by Leah Raeder
His arms tightened around me, and he whispered back, “You changed mine.”
Wesley looked at the two of us, then away.
The crazy thing was that after all of this, no one knew. No one gave me a second glance or raised an eyebrow. They talked excitedly about Hollywood and New York. They asked Evan about his college days. The rumors had died down without Hiyam fueling them. Now he was just a teacher, and I was just another student, not connected to him in any special way. I drifted across the grass, leaving him there in the sun and the warmth of their attention, closing my eyes and letting the light soak through, blinding me with my own neon red blood.
#
Wesley left with Natalie the day after graduation, heading to California. I had plans to take a plane next week. Carbondale graduated later than us.
I stayed with Siobhan after her kids left. We made Manhattans with maraschino cherries and sat on the back deck, talking long after sunset. She planned to travel now that Wesley had left home. She wanted to see Europe, write a novel, date a young Italian (“At least three times younger than me,” she said, “to get even with Jack.”), live for a while in a villa by the sea. She knew I was waiting for an answer from Evan.
“I am not the wise woman you think,” she said, tilting her glass. Starlight skimmed off the rim and shot into her eyes, sparkling. “But I will tell you this: don’t put your life on hold for someone, or you’ll wake up at forty-two with an empty house and a terrifying sense of freedom and no energy or innocence left to enjoy it.”
I wanted to hug her so much. “If Wesley doesn’t call you every week, I’ll beat the shit out of him.”
“Perhaps you should do that anyway, as a preventive measure.”
I laughed, she cackled, and we got drunk under the leaves and stars.
#
When I got home, I discovered two shocking things.
One: Mom was gone.
She’d scrawled a note on the back of an envelope and left it on the kitchen table. Her childish, blocky handwriting: Checking in to clinic. Sorry I’m a shit mom & no good with words. This letter came for you.
I blinked the sudden tears out of my eyes—I was drunk, that was the only explanation—and turned the envelope over. My name in florid, scrolling letters. Return address: Ahmad Farhoudi.
Shocking thing number two: a letter from Hiyam’s dad.
I opened it, my heart going at lightspeed. A smaller slip of paper fluttered out. I focused on the larger one.
My deepest gratitude for your discretion and concern regarding my daughter. You have given both of us a second chance. I hope this small gift helps you transition to an exciting new period in your life.
The smaller slip of paper was a check.
For ten thousand dollars.
I started laughing, breathless, crazy laughter, and then I jumped up and did a sort of whirling dervish dance around the kitchen, saying, “Thank you, sweet Jesus, I fucking love you,” and could not stop laughing with hysterical joy and relief.
#
And then the only thing left was him.
We spent that last week in St. Louis. Summer was in full bloom now, the city wild and drenched with color, the sidewalks breathing warmly beneath my sandals. I tried my best to live in the moment. To not think about the fact that there were only five more days before we might part for the last time. Then four. Then three. But the tension was always there, a wire tightening in me, pulling my limbs and neck taut like a puppet, and when I looked up at the Arch I thought, That’s how I feel. A terrifying upward pull, away from terra firma.
One night in the loft, Evan was pouring a drink in the kitchen when he suddenly put the bottle down and walked over to me, sinking to his knees. He clutched my legs, his face pressing to my shins, stubble grinding against smoothness. I was bewildered, and when he said, “God, what am I doing?” my confusion became fear. I stroked his hair tentatively, asked what was wrong. He looked up, his face full of panic, and said, “I can’t do this to you. You don’t know what you’re doing, Maise. You have a life to live, not a broken man to fix.” I stared at him, horrified, starting to cry as I realized what he was saying, and that quickly he flipped a switch and became the one comforting me, apologizing, soothing me with promises that he was just tired, stressed, not thinking clearly. But that night we both lay awake, staring at the ceiling, silent. I thought, Who fixes broken people? Is it only other broken people, ones who’ve already been ruined? And do we need to be fixed? It was the messiness and hurt in our pasts that drove us, and that same hurt connected us at a subdermal level, the kind of scars written so deeply in your cells that you can’t even see them anymore, only recognize them in someone else.
