vanderlyle crybaby geeks.

magdelena 'del' rhodes man, it's all been forgiven. swans are a-swimmin'. i'll explain everything to the geeks. all the very best of us string ourselves up for love.

[sam-loftgren]

He smiled as she rambled on just as he had. It gave him some comfort to know she was just as nervous here as he was. For all the good, all the excitement, that they were finally standing here in front of each other, it was strange, wasn't it? That the distance, and the screens between them had been a crutch. There was some peace of mind that came with knowing that if he'd said something wrong, or embarrassing, they had a buffer. And now that buffer was gone. They were here, there wasn't hiding. 

A sigh of relief spilled from Sam as soon as she proposed the walk. He was all nervous energy, and the idea of occupying some of their attention, without the added caffeine felt better than sitting there trying to force conversation until they'd fully broken the ice. "A walk sounds great, actually," he affirmed. He felt a heat in his cheeks at her smile, and nodded, already running through his head trying to remember the proper steps of making the promised napkin flower. "One condition. You don't get to make fun of me if I mess it up." As if it had been a worry that she would, or that he would have even cared if she did over something quite so corny to be offered. He reached out, his hand gently taking hers. An act that he almost regretted, because he knew he would feel the loss in his gut when he did have to drop it, just as he had when she pulled away from that initial deep hug. The emotional tether they’d created between them finally being physical, he didn’t want to let that go. He gave her hand a friendly squeeze, before leading them back towards the entrance. Despite his own mental protest, he dropped her hand as they came up to the bar near the door, and slipped a napkin from the dispenser. "Two seconds," he said with a wide grin.

It was telling, or at least he thought it was, why he'd hitched his boat to Lena. From their first few private messages on their grief forums to the first phone call that Lena had asked such a personal thing. Sam hadn't listened to that album for months, too scared to put it on, and too afraid that if he didn't before it was too late, it all would disappear. But, she’d managed to make him finally give in. Everything felt ephemeral and fake until the first time that Lena and him had gotten on the phone, and awkwardly found their voices with each other, that turned into hours long mix of tears and gentle whispers about their shared grief until the night had stretched well past reasonable hours to still be awake, his eyes fighting every urge to fall closed and seal from the salt of the tears he'd shed. He hadn't realized how much he wanted to share until it was pouring from him, and how much he wanted to hear back about Lena's own in return. No one else had been allowed to see him cry, no one had really heard him speak in months, and suddenly, she had him talking more than he had in years. She was the exception, and she remained that for years. Always his exception. The person he’d drop everything else for. He knew he told on himself every time he snuck out of a bar or cancelled plans last second to take her call. And, even as the two of them stood there, she was still exactly that for him. The one to drop any façade, the one that got to see him in his truest form, and who he would give exactly that. Subtlety hadn’t exactly been his strong suit, as it was, but with her, his hand was on full display.

He unfolded the napkin fully, before he folded just enough for what would be the actual flower over again. He rolled it, quick to twist and tighten what was ending up as the stem, until it was tight enough to hold on its own. He turned back to her, and smiled, one that was full of something that hadn’t really been explicitly spoke between them, but all other denial of it was flimsy at best. "For you," he presented what vaguely resembled something like a sad impression of a tulip or, if you really squinted, a rose, all brown and cheap paper. The small flash of his own disappointment at how it had turned out passed, though. It felt sort of fitting in its own way. “I’ll, uh, make sure to do better next time.” Next time. It was a stupid assumption, but he bit his tongue to dwell too long on it. He stepped around Lena, turning his body to keep facing her as he moved and continued to speak. He blindly reached for the door, and held it open for her. “I think my fourth grade teacher taught my class that for Valentine’s Day. I think I made fifty trying to get a perfect one for one of the girls in my class. But, my napkin flower making days have been long in the rearview before now.”

