Once the attention is off me, my mind goes back to the phone call. First, I convince myself I could have lied, forced myself to sound excited for her, and hung up ASAP. I’ve never been that good of an actor, but maybe I could have gotten through it. She was determined to be happy, and I wouldn’t have had to say much at all.
However.
Blindly lying about my feelings would only have taken me so far. There’s no way I could keep that attitude up for the next five months, and presumably, for the rest of their marriage. Best-case scenario is I lie and lie and lie and lie some more and bottle up all my emotions until they come exploding out on her wedding day, true rom-com style, when the priest says, “Are there any objections” and I’m like, “Uh. Yeah. Me?” Except that’s not the plot of a rom-com, because I’m not the ex-boyfriend that she’s still in love with.
The phone call was doomed from the start. Which brings me to option two: Williams instead of New York.
This daydream is very seductive, because it starts exactly like it sounds. I’m in Williams, and it’s snowing, and Fitz is snuggling me in front of a fire and he’s realizing that (surprise!) he’s loved me the whole time! How convenient, right? I get sidetracked with this all through breakfast, and it takes me nearly an hour to remember this exercise is supposed to be about Clover. Avoiding the disaster with Clover. And it turns out that me being in Williams doesn’t fix that at all. Unfortunately.
I move on to option three: Stay in Gilbert. This one is tricky, because Clover still gets engaged, and my mom is in New York, and Fitz is in Williams, and my dad is in Tucson, so what am I even doing alone on Christmas Day in Gilbert? The logic isn’t there, but the thing about time traveling and the secretary in my brain who keeps a list of all my worries is that he doesn’t rely on logic. In this scenario, Clover accepts Jay’s proposal and then immediately drives to my house. She wakes me up to tell me the news, and I’m able to delicately, gently explain why it’s such a bad decision. And because we’re face-to-face, I get my point across without offending her and she cries but realizes that I’m right. Our friendship is still solid, and there is no fight. She gently tells Jay that they have to wait, and he agrees.
It’s a solid, foolproof plan, with the very small exception that time travel doesn’t exist and it’ll never happen.
But still. I obsess over it all day, until I’m absolutely positive that coming to New York was a huge mistake. What I should have done was shut myself alone in my bedroom and waited for Clover to get engaged so I could talk her out of it.
“Paige?” Mom’s voice snaps me out of my imaginary world and brings me back to New York. “Are you okay?”
“Huh? Yeah. I’m fine.” I’m on the couch, ostensibly watching another Christmas movie.
“We’re going for a walk. Do you want to come?”
“Who’s we?”
“All of us.” She points to herself, Tyson, and Harrison.
Harrison, who hasn’t made eye contact with me since I snapped at him last night. Harrison, who watched my brain implode and who now refuses to talk to me. It only took two days for him to realize that dealing with me is more trouble than it’s worth. What guy wants to kiss a girl who’s always on the verge of losing it? None that I’ve ever met. And even though I was frustrated with him too, I can’t pretend like I didn’t enjoy the weight of his hand on my knee and all the possibilities implicit in that gesture. It might have been a bad idea to kiss him, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to do it.
I tell them I want to stay home and bake. They leave, and I decide on a yeast bread. Correctly getting a loaf of yeast bread to rise never fails to make me feel like a magician. And my life could use a little magic right now. I drag my feet around the kitchen as I mix the water, yeast, and a pinch of sugar in the stand mixer. I cover it with a towel, wait for the mixture to bubble, and sink back into a daydream of regret.
“Hey.”
I yelp at the sound of Harrison’s voice, startled to discover I’m not alone in the kitchen.
“What are you doing here?” I stayed behind so I could avoid potentially awkward conversations.
He shrugs. “Changed my mind about the walk. What are you cooking?”
“Baking,” I correct him. “French bread.”
“No kidding?” He unwraps a scarf from his neck, lifting the towel to peer in the bowl. His arm brushes against mine, and the proximity to him, the scent of him, perks up all my senses. I feel like I’ve been sleepwalking through the whole day, and I’m only now waking up.
My growing crush on Harrison is lightning fast and electric. It’s also a new experience, because it’s the opposite of the way my feelings for Fitz developed. One day, Fitz was that kid who was a head shorter than me with a Boy Scout haircut who whispered jokes into my ear while our teacher read Shakespeare. A month later, I bossed him into partnering with me in the PE “Dance Unit,” an awkward and stumbling encounter that paved the way for the friendship that eventually formed during those afternoons on the curb, waiting for a ride home. It would be a few more years before he shot up twelve inches, grew his hair out, hit the weight room with the baseball team, and transformed into Fitz Wilding, certified Dream Boy. By the start of sophomore year, everyone wanted to be friends with Fitz, but by then, I’d already claimed him as my own.
I wanted him first, and I wanted him the most. When he chose Ivy, I knew it had been a mistake to laugh at his jokes and orient my life around him. But it was too late, and I was too far gone.
And now my insides are all electric because of a boy who isn’t Fitz. I can’t decide how I feel about that.
Relieved.
Excited.
Unexpectedly sad.
“Is it supposed to be all frothy like that?” Harrison wrinkles his nose, pointing to the bubbly mixture in front of us.
“Yes. That means the yeast is alive.” I remove the towel and add more sugar, along with flour, salt, and oil. “I’m sorry about last night.” I keep my eyes on the dough, afraid of the potential scorn in his expression.
“You were upset. And I shouldn’t have said what I did about your friend,” he says. Only then do I dare a glance, and it seems like he means it. “Where have you been today?” He raps lightly on my head with his knuckles. “It’s like you’re here but not here.”
My heart flutters in my chest at the gesture. It’s not romantic, not in the over-the-top way that Fitz specializes in, but it’s silly and sweet and genuine, and not at all what I expected from a surly bookworm like Harrison. “You’re different than I thought you’d be,” I muse.
“Yeah—” He rubs his hand over his jaw. “You met me on a bad day. My ex and I had this argument because I found out that she’s already moved on to a new guy, less than two weeks after we broke up.”
“Ouch.”
He makes a face in agreement.
“Is that why you broke up, do you think?”
He leans back, his palms resting behind him on the kitchen counter. “It has taken every ounce of self-control not to go down that particular rabbit hole,” he says. “If she was cheating on me …” He sighs. “I don’t want to know.”