Two days.
The wires finally snapped at lunch.
I sat on a patio in front of a plate of something I couldn’t even process as food. The sunlight ricocheting off the concrete was blinding. Silverware flashed, all sharp edges. Everything was bright and incomprehensible.
My fork clattered to the plate, catching Evan’s attention. His skin had tanned slightly, and in the sun his eyes were so vividly blue it didn’t seem the right word anymore—they were azul, the color of the Mexican Pacific, so pure it almost hurt to look at. He put his fork down. He looked so beautiful sitting there, a fine scatter of sand on his cheeks, the sun drizzling his hair with light, gold on gold.
“Stop acting,” I said quietly. “Stop pretending you’re not scared.”
“I’m scared,” he said, his voice also soft.
“We made it through the worst, Evan. School’s over. This should be the easy part.” The summer sun was in my blood, shining through my skin. “Why can’t you let yourself do what makes you happy?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It really is. You drop the bullshit and tell me yes or no.”
His gaze broke away from me, his eyes tightening. “Just because it’s complicated doesn’t mean it’s bullshit.”
“That’s exactly what it means.”
“You know,” he said, focusing on me again, “you talk like you’re so jaded and wise, but sometimes you’re pretty naive.”
My mouth dropped. I felt like he’d punched me. I swallowed, and said, “I’m eighteen fucking years old. Excuse me for being naive.”
Evan leaned across the table, lowering his voice. “That’s right. You’re eighteen. I’m thirty-three. I’m a grown man, Maise. Fifteen years older than you, fifteen years’ worth of problems, and bitterness, and second-guessing myself. You don’t need that. Not when you can have a clean slate in California.”
Adrenaline pumped through me, turning me cold, my hands and feet tingling. Finally. This was finally all coming into the open.
“Like I don’t have my own problems?” I shot back. “How about my junkie mother and deadbeat dad? And the guys I was with before you, who I just wanted to be nice to me?” My voice cracked; I swallowed again. “And Wesley stalking me, and Hiyam blackmailing me, and every crazy thing that’s happened this year?”
“What happened with Hiyam?” he said, frowning.
God, stupid slip-up. I hadn’t told him about the blackmail, knowing he’d use it as another example of how he was ruining my life. It was a story for another time.
“The point is, I don’t have a clean slate. All of that shit comes with me. It’s part of who I am. Your problems have always been part of you, and I accepted them. That doesn’t change now.”
“You’re young, Maise,” he said gently, giving me that mournful look that took me apart inside. “You don’t know any better.”
I could not believe this. I could not believe, after everything, he was playing the fucking age card. Reducing me to a number.
“Fuck you,” I said.
I stood up. The lion in me wanted to flip the table over, listen to the glass and china shattering, see the shocked faces, but it would only prove his point about my age. I turned around and walked out. I had no idea where I was going, no idea where or who I was, just a me
aningless blur of blood cells floating over white-hot concrete. I knew what he was doing. Trying to piss me off, make me leave him. You fucking coward, I thought. If you think you’re so wrong for me, own it, and let me decide. Don’t try to do what’s best for me. Don’t try to teach me.
I ended up in one of those urban parks that were everywhere downtown, this one all swathes of velvet green grass and trees centering on a plaza with a huge pool. In the center, a bronze Olympian runner stood frozen midstride, plumes of white water pulsing to either side of him. Behind the statue you could see the Old Courthouse and the Arch, a visual timeline of history. I sat on the coping, dipping a hand into the cool water and pressing it to my neck. Breathe, I told myself. I smelled wet metal. I watched the sun chip shards of light into the pool’s surface.
