“You’re not dropping out?” he asked. She heard the concern in his voice. But also, just under it, hope.
“No,” she said, and as she said it, she meant it. She was down, but she wasn’t out. Not yet. But she couldn’t keep missing classes. The dean had said she could take some time, that the profs would be notified, and she could stay abreast of her classwork from home. But that her absence couldn’t drag on. She would have to take a withdrawal or come back. Soon. Meanwhile, the great love of her life—the boy she’d broken up with before leaving for school—stood right in front of her. And all she could think was, Maybe this changes everything.
Thankfully he didn’t push her for more details on her homecoming. Instead he said, “Got time for lunch before you go back?” He’d made it sound so nonchalant that she almost believed he didn’t care whether she said yes.
The first few weeks after they’d broken up had been grueling—the texts, the calls, the tearful “Whys?” that she could not answer except to say “It’s for the best.” He’d stopped calling eventually, and she’d thrown herself into the parties, the new friends, the late nights in the dorm. She’d worked to find her niche at school, forced herself to enter fully into this new life, one that hadn’t involved him. When he crept into her mind, she would focus on something else. But now, here he was. That had to mean something, didn’t it?
“I could do lunch,” she said, and made her voice sound as cavalier as his did.
They’d agreed on a date and time. She’d told him she’d meet him—not to pick her up—her mom would freak if she saw him picking her up, but she didn’t say so. He’d seize on that if she did. He’d known that her mother was behind their breakup, that it wasn’t really what she, Casey, had wanted. Being independent was doing what you wanted, not what your parents told you. But her mother had been so insistent that she break it off, so certain in a way that Casey had not been. So she’d listened, never putting much thought as to why her mother had been so adamant that they cut ties before Casey went off to school.
Now she wondered if breaking up had been truly what was best for her, if her mother was capable of even knowing what that was. If she hadn’t broken up with him, none of what had happened would’ve happened. This she knows for sure. Standing there, she regretted having listened to her mother. She’d placed a lot of confidence in someone who didn’t seem to be happy with her own life decisions.
“So I’ll see you Wednesday?” he’d asked, and smiled at her. She thought of what had happened back at the university the night she fled, the faces leering at her. Those faces hadn’t looked anything like his did. She told herself that what she saw on his face was love, plain and simple. That he was something to grab on to in the midst of her freefall. She felt her hand reach out as if she might literally take hold of him, the impulse overcoming her rational mind. She hoped he thought that she was just reaching out to shake his hand, to behave with the formality of someone who was now just an acquaintance.
Instead his smile widened. He reached out his own hand and took hers, then pulled her to him, erasing the space between them. In his arms she felt a flicker of peace she hadn’t felt since everything had happened, a sense of being home in the way that she hadn’t felt upon actually arriving home. She inhaled and exhaled, smelling the familiar scent of him, feeling the warmth of his body. He’d been her everything until he’d become her nothing. And, just like that, here he was being something again. She made herself let go, step out of the embrace, creating a distance between them again.
“See you Wednesday,” she said.
And then Wednesday was there. It would be a fresh start, a new thing. But what kind of thing, she could not say. She wasn’t sure she wanted to think that far ahead. She wasn’t sure she was capable of thinking beyond this moment, here, putting on the shoes she would wear to walk out the door, climb into her car, and go meet Eli, who was waiting for her on the other side of town.
Bess
October 7
She did not hide after class that week. She did not have to. One of their own was conspicuously absent, causing a somber silence to fall over the gossipers. Laura Jones’s arrest, it seemed, had caused everyone to retreat to a place inside themselves, a guarded place, a place no one wanted anyone else to see. In that place were the kinds of questions one would never give voice to, the ones that unearthed and unsettled. How well do we know each other? How well do we know ourselves? Could I? Would I?
In the bathroom, Bess noticed that no one lingered at the mirror. After everyone was gone, she stood in front of it, the only one who dared to take in her own image. She left the studio feeling unburdened, a lightness in her step. Steve had left for a business trip that morning, his absence a gift, freedom stretching out in front of her. No stilted conversation. No tension in the air. No wondering where things stood or where things would end up. He was out of sight, out of mind for a few blessed days.
She got out of the car and rounded the corner to her back door, keys in hand, to let herself into the house, which was, thankfully, empty. Casey was gone, off to have lunch with a friend, she had said. But Bess suspected it was her ex-boyfriend. Casey had never been a very good liar, and Bess could always tell when she was outright lying or just omitting a key truth. She needed to pin Casey down about it, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to remain blissfully ignorant. About whether Casey was seeing her ex, and about why she was home. The Strickland household specialized in unasked questions and unrocked boats. Bess didn’t know when it had become that way, and she didn’t like that it had. She resolved that today was the day she would insist on knowing what was going on. Bess would ask Casey nicely, tell her she was concerned about her missing so many classes, offer to help sort out whatever it was that had brought her home.
Movement in her peripheral vision interrupted her rapid-fire thoughts, stopping her short. Her eyes darted in the direction of the movement, her heart rate picking up speed as her mind shifted into alert mode. Fresh from self-defense class, she was aware of danger lurking in every corner.
A figure moved out of her shed, and she felt the relief of recognition as their eyes met from across the yard. She smiled and lifted her hand in greeting. He smiled back and, like a pantomime, lifted his own hand the same way she had. They stood still for a moment, both grinning like idiots, and she wondered if he felt as happy at the sight of her as she did at the sight of him. She crossed the yard.
“Thanks,” he said when she reached him, lifting the sandwich and bottled water she’d left for him that morning as she always did. His face was dirty, his usual days-old stubble grown into a full-fledged beard since she had last seen him. She wondered how he shaved, where he shaved. She pictured him crouching over a mountain stream, using his reflection in the water as a guide, even though there was no mountain stream anywhere nearby, just a lake tucked back in the woods that kids around here went to fish in or park at.
She gestured to her house. “Want to come in?”
He shifted, considering it. Sometimes he said yes, sometimes no. But whether he came inside or not, they always stood and chatted. That was why she had first offered to let him in her house, because she didn’t want her neighbors to see them standing in full view, chatting. She didn’t want them mentioning the strange man to Steve.