[magdelenarhodes]

A smile curved her lips, all edged with trepidation and possibility. “No promises,” she whispered, even though it’s a promise she would make a thousand times over. She was so aware of his hand in hers, of hers in his. So aware of the pulse-point in her wrist, that if he were to shift his thumb downward, he would feel the rapid hammering of it – her own personal Morse code, screaming out her betrayal in dots and dashes. 

Del was feeling too many things in that moment – she added that to her growing list of injustices. She had spent days, weeks, months, preparing for this day, and trying to cycle through her barrage of emotions in private so she stood any chance of not doing it in public. She wanted to be effortless, and more importantly, she wanted to be brave. Del Rhodes had never been either of those things, even in her most dire moments. She was exposed nerve endings and smiles that only land right at the wrong times. She was a soft lie, because the truth was always too sharp. 

But she wanted his hand in hers, and she never wanted to let it go. Maybe because of that, for the flash of an instant, she held it too tightly. He has a nice smile, she thought, and that seemed unfair, too. The right kind of smile – there was an openness in it. Was that kind of smile for everyone, or was it only for her? For Lena? Still, she felt her features mirroring his, even as she searched his face. In her search, she’d lost his hand, and was suddenly entirely unsure what to do with her own. She watched as the fingers that had so briefly been laced with hers worked something like magic, the brief flicker of genuine incredulity flashing in her eyes. Her smile was earnest as she took the flower, gaze flickering from the thin paper to Sam, already holding it like she’d been gifted someone’s most important possession. Del had always cared too much for inanimate objects, treating them with more care than she ever extended inward. But this was special, and she held it close to her chest like it were a precious thing, because it was. She quickly shook her head as he demeaned his work, smile lingering. “Absolutely not. It’s perfect. I don’t see how anyone could do much better,” she said, managing, for the first time, to sound assured in what she was saying. She knew it then, heard it in her own voice – this was a person she loved. Loved in earnest, loved in all the ways she promised herself to be more open with after Eric. But this was different. If she said she loved him, he would hear it from the lips of a woman who never existed. Del would only ever be the woman who took her. 

She gave a small little nod of thanks before she stepped out the open door, reticent to look anywhere but at Sam, or her flower. She welcomed the winter air, though – the cold felt more a friend than the coffee shop’s heat. “Did she appreciate it?” She asked, head tilted as she reclaimed the hand that she hadn’t wanted to let go of in the first place. It was bold, and it was yet another thing that was unfair. “The girl and the flower. Was it love?” 

[patrickcromwellx]

Location: Rittenhouse Square Park 🌳 Status: open starter @philly-starters

"Yes, mom - I did have breakfast. No, it wasn't just a coffee, I'm fine! I told you."

There was an agitation to Patrick's tone, one that seemed almost permanently attached at this point whenever his mother started asking questions he was slowly but surely getting sick of. Some of them being "Are you taking care of yourself?" or "Are you doing okay?" The real answer was always no but Patrick knew what she wanted to hear and maybe, in a way, he needed to say it more in order to start believing it himself. Yet, it was tiring and Patrick was always tired anyways so this didn't exactly help his case. He lowered his phone and let out sigh before putting it back up against his ear, a fake smile spreading across his lips so it'd register on the other end of the line. "What about you?" He asked, trying to somehow coordinate holding a phone, a leash that had two dogs attached and a cup of coffee when suddenly a squirrel ran across their path. "Oh shit," Patrick breathed. "No, not you - I - yeah, mom? I gotta go."

That was all he managed to choke out before his day turned into one that seemed like it was taken right out of some over the top romcom if you took away both, the romance and the comedy - at least for the protagonist. One of his dogs had spotted the squirrel and before he could say anything, Meadow, his usually rather calm samoyed, gave her leash a good tug that had Patrick tumbling forward, causing him to drop his phone along with his coffee in the process. The sound was enough for his dogs to focus back on him but the damage was done and he could feel at least one pair of eyes on him in a way that caused a flush to creep up his neck. "Well...that was embarrassing," he said to the person the coffee had splashed in front of and he was quick to reach down to retrieve his phone. "I'm so sorry about that. Is everything okay?" And now, on top of everything, he sounded exactly like his mother.

