“Like the time I desperately wanted to go to Trader Joe’s for the squishy penguin gummies and you wouldn’t go with me unless I wore that gray boatneck sweater and pink chiffon skirt?”
“First of all, it wasn’t pink, it was champagne … and it wasn’t gray, it was smoke; and secondly, it was gorgeous and you looked amazing, so whatever,” I said, flicking my wrist at her commentary.
* * *
The gallery was packed, and between the photographs and the buzz of low conversation, all my attention was occupied as I moved slowly from one photo to the next. It was impossible to deny what Serena had captured, falling in love. A feeling so many have tried to explain through words and art and dance, but for me never quite hit the mark. But these photos hit the mark. It was all over my face in every picture. My body language. My hands. My eyes. Everything aglow with new love.
New love.
I stopped at a photo I had seen earlier in the week, the one with my dress pooled in my lap, pins in my mouth. That was who I was. The Edie who had dreams, ideas, goals yet achieved. I’d snipped away a piece of that Edie to make room for Hudson. Carefully trimming my edges and serging him in without even realizing it.
I let my head fall forward, closing my eyes. It was all too much. The movement. The whispered conversations. The heating system blowing. The glass doors whooshing every time someone entered the gallery.
“Edie.”
I turned to see Cody. “I called your name like three times,” he said.
“Oh, hey,” I said, looking at my feet. He probably had, but there was too much going on in the gallery for me to focus. “Sorry.” I waved my hand around. “You know.”
He nodded, rocking back on his heels. He snapped his fingers, clapping his hand against his fist. “So,” he said, motioning to a portrait of me, my face illuminated by my cell phone, a slow smile on my face.
I released a sharp breath. “Yeah.” I looked at the portrait. It was the riddle text conversation. The wet umbrella pun. I turned back to Cody with a shrug.
He shook his head, turning to look at the picture behind us. The one of Hudson and me nose to nose in the theater. “I just—”
“Cody,” I started.
“No.” He put up his hand. “Edie, I just feel like things could have been different between us.”
I breathed unevenly, my shoulder slumping forward. I shook my head. “Maybe.”
“Yeah…,” he said, crossing his arms. “So, did you, uh, do the same thing to this poor kid?” He rubbed the back of his neck before returning his arm to the crossed position.
I blinked. “No,” I lied. “It wasn’t like that.”
He nodded, his eyes wandering to the other photos of me. “So, you and he were never a thing?”
“We weren’t supposed to be,” I said, trying to convince myself.
“But you and I, we were a thing,” he said, his eyes meeting mine.
I nodded. Cody and I had been a thing. I’d never put a title on it. In fact, I’d gone out of my way to not put a title on it. We didn’t go on dates, we hung out. We weren’t seeing each other. We weren’t friends with benefits. He was exactly what I wanted him to be … an arm’s length away, but within reach.
He pressed his lips together “Well, thanks for finally admitting to that,” he said.
I let my head fall back, focusing on the ceiling fans above, cycling out of sync.
“It’s just that it would have been easier if you actually broke up with me, you know?” he said. When I looked at him, his eyes were down.
“Instead of just an ‘It’s over’ text. If you’d had the balls to tell me the truth.” His voice was barely a whisper.
“I should never have done that,” I said, guilt filling my stomach. There I was, surrounded by pictures of me and Hudson, talking to Cody about how our non-relationship relationship crapped out before it could even begin. “I’m sorry.”
Cody laughed, forced and harsh. “You’re sorry?”
I winced.
“You break up with me, for all intents and purposes, and then ghost me for weeks.” He put his hands on his hips. “Dead air for days, like I never even existed to you, and then when you do reach out it’s nonsense.”
It was all true, but it was for a reason.
“Listen, all I want to say is that if I were this guy”—he motioned toward a picture of me and Hudson—“I wouldn’t let you go. I’d fight to the death for you. I’d fight until you were on the plane, taking off into the air.”
I took a step back.
“Hey, you two,” Serena said, resting her arms on my shoulders. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Cody said. “We’re good. I was actually just about to leave.” He motioned over his shoulder with his thumb.
I forced a smile, wrapping my arms around my middle.
“Well, thanks for coming,” Serena said, gracious as always. “I hope you, uh—liked it…?”
Cody shoved his hands into his pockets. “You did a great job, Serena. Congrats.” He smiled at her before turning away.
The moment Cody was out of sight Serena turned to me. “What was that?” she asked through a forced smile.
“How much did you hear?” I asked, running my hand through my hair.
“It wasn’t so much what I heard, it was more like what I saw. Your body language and his.”
I huffed, dropping my folded arms. “Well, whatever it was that you saw, I deserved.”
“How do you figure?” Serena asked. “Just like you don’t owe Hudson anything, you don’t owe Cody anything, either. At least with Cody you were more upfront from the beginning.… He just thought he’d change your mind.”
“He sure did,” I said, rolling my eyes at the memory of him asking me not to go to Paris and to spend the summer with him at his family’s place in Martha’s Vineyard.
