If We're Still Single

Lila

Turning thirty in Portland wasn’t supposed to feel like standing on the edge of something.

It was supposed to feel settled. Like finally arriving at the destination you’d been navigating toward your entire adult life—the point where the road levels out and you can look back at the climb with satisfaction rather than breathlessness.

Instead, I’m rearranging the same bouquet of white lilies for the third time on my kitchen island and wondering why my chest feels tight when nothing is wrong. Nothing at all. The lilies are fine. The apartment is clean. The champagne is chilling. The people I love most are about to walk through the door.

So why does it feel like I’m waiting for something I can’t name?

Outside the tall windows of my Pearl District apartment, the sky hangs low and gray—that particular Portland gray that isn’t quite rain and isn’t quite fog, but something in between that seeps into your bones if you let it. A fine mist clings to the glass, softening the city lights into watercolor smudges.

Down below on Northwest 13th, someone laughs as they duck into the café on the corner, and the scent of roasted coffee drifts faintly upward every time the door opens. The familiar hiss of the espresso machine. The clatter of cups. The rhythm of a city I’ve called home for twelve years now—first as a freshman with a suitcase and too much hope, then as a graduate clinging to the place that had grown roots into me, and now as... what? A woman on the cusp of thirty, rearranging flowers.

“Those flowers are not going to change their minds,” Ethan says.

I glance over my shoulder. He’s standing on one of my dining chairs near the balcony doors—the good chairs, the ones my mother gave me when she downsized—adjusting the string lights he insisted we hang “for ambiance.” His sleeves are rolled to his elbows, and the tiny gold flecks of light catch in his dark hair, making him look younger than thirty-one. Making him look like the boy who once watched me destroy his Western Civilization notes with a coffee cup and decided to buy me another drink anyway.

“I’m not changing their minds,” I say, rotating a lily stem two degrees to the left. “I’m adjusting their posture.”

“They’re flowers, Lila.”

“And you’re standing on my dining chair.”

He hops down, grinning that grin I’ve seen a thousand times—the one that starts in his eyes and works its way out. “You love when I commit to the aesthetic.”

I do. That’s the problem.

Ethan has always committed—to the details, to the follow-through, to showing up. Ten years ago, when I spilled an entire medium drip—black, no sugar—on his meticulously highlighted notes at Portland State’s student union, he looked at the spreading stain like I’d personally erased Western civilization from the historical record.

“You’ve destroyed primary sources,” he’d said gravely, holding up a dripping page that had once contained his entire understanding of the French Revolution.

I bought him a new notebook. Leather-bound, because I felt terrible.

He bought me another coffee. And then another. And then we were studying together, and then we were studying together at 2 a.m., and then we were studying together at 2 a.m. while sharing earbuds and pretending not to notice when our shoulders touched.

We never really stopped after that.

“Relax,” he says now, stepping closer with two champagne flutes held by their stems. The glasses catch the string light, throwing tiny reflections across the ceiling. “It’s just a birthday.”

“It’s not just a birthday.” I take one of the flutes, but don’t drink. “It’s thirty.”

“You’ve been saying that since twenty-six.”

“That’s because since twenty-six, everything has felt like it’s accelerating. Like I’m on one of those moving walkways at the airport, and I can’t slow down, and I’m not even sure I’m going in the right direction, but I can’t get off.”

He studies me for a second, softer now. The grin fades into something quieter. “You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, Lila.”

Something in my chest warms at that. At the way he says my name. At the certainty in his voice, as if he knows something about my life that I don’t.

I take the champagne. Our fingers brush. The contact lingers half a beat too long before he steps back to survey the string lights.

It’s nothing.

It has always been nothing.

The doorbell rings.

Soon the apartment fills with familiar voices, damp jackets, and the warmth of shared history. Mia kicks off her boots near the door and immediately commandeers the cheese board. Josh critiques the playlist and adds three songs no one else likes. Someone claims the corner of the couch like they live here—because in a way, they all do. This apartment has held every important conversation of the last five years. Every breakup post-mortem. Every promotion celebration. Every ordinary Tuesday that somehow mattered.

It feels like every birthday we’ve celebrated since college—only bigger. Heavier somehow. As if thirty carries more weight than the years that came before it. As if we’re all standing in my living room, laughing and drinking, but also taking stock. Measuring where we are against where we thought we’d be.

Ethan moves easily through the room, greeting everyone, refilling glasses, laughing at jokes before the punchline lands. He’s always been like that—the person who makes a party work, who remembers what everyone drinks, who asks about the thing you mentioned three months ago. I watch him without meaning to, the way you watch something familiar that has suddenly shifted into slightly different light.