[magdelenarhodes]

"Not at all," she said softly. If their positions had been reversed, she would've strongly considering going back home and crawling into bed in attempt to forget the morning's events – but objectivity was much easier when she'd seen things play out secondhand. For a moment, she almost felt bad for not intervening, somehow – as though that would've resulted in anything but his coffee finding a way onto her instead of the sidewalk. Still, Del offered the man a smile, tilting her head at the seemingly genuine concern for something that it had seemed – at least from her vantage point – that he had almost no control over.

"Oh, you don't have anything to apologize for," she said, smile lingering as she knelt to see if there was an chance in salvaging any of it. "I am afraid the coffee is a goner, though. Your phone – it didn't break, did it?" She asked, straightening and nodding toward it, now empty coffee cup in her own hand. She quickly looked around the area until her eyes finally landed on a garbage can. Her penance for eavesdropping, she justified, was to at least save him the trouble of scrambling to clean everything up. She made an attempt to toss it into the can, pulling a face as it arced off the side and landed uselessly in the grass. "That," she started, lowering her voice and offering an almost conspiratorial smile, "was embarrassing." She made the few steps to rectify her terrible aim, this time dropping the cup into the bin.

[sam-loftgren]

There was enough time between his question of her name, and her response of his own that he almost felt himself start to wither away at the embarrassment of bothering this poor stranger. But, as soon as she finally said his name, he felt relief. That familiar voice, clearer and just slightly different without that static of their phones, he let out a stream of air, a light laugh against his own nerves. Their arms wrapping around each other in a way he'd never really thought they'd be able to. Eight years was a long time to not actually hold the person that you were both so desperately carrying with everywhere you went. The reality of each other was still almost something he wasn't sure if he could fully wrap his head around, but here she was, tangible and solid with arms tight around him. He didn't want to let go, didn't want her to put that space between them again, and he was sure she could see the disappointment plastered on his face when she did. He quickly smiled, something soft, and something assuring. It was fine, because of course it was, it was her after all.

He shook his head at the stammered apology. "Hi," he responded. Sam didn't want to sit, he felt too suddenly restless to do so, but he didn't want to stand either, his legs feeling like they'd give out at any second from under him. A million mental back and forths keeping him wired. There were plenty of things that he wanted to say, and so many others that he had said to her without any second thought. A careless expression of feelings was different when you weren't just a voice or a blue message bubble. "It's really good to see you too." It was all he managed out, still taking the entire situation in.

After a beat, his eyes followed hers to her cup, and immediately felt bad. Had he been that late? He internally chided himself, and then glanced up at the counter. "Um," he stammered out, finally meeting her eyes again. "I'm sorry for keeping you waiting. I woke up late, and tried to hurry. Honestly, I thought I'd still manage to beat you here, and have a coffee waiting for you, or something. Maybe make a flower out of a napkin, pin it to my shirt or something. Keep it as cheesy and weird as possible." It all came streaming out in one quick breath, suddenly realizing he'd thrown a lot at her. He pointed to her cup. "All that to ask, do you want another?" He knew caffeine wasn't going to help him, he already felt jittery in all of this, but they were here, weren't they? Coffee was expected, and he wasn't going to miss an opportunity for some sort of chivalrous act of buying her a $5 coffee. "Totally my treat."

[magdelenarhodes]

Both of them knew loss as an old, cruel friend who seemed to be around every corner. It was the wedge between every relationship, every friendship, she tried to form after Eric – this impossible, insurmountable barrier. In the early days, she didn’t think she would ever see passed it – Sam was the first person to show her she didn’t need to. Maybe they were both staring down this tall, impossible thing – but they were doing it from the same side. She saw it on night when she knew sleep would never find her, and if it did, she didn’t want to meet the nightmares it promised to hold. 

