One Good Reason

I remember the day he died.

Vividly.

It’s amazing how someone can take up so much space in your life in one minute and then none at all the next.

Jonathan was Evie’s boyfriend. Her first love.

Evie is my best friend. My first love.

You might imagine that this caused tension between Jonathan and I from the beginning, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I loved Evie and Evie loved him, so I loved him, too. I was a straight A student, who understood both the transitive property and the rules of friendship, so I didn’t struggle for a second to adopt this mindset. One day, Jonathan was there, and he was welcome.

He’s been dead and gone for six years now, so you can imagine my surprise when he walks into the too-cold studio room and is introduced as my partner for the upcoming summer baking competition series.

Allow me to clarify. When I say that Jonathan is dead, I mean dead to me.

In reality, he is all too alive, and equipped with the audacity to look happy to see me.

“Holy shit, Madison!” He is smiling and pulls me into an unwelcome hug, which I am too shocked to return. “This is crazy, what are the odds?”

I hear what he’s saying, but my brain doesn’t fully absorb the words. I blink and when I open my eyes I’m not looking out at the sound stage, but instead I’m in Evie’s old bedroom, in the house her parents no longer live in. The room is cluttered full of suitcases and shopping bags, because Evie leaves the next morning to move into her new college dorm. Instead of excitement, when I look at my friend’s face I see utter devastation.

Evie and Jonathan had been together all through high school, and naturally, she saw no end in sight. They were all set to go to colleges forty minutes apart, and already had a plan in place for how often they would visit and call. Unbeknownst to Evie, Jonathan had gotten off the waitlist at a school on the west coast, thousands of miles away from where she’d be in Pennsylvania.

On Evie’s last morning at home, a rudely sunny and beautiful day, he’d picked her up, taken her to breakfast and told her that, not only will he be on the other side of the country, but he also didn't think they should stay together after all. The cloudless blue sky was a stark juxtaposition to the storm of emotions that were written across my best friend’s face still, hours after he’d dropped her back at home with a measly “good luck”.

Like flipping a switch, I shut down any shred of connection I felt towards Jonathan. I un-memorized his cell phone number, I cropped him out of our photos, and I erased any idea I had that he would be part of our, of my, future.

Hell hath no fury, and all that.

Jonathan died in my eyes on that August day long ago, but I guess it would be incorrect to say that I erased him entirely from my life. He’s actually been an all-too present fixture for years. I root against his success, find fault with every new girlfriend he posts online, and may or may not have hired an Etsy witch to curse him.

And now, apparently, I will be spending the next four weeks relying on him to achieve my dreams.

I dropped out of college and abandoned my biology degree three years in and enrolled in culinary school. I’ve been sweating in kitchens ever since, hoping to one day open my own bakery.

Two months ago, my school sent out an email notifying all current students and alumni about open casting calls for a new cooking competition, which would pair trained chefs with professionals from entirely unrelated fields to compete in different challenges. The prize money is $15,000.

I had made it through every round of the audition process and was here today to meet my partner. I was only told that he was a “finance bro” and they thought that his energy would play off of mine well for the cameras.

“You guys know each other?” asked Emily, the production assistant who had led me into this nightmare.

“We went to high school together,” Jonathan says, since I still haven’t been able to form words.

“Shut up,” Emily says, actually stopping in her tracks. “That is amazing, that’s going to add such a cool angle for the show. I bet you guys will be fan favorites. I have to tell the team about this.” She regains the ability to walk and hustles out of the room, leaving me alone with this ghost from my past.

I want to walk out behind her and tell her this can’t work. I want to demand a new partner. I want to yell. I want to cry. I want to call Evie.

I do none of these things, choosing instead to stare at Jonathan wordlessly for another full minute before I speak.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask, not adding the “to me” that I feel in my gut.

“I actually auditioned with a buddy of mine, he thought it was funny that all the show said they were looking for was ‘skilled professionals with no skills in the kitchen’. We thought it would be a random thing to do one Saturday, but I guess my lack of talent really spoke to them.” He still sports the easy grin I remember from our teenage days.

“Do you…Are you not…” I have too many questions bubbling inside me to pick one to ask. Finally, I land on “You remember me, right?”

