On Friday nights, when Cambria had a few hours of spare time, I started asking her to do my makeup for me. As I predicted, she consistently jumped on the opportunity to play with her many beauty products on my face. Eventually, it turned into a whole routine for us. Every Friday night, she would do makeup for both of us, and then we’d go out to eat somewhere. It was always somewhere cheap (she had finally accepted that we were, in fact, poor college students), but we would get dressed up anyway and make the most of it.
I had always thought our avoidance of and apathy toward each other was largely mutual, but I was starting to think I’d been wrong about that. I had never seen Cambria laugh with me the way she started to on those Friday evenings. It was as though she had been waiting for this all these years, but she hadn’t wanted to ask me for it.
Most nights, before I fell asleep in my bed, I would slide open the drawer of my nightstand and pull out the To Do List. I would look over the five items by the light of my lamp, and I would feel a trickle of relief run through me. I would look at River’s note at the bottom, WYWWM, and I would feel like things were going to be okay.
Halfway through Winter Term, I had made so much progress, and things felt so different than they had been one term ago, it actually shocked me. Those items on my To Do List looked and sounded so simple, yet their impact on my life was not.
There was only one thing on the list I hadn’t dealt with. There was just that one, pesky little item I had been procrastinating, and I knew it had been long enough.
It was that task written at the very bottom of the list: Number Five.
◈ ◈ ◈
When David got back from Fiji in January, it was as though nothing had happened between us. That was how he acted, anyway—as though we had never had that fight at my apartment before he left. As though we hadn’t left things so horribly tense and then hadn’t seen each other for an entire month.
For me, things were different. I felt different around him. Granted, I was hanging out with him again that term, and doing so often. He would text me a couple times during the week wanting to meet up, and I always agreed to. I knew that I shouldn’t be with him. I knew that River was right to include item Number Five on the To Do List. I knew that breaking up with David was just a matter of time and courage. And that latter part was what I was struggling with the most.
It was just easier for me to spend time with David, to continue that bad habit I’d started the previous term. I didn’t know how to say no when he texted me. I had no idea how I was supposed to break up with him, considering the fact that he clearly had a hot temper. So, I kept going to his house and watching movies with him, or he would come to my apartment and we’d get takeout. He would kiss me, and I would let him, but I found that I never initiated anything myself.
It was more than halfway through the term when I had an epiphany.
Things were obviously different with me and David—I’d known that ever since I first saw him again in January. But things weren’t different just because of the fight we’d had, or the talk River and I’d had in Seattle, or because of item Number Five on my To Do List. Back in the fall, David Valentine had been my sole motivating source that got me through my every day obligations. David Valentine had been, really, the only part of my life I looked forward to back then.
But now, during Winter Term, I realized that was no longer the case. The parts of my life that I looked forward to most were multiple and varied. Attending my creative writing class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Recognizing a new idea for a writing submission and jotting it down on my idea list. My weekly phone calls with Riley—hearing her voice, listening to what was new in her life, venting to her about school. My Friday nights with Cambria and starting to understand for the first time what it was really like having a sister.
I didn’t need David Valentine anymore. There was no reason to keep seeing him. I came to understand that clearly and fully. But, I still needed some kind of push to get me to finally break things off with him, otherwise nothing was going to change.
As it turned out, that push did come. And it came in a way that allowed me to check not just one, but two things off my To Do List.
◈ ◈ ◈
We were at the Rite Aid in town, David and I. It was the beginning of March, which meant finals were coming up soon. That also meant that Spring Break was approaching rapidly, and with it would include a visit from Riley and Zach. In my mind, this was my deadline for breaking up with David, that way I could give the news to Riley in person.
At the store, David wanted to grab a random assortment of products: eyedrops, as he wore contact lenses; popcorn, because we were going to watch a movie at his place later; and a card for his father, since his father’s birthday was two weeks away. David informed me that there was going to be a birthday party for his father, but, similar to the Thanksgiving incident, he did not tell me I was invited to come along.
We located the popcorn and a suitable birthday card relatively quickly, so all that remained were the eyedrops. We found the various eyedrop products tucked away next to the pharmacy counter in the store.
“Are these the right ones?”
I held up a small box of name-brand eyedrops, but David didn’t seem to notice. I was just about to repeat my question when his cell phone rang. He slid it out of his pants pocket and consulted the screen.
“I have to take this,” he said, glancing up at me for a moment with his shiny eyes. “Will you sit there and wait for me?”
He pointed to a chair that was situated next to the pharmacy counter. I obeyed silently, taking my seat while David answered the call and headed for the store’s exit. I scratched at my head and sighed, wondering how long I would have to wait for him. He received a lot of phone calls, and while most of them only lasted around five minutes, some could be as long as forty.
“He’s not right for you.”
At first I thought the melodic voice had just been in my head, it was so fitting, after all, to some of the thoughts that were already swarming around in there. But then, I realized it was, in fact, some external sound source. I looked up, swiveled my head around, and saw a young woman looking at me from behind the pharmacy counter.
“Not the guy I pictured you with,” the woman spoke again.
She looked familiar to me. Familiar to the point it almost hurt. Her olive skin tone. Her soft features. Her long, brown hair that was pulled into two braids at the side of her head.
“Chloe?”
I stood from my chair and approached her at the counter. Sure enough, the name badge on her lab coat read, CHLOE. It was Chloe Gibson, my former elementary school best friend, my former high school peer.
“Hi, Drew.” She said it with a smile that revealed her upper and lower teeth.
“Chloe. Wow! It’s good to see you,” I stammered, feeling embarrassed not to have recognized her right away. It wasn’t really surprising that I hadn’t, though. She looked different. Not quite as thin. Not quite as vibrant, like her skin had lost some of its glow. But she was still beautiful.
“Likewise, Drew Caldwell.”
“What are you doing here? I mean, obviously, you work here. But I thought you were still in Rockwood?”
“I’ve been working as a pharmacy tech. I transferred to this location last month. My grandparents live here, and it makes life much easier being close to them.”