Evan eventually found me. He stopped a few feet away, his hands hanging loosely, his pale short-sleeved Oxford glowing with sunlight. He stood there while I stared into the pool.
“You look so beautiful,” he said. “So beautiful and far away.”
Do something, I thought. Jump in the water, propose to me, tell me you’re moving to South Africa. Don’t just let me go.
But he only stood there, breaking my heart.
I got up. Headed toward his car, across a street bordering the park, my sundress snapping at my legs as I walked fast. Evan caught me before I crossed and touched my shoulder and I stopped right in the middle of the street.
“Don’t leave like this,” he said.
The muscles of my throat were tight as a noose. “This is it, Evan. This is how it’s going to end. Not on some romantic runway at midnight. It’s going to end in broad daylight, on a crowded street, with people—shut up!” I snapped when a car honked behind me, “—with people hurrying us so they can go pick up their laundry. Is this how you imagined it? Is this really how you want it to end?”
He looked at me miserably, his voice thick. “I don’t want it to end.”
“That’s not good enough,” I said. The car veered around us and zoomed away. I started to cry. “If you’re not on that plane with me, it’s over. And I’m not holding my breath a minute longer to find out. Are you coming with me or not?”
This is what he said:
Nothing.
Not a word to stop me, to explain himself, no matter how futile it would be.
He just gave me that aching, tender look that ripped me to shreds.
“Give me your keys,” I said. “Give me your fucking keys.”
He did.
Autopilot engaged. I opened the trunk, pulled my bags out. Some of my clothes were still in the loft, trivial things, toothbrush, lotion. Nothing I cared about. Not that I cared about anything anymore.
“Maise,” Evan said, “please.”
I dropped my bags into the street. Cars were honking again, edging around us. I ignored them. I knelt to unzip one of the bags and yanked out that fucking stuffed pony I’d won almost a year ago and hurled it at him. Goodbye, Louis. Then I bounced to my feet, flagging down a taxi.
“Maise,” Evan said again.
I didn’t look at him. The cab coasted over, popped the trunk, and I shoved my bags in. Threw myself into the backseat and slammed the door. I couldn’t feel anything. My brain registered the hot sun-baked leather, but my body was numb.
“Where you headed?” the cabbie said.
“Just drive,” I said, refusing to wipe the tears off my face. “Drive around for a while, please.”
He pulled away, and I lasted all of eight seconds before I started crying again, openly, horribly, lowering my head and shrouding myself in the dark curtain of my hair. The hem of my dress turned transparent with tears.
Mr. Driver didn’t say a word.
The brain is an incredible multitasker. At the same time that it’s piercing itself with superheated needles of anguish, it’s ruthlessly making plans, contingencies, plotting out a future, giving zero fucks whether it’ll ever see it. On the day I die, it’ll be calculating what to have for dinner as it bombards itself with pain signals from my amputated legs or my clocked-out heart. And so, when I stopped crying, I wiped the snot off my upper lip and took out my phone.
In sixty seconds, I had an address for the driver.
Park was waiting in the cool green shade of an elm outside his building. He took my bags as I paid the fare.
“You’ll be all right,” the driver said.
I laughed, sniffling. “Yeah. I will.”
Park led me upstairs without a word. He had a condo a few floors up, pristine cherry hardwood and sleek modern furniture, tracklights, art on raw canvases, everything in shades of gray and touches of chrome. A view of the Arch through enormous windows.
“This way,” he said, still carrying my bags.
He showed me to a bathroom. It was so white I squinted, hard lights hitting the mirrors. It looked like a place where androids slept. I scrubbed my face, brushed my hair, tried to tease out some vestige of my humanity, instead of looking like a decomposing waif.
When I came out Park was at the granite kitchen counter, sipping a beer. “Drink?”
“Water, please. I’m really sorry to show up like this.”
He made a quick, dismissive gesture, handed me a glass, and looked at me with muted curiosity. Men, I thought. They’ll never ask, even if they’re dying to know.