He’s good at this. At people. At being steady.

“Still single, huh?” Mia says, appearing at my elbow with a glass of wine.

“Apparently,” I reply, tearing my gaze away from where Ethan is laughing at something Josh said.

She grins, and I know that grin. I’ve known it since freshman orientation, when we ended up in the same dorm and discovered we both stole the good shampoo from the communal showers. “You know what that means.”

I groan. “Don’t.”

“Oh, I absolutely will. I’m contractually obligated as your best friend to bring this up at every possible opportunity until one of you caves.”

“There’s nothing to cave about. We’re friends.”

“Uh-huh.” She sips her wine, eyes dancing. “And I’m the Queen of England.”

“You don’t even like the Pact. You’ve always said it was a terrible idea.”

“I’ve said it was a terrible ideaif you actually did itwithout ever dealing with the obvious. But that’s not what I’m talking about right now.” She tilts her head toward where Ethan is now helping someone find the corkscrew. “I’m talking about the way you’re looking at him.”

“I’m not looking at him any particular way.”

“You’re looking at him like he’s the last slice of pizza and you’re pretending you’re not hungry.”

“Mia—”

“Lila.” She mimics my tone perfectly. “Just... think about it. That’s all I’m saying.”

She drifts away before I can respond, which is probably for the best because I don’t know what I would say. There’s nothing to think about. Ethan is Ethan. We’re friends. We’ve always been friends. That’s the whole point.

The cake appears an hour later—slightly lopsided and aggressively frosted, because Mia made it and Mia believes that baking instructions are “suggestions, not rules.” Thirty candles flicker, reflected in the window like twin constellations. Someone dims the lights. Everyone starts singing, badly and with enthusiasm.

“To Lila and Ethan!” Josh shouts when the song ends. “Thriving at thirty and tragically unattached!”

“Speak for yourself!” I call back, laughing.

“And according to the sacred pact—” Mia raises her glass, eyes sparkling with mischief, “—that means wedding bells!”

Laughter explodes around us. Someone whistles. Someone else starts chanting “Wed-ding! Wed-ding!” just to be annoying.

There it is.

The Pact.

Ten years ago, on a rooftop off Burnside. Someone else had just gotten engaged—a mutual friend whose name I can no longer remember. We were tipsy on cheap wine and sunburned from an afternoon at Forest Park. Reckless with the future in that way you can only be at twenty, when thirty feels like a lifetime away and everything is still possible.

“If we’re still single at thirty,” Ethan had said, raising his plastic cup toward the skyline, “we’ll just marry each other.”

“Deal,” I’d agreed, because why not? Because he was my best friend. Because it was funny. Because the idea of being thirty and single felt abstract, theoretical, impossible.

We’d shaken on it. Pinky promise sealed.

Harmless.

Everyone laughs now.

I laugh too.

Ethan smiles.

But he doesn’t laugh.

The shift is subtle—a stillness behind his eyes that doesn’t match the expression on his face. A pause before the smile reaches them. I’ve known him long enough to read the difference, even if no one else can.

“So?” Mia presses, undeterred by the laughter. “Do we need to start venue hunting? I’m thinking something outdoor. Maybe with a view of the river.”

“Technically,” I say, lifting my glass with practiced casualness, “we do qualify. Thirty, single, present and accounted for.”

More laughter. Someone makes a joke about prenups.

But when I glance at him, he’s already looking at me.

And he’s not amused.

He’s thinking.

My stomach dips.

The moment passes as someone starts chanting for us to blow out the candles together—“It’s tradition!“—and we do, leaning in from opposite sides of the cake. Our faces are close for just a second, close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes, the tiny scar near his eyebrow from when he fell off his bike at twelve.

Everyone cheers.

But the air feels different.

Later, when the apartment finally empties and the quiet settles in like dust after a storm, I step onto the balcony.

The rain has thinned to a cool mist that clings to my skin like a second layer. The skyline glows softly through it—the familiar silhouette of the city I’ve loved since I was eighteen and terrified. In the distance, the Willamette reflects fractured light, and a MAX train hums past on the bridge like a low, mechanical heartbeat.

I grip the railing.

Thirty.

Single.

The Pact.

It was a joke. It was always a joke. A running bit that we dragged out at parties and birthdays and any time someone asked why we weren’t dating. A convenient answer to an inconvenient question.

We have a pact. Thirty and single. Don’t worry, we’ll let you know when to start planning the wedding.

Everyone laughed. We laughed. It was fine.

But tonight, when I’d said “we do qualify,” something had flickered across his face. Something I couldn’t name.

The sliding door opens behind me.

“You escaped,” Ethan says.

