The Bridge

by Jill Cox

  I recalculated my options fifteen hundred different ways while Drew took forever to pack his bag. Neither of us touched our breakfast, nor did we talk much. We chose to put our lips to better use instead.

  At six thirty, after the car service buzzed from downstairs, the rickety elevator clanged its way down five flights while my heart thumped so loudly I thought it might knock the elevator off its pulley. Drew was leaving, and just like that, I wanted to leave, too.

  The moment the driver took Drew’s bag, tears began to fall down my cheeks. Drew pulled me close and kissed me again, like this was the last time ever. “I love you,” he whispered.

  But I couldn’t answer him back this time. I just sobbed into his shoulder until the driver revved his engine, and before I could form a sentence, the car was halfway up the rue Bonaparte with Drew inside. I stood there for ten whole minutes, tears still streaming down my face, wondering whose dumb idea it was to run away to Paris anyway.

  It was still too early to head to school, so I clomped up all seven flights of the back staircase to return Anne’s room back to its perfect order, fresh linens and all. But even after her room looked magazine-perfect again, I still had another hour before class. So I headed to my room and stripped my own linens, picking up my pillow first.

  When I pressed my nose against the fabric to breathe in Drew’s scent one last time, I felt something flat inside. So I shook it upside down, and a gigantic, thick envelope with my name on it fell out onto the mattress.

  You know those oversized cards you see at the drugstore that have a pink teddy bear saying: Roses are red, violets are blue/No one loves you as much as I do?

  They’re ridiculous.

  Every time we’d seen cards like that over the years, Drew and I had mocked any poor sap who wasted their money on such nonsense. Sitting down on my bed, I imagined Drew cracking up in the store when he bought it. And that made finding this silly card for me and hauling it all the way from America the most romantic thing he’d done all weekend.

  Inside, there were a dozen old photos of us, and a letter, written in Drew’s scrawly print.

  Dear Meredith,

  This has been the best weekend of my life, and before you say it, YES, that includes the weird moments. I’ve loved every second of being here with you. I wish I could stay. Why didn’t I listen to you in the eighth grade when you told me that speaking French would make me a chick magnet? WHY WAS YOUR YOUNGER SELF ALWAYS SO MUCH WISER THAN MINE?

  If you decide when I leave that the distance is too much, I get it. But if you still want to see where this goes, I’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy. So, if you’re ready, just change your relationship status on Facebook. It’s your call.

  I love you,

  Drew

  PS- Look up at your bulletin board. You forgot someone important. Ahem.

  PSS- I made a MereDrew playlist. (Well, I tried. Your music’s lame.)

  PSSS- I thought you might want the pictures I took this weekend, so I downloaded them onto your laptop. I may or may not have made you an embarrassing slideshow. And a screensaver. (Don’t judge, man. I had to do something to fill my time while you spent a whole hour primping before Versailles yesterday morning.)

  PSSSS- Seriously, why are you still reading?!?!? LOOK UP, FEE.

  I obeyed and looked up at my bulletin board. My wonky little triangle of pictures was now shaped like a plus sign, with the four most important people from my past placed around the Sullivan’s postcard – north, south, east, and west.

  Drew had tacked his photo down at the bottom: a black-and-white image Ian had taken this summer on the Fourth of July. Drew was wearing his glasses and grinning at the camera like a fool, his arm draped lazily around my shoulder. And despite the sparklers I held in each hand, I was looking away from the camera, smiling at Drew.

  Just like always.

  I stood up and walked to my computer, then pulled up the photos Drew had downloaded from the weekend. He really did make a slideshow, and set it to some screamo band cover of Rihanna’s Umbrella. I was half-laughing, half-teary-eyed as a million two-headed selfies flashed before my eyes. And yeah, the number of kissing shots was humiliating, but each and every one was adorable.

  As the images slid past on the screen, I made a decision. No more doubts. I logged in to Facebook and changed my status to “in a relationship.” Immediately, I had a notification.