It was unfair to call Sam her port in the storm when the skies were falling down around him, too. She would sit for hours with her phone in her hands, willing herself to find her own way to okay instead of demanding someone else hold her hand through it. That’s the moment it really clicked for Del – they didn’t have to give each other shelter. He needed a hand, too, even if both of them were shaking.

She hadn't expected a response until the morning – a look at her clock told her that it was late, even across the country. Her phone was barely out of her hand when it chimed with a response. The question had been an easy one – one that had mattered to her when all she wanted was to talk about her dad. ‘What was your friend’s favorite album?’

A night that had turned to a phone call, playing the album with a ‘1,2,3’ countdown in the background. The ‘tell me about them,’ that had felt like oxygen when she was sure there was nothing in her lungs but water. It’s what she wished someone had done for her in the days when she wanted to scream everything about Eric from the rooftops so it wouldn’t be swallowed by time. She so desperately wanted someone else to keep him, too. More than that, she wanted to be that for Sam. That night was the last time, she thought, it was acceptable to live in Lena. The night she quietly requested Sam share the memories he kept close – the memories he didn’t want to lose. After that night, after so much shared vulnerability, she should’ve been honest. 

Now, looking into his face, barely resisting the urge to reach up and touch him, to keep touching him, she knew it was too late. Selfishly and silently, her regret battled her relief, and she knew which would win. But it didn’t have to right now – it couldn’t. To stop herself from making good on the instinct to once again confirm that he was a tangible thing, not someone she’d made up, she grabbed that empty cup. For the flash of a second, her head was in her throat. In big, sloppy script on the side of the cup read ‘DEL,’ which seemed both an accusation and a reminder. With an almost trembling hand, she turned the cup inward. She offered Sam a smile that was all nerves, she shook her head. “No, no. You’re not late. I was early – too early. And then I thought maybe I’d go ahead and order and be sitting her really cool and composed when you got here. But then I just needed something to do with my hands, and then you were here and...” she trailed off, wrinkling her nose. “Which is a really long way of saying I think another coffee might be the end of me. We can go for a walk, maybe? If you’d want that?” She sounded so unsure, even as she stepped slightly to the side to toss the offending empty cup into the garbage. With it, she felt herself breathe a little easier – almost. She lowered her voice, slightly easier smile curving her lips as she spoke. “I do kind of want to see that flower napkin.” 

[sam-loftgren]

Would it be okay if I stayed in Philadelphia? The text he’d received had been a surprise. Maybe one that was something he’d sometimes imagined, the type of shit that a normal long lasting friendship would receive without extra thought. He’d wanted to meet her for years, they’d talked about it before, but that never amounted to anything except talk. But, this time, it felt right. And his response had, initially, been an easy answer. It felt good, it felt like everything was finally aligning. The easiest yes. 

But, when he’d gotten the text that she was finally in town a full month later, it was suddenly too real. He’d stared at it for too long, he thought. An anxious flutter in his stomach at the thought. He’d ran through every thought of what that meant of finally meeting Lena. It was something different than just a pop in from an old friend. They had left their friendship totally in the realm of text or phone calls, and for every time they ever mentioned maybe properly meeting one day, came 5 excuses why they never would. But, this meant something else entirely. He didn’t want to get out of it, he didn’t want to let an opportunity for them to finally be face to face to pass when they’d already spent eight years sharing their deepest shit to each other, shit he didn’t tell his best friends in the city. They deserved this chance to finally have that final bridge crossed, didn’t they? 

It took two hours, and a high that left him nearly non-functional before he’d finally figured out what felt like the perfect, relaxed response, and sent it out without any more thought.

Always got time for coffee. Can’t wait 

Waking up the next morning, he’d scrambled. All the anxiety of receiving the text that he’d manage to mute with weed rushing back the second he’d fully processed the situation all over again. He’d put on his best shirt, a fact that he was suddenly embarrassed about, and grabbed his jacket and was out the door. The entire way over to meet her, he ran through every scenario. Deciding, despite knowing her voice, that she was secretly a weird old dude he’d been talking to that was going to harvest his organs. He figured, a quick scan of the cafe, and if he saw any sketchy looking dude holding a knife, he’d slip back out and haul ass out of there. A repeated ‘you know her better than anyone. it’s going to be fine’ as he paced the sidewalk back and forth from the corner and the entry of the cafe.

