Cantonese Jericho and I are almost never on the same page. When I’m doing well, he’s getting dumped, and when I’m bedridden, he’s globetrotting. We joke that we can’t both be happy at the same time: One of us has to be miserable for the other to prosper.

“Can you ask your girlfriend to break up with you?” I texted him before my chemistry final exam. In the days leading up to the exam, my phone had automatically bookmarked a grade calculator. I needed an 82 to land an A, and the more time I spent in the library, the more clearly I could see how low my chances were. “You can get back together Saturday after noon.”

“Okay, okay,” he replied. “I’ll be really sad.”

We had met in an elevator on the first day of the fall semester of my sophomore year and his junior year. After we had both spent the day standing in the back of every available course on pre-Columbian history, we ended up back at our dorm at the same time. “I saw you everywhere today,” I said as he pushed the button for his floor. “Do you seriously live right above me?” I lived in room 506, he was in 603. We had no choice but to know each other.

It wasn’t long before we had graduated from class friends to friends who met in class. He gave me pistachios from the giant bags his mother shipped to him, and I made him flat whites with oat milk and a half-pump of lavender syrup at my barista job. He visited my hometown the summer he returned from a semester abroad. On the Amtrak platform, he seemed to hold his tongue. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “You’re just smaller than I remember.”

Whenever we were apart, we called as often as we could and texted fake names (Jacques Boneless, Gourd Fatherson, Justin Breadstick) back and forth. “Which one do you want to be?” I texted.

“Can I please be Cantonese Jericho?” I chose Hugeness Bigness.

When I came back to Providence after finals for his commencement, I cried while helping him move out. He forced me to take everything I wanted (a Miles Davis poster, his cousin’s sweater that I’m hoping she forgets about, his obsolete fake ID to add to my collection) and everything I didn’t (rolls of film that had already been developed, a Fujifilm instant camera, a bonsai tree starter kit that I knew I’d just kill).

The last time I’d cried in his apartment, it was because he had fed me noodles so spicy that I started wailing about my insecurities.

“I feel like no one cares if I’m around,” I sobbed.

He laughed and took photos of me. “You need to train your spice tolerance.”

My face grew red and puffy. “I can’t!”

“Hugeness Bigness,” he leveled with me, “Nat, Kiran, Lucas, they all like hanging out with you. We love you. We want you around.” I set the noodles aside, and we watched Twin Peaks until I fell asleep.

It was only natural that once I stopped crying and took the posters he couldn’t pack, Cantonese Jericho started. We had spent half our nights at his apartment on Ives Street. We cooked somewhat successful dinners, aside from one dish he called “Bolognese Bianca” that was some blend of cream and ground beef that turned purple on the stove. We watched movies I didn’t understand and did German homework that neither of us could comprehend. He told me about his relationship problems and I told him about my social conflicts. We retreated to each other’s apartments when the people we liked didn’t like us back. He would say, “They kind of suck,” and I would say, “Who wouldn’t love you?” I fell asleep on the couch and sometimes came to consciousness just for a moment as he laid a blanket over me.

+++

For months after he graduated and moved to Vienna, the only response I had to “How are you?” was “I’m good, just in an adjustment period,” but there was no sufficient amount of adjusting to be done. Our semi-weekly phone calls from his study abroad days became the norm once more. I knew that I needed him more than he needed me, but he was always the one to call. He sent me photos with no caption: a giant statue of Serge Gainsbourg’s credit card at a restaurant in Paris, his enormous and captivatingly fancy cat, a graffiti drawing of a kitten that he turned into Angelus Novus. I never sent a compiled list of updates; I told him every unimportant thought the minute it appeared.

Still, what I would consider my “college experience” ended when he left. Cooking dinner became a chore, and I started avoiding as many social gatherings as I could. Without Cantonese Jericho, living in my own apartment felt like playing house, like going through the motions of real life when my days outside of class consisted almost entirely of knitting, working a restaurant job, and watching Survivor. It felt like there was no way to be happy here, just a way to be content.

I did so poorly in a presentation in my Toni Morrison class last semester that I immediately dropped the class and booked a flight to Vienna for spring break. It was a long time coming; contrary to what I had been told about Toni Morrison, there was a limit to how many rape, murder, and kitten-death scenes I could tolerate. Cantonese Jericho was the only one I wanted to see, let alone spend a week with. Aside from my mother, he’s the only person I never get sick of.

+++

He has a sweet indifference to my arrival in Vienna. I asked him over the phone a few days before my flight how to get to his apartment, and he replied, “You’ll figure it out.” He still hates how long I take to eat and tie my shoes, and he still disagrees with all my takes on books and art. I still don’t hold his pretentious opinions against him because they’re probably right. He still tells me he worries about me. I still tell him not to.

His apartment is hardly big enough to make coffee in the morning. Aside from his bed, there are about four square feet of space to move around in his room. I snore so loudly the first night that I walk to the Apotheke the next morning and spend 23 euros on Breathe Right strips. We decide to sleep head-to-foot for the rest of the week. We try to tape my mouth closed, but my drool forms channels in the adhesive. “The things I do for you,” I complain. 

“I really don’t think I’m being dramatic,” he insists. “It’s really loud.” I should have guessed that every night I couldn’t sleep, he slept soundly.

We spend the week eating at cafes and going to museums. He shows me around the city and introduces me to his friends as I try to understand why every restaurant is called a cafe, even if it’s a semi-formal sit-down dinner service. At night, we read side-by-side and talk about the same nothings we always did.

On a Wednesday night, we play chess in a jazz bar and both suck at it. “Always think one step behind,” I say. A man with a middle part and a turtleneck makes a snarky comment on our game before reading Jack Kerouac into the microphone. I say I want to kill him. Cantonese Jericho just thinks he’s lame.

“I don’t think I’m going to be friends with many of these people when I leave,” he says to me as we ride the straßenbahn back to his apartment.

“I think that’s just how it goes,” I say. I probably won’t keep in touch with most of the people I consider friends now. I tend to place my bets hastily, saying I’m soul-tied to anyone I can spend more than two hours at a time with, but I’m not good at gambling. I often consider changing my number after I graduate. “Do you feel sad about that?”

He pauses for a moment. “Not really.” We watch a man lower his head behind his friend’s shoulder and sneeze directly onto his back. Our conversation stops abruptly as he turns to face me: “That was crazy.” 

“If you ever do that to me,” I respond, “I’m never speaking to you again.”

Even with distance, I don’t see my friendship with Cantonese Jericho fading. He’s a part of being alive, like sleeping. Staying in each other’s lives is hardly a choice. It seems like the natural way of the world, as if to say, What else would I do without you? 

I leave for Providence the same day he leaves for Paris. We go to the airport together, and I tell him to go through security and wait at his gate while I check in. He calls me as I stand in line to tell me he’s already boarding. “I’m sorry, Hugeness Bigness. I wish we had a proper goodbye,” he texts me a few minutes later. In our opposites-attract fashion, I take silent satisfaction in our not-goodbye. The time we spend apart seems more temporary than the time we spend together. A goodbye would be moot, insincere. I reply, “Never too long before we see each other again.”