  Drew Sutton likes your relationship status change.

  Somewhere on the outskirts of Paris, my official new boyfriend was sitting in early morning rush hour traffic, using up the last of his international data plan to stalk my feed. Sad, pathetic, and exactly what I needed to know.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The moment I’d changed my relationship status, everything had solidified with Drew. I will spare you the sappy text I got seconds later, but let’s just say that if he’d said those things before he left, I would have gone back to America with him. By the end of the day, I had about five hundred notifications from high school and college friends, with every variation of it’s about time.

  Talk about your own worst nightmare. My love-drunkness with Drew Sutton fueled a new obsession with social media, video chat, and texting. We talked more now than we had back in our Lincoln City days when we’d been inseparable. October sped by so fast that if Ian hadn’t called me from SeaTac Airport on Halloween, I would have forgotten his impending visit completely.

  Pictures never quite did Ian justice because his features leaned toward the quirky side of asymmetrical. But his jet-black hair and piercing green eyes were striking, and when he spoke, the entire room crackled with energy. So I made sure every member of Marie-France’s quiver knew he’d be in attendance at Wednesday night dinner that week. Then I sat back and observed the pandemonium.

  Marie-France was so mesmerized by my brother all evening that she spoke English with us for the first time ever. The. Entire. Night.

  My family didn’t leave Ireland until Ian was six, which left him with a slight accent on certain words and a faintly European mindset. When he’d graduated from high school, my crafty big brother convinced my parents to let him take a gap year on his own dime. By Labor Day, he’d reached his savings goal and hopped the next flight to Phnom Penh.

  Somehow, Ian stretched his savings for nine months while he circled the globe. Rumor has it he visited thirty-five countries on six continents, and the images he captured earned him a photojournalism scholarship to a small fine arts college in Seattle.

  Vagabonding had made my brother fearless. When Ian told me he wanted to get an internship with Greg the Guidebook Guru – the one-man European travel conglomerate with shows on public television – I told him he was crazy. No one got those internships. They were the professional equivalent of Ed McMahon showing up on your front door with a six-foot-long paycheck. Not even The Ian Sullivan could land a job like that.

  I was wrong. The internship turned full-time once Ian graduated, and now, four years later, he’s got a fancy title and more frequent flier miles than anyone could imagine. Which is how I found myself in Prague for All Saints’ Day weekend.

  During his Tour du Monde, Ian had managed to make all sorts of friends, so it made sense that he spent half of his professional life catching up with people from the past. When we got to Prague on Friday morning, Ian introduced me to Pavel and Anika Nemcek, an early-thirtysomething couple he’d befriended during his month-long stay in Laos. All day, while Ian scampered from meeting to meeting with Pavel in tow as his interpreter, Anika ferried me around town on her scooter with the sole task of collecting as many silver charms for my bracelet as we could find.

  Later that evening, Ian and I were settling into the guest room of their modest yet charming flat in the suburbs when he flopped back on his twin bed and sighed. “Okay, mate, we’ve put this off long enough. You want to tell me what’s going on between you and our mutual friend Andrew?”

  “No, I do not,” I laughed, stacking my dirty clothes on the left
side of my backpack. “Gross, Ian. You’re my brother. Like I would fill you in on the details of my personal life.”

  Ian pushed himself to a seated position and watched while I zipped up my bag. “I’m not asking for details. But you haven’t even said the kid’s name since I arrived, and I’m not going to lie, Fee. I’m starting to get concerned.”

  “I’ve said his name.”

  “No. You haven’t. Are you… I mean, is everything okay with you two?”

  “Ian, please,” I laughed, crossing the room to set my backpack near the door. “Everything is fine. What could possibly be wrong?”

  “Fine?” Ian’s expression went dark. “Everything is fine? Stop messing around, Fee. You never say something’s fine unless it isn’t. Sit down this instant and talk to me.”