The bell above the door brought him to reality, and he scanned through the seated patrons, pleased to report that none of the handful of people sitting in looked particularly threatening, or interested in a new presence stopping in. Except for one. He’d locked eyes, and he almost turned heel and left. Suddenly self-conscious of what he was presented with, deciding that maybe he would have rather this all been some elaborate scheme and had been out to harvest his organs, than someone he was going to suddenly nervously stumble through his words with when he’d never really struggled to find them with her before. He gave a nervous smile, and waved, before slowly walking over, forgoing a coffee, at least for now. “Lena?” He asked, half expecting her to say no, and ready to tuck tail and head back home to let his hurt pride send him spiraling in private.

[magdelenarhodes]

She’d intended to be a quiet observer, just for a second. Just long enough to gather her courage, or the closest thing she had to it. But with the chime that mattered most, with the one that seemed to bring everything around her to a grinding halt, the only part of Del that was clutching any of her convictions fell away. She felt it in her own features – felt the way her lips pull into the kind of smile that she didn’t even know she was still capable of. Her breath caught in her throat, any correction being held down with it. She meant to say no – wanted to say no. Wanted to do this part right, even if she’d managed to do all the rest of it wrong. It wasn’t fair not to five him the chance to turn heel and run – it wasn’t fair for the first words she spoke aloud to him to be anything but a softer version of ‘everything was predicated on a lie, but I can explain, if you want to let me.’

She couldn’t hide behind Lena when they were face to face. She didn’t have the buffer between them that had once been more than two thousand miles wide. She didn’t, as she stood, even have two feet. She opened her mouth to speak, willing that tiny, detrimental word to come out. Instead, she heard herself say his name. Heard it as she heard the door chime again in the distance, heard a chair scrape against the floor somewhere behind her. A distant thing, from someone and somewhere else, under just under the quiet ringing that started in her ears the second she locked eyes with him. She wished there had been some composure in her voice – wished it had carried any sort of strength. Instead, it was weak and watery. The reluctant intersection of a whisper, a question, and an answer. For the second, she acted against her own intentions, her arms around Sam in a hug she’d desperately needed for the last eight years. The hug she wanted to give him from the first ‘yeah, me too.’ It felt desperate – but so did she. Because he was here, he was tangible, and he was real. But you aren’t, she reminded herself, that tiny voice being the only thing in that second that could make her let go. So she did, her smile apologetic, and her cheeks flushed with the embarrassment of feeling so irretrievably outside of her own control.

“Sorry, I just,” she stammered with a soft shake of her head, still standing, her gaze flickering to her own cup of coffee. She didn’t need to really inspect it to know it was down to the dregs, not with the way the caffeine had coupled with her nerves in the soft shake of her hands. “Hi,” she managed, the word sounded too soft – and not anything like the ‘I have to be honest with you,’ she’d planned. “It’s just... it’s really good to finally see you.”

[magdelenarhodes]

CLOSED STARTER

With: Sam Loftgren Where: Any coffee shop

A part of Del wanted to throw her hands up and complain that it wasn’t fair that her most honest relationship – her most trusted relationship – was predicated on a lie. But that part of her fell silent, because she was the one who had built an entire foundation from nothing at all. Little truths ensconced in big lies, big truths only finding their way forward because it felt like someone else was saying them. In the last eight years, Del had found so many ways to justify herself – so many things that rang hollow, even to her.

Two weeks in Pennsylania, two weeks pretending she was still in Boulder – a place she’d never been. One month since she’d fired off the text that she was going to be in the area for work, would it be okay if she stayed in Philadelphia? Now, her name was on a lease, and she was pretending this whole situation was fair more temporary than it was. One month of learning that a moment of courage doesn’t negate a lifetime of a cowardice, and it certainly shouldn’t have been enough to send her across the country and setting her life on entirely new trajectory. It was the final thought that propelled her to send the text that she’d meant to fire off before her obscene dose of melatonin could pull her under.

