Harriet, you’re just . . . really something special. How am I the first guy to snatch you up?”
I felt a twinge of guilt that he was saying that because of some-thing I didn’t even really believe. That maybe he didn’t actually know me at all, and did that mean these feelings were false, too?
But then he leaned in, pressing his lips to mine, coaxing them open with soft, sweet pressure, and those worries drifted away like passing clouds. And all I was thinking about was how right, how good it felt, being kissed like this. Being his.
When I got back home, after speeding through Mom’s questions and escaping to the safety of my room, I started dancing. Even though I never dance. It just felt like the only natural, normal thing to do—other than call Gaile, which would come later. First, though, I threw my arms up in the air and spun around and did something that vaguely resembled Kendrick Lamar at the Super Bowl. I slipped into the electric slide, still stored in my muscle memory from elementary school PE. I shoulder-shimmied and body-rolled and even considered the worm—
$
“Harriet, oh, Harriet—honey. Is that what you’re doing in here?”
I’m jolted right back to my room now, in the present, where I’m sitting on the floor surrounded by the artifacts of my relationship with Oliver, plus scissors and glitter and cardstock and the elusive double-sided tape that must have fallen down into the mess, too.
So I guess I kinda get why Mom is looking at me like that.
She drops down next to me on the floor, petting my head and then my shoulder.
“Honey, I know this breakup probably feels like the end of the world. But it doesn’t have to be—it can be the beginning of your new world.”
And there’s your spoiler for how this all ends, if the hot glue gun–battling and Bella-cosplaying and BO wasn’t enough.
I was dumped.
“High school boyfriends are rarely forever. And I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but eventually, down the line, you’ll be glad he wasn’t forever. You’re figuring out who you’re supposed to be, so it makes sense that who you’re with would change. I think you’re going to find that this was a lesson, and one you’re going to be so thankful for. Actually, I have a book—”
“It’s fine, Mom. I’m fine.” I don’t roll my eyes, but it takes, like, all of my life force not to.
Her gaze flickers to my unfinished poster, but she doesn’t say anything, thankfully. Instead, she leaps to her feet and slowly backs away with her palms up like I’m some wild, unpredictable animal ready to attack . . . which it sorta feels like Mom thinks I am ever since puberty entered the equation. “I’m going to get it for you. You don’t have to read it, but just be open, okay? Jenna Bush Hager recommended it.”
She’s out the door before I can protest, and I unleash the eye roll I was holding in. And look, I know she’s right. But no one wants to think oh, that’s a valuable lesson while they’re living it. It’s hard to have perspective when you’re still boots on the ground.
Plus, it’s not like I thought we were going to get married someday. But, you know, maybe we’d go to the same college and then live together in a tiny apartment while he was working to get a record deal and I was writing my first screenplay and then eventually, when we both made it, he’d casually pull a little box out of his back pocket and . . .
Ugh, okay, I was delusional. And stupid. I was so, so stupid. But I’m not stupid anymore. I know what I need now, and I know what I’m going to do.
And maybe tomorrow, when I’ve fixed everything, I can smile at Mom and say you were right and read a few pages of her book. I know she’s just trying to help.
I survey the mess of artifacts around me, the building blocks of my relationship with Oliver. The note he passed me in January that read Are you my girlfriend? Check yes or no. My corsage for the spring formal in April.
Then I pick up the neon green all-access wristband from the Mode, the one I wore to every Football Team show, the glowing reminder to me and everyone else that I was his, chosen. And I remember how I felt that last night, the one that changed everything and every night since: blindsided, heartbroken . . . ashamed.
$
artifact 3: all-access wristband
I didn’t see it coming, because it was a Saturday night like every Saturday night.
We were at the Mode. By May, that’s where I spent most weekends, swooning over Oliver as he played guitar onstage or leaning back onto his chest with his hands on my hips as we watched some other band. I can’t pinpoint exactly when that became the norm instead of hanging out and giggling in my room with Gaile, and I missed that—I did. But even though she was always invited, her parents continued to see the Mode as a den of sin and hormones, and never let her tag along. And she said she understood why I had to be there if I wanted to be with Oliver. Anyway, she had James . . . They weren’t dating yet, but I knew it would work out for her eventually, like it had for me. “Harriet, I think that maybe we should call it.”
That’s how I was informed that my first relationship was ending, on the dirty burgundy couch backstage at the Mode. I was wearing the Velvet Underground shirt Oliver gave me, even though I never really got into the Velvet Underground.
“It’s just . . . you know I’m starting at UCLA in the fall, and I don’t want to, um . . . hold you back. You deserve to have fun the rest of high school.”
UCLA is just up the 405, I wanted to say. And I already have fun, with you.
“And sometimes, I just feel like . . . we’re not connected? You just get so . . . quiet. I feel like I can never actually understand you all the way, you know, because you don’t want to let me in? So maybe this is what you want, too? I think this is probably what we both have known we had to do, but, like, have been afraid to say for a while.”