“Briefly.”

He joins me at the railing, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off him through the cool night air. He’s changed out of his party shirt into the gray hoodie he’s had since college—the one with the small hole in the cuff that he refuses to throw away. Familiar. Comfortable.

We’ve stood like this so many times.

After my breakup with Daniel, when I cried into that same hoodie and he pretended not to notice the mascara stains he’d have to wash out later.

After his promotion fell through and we walked the riverfront in silence for two hours, and then got drunk on cheap beer at a dive bar in Southeast, and then walked some more.

After random Tuesdays that turned into midnight conversations on this very balcony, watching the city sleep and talking about nothing and everything.

Tonight feels different.

“I can’t believe we’re thirty,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say.

“We survived our twenties in Portland,” he replies. “That deserves a medal. Or at least really good health insurance.”

I smile faintly, but it doesn’t reach the tightness in my chest.

Silence falls. Familiar. Easy.

But underneath it, something pulses. A current I’ve never noticed before, or maybe never let myself notice.

“You know,” I say lightly, trying to find solid ground, “I mean, we did make a legally binding agreement. Ten years ago. Witnesses and everything.”

He doesn’t smile this time.

“Lila.”

Something in his voice makes me turn. Makes me really look at him.

“What if we didn’t have to pretend?” he asks.

The words settle between us like stones dropped into still water.

“Pretend about what?” My voice comes out quieter than I intended.

“That it was a joke.”

The city noise fades. The distant hum of the MAX train. The muffled music from the apartment downstairs. All of it dissolves until there’s nothing but the space between us and the question hanging in it.

He shifts closer. Not much. Just enough that I can see the slight tension in his jaw, the way his hand grips the railing like he’s steadying himself.

“We’ve both dated,” he says quietly. “We’ve both tried. And we’re still here.”

Still here.

Ten years of coffee shops and river walks and late-night phone calls. Of knowing how he takes his Stumptown—black with one sugar, even though he pretends he doesn’t have a sweet tooth. Of knowing that he can’t watch sad movies without getting emotionally compromised, that he calls his mother every Sunday without fail, that he still has the notebook I bought him after the coffee incident, its pages yellowed and falling out.

“It was just something we said,” I manage. “We were twenty.”

“Was it just something we said?”

His voice is steady. Intent. The same voice he uses when he’s arguing something he believes in, something he’s thought about, something he’s certain of.

My pulse stutters.

He looks at me like he’s searching for something. Like he’s been searching for a while, and I’ve only just noticed.

“Lila...” He exhales slowly, and I watch his breath mist in the cold air. “Have you ever wondered if maybe we’ve been—”

He stops.

My heart climbs into my throat, beating against the words I can’t say, the questions I’ve never asked.

“If maybe we’ve been what?” I whisper.

His hand lifts slightly, hovering near mine on the railing. Close enough that I can feel the warmth of it without touching. Close enough that if I moved my fingers just an inch, we’d connect.

“If we’ve been choosing the wrong people,” he says carefully, “because we were afraid to—”

The balcony door slides open abruptly.

“There you are!” Mia’s voice cuts through the night like a searchlight. She’s standing in the doorway, coat half-on, phone in hand. “Josh forgot his keys and he’s already downstairs and—oh.”

Her eyes dart between us. Between the space that’s suddenly too charged. Between the moment she’s clearly interrupted.

Ethan steps back instantly. His hand drops to his side.

The space between us rushes in like cold air.

“Just discussing tax benefits,” he says easily. Too easily. The mask is back, smooth and practiced. “Very romantic birthday conversation.”

I swallow, trying to steady my breathing. “We’re wild like that.”

Mia narrows her eyes playfully—or maybe not entirely playfully—but retreats after grabbing Josh’s keys from the counter. The door slides shut behind her, muting the light from the apartment.

Silence.

But it’s not the same silence as before.

Ethan’s jaw tightens slightly. He looks out at the skyline instead of at me. The string lights he hung earlier reflect in his eyes, tiny pinpricks of gold.

“You were saying?” I ask softly.

He shakes his head once. “It’s late.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have right now.” He turns toward the door, then pauses with his hand on the handle. “Happy birthday, Lila.”

That’s it.

That’s all he gives me.

The door opens. He steps inside. The light swallows him.

I stay on the balcony, gripping the railing, watching my breath form clouds that dissolve almost instantly.

The moment slips through my fingers like rain.

We didn’t finish the sentence. We didn’t name whatever almost happened. We didn’t pretend it didn’t—because we didn’t acknowledge it at all.

And for the first time in ten years, I don’t know if the thing between us is unbreakable...

Or fragile enough to shatter.