Finally in the same area code – got time for that coffee tomorrow?

The message was too casual – overcompensated to hide the quiet desperation in hoping for both a yes, and praying for a no. Throwing her phone into airplane mode hadn’t stopped the text from going through – she watched in tired horror as the bubble flashed blue. Even in her first run at real honesty, she dug her heels in on another lie. She wanted to take it back – wanted to unsend the message, wanted to pack her bags and leave the state. Lena Rivers could have it, because Del Rhodes maybe was only a girl who was never going to be meant for anywhere but Hilltop, Ohio. But she didn’t. Instead, she found herself with tired eyes (the melatonin, as it turned out, had no power against the weight of her own conscience and terrible decision making) and as many shots of espresso as the barista thought she could legally give her. She was just going to scope it out, she justified. Maybe Sam wasn’t Sam, either – that notion felt both cruel, and like a relief. She’d left her phone in her car, making good on the airplane mode she should’ve utilized the night before. For someone who had spent the better part of a decade lying, she wasn’t particularly good at it – not when she had nothing to hide behind. Her eyes flickered to the door with every chime of the bell, as though she wasn’t half an hour early. Somewhere between the first and fifth patron, her mantra shifted from ‘you can do this. just be honest,’ to ‘it’s not too late to get up and walk away, no one ever has to know.’

[magdelenarhodes]

CHARACTER INFORMATION:

FULL NAME: Magdelena Rhodes

NICKNAMES: Del, Lena

PRONOUNS AND GENDER: Cis woman, she/her

SEXUALITY: Bisexual

OCCUPATION: Librarian

TL;DR:

TRIGGER WARNING(S): CAR ACCIDENT, DEATH  

kind of sad girl hours forever

from small town ohio, comes from a home where her parents loved her, but barely tolerated each other.

spent most of her life lying – about her home, about her family. spent most of time reading and losing herself in fictional words that seemed a little better and a little easier.

she was really, truly honest with one person – a kid named eric who moved in next door, and who she subsequently spent almost every waking moment with after.

her dad passed away suddenly when she was in high school, and eric was the only person who was able to pull her out of that grief. her mom was dealing with a lot of shit on her own, and had never really learned to parent, despite taking a somewhat passable run of it for all of del’s life.

she and eric went off to college together, making all their dumb plans about the rest of their lives. she had loved him for most of the time they’d known each other, but she was waiting to say it. or maybe she wasn’t – maybe she never intended to say it at all.

eric was killed in a car crash after their college graduation.

without eric, del didn’t know who she was. still doesn’t, in all the ways that matter.

there was no one to pull her out of this one. seeking anything, she joined a small online support group. but she joined the group with a different name, a different job, with a different relationship to the person she’d lost. it felt too vulnerable to enter that world as del rhodes, who lost her best friend. lena rivers who lost her fiancé felt easier.

as lena, she made a friend. a real friend – someone who really understood.

she had a lot of time to tell sam the truth. a lot of time, and even more opportunities. she hadn’t expect their late night talks to last for days, much less years.

after eight of them, she made the decision to finally meet up with him in person. she packed up her life in hilltop, and rented to first one bedroom apartment in philly.

personality wise, she’s a very lost person. she wants to be good, she wants to do the right thing, but her own insecurities keep her from it more often than not.

FUN DUMB STATS:

Birthday: June 30, 1992

Zodiac Sign: Cancer ☉ | Cancer ☽ | Libra➶  

MBTI: ISFP

Enneagram: Type 2

Temperament: Melancholic

Moral Alignment: True neutral

Element: Air

WANTED CONNECTIONS:

someone she’s actually honest with

new friends

coworkers

drinking buddies

absolutely anything

ESTABLISHED CONNECTIONS:

person she’s been catfishing for the past eight years - sam loftgren

FULL BIOGRAPHY:

Magdelena Rhodes is a true cautionary tale of parents staying together for their kid, only to the absolute detriment of everyone involved. Growing up, her whole life had been a sort of pretending – a one-man show for an audience of none. She saw the life she wanted in classmates, saw the parents she wished for in the drop off and pick up zones. She was in the second grade when she started to pretend her life resembled the ones she was so jealous of. She had always been good at losing herself in another life.