“Listen, as much as I don’t want to see you hurting, you have a right to make your own choices. If Paris is the priority, which we all know it is, then that’s it. I respect that … but it doesn’t have to be black and white.”
“That’s basically what Hudson said.”
She gestured with her hands. “See?”
“That doesn’t mean he’s right … or that you are.”
She turned to me, her hands on her hips. “You can live without Wesley Hudson. I have no doubt about that. But you don’t have to. You don’t have to let it end like this. It matters how this ends, Edie. It matters because there will be life after French 102 and Paris in the fall. Give yourself a break, okay? Get out of the right now and think about the after for a second.”
31
D Stands for Done
“Why do I have more confidence in you than you do?” Serena asked as we sat at a table in the back of the tutoring center.
Ha. Story of my life right here. I had little to no confidence in my ability to pass this final exam. Passing this exam meant I would pass the course. A sixty-five on this exam meant a sixty-five in French 102.
D meant done as far as I was concerned.
I didn’t feel confident in what I’d learned. I didn’t feel confident that I could get through the final with a sixty-five. I wasn’t confident in myself at all. I felt so totally knocked down and dragged out. I wasn’t confident in Hudson’s original strategy of focusing on the vocab and not on the listening. I wasn’t confident that I would finish on time. I wasn’t confident that I could keep my attention off Hudson and on the test.
“There is so much pressure to pass this. I literally feel like I’m dying,” I said as I opened my hand to her and received three penguin gummies in return. I popped them all into my mouth at once.
“Are you sure that feeling isn’t from everything going on with you and Hudson?” she asked.
I may have still been upset with him, but passing French was the priority. Passing French was the most important hurdle. I couldn’t even consider making things right with him until I knew my French fate. And I did plan on making things right with him.
Something inside me said that time would help. That I could take the time I needed to figure out a balance. That maybe we could move forward as friends.
“Honestly, I can’t even with him right now. This is my priority. This is where my head needs to be,” I said, tapping my stack of flash cards. Except my head was not on French, it was exactly where Serena said it was: on Hudson.
I sighed as I followed her lead and started gathering all my study materials.
“So, I got this thing,” Serena said, biting at her bottom lip as she swiped at her phone. “And I think you should see it.”
I dropped a handful of highlighters into my bag as I watched her.
“It’s, um—” She handed me the phone. “Just read it.”
I held her eyes as I took her phone, swallowing hard before looking at the screen.
HUDSON: Your photo series was incredible. You deserved to win.
HUDSON: I should have told you when I was at the gallery, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to you, sorry.
SERENA: Thank you
SERENA: It’s ok. I understand.
HUDSON: Is it possible for me to have copies of those pics?
SERENA: Of course
HUDSON: I guess I’m a glutton for punishment
SERENA: Just so you know, she is, too
HUDSON: I saw that you had the collection titled “Falling in Love,” but may I suggest a different title?
SERENA: Haha. Yeah, real creative. I know. Sure.
HUDSON: Avec la douleur exquise
SERENA: You’re gonna make me google that, aren’t you?
“What does it mean?” I asked.
Serena shrugged as she extended her hand to take her phone back. “Google Translate was no help. I thought maybe we could ask Makenna,” she said, throwing a look over her shoulder.
I pursed my lips as I watched Makenna working on the computer, her back to us.
“Can you translate something for us?” I asked Makenna, nodding to Serena to hand Makenna the phone.
“Yeah, of course.” Makenna looked at it and then up to me. A small smile started in the corner of her mouth and then spread to take over her whole face. “Who wrote this, Hudson?”
I nodded.
She shook her head, blushing as she looked at the phone again. My eyes went to Serena and then back to Makenna.
“I tried to google it, but it didn’t translate to anything that actually made sense. ‘With exquisite pain’?” Serena said.
“No, it wouldn’t,” she said, handing back the phone. “Avec la douleur exquise literally translates to exquisite pain, yes, but that doesn’t really do it justice. It comes from the medical word for a pain that opiates can’t even dull. In life and love, it’s used to describe the indescribable pain of knowing you cannot have the person you love.”
I looked from Makenna to Serena. I could see it in both of their faces. They were both swooning.
“Stop,” I warned Serena, knowing she was going to use this as yet another reason for me to get on with it and make up with Hudson … and potentially as a name for the collection. Considering the circumstances, it was a fitting name, I had to give him that.
“Can I be honest for, like, one second?” Makenna asked, interrupting the silent conversation I was having with Serena.
I shrugged. “Sure,” I said, knowing that there was pretty much nothing she could say that could make this situation any more awkward.
“I don’t know if Huds told you this or not, but I asked him out last semester,” she said. “We went on a couple dates, but it didn’t work out, obviously.”
I nodded slowly, wondering where she was going with this.
“This isn’t him.”
“What do you mean?” Serena asked, since I wasn’t quick enough.
“I mean, he must really be in deep with you, because the Hudson I know would never have written something like this. He never would have opened up like that,” she said, her eyes moving from me to some point over my left shoulder. “Trust me.”
32
Angel Wings
We were one hour into the final, and my eyes met Hudson’s for the third time. He openly watched me. Not like he hadn’t been watching me these past few weeks anyway, but seeing him watch me now made me sad. He was worried about me, that much was clear.