  Something in the way Ian was looking at me made my stomach drop. I walked back to my bed and sat down, mirroring my brother’s posture until he relaxed himself against the wall behind him. Then I waited. I waited so long that I counted him breathe in and out seventeen times.

  “Your whole life,” he finally said, “I’ve stayed out of your business. You’re smart, and definitely a little too cautious, but I trust you. You know that, right?”

  “Yes. Except I hear a but coming.”

  “There are no buts. I just want to be…” Ian rubbed his eyes. “Listen, Fee, when I took Drew to breakfast in Portland last month, he looked awful. Like, wild-eyed. I haven’t seen him like that since his mom died. I thought the little dude was going to sob into his scrambled eggs.”

  “Don’t say little dude, Ian. Drew’s just as much a man as you are now.”

  “Maybe so. But when I asked him what was wrong, he said he’d finally screwed everything up. He said he was going to lose you, and he had no one but himself to blame. It was a little pathetic, actually. So pathetic that I got a little misty myself.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “I’m the one who sent Drew to Paris,” Ian smiled weakly. “Hey, don’t give me that look. What good are all those air miles anyway if you can’t help one of your oldest mates?”

  My throat began to ache. “But why would you do that? Did he ask you for help?”

  “What? No way, Meredith. He was furious that I even offered. It’s not as romantic to surprise your girl in Paris if her brother pays for the tickets. So I’d appreciate it if you’d keep this secret to yourself.”

  “I’m not going to tell him. I’m just trying to understand why you got involved, especially since you’re the one who told me to move on with my life.”

  “Because, Meredith. Drew told me he was in love with you. And I thought you deserved to know.”

  Even though our window was closed, I could hear a police car klaxon wailing in the distance. Deee doooo, deee doooo, deee doooo, volleying from one side of my heart to the other, like the echo of all the red flags I’d chosen to ignore. The timing. The urgency to make it all official. The complete omission of my brother’s involvement.

  Suddenly, Drew’s grand romantic gesture felt as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny.

  For a long time, Ian watched me from across the room, every question he wasn’t asking written right there on his face. I wanted to run across the room and hug him for his kind heart. I wanted to deck him for butting into my life. But mostly, I wanted a do-over of the last several months, because the worst part was knowing how blindly I’d navigated the whole thing.

  “Tell me I did the right thing, Fee,” Ian said after the silence had gone on too long. “Tell me I haven’t messed up your year in Paris by sticking my nose in where it didn’t belong.”

  I paused, then plastered my little sister smile onto my face. “All you ever do is look out for me, Ian. I’m sorry I’m acting weird. You just surprised me, that’s all.”

  Ian eyed me strangely for a minute. “I don’t think you understand what I’m asking you. Be honest, Fee – by sending Drew here last month, did I force you to pick him over someone else? Because I got the impression the other night at Marie-France’s that you and that Pete guy had some unfinished business.”

  Hearing my brother say his name like that sent an unexpected pang through my chest. Ever since Drew left, Pete had stopped coming to Wednesday night dinner and started arriving to class late, which he’d never done back at Highgate. Then, at the end of every class, he would flee without a word, tapping away on his phone or wrangling things into his backpack.

  Not one person even mentioned the change in his behavior, and on Wednesdays, every eye avoided that empty chair at Marie-France’s table, like it had been empty all along.

  So when Pete had shown up for dinner this week, chatting and laughing like it was his job, I’d spent the whole evening like a repelled magnet, orbiting the outlier from as far as possible, wary of his re-entry on the scene.

  If anyone could read between the lines of my weirdness, it was my big brother. So I hopped up from the bed, crossed the room, and clicked off the light with a rueful laugh. “Dude, I always suspected you were a liar. And now I have proof.”

  “A liar?” I could feel Ian’s eyes follow me in the darkness. “About what?”

  I slipped into my twin bed, yanking the duvet up to my chin. “Do you have any idea how many times you’ve bragged that you can sleep like a boss anytime, anywhere?”