Her parents did love her, she thought. They just had difficulty navigating that love in their hatred for each other. They’d had her young, before they really had an understanding of themselves, much less before they understood each other. Desperate to do right by their burgeoning family, they got married and bought a doublewide they could barely afford. None of that changed the fact that they were just fundamentally different people. Her dad was a serious man – stoic to the point of seeming unfriendly, and contemplative to the extent of nearly being mute until he found the right way to say what he meant. Her mother was the opposite – she was a woman of extremes, flying so high some days that she seemed like the sun in the Rhodes household. Other days, she didn’t leave bed. Their daughter was their only common ground, but it wasn’t enough. It took Del nearly a lifetime to realize it never would’ve been.

They tried, in their own ways. But they were just pretending, too. Her mom liked to take her to movies after school sometimes when her dad came home early – a thinly-veiled gambit to spend less time with the man she married when she was newly eighteen years old. Her dad took her for ice cream whenever her mom was out later than either of them expected, and drove around until Magdelena fell asleep in the car. It wasn’t until she was older that she realized he was hoping she would be too tired by the time they got back to their double-wide to hear the subsequent argument through the paper thin walls. He wanted it to work so badly that del pretended it did.

She found real solace in a neighbor. Before his family had even finished unloading the moving van, Eric Atwater was in her yard with a baseball and asking if she wanted to play catch. For a second, she felt the itching self-consciousness that hadn’t left since the first sleepover she attended at another kid’s house. She was too aware of the holes in the trailer’s vinyl siding, the ground under her feet being more dirty and mud than grass, the old barely-running Astrovan in the front yard. But then she looked at Eric’s house and saw the shattered window held together by duct tape that was older than either of them, the dry rotted wood of the two stairs by his front door. She decided to play catch after all.

Eric was the first person to tell a young Magdelena that her name sounded like an old lady, and declared that he was going to call her Del. She let him, and by the end of their first summer as friends, she barely answered to anything else from anyone. She saw him every single day that first summer, making up dumb games that they were both terrible at, especially because they both kept changing the rules. When school started, they were just as inseparable. They shoved their desks together in any classes they shared – an act of short-lived rebellion that ended with them being seated all the way across the room from each other in almost every instance. Other kids came and went, their circle of friends growing and shrinking all the time, but Del and Eric remained.

Eric was her best friend, and she’d spent most of her life being in love with him. Del always thought he knew – thought there would be a day when she finally worked up the courage to say it. He punched her first boyfriend when he caught him kissing another girl under the bleachers at their freshman year homecoming game. Del wrote every single paper he needed to get his AP English credit. They protected each other in the way only kids who had always been fending for themselves could.

When her dad died, Eric was the only one who was able to reach her. He took her for ice cream, ordering rum raisin – a flavor she’d always hated as a kid, but had been her dad’s favorite. When just the smell of it made Del break down, he asked what her dad’s favorite song had been. They listened to that old Cat Stevens album on repeat, Eric squeezing her hand when Father and Son came on. Later, he drove them around until his car ran out of gas. Pushing the old Corolla up the hill was the first time Del laughed since he passed, tears streaming down her face until she was no longer sure what emotion was pouring out of her. It hadn’t been what she wanted in her grief – but she’d needed it.

They went off to the same college, his U of O acceptance letter hanging on her wall, and hers on his. Everyone assumed they would end up together one day, even as they both protested. She wondered if her objections rang more hollow than his. Nothing had ever happened between them – nothing more than holding hands in the way kids do on the playground with someone they met only moments ago. That was alright by Del. She suspected one day she would be the best man at his wedding, and when she smiled, she would mean it. That’s how they worked.

