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She had promised Mike that she would come back, and friends don’t lie. But she had to lie.
Because she and Mike weren’t just friends anymore, she’d watched enough TV in the past year to know that. She’d seen countless movies, watched enough soap operas to know that when someone makes another person feel the way that Mike made her feel, it’s something else.
But the word for it. El had heard things like “boyfriend,” “lover,” “special friend,” “married.”
That last one she’d had to ask Hop about. He told her that when two people liked each other so much that they wanted to be together forever, they got married.
“Are you married?” she’d asked.
Hopper had stabbed a bit harder at his gravy-covered mashed potatoes than was absolutely necessary. “Nah. I was once, though.”
“Once?”
“You see, kid, sometimes people realize they were wrong. That they didn’t want to be together forever. When that happens, they can get something called a divorce, which means that they aren’t married anymore. That’s what happened.”
She hadn’t asked any more questions after that, but she kept thinking about it. Marriage. It seemed so big, so impossible. To like someone so much, you’d be with them forever?
Forever was never something she’d thought of until then, and she didn’t think of it often afterwards, only thinking of the days, each day as it came, each day that Mike called her.
But seeing him again, hugging him for real, made her think of forever again.
She looked at him and realized how you could stay with a person, how you could care for them for your whole life and never need anything else. She hugged him and never wanted to let go.
Love. It was a word she’d heard, but never asked about. She knew it was big and important, but she hadn’t realized that that was the caring. That was what made people stay together forever, what made Mike call her every day for 353 days. What made her lie to him.
Because she had no idea if she’d come back. She could close the gate, sure. But she was ready, she was prepared to not come back.
In a perfect world, Mike would’ve been her forever, but El’s forever was to be much shorter than his, and she would not take it away from him.
So she tells him that he won’t lose her, and it’s not technically a lie because if she was gone, she had a feeling that he’d keep her with him. She wouldn’t be gone, not really.
Hop drives away, and El is next to him, looking back at the boy who she loved.
Who she would love forever.