For most of my life, I convinced myself that some people were meant to remain in the past, no matter how badly you once wished they could have stayed in your future.
Then, after forty-one years, I heard a voice say my name.
“Ruthie.”
And suddenly, every year between us disappeared.
I was standing outside a hospital room with one hand resting on the door.
Forty-one years.
That was how long it had been since I had seen Jeffrey.
Forty-one years since his final letter.
Forty-one years since he had asked me never to contact him again.
Now his son, Peter, was standing beside me.
“He keeps asking if you’re here yet,” Peter said.
I looked at him.
He had Jeffrey’s eyes.
“Is he awake?”
“He’s trying to stay awake for you.”
For a moment, I almost turned around.
I was sixty years old.
I had spent most of my adult life learning how to exist without Jeffrey.
And less than an hour earlier, I had been sitting alone in my childhood home when the old landline rang.
Now I was about to walk into a room and see the person I had once believed would always be part of my life.
I finally opened the door.
Jeffrey lay in the hospital bed.
He was thinner than I remembered.
His hair was white now, and time had changed almost every feature of his face.
But somehow, he was still unmistakably Jeffrey.
His eyes found mine immediately.
“Ruthie.”
My throat tightened.
Then I noticed something sitting on the chair beside his bed.
A wooden box.
The second I recognized it, I stopped breathing.
It had belonged to my father.
And I hadn’t seen it since the year he died.
—
Jeffrey and I became best friends when we were seventeen.
Not boyfriend and girlfriend.
Just Jeffrey and Ruth.
At least, that was what we always told people.
He dated other girls.
I went out with other boys.
I even attended prom with someone else, although Jeffrey ended up driving me there after my date’s car broke down.
Everyone around us thought we were ridiculous.
Our families were convinced that sooner or later, we would realize what they already believed was obvious.
My mother, Erica, used to watch us sitting at the kitchen table arguing over homework.
“One day,” she would say, “you two are finally going to figure this out.”
Jeffrey would grin.
“Figure out what?”
Mom would just smile.
“You know exactly what.”
Then Jeffrey would look at me, and I would roll my eyes.
“We’re friends, Mom.”
And technically, that was true.
The truth underneath it was something neither of us was brave enough to examine.
I think we were both more afraid of losing the friendship than we were excited by the possibility of becoming something more.
So we left things exactly as they were.
Until one summer night when we were nineteen.
We had both gone on terrible dates.
Mine had spent nearly the entire evening talking about himself.
Jeffrey’s date had left early after they argued over some movie.
Later that night, Jeffrey and I met at our old high school football field.
The gates had been left open, so we slipped beneath the bleachers and sat in the grass.
Jeffrey leaned against one of the metal supports.
“We’re terrible at this.”
I laughed.
“At dating?”
“At choosing people.”
“That might be true.”
He became quiet.
Then he asked,
“What if we never figure it out?”
“We’ll survive.”
“What if we’re both still single when we’re old?”
I looked at him.
Jeffrey held out his pinky.
“If we’re both single at sixty, we stop being idiots and find each other.”
I stared at his hand.
He wasn’t joking.
“Jeffrey.”
“I mean it.”
“Why sixty?”
“Because if we haven’t figured our lives out by then, clearly we need help.”
I laughed and wrapped my pinky around his.
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
For one strange second, neither of us moved.
I remember wanting to say something else.
Something important.
But I didn’t.
Two months later, Jeffrey left for college three states away.
—
At first, distance didn’t change much.
We wrote constantly.
Long letters.
Birthday cards.
