Ugh, Logan. Should I tell James about our conversation? I need her to be there for me while I’m figuring all of this out with my dad. Potentially pushing her away right now is almost literally the very last thing I need. Sure, I’m dying to ask, but I’m not an idiot. Our texts are not what they used to be. My side of the screen is always so much heavier these days.
And, anyway, breakups are hard. Maybe it felt like getting dumped, the way I technically broke up with Matty but he’s the one who did something unforgivable. Not that I can see James or Logan doing anything horrible. Not only to each other, but at all.
Even though I have homework and even though it might not be the most ethically sound thing to use someone for distraction, I go to Quinn’s after school our second day back from winter break. The night I’m supposed to meet Diane.
“Can you help me with my calculus homework?” Quinn asks once we’re in her bedroom with the door closed and I’ve already stepped out of my shoes.
I sit back on her bed and pull her toward me. “Um, I can, but does it have to be now?”
Quinn and I have only had sex once, on New Year’s Eve. It’s not that we haven’t wanted to since; it’s that logistics have been super annoying. Luke is almost always at my house while he’s home on break, and when he’s not, my dad is. Quinn’s sister is nearly always home here. Today is a rare occasion that we have a house to ourselves, and I thought we were both well aware that we needed to take advantage of this situation.
She leans over to kiss me. It is not a sex-starting kiss; it’s way too polite.
“You should talk to James sometime,” I say. “She’s way better at explaining math stuff than I am, and unlike your sister she’s actually taking the same classes you are.”
Quinn shrugs. “I don’t really think James wants to help me. We’re not friends, you know.”
“No, I know, but, like, you’re not not friends, either.”
“I don’t think we’re going to be friends,” she says in her most gentle voice, like it’s a consolation. “James doesn’t like me, K.”
“No, totally not true,” I say as quickly as I can. “James is just, you know, all stoic and quiet. She’s a tough nut to crack, but those are always worth it ’cause they’re the most delicious nuts.”
“Sure,” Quinn says, and there’s one tiny ribbon of hope laced through the word. Unfortunately, there are way more ribbons of reality in there, and so I know she doesn’t really believe it, no matter how good it would be if she did.
“Also, I don’t think that’s true about nuts.”
I pretend to gasp. “Do you doubt my nut knowledge?”
She cracks up and I take advantage of the moment to tackle her back on the bed. She slips right out of it, though.
“Not homework,” I say. “That can’t be what you want to do right now.”
“Of course it’s not. But I also want to graduate with a decent GPA and get into a good school and have a future to look forward to. Calculus is jeopardizing all of that.”
“You dork, we’re early decision. Oberlin has probably already made its mind up about us.” I grimace when I realize that’s true. “Whoa. We’ll know within a few weeks if it’s happening or not. How weird is that?”
Quinn sighs and looks away from me. “I . . . should tell you something.”
It is never good when people start sentences that way.
“K, I didn’t apply early decision,” she says.
It feels like someone just threw cold water all over me with no freaking warning at all. “What are you talking about? Did you mess up the deadline? I feel like they completely changed since I wrote them down last year.”
“No, I didn’t mess up the deadline. I just didn’t apply.”
“Quinn, what is going on?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t say something.” She runs her hands through her hair. “It just wasn’t right for me, and I didn’t think you’d understand.”
I search her face for some change, something I could have seen in her eyes. But that’s never where you see important things, and I have no idea why I bother to check anyway. “Why didn’t you even tell me? You could have given me a chance to understand! Do you not want to go to school with me anymore?”
“No. It’s not that at all,” Quinn says. “It’s . . . you treat me like I’m perfect.”
I don’t know what I’m expecting her to say, but it’s not that.
“But you are perfect!” I tackle her back on her bed and mess up her hair. “You’re, like, amazing and magical and—”
Quinn sighs and squirms away from me. “Kat. You get that you think that because you’re my girlfriend, right? You have a pretty biased take.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No,” she says, though her voice sounds potentially the opposite. “I just wish I could make you see reality a little more clearly. You had really good reason to apply early. My grades aren’t as good as yours, and I’m positive I won’t write nearly as good of an essay as you did. We aren’t the same.”
“I don’t think we’re the same,” I say. “I just think you have, like, tons of value that you pretend isn’t there.”
She just sighs.
“Is it because you have to commit?” I ask, because if you apply early decision to Oberlin and get in, you are going to Oberlin. Which means right now that I could be signed, sealed, and delivered to a school my girlfriend has rejected.
“We hadn’t even been together two months at the deadline,” Quinn says, which is technically true, but why are we just counting from the afternoon she kissed me? Why can’t we count from the night we met, when suddenly there was this new person I couldn’t get out of my brain? Why do we even count time when it means nothing? Mom’s been gone for years now but I still occasionally have mornings when I have to remember that she’s gone. How many days do I have to log with Quinn for it to be real?
“No, like, I totally get that,” I say anyway, because I do, even if I also hate it. “I just thought we—”
“We are! I promise I’m applying for regular decision,” she says. “And all my backup schools, which have plenty of overlap with yours, if Oberlin doesn’t work out. Early decision was just too much. OK?”
I inch my way over to her, trying to close this gap that seems to have opened up out of nowhere and threatens to swallow everything. I wish she’d told me sooner, but she did tell me, which isn’t at all like James and Logan’s breakup, still out there with its truth unsaid. I mean, it would be way better if it wasn’t a thing at all, but at least Quinn told me.
Eventually.
“Are you mad at me?” I ask again, because that, I’m sure, I can fix. I can be a better girlfriend. I can try even harder and be the best girlfriend who’s ever lived.
“Of course I’m not,” Quinn says, though, again, her tone doesn’t totally match her words. “You have to promise me something.”
“Possibly,” I say, as my stomach drops again. Today Quinn seems full of scary possibilities. “What is it?”