  “I have never bragged about something that ridiculous.”

  “Oh, but you have, my friend,” I retorted. “Except now I’ve got proof that you suffer from jet lag like the rest of us. You’re experiencing visual hallucinations on par with unicorn sightings if you think I’ve got drama with a frat boy player like Pete Russell.”

  “I didn’t say you had drama. I only meant…”

  “Too late, mate. The next time you start crowing about your superhuman travel skills, I’m bringing up that one night in Prague when I witnessed the time zone delirium warp your brain just like it does to everybody else. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Ian laughed, quietly at first, and then full-blown guffaws. Even after he’d buried himself under his own covers, I could hear him snickering, like a little kid who’d just farted in church.

  I was half a second away from drifting off when I heard his muffled voice. “Hey, Fee?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re my favorite. You know that, right?”

  “Ah, delirium,” I sighed. “You’re the gift that keeps on giving.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  After Ian flew back to Seattle the following Monday, I finally hit the homesick wall. The Paris skies were permanently gray, the air bone-chillingly damp, and the constant spitting rain was miserable, even for a girl from Oregon. The melancholy inside made me queasy, like I was on a constant blood sugar low. When your boyfriend and your family live nine time zones away, it’s impossible to ignore that distance forever.

  Which might explain why none of us were prepared for the full-scale frenemy assault I later dubbed Operation: Pumpkin Spice.

  Pete’s new friend Meg Green was that strange sort of beautiful – not gorgeous in the traditional sense, but something about her bewitched every person in her wake. Like an actress, or a supermodel.

  No, wait: like a vampire. And she totally used it to her advantage.

  So when she invited herself to Wednesday night dinner during the last week of November, the dam of my self-restraint finally burst.

  “I never thought of myself as clique-ish before,” I huffed, plopping down between Harper and Kelly on the sofa after Meg followed Dan and Pete out for the evening. “But doesn’t she know you can’t invite yourself to someone else’s dinner party?”

  Marie-France slipped into the armchair across from us. “You know, les filles, every time I think I’ve figured out the human race, someone like Meg proves me wrong. She had absolutely no idea that she’d offended me tonight by showing up without an invitation. Maybe she just assumed she belonged here with the rest of you?”

  Kelly groaned. “Did you see the boys
stand up every time she ran to the restroom? Why would they do that? She isn’t royalty.”

  “Exactly!” Anne piped in from the kitchen. “I cannot figure out what is so fascinating about that girl.”

  “It’s her eyes,” Marie-France said matter-of-factly, taking a long sip from her wine glass. “Are they violet or indigo? I can’t decide. And those lashes! Is this an American thing?”

  “They’re lash extensions,” Harper rolled her blue eyes. “You gotta admire her, though. I’ve never met anyone so gifted in mystique. Watch next time someone asks her a question. She offers just enough information to answer, but it’s never more than vague nonsense.”

  Kelly stretched her long legs out before her, then slumped back against the sofa. “I always wonder if those girls she runs around with even like each other. To me, they’re more like a squadron of fembots, scouring Europe for clues to a game we’re too uncool to understand.”

  “Yes!” Anne agreed from the doorway. “But at least Meg tries to be nice. She actually texted me about our translation homework last night. I just wish I knew what her angle was.”

  “I think I know the answer to that.” Harper readjusted her scarf, then leaned forward and gave Kelly a look. “We have to tell them.”

  My stomach knotted. “Tell us what?”

  “Last weekend, we saw Meg and Pete at the movies.”

  An uneasy silence spread among the five of us during which two things happened. First, Anne stepped fully into the living room and shot daggers at her two best friends. Then, Marie-France looked at me so wistfully that I wondered just how intuitive she really was.

  “Why haven’t you told us before now?” Anne demanded.

  Kelly lifted her hands in defense. “Hey, it was none of our business. Especially since it looked like a double date – Dan was there, too, with Meg’s French friend. What’s her name again?”