Fifteen years. Was that really what it came down to? I’d been with Evan for the better part of the past year, so why was age a problem now? Because he’d be committing himself to something, I guess. Uprooting his life, leaving his friends, the easy jobs and low cost of living, all for a city full of broken dreams and a screwed-up eighteen-year-old who’d already left him twice.
I took a deep breath and drank. When I thought of it like that, I couldn’t blame him.
“The first time I met you,” I said, “you thought it was happening again, didn’t you? What happened with the other girl.”
Park’s eyes narrowed. He took a moment to answer, sipping his beer first. “She came to me, crying and begging. I thought she needed help. It was all an act. Eric—” He caught himself. “—E felt so guilty, he refused to see what she was doing. I told him, ‘You were wrong, but so is torturing someone for a mistake.’ I was moving to St. Louis for a job and offered him a chance to start over.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Since college. We were roommates.”
“Why was that girl torturing him?”
Park spun his bottle on the counter. “She thought she was in love.”
But she wasn’t. She was just a hurt, fucked-up, obsessed little girl. Maybe that was how Evan saw me.
“You know,” Park said, peering into his beer, “I’ve known E half my life. He’s family. Even my mother loves him, and she is impossible to impress. Like, doesn’t carry the gene.” He grinned at me, let it slowly fade. “He has changed so much since he met you. He talks about getting back into acting. Helping you launch a movie career. I haven’t heard him talk so much about the future since college. He’s finally looking forward, not backward.”
I swallowed. I was a mess inside, part of me lifting at this, reaching for any shred of hope, but the greater part knowing it was just that, just talk. We were past that stage. No more dialogue. Action beats only.
“He can talk about the future all he wants, but it’s not going to wait for him to start.”
Park gave a quick laugh. “You sound like my mother. She would like you, too.”
He went to shower, and I stared out the windows at the Arch looping over the shining blue thread of the Mississippi, like a silver shoelace. I couldn’t imagine getting through the next two days. Not in this haunted city, not with the laughing ghost of a girl who thought she was getting away with some grand secret. Funny, how easy happiness had been when it was us against the world. Guess that was the trick after all.
I took out my phone.
When Park came back, I said, “I rescheduled my flight. I’m leaving tonight. Can
you drive me?”
“Of course,” he said, but apprehension flickered in his eyes.
I checked and rechecked my bags, texted Wesley that I’d be arriving early, watched TV with Park on his absurdly large screen. My new departure time was nine P.M. It was a long drive.
“I guess we should go,” I said when the sky began to turn lavender.
Park paused with my bags at the door. “You sure about this? Maybe you should wait, sleep on it.”
“I’ve been waiting for months,” I said, but what I thought was, I’ve been waiting my whole life. I was so sure this was different, the kind of love story they made movies and books about, but in the end it was just a summer to a summer, a dizzying breath of honeysuckle and whiskey and candle smoke, inhaled, held, let go.
Park told me funny bar stories on the way to the airport, trying to take my mind off things, and I laughed but I felt outside myself, an observer. The camera watching the girl. He walked me inside the terminal all the way to the TSA checkpoint, because he said no one should go to an airport alone. That almost made cry. He said he’d tell Evan I got here safely. I hugged him goodbye, and he winked.
Lambert International was cold and bright as a hospital, everything sterile white. I was freezing but I walked slowly to my gate, wanting to prolong it all, listening to the voices on the PA talking about gate changes and delays with an intense reverence. Lives changed here, stories beginning and ending. Somewhere lovers met for the first time after talking online, touching each other’s faces with amazement. An Afghanistan vet with sand in her boots hugged her husband and kid. And a girl headed west, chasing the setting sun, without the man she loved. It was so surreal. It was going to end in an airport after all, just like Ilsa. I stared at the signs, the names of cities, but I was lost inside myself. Regrets Only Beyond This Point.
