Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday last spring.
One iced vanilla matcha with oat milk
And a strawberry matcha with coconut milk and an extra shot of matcha
please
I would wait outside his dorm, hands cold from the frozen air and chilly ice. Max would come up to me, his homey smell trailing behind him. Wide smile, wet curled hair. He would take the matcha out of my left hand with his right, straw out of my right hand with his left and chirp:
thanks!
Max used to wear this scent. It would seep into the crevices of the thick, soft sweaters he slung over his thin body. His scarves, his curls. When his skinny arms wrapped around me it was always a little too tight. Too long. Like he wanted me to know that he wouldn’t let go. I’d bury my face into his left shoulder and breathe in. That was home.
I met Max during my second year of college. We were introduced the night I moved into my dorm. By the morning, I forgot who he was, but when he walked past my mom and me the next day at a popular campus coffee shop, his lips curled upward and his blue eyes shined at me to match his turquoise sweater. I wondered why he shined at me. My mom asked, “Who was that?” I shrugged but was absolutely starstruck. I would eventually learn that Max has always had that effect on people. To this day, I look at him and I wonder how he manages to reflect the sun with his smile.
And suddenly, he was everywhere and everything to me.
I credit Max for teaching me what friendship is. What a best friend is. I struggled in my first year of college to form any lasting connections. But Max brought me pull-apart Twizzlers when I had a bad day and always told me where he was studying so I could join. He sent me texts of birds he found funny, scenes I would like, conversations he overheard. When I called, he picked up. Or always called back.
When my spring break plans fell through, he took me to Paris. I leaned my cheek against his shoulder as he crossed the ocean for the first time, and we linked arms when going through customs, poking fun of the officer who thought we were a couple. We slept side-by-side, pillows between us, moonlight glowing in our Airbnb. He slept on his back with his arms crossed over his chest. I slept on my stomach with my arms over my head, hair tangling, neck twisted. We listened to each other sing in the shower, and bickered about being on time to our dinner reservation. We took turns carrying his backpack on a hike, passing his water bottle back and forth when we hit a flat stretch. At night we knocked knees at cocktail bars and skipped down empty streets with giant cones of ice cream. When mine fell, he didn’t hesitate to scoop half of his ice cream into my sad cone.
I always felt lucky that Max chose me. I never asked why he did choose me, but as time went on, I discovered that many thought his love was too much, too intense. He loved too fiercely for a lot of people to handle, but I embraced his attention, craved it, and gave it right back. And when we walked, I linked my right arm into his left and he smiled down at me. There was never a doubt in my head that Max was special, and I was special because he chose me and because I chose him.
Max sprayed his scent on me when I went on my first date. Had my first kiss. When we laid in my bed, it would smell like him for days. The scent was somewhere between a perfume and cologne. Musty like a leathered study, but somehow fresh and light, like the houseplants he collected and obsessively moved around his room depending on the sun’s path. The way it mixed with his shampoo and cashmere sweaters felt intentional. The way his ringlets of hair would remember that scent for days was astonishing.
I don’t know what happened, but suddenly nothing was the same. It had been a few days without seeing each other after we got back from Paris, so we decided to meet up for matchas. Sitting just a few feet away from where Max first shined his light on me, where he first chose me, where my mom asked, “Who was that?” and I shrugged, I expected to see the boy who I knew everything about. The boy with the brain I knew every crevice and curve of. The boy who knew the streaks in my monochromatic eyes. But the boy in front of me was not the Max I knew. There were long, awkward pauses between clauses and an omittance of plans in our discussion that had never existed before. In one of those pauses I considered asking what was going on? Why things felt so different? What had happened since Paris? I didn’t. I was too scared that it would be my fault that Max was gone. So, I pretended like I was sitting with my best friend, even though I hardly knew this boy.
I never see Max anymore, but I see him everywhere. In the curly heads crunched over problem sets in the library and in the bouncy gait of a boy in a rush. I see Max in the empty hand I get back now that I only order one matcha:
One iced vanilla matcha with oat milk
please
I even run into him between classes sometimes. He gives me a quick hug and makes some remark about getting lunch sometime. He never texts me and I never text him. It’s hard to explain that the version of Max that I chose, who chose me, is as gone as those who have graduated and moved on years ago. His face turned from a bright smile to a ghostly glow that I can’t recognize.
Most of all, I see Max in the friendships I have today. How I still like to link arms with my girlfriend or whoever is walking next to me. How I go out of my way to pick up breakfast for my roommate before a big exam in the morning. I follow the formula he taught me. How to reflect the sun with my smile. How to find those who are unsuspecting (just like Max found me all that time ago) and blind them with my light. How to choose someone and make them feel special because they were chosen.
Max doesn’t have that smell anymore. I wonder if he lost it. Or if it got buried in the back of his bathroom cupboard. Or if the season for the scent was just as fleeting as the few weeks of sunshine at the end of the semester. Maybe the bottle just ran out.