But Eric left her, too. The summer after their college graduation, he was killed in a car accident. It was on impact, she’d been told – like it was supposed to lessen her grief. Like there was anything inside her that could find comfort in a world without Eric.

He had been eleven days older, and by nature, eleven days wiser, he’d insisted when they were kids. The twelfth day after he passed was the hardest – the day Magdelena Rhodes became one day older than Eric would ever be.  She was just twenty-two, and the only person who had ever really known her was gone, and all she had left of him was a sweatshirt that was starting to smell more like her and less like him. She was, she thought, too young to understand her mother’s blackout days.

It was on the twelfth day after he died that Del did something that would shape the rest of her life going forward. She found a support group online – a tiny little forum where a group of lost people tried to navigate their grief together. She felt like a person outside of her body when she started to type – watched herself build someone new in the hollow place Del had once filled. She watched as Lena rivers took shape, a photojournalist from Boulder who lost her fiancé. She hadn’t expected to need her for long, this fictional woman who let her hide in her shadow. Someone who was brave enough to say everything she’d choked on. Someone who wasn’t afraid. Against her better judgment, in her clawing desperation, Del made a friend. Sam, whether he meant to or not, became her lifeline. It was after the first time they stayed up messaging back and forth all night that she should’ve told the truth – but she didn’t. Even as their IMs turned to texts, and texts turned to calls. Even when their messages were the only thing that got her out of bed some days – even when they crawled out of their grief together.

Life was moving forward, and Del was finally moving with it. She got a job at the library back in Hilltop, and she pretended that she didn’t imagine Eric around every corner. That she didn’t still hear the echo of his laughter down long hallways. It would’ve been worse if she didn’t, she thought. Feeling okay again felt like a betrayal, an act of treason she wasn’t sure she would ever find herself committing. But weeks turned to months, and months turned to years, and the quiet spaces found silence again. She still went to see him, though. She lost hours and sometimes entire days sitting with her back against his headstone, reading him books she knew he would like, and sometimes ones she knew he would hate in a childlike hope of him making good on his promise to haunt her if he died first.

She stopped telling people how much she went to see him, even when they asked. She hated the way the pity she’d already resented shifted into judgment. But she told Sam. Sam, who never made her feel like she was pathetic. Sam, who never made her feel like she was anything but understood. At least, Sam made Lena feel seen. Lena, who was a widow and still found adventures in her life. Not Del, who had come to feel like pretending her friendship with Eric had been anything more diminished it. Del, who only found adventures in books. That guilt started to eat away at the edges of her, chipping away any of her flimsy resolve that she would never have to come clean – that her honesty would be worse for them both.

It took Del eight years to decide it was time for the truth. The kind of truth she owed Sam from the start, and had never found a way to say. In a moment of uncharacteristic boldness, she backed herself into a corner she couldn’t get out of. She quit her job at the library in Hilltop, letting the lease on her tiny, cluttered apartment run out. She couldn’t stay here forever – she’d been telling herself that since Eric died. Even if they’d made a grade-school blood promise to never go where the other couldn’t follow. As she sat with him for what would be the last time for a long time, finger tracing along that jagged scar on her palm, she gently reminded him that he broke their promise first. Her car was already loaded, but at that moment, she felt herself wavering. She felt the weight of everything she was leaving behind, and the more crushing burden of everything she still had to do.

Still, she did it. The drive took days, and so many times she found herself doing the math of exactly how much time it would take her to get back. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected of Philadelphia – who she expected herself to be in Pennsylvania. There was an undeniable edge of disappointment when she’d crossed so many state lines, and still carried Del Rhodes with her. Even as she signed a new lease – three months, enough time to change her mind, if she needed to. She got a job at the library. She was, despite her protestations, putting down roots. Still, she hasn’t found the courage to send the ‘i’m here, let’s meet up’ text. One step at a time.

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