Her eyes have filled with sympathy, the respectful kind where it’s clear she’s not pressing me to confide or be okay. It makes me want to kiss her and cry in equal measure.
“We’re good,” I say, taking the bagels. “We talked and . . . it’s nice to have him understand me. To understand him.” The sentences come out clumsily. I guess I have to get used to them being true.
Juniper nods. “Is he awake?” She glances past me into the room.
“He’s showering. We’ll be ready to hit the road in thirty minutes.”
“Actually,” she says, chewing her lip. “I was thinking, maybe we should skip UVA.”
I frown. “Skip it? What about your itinerary?”
“Forget the itinerary,” she replies. “I think we’re all about ready to head home.”
I’m half relieved, half heartbroken. True, I don’t want to see any more schools, but canceling the tour means bringing Juniper and me closer to goodbye. I imagine how hard it’s going to be, hugging her for the last time, backing away before driving out of each other’s lives. “Yeah,” I say. “That’s probably a good idea.”
She smiles, but I notice the sadness in her expression. “Great. It’s a seven-hour drive. We could do it in one day, if you’re up for it.”
“Sure.” I’m forcing every word, every gesture. I feel like I’m following commands to break my fingers or something. “Do you want to head out now, before we’re ready, or . . . ?”
The sadness flees from her smile, and she crosses her arms authoritatively. “We have seven more hours together, Fitzgerald. You’re riding with me.”
Relief races over me. “Good. Maybe we’ll hit traffic,” I say hopefully.
She tugs my shirt, pulling us together. “I wouldn’t complain.” She kisses me fiercely, like she does everything.
I try to lose myself in the kiss. My hands find her hips under her jacket, and I take in the unforgettable smell of her skin, the brush of tongues. With her lips on mine, I try to forget the voice reminding me this is one of the last kisses we have left.
Fitz
IN HALF AN hour, we’re on the road returning to Boston. I’m in Juniper’s car, while Lewis follows in his.
There are thousands of things I want to say. I want to thank Juniper for understanding I needed to skip UVA. To hear her thoughts on each of the colleges we’ve visited, to listen to her mind working through variables and contingencies, possibilities and plans. To tell her I think she’s beautiful with her hair down, bronze waves cascading onto her shoulders.
Except I can’t. Everything I could say carries the unsupportable weight of being one of our final conversations.
The silence in the car is suffocating, the way it was in our first drive together. We’ve come heartbreakingly full circle. I know without having to confirm it out loud Juniper isn’t speaking for the same reason, the inescapable knowledge our relationship ends in Boston.
“Want to listen to a podcast?” I finally ask jokingly. Anything to split the silence.
“No, I think we should get the goodbyes out of our system.” Her voice is confident, upbeat.
I don’t see how she can be cheerful. “Explain,” I say.
“It’s hanging over us, isn’t it?” She glances from the road to meet my eyes briefly. “We’re not talking the way we usually do because we know tonight will be goodbye.”
It’s one thing to understand we’re probably dreading the same parting moments, the imminent end of us. It’s something else entirely to hear her put the feeling into words, not to mention with such effortless, immediate efficiency. I know I’ve presumed our relationship will end with this trip, but truthfully, we haven’t had the conversation.
“Will it?” I ask. “Be goodbye, I mean?”
Juniper’s confidence softens into something delicate. “A long-distance relationship in the final semester of our senior year doesn’t really . . .”
“I know,” I say.
I do know. I know this probably isn’t literally one of our final conversations. I know there’s texting. There’s social media. We could stay friends, stay in each other’s lives. It wouldn’t be the same, though, and honestly, it probably won’t happen. I know Juniper well enough to know she could never be content clinging to our one week together, memories drifting unreachably into her past.
I muster a smile, hoping to trick myself into being okay with this. “You were saying something about getting goodbyes out of our systems?”
Juniper nods, and I can practically feel her trying to recapture her cheerful momentum. “Whatever we’re planning on saying in Boston,” she explains, “let’s say it now. That way we’ll have the goodbye behind us. We won’t have to dwell on it during this entire drive.”
I’m not convinced the idea will work. That anything could banish our impending goodbye from my thoughts. But I’m willing to try. “Okay,” I tell her. “You go first.”
Her expression goes stony. “Fitzgerald Holton,” she says. “I did not expect to like you when we first met.”
I laugh, improbably. “Oh yeah. This is working. I’m feeling better already.”
Juniper swats my shoulder, permitting a laugh past her lips. Her dark-pink lips, which she chews when she’s making one of the million decisions her mind processes every day.
No. I won’t do this right now. I focus on her goodbye.
“But what I feel for you has gone past ‘like’ into . . . I don’t know,” she continues, earnest again. She watches the road intently, like she’s searching for something. The right description, maybe. “It’s something bigger,” she says. “I feel like I’ll carry your fingerprints on who I am for the rest of my life. I’m excited for the future. But this week with you has taught me I can still run toward what’s to come while holding on to the past. The boy I traveled down the coast with, the fights I’m glad I had with my family, the feeling of a kiss by a frozen waterfall. Everything.”
I say nothing, and not because of the conversation’s weight. I’ve told Juniper she changed me, and I will never forget the ways she opened my world. I had no idea I changed hers.
“I guess it’s a part of growing up I didn’t understand,” she says. “Who I am, the home I come from, they’ll never be gone even though they’ll never be the same. Hiraeth, right?”
She throws me a small smile. I try to return it, but hiraeth has pulled open torn edges I’m trying hard to mend. “The home you’re talking about only lives in memories,” I say. I hear the hurt in my voice. It’s impossible to hide. I didn’t want this conversation to veer into my mom’s health, and yet, I have a feeling it’s inescapable.