I wanted to tell him I’m quiet because I want to make sure I say the right thing. I wanted to say You don’t understand me all the way because I barely do yet, because I’m constantly choosing between what is right and what is true. I wanted to remind him of that one time I tried to be more open with him—when we saw another movie and I said it was boring, said the pretentious film bro could learn a thing or two from Nora Ephron or Jenny Han—and he just laughed.
But instead, I kept my lips pressed together, resigned. Quiet.
Because that was the only way I knew how to be with him.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Oliver looked at me closely with his blue eyes, but it didn’t make me feel heated through like before. Instead, I felt the absence of warmth, like a swift storm filling the sky, blocking out the sun.
“Okay.” I stood up and walked past him, outside, where the June gloom had transitioned into a rare rain. I knew it would destroy my silk press, but I went out into the downpour anyway. And I started running to the only place that made sense. To the only person who did understand me all the way and would know how much this hurt.
As I reached the flagstone path leading up to Gaile’s house, lined with lavender and milkweed, my feet slowed, and I felt a sud-den pang of worry. It had been a while since I’d come over. Was it still okay to just show up like this? And there was something else, something darting on the outskirts of my mind, just out of reach . . .
But then she opened the door before I even knocked, like she was already anticipating someone’s arrival.
“Sorry,” I said, wiping away the tears and snot and raindrops on my face. “I should have texted. Do you already have plans with James?”
“No, me and James aren’t even— I was . . . waiting for you.” Her dark brown eyes searched my face in the dim glow of the porch light, and then she nodded as if she’d found an answer. “But you didn’t remember. Of course you didn’t remember.”
“Did we . . . have plans?”
As soon as I asked the question, though, the texts I got from her that morning finally zipped in from the edges of my brain, flashing front and center.
You me and all five Twilight movies tonight? I promise not to make my Renesmee face . . . the whole time.
And then, Is it sappy to say that I miss you? Cuz I miss you!!
But right after, Oliver also texted me that one of his favorite bands would be down from the Bay, playing at the Mode . . .
“I forgot—god, I’m such an asshole. You deserve to be pissed at me. Please be pissed at me, but first, can you just give me a hug? Because Oliver just broke up with me and I feel like my heart was just torn from my chest? Like, I don’t even know how I’m going to keep going, Gaile? He said I—”
“Harriet.” Her icy voice, so unfamiliar, cut me off. “I’m not just your sassy best friend in a movie. This is real life—my real life, too.”
“What? I know that.”
“Do you think I’m just waiting around until you deign to give me your time? Counting down the minutes until I can hear all the details of your great love story? Until you give me the privilege of comforting you and giving you advice?”
She scoffed and shook her head. “You changed so much about yourself just to make Oliver like you, and I mean, who decided that he was so amazing, anyway? He acts like he’s so subversive and cool, but he’s not even original—he and all his friends wear the same stupid fake vintage shirts from Target. There’s nothing subversive about Target. Also, his band sucks.”
“His band doesn’t suck . . .” Out of all the possible choices of things to say, I picked the absolute worst one. And I didn’t even believe it, not really. I was just so used to saying things that weren’t true to keep what I wanted.
But now that my best friend was standing in front of me, an-gry and hurt, looking like she was done with me, losing Oliver felt like a paper cut. Losing Gaile would be a deep, infected wound—something that might never heal.
“See, you can’t even say they suck when I know you think they suck.”
“You’re right,” I started, but she kept talking, like all her feelings were a shaken-up bottle of Coke.
“Harriet, what you like and who you are isn’t bad. It’s why we became friends. I liked you. But this you . . . I don’t know who she is. And I . . . I don’t know if I want to be friends with her anymore.” I’d just said it felt like my heart was torn out, but that showed me it was still there, right before it was snatched for real this time and stomped on. Destroyed.
“Gaile, no. You can’t mean that.” She held a hand up. “I think I need some space.”
Her lips curved into a deep frown. Her eyebrows pressed to-gether tightly in sadness but also determination. I didn’t think there was anything I could say to make that expression change, so I stayed quiet again.
“Okay.”
I looked down at the ground as the door clicked closed, and then I turned and walked home alone.
$
And there you have it, the finale to this sad story. I lost my best friend and my boyfriend in the same night.
I spent the last lonely weeks of my freshman year staring at the ground and wishing I could disappear.
But see, what I’ve come to realize in all this time sitting in my room, stewing over it, is that it wasn’t the finale. It was the dark night of the soul! And my grand gesture is going to bring us to our actual finale, the happily ever after version—with one of them, at least. The one that matters.
I know it sounds like a long shot. I know it sounds slightly bon-kers. But it feels like the right way after everything I got wrong. I can apologize and express my feelings. I can be loud instead of quiet. I can finally start taking steps toward the Harriet I’m supposed to be.
As I tape the final letters onto the poster, though—i’m sorry cut out of cardstock in perfectly uniform letters—it doesn’t look even close to right. It looks awful. Like it was made by a toddler—and not even one who was having a good time.