He laughs. “Madison, of course I remember you. I spent the better part of four years watching movies in your basement and forcing you to teach me algebra.”

“You spent the better part of four years in love with my best friend and then you disappeared, like fucking Houdini.” I say.

He looks taken aback, like the force of my vitriol after all these years surprises him.

“Madison,” he says. “You don’t,”

I cut him off, not interested in whatever he has to say for himself. “Fuck me. This can’t be happening. This is the biggest opportunity of my entire life and the one person that is supposed to help me is you. Fuck me.”

“Are you actually pissed about this? I can’t tell if you’re serious.”

“Jonathan, have you not noticed all the not talking to each other we’ve done since high school?” I cry.

“I know you were pissed at me, but Evie and I broke up six years ago. We’ve lived a lot of life between then and now. I was a dick to end things how I did, but I was a kid and she’s clearly come out of it ok. Isn’t she engaged?” She is. She asked me to bake their wedding cake. “How are you seriously mad right now?” He’s starting to look as angry as I feel, my attitude egging him on into his own fit of rage.

“Because you don’t get over something like that!”

“I didn’t do it to you!”

“Yes you did!” I practically scream, and this stops the anger rising through his face. It fades back to confusion. “You left me too, Jonathan.” I say quietly.

Because yeah. That college, forty minutes away from Evie that he was all set to go to? That was my school. Our school. We were going together.

He broke up with Evie and I fucking hate his guts for that, but I lost my friend, too.

I look up at Jonathan. He looks like I hit him.

“I. Madison. I,” It’s his turn now to start a million thoughts and finish zero. I let him flounder.

Eventually he says, “I didn’t think you cared. I called you. A few times. You never answered, so I stopped trying. I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“I didn’t,” I say. “For Evie.” I add. “For me, I missed my friend.”

More silence.

“Well,” he finally says, testing out his grin again. “Wouldn’t that make this a happy coincidence? Friends, teammates, it’s a win-win.”

“No, Jonathan, this isn’t a reunion special. This is a big deal to me and I don’t know how I’m supposed to rely on you for this.” I’m fighting back tears. “Give me one good reason to trust you.”

“Other than the fact that you have no other option?” He says, and I glare daggers at him. He holds up his hands in mock surrender. “Ok, sorry. One good reason, that’s all you need?”

“I’d like for you to undo all your stupid life choices, but, like you said, that’s not an option,” I say. “So yeah. One good reason.”

“Ok,” he cracks his knuckles and shakes the tension out of his body, like he’s preparing for a fight. In some ways, he is.

“I gave you the literal shirt off my back when you bled through your jeans sophomore year.” I remember how grateful I was to have his flannel to wrap around my waist for the rest of the day until I could go home and change.

“I brought you a cake pop from Starbucks every time Evie and I went the semester that we had a free period while you were in Econ,” he’s ticking off the reasons on his fingers, clearly not stopping at just one. “I lied for you on our field trip to DC so you could go meet up with that guy instead of watching that one woman show about the constitution.” He said I had explosive diarrhea. So I did get to go on my date, but that diarrhea story spread through our class rather quickly and I got some very concerned looks for the rest of the trip.

“I watched you run track in rain, sleet, and snow. I read ‘Twilight’ for you. I buried your goldfish when it died.”

“Ok, ok, you can stop.” I said. “I only asked for one.” I’m trying to infuse my voice with venom but I think I’ve lost some of the edge I had just minutes ago.

Just then, Emily bursts back in, with several other crew members in tow. “Ok guys, we’re starting off shooting your first interview segment. The other teams are doing theirs separately, but we decided to shoot yours together. This is when we’ll introduce your history, so tell us some background on how you met, how long you’ve known each other. All that stuff.”

They hustle us into our seats and we sit next to each other, not talking while the team buzzes around us prepping the set.

At go time, Emily stands behind the camera man and asks us some basic questions to prompt our introductions. We say our names, our jobs, our goals for the competition.

“And in a twist even we didn’t know about, you guys actually knew each other before today. Tell us about that, about what it’ll be like to be working together,,” she says.

I glance at the man sitting next to me. I feel six years worth of hurt and loss and anger swirl through me, but something else is holding steady amid all the chaos. I look at the camera.

“I guess you could say I have a few good reasons to trust this guy.”