I didn’t regret the time we’d spent goofing around instead of studying. What I did regret was allowing myself to be distracted from the beginning. Hudson was a distraction. At the end of the day, that was what our relationship boiled down to. Maybe I pursued him on purpose. Self-sabotage. If I failed, I could blame him. If Paris didn’t work out that summer, I could blame him.
“Il vous reste trente minutes, mesdames et messieurs.”
Dr. Clément’s voice came through my earpiece, startling the crap out of me. His announcement that we had thirty minutes left to complete the exam initiated nearly half the class to rise from their seats, declaring silently that they were already done.
Except this part of test taking was never a silent declaration. I heard everything. Every chair scrape. Every shuffled paper. Every whispered how do you think you did. This very moment was the exact reason I used to take my tests in a separate location in high school.
I put my pen down and waited. There was no sense in trying to finish until the herd had handed in their booklets and left. I looked at Hudson. He was watching me again as he bit his bottom lip.
I couldn’t focus on him right now. I had to focus on the rest of my test. I had to get as many of the multiple-choice questions correct as possible.
“You have five minutes to finish up, Edie.”
Dr. Clément’s voice was soft in my ear. I looked up. Why was he only addressing me?
Oh.
I was the only person still in the 100-seat lecture hall. And I still had an entire page to go. I was done for. This was over. I’d be back in this room in the fall.
I’d kept up the best I could during the listening section. I’d gotten through the vocab and the fill-in-the-blanks and even the adjectives, but the reading section was killing me. The reading section was about to do me in.
I breathed slowly. I still had five minutes. A lot could happen in five minutes. I could get something done in five minutes, get through the rest of this test.
I stared at the few words I’d written on the page. It wasn’t nearly enough. It wasn’t quality and it wasn’t enough.
“You can do this,” Hudson whispered in my ear. “Forget about the time, and focus.”
I shook my head, my eyes on the nearly blank page. I wasn’t going to make it.
“No to which?” he asked. “The you can do this or the forget about the time, and focus?”
I looked up at him. Actually looked at him for the first time in over three weeks. I looked at the way he watched me. The way his eyes told me I could do it. How he genuinely wanted me to beat this test.
“Both,” I said aloud, closing my test and sinking my head back into my hands.
“Edie, don’t—” he started, but I pulled the earpiece before he could finish.
* * *
The exam scores wouldn’t be posted until midnight. I checked my phone for the ninth time, and only five minutes had passed. I still had two hours to go.
“I really want to see The Dress,” Serena nagged for the third time. “Can we just go see The Dress?”
I stared at the Word document on my laptop. I had an essay to write, three casual beachwear outfit designs to finish, and the last chapter of a book for British Lit. Just because French was done and over with didn’t mean I was in the clear for all my other classes, but going to visit my dress had enough pull for me to forget about everything else.
Serena sat on her desk, her legs swinging as she watched me.
I sighed as I closed my laptop.
“Yay!” she cheered as she hopped off her desk. She ferociously shoved her feet into her boots. “Come on, come on.”
“Oh my God.” I laughed as I s
lipped into my Keds and pulled on my wool coat. “You are out of control right now.”
“I can’t wait another second to see this dress, Edie. It’s all you’ve talked about for, like, ever. There are sketches of it all around the room. You even talk about it in your sleep.” She opened the door and waved me through.
“I’m sure I don’t talk about it in my sleep.”
“You definitely do,” she said as she shoved me lightly with her shoulder.
* * *
It was Grecian. This was in all senses of the term navy blue, but as it moved in the light you saw hints of teal and bronze. It was modeled after one I’d seen on a beautiful actress at an awards show when I was ten. She’d worn it with such grace that I knew I had to have it, and at that time fashion wasn’t a living, breathing thing for me. I kept that image in my mind anyway, storing it until I decided to look it up on the internet when I’d finally dived headfirst into patterning and sewing.
The entire dress was draped, which was a style of construction that meant I’d spent hours standing at the dress form, moving and shifting fabric. Pinning and unpinning. Pricking myself and trying to keep drops of blood off the fabric.
Instead of a traditional belt made of woven rope, this had a stylized structured belt. Cinched at the waist and split up the side seams to form the straps—bridle straps, similar to the way a shoulder holster for a gun would look. The top of the bodice then connected to the straps at the center of the sternum. This formed a soft diamond shape to complete the look of the front of the bodice. It had a plunging back, which meant my back was completely bare. Any lower and the top of my butt crack might have shown.
“It truly looks beautiful,” Serena said as she stood a few steps back over my left shoulder.
The Dress was done and I couldn’t believe it. She’d asked to be there for the grand reveal, which was perfect because I needed someone to zip me up. Double plus, I needed a distraction from the two-hour wait I had until my final grade for French would be posted. Triple plus, Serena was still taking pictures for my portfolio.
“It’s certainly been a labor of love,” I said, making eye contact with her in the full-length mirror. “You like the color?”
Meet Me in Outer Space Page 15