I can’t bring this. This isn’t going to fix anything—it might even make it worse. But my eyes catch on the box of artifacts, and a new idea starts to come together in my mind. That might be . . . good, actually. Not just good, perfect.
I stop in the kitchen on my way out to grab some more supplies and then slip quietly out the side door before my mom can ques-tion me or offer another book.
Cradled in the balmy summer night air, I walk up the flag-stone path to a bush of lavender underneath the window. I dig into my pocket for the rocks. Little ones, so they won’t crack the glass. The movies never show how important it is to get the toss just right, the thin line between grand gesture and misdemeanor. It takes seven of them before a light turns on, and the freckled face of my grand-gesture recipient—the only person who’s owed one—appears.
Gaile leans over the sill, wiping the sleep from her eyes. Her auburn curls are pulled up into a puff, and she’s wearing rainbow-striped pajamas. Her nose wrinkles in confusion, and I know I need to act fast before the anger has a chance to wake up and slam that window shut.
“Wait. Just wait—I have something to show you!” It’s time.
I drop the big metal pot on the grass and empty the box full of artifacts inside. I pull the box of matches I grabbed from the junk drawer out of my pocket and strike one until it catches, throwing it into the pot full of all my memories with Oliver. The flame erupts faster and bigger than I anticipated, warming my skin.
“Harriet—oh my GOD, Harriet!” Gaile whisper-yells from the window, her eyes wide. “What are you doing? You can’t do that!”
And okay, seeing all those papers and pictures actually burning here in front of me as sparks fly onto the dry grass . . . I can see that maybe this wasn’t my best-thought-out plan. If only that fucking hot glue gun hadn’t wasted so much of my time.
“No, yeah, okay. You’re right. But I was trying to prove a point,” I call up to her.
“You were trying to prove a point by being an arsonist?” I think I hear amusement in her voice, the edge of a laugh, but I’m scared to hope.
“I mean, no. Well, yeah. It . . . made more sense in my head. But, like, I’m setting fire to this me—” I gesture to the flames that are getting a little concerning in size. “The me who didn’t show up for you like she should have. The me who was acting like the main character even though you’re the main character, too. The me—”
“Point made, girl.” An unmistakable giggle. “Now, um, let’s not set my lawn on fire.”
“You’re right. On it!” I try to stomp it out, but once I realize that option is terrifying and not at all as easy as it looks, Gaile runs down the stairs and out the front door with a pitcher of water. As she douses the fire, I say a little prayer that I haven’t woken her par-ents up, because their minds are probably going to jump straight to arsonist, too.
“So, what is this about?” she asks once the flames are gone and the smoke hangs in the air between us.
“It’s, uh . . . a grand gesture,” I start, and her lips quirk at that because she loves grand gestures just as much as I do. There’s hope. “Because I love you, Gaile. And I’m so sorry. I messed up. I messed everything up!”
“Yep, you did.”
“And, like, I still don’t know who I am. I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.” I think back to what Mom was saying earlier about changing relationships as I change, and I don’t know if she’s right about that, but— “The one thing I do know is I’m supposed to be your friend, Gaile. I was so caught up in being chosen by Oliver. I thought . . . I thought that was my story, being with him, being his. But it’s not. Me and you, that’s my story.”
She sighs, nudging the pot full of charred remains at her feet. “But see, I don’t want me and you to be your story.”
My heart drops.
“Oh, okay. I understand . . .” I turn to go, already making plans for blank stare chair-sitting. Maybe I’ll add a pint of Ben & Jerry’s this time, spice it up.
But she grabs my hand. I feel the friendship bracelets on her wrist, matching the one on mine, the one she gave me that first day. “What I mean is I don’t want me and you to be your entire story.
Because, as your friend, Harriet, as someone who loves you, I want you to be your story. And I want to be part of it, I do—but only if you’re interested in my story, too.”
“I am! I promise I am! Your story is my favorite story. And I won’t lose sight of that again.”
She raises an eyebrow as she searches my face, and I’m not sure what she’ll find there this time. But I know I said what’s right and true. I know I’m being myself, authentically. I know that’s all I can be.
Finally, she nods. “Okay, grand gesture accepted.”
“Grand gesture accepted?!” I shriek so loud that, if her parents weren’t already awake, they definitely are now. Along with the whole neighborhood.
“Yes.” She laughs, pulling me into a tight hug. “And now that we have that settled, let’s have a little talk about fire safety.”
She squeezes my hand, I thread my fingers through hers, and we walk through her front door together.
Excerpted from 13 Little Love Stories by Elise Bryant, Jennifer Dugan, J. Elle, Jessica Goodman, Sloan Harlow, Crystal Maldonado, Krystal Marquis, Katharine McGee, Julie Murphy, Lynn Painter, Laura Sebastian, Sara Shepard and Jesse Q. Sutanto. Copyright © 2026. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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