One & Only (Canton)

by Daniels, Viv

  When I got home that evening, I sent him a short email, updating him on the progress I’d made at the lab. It was simple and professional, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t keep waiting for the ping of his response for the next few hours. It never came, and the next morning, when I woke up, there was still no new mail from Dylan.

  I tamped down my confusion as best I could and headed to school, but no matter how loudly I played the radio in my car, worries crept in. This wasn’t like him, to not respond to a progress report. This wasn’t like him, to not respond at all.

  The day passed. I took notes in Org 3, aced a pop quiz in Stats, and met with my advisor to review my plan for next semester. By noon, I was worried that Dylan might not make it today, either. Actually, I was worried, full stop. He’d never not replied to me. Never. Was he sick? Dead in a ditch? Lost his phone in a freak water buffalo stampede? I decided to text him, just to make sure.

  We still on for lab tonight?

  Fifteen minutes later, there was no response. Another half-hour had passed by the time I finished lunch. Before I left for my 1:00 p.m. class, I tried again.

  If you can’t come, let me know so I can tell Elaine we don’t need the lab slot after all.

  A minute later, my phone buzzed.

  I’ll be there.

  So here’s the thing. I used to pride myself on not being one of those girls who read into every single word a guy ever said or wrote. But I looked at those three words over and over, trying to figure out why he was being so terse and distant. Yes, we’d had an argument last Thursday, after the…closet. Yes, we hadn’t seen each other all weekend. But he’d come in with that necklace on Monday. If he’d been mad at me, he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to surprise me in Organic Chemistry.

  He wouldn’t have held my hand like that all through Transport on Tuesday morning.

  Right?

  So it was with trepidation that I approached the Bio-E building that evening after dinner, prepared to start our lab session.

  Dylan was waiting when I got up to our assigned room. Well, waiting wasn’t quite the right word for it. He was working, already set up with print-outs of results spread out on the tables, reviewing the slides on the big overhead projector hooked up to his laptop.

  “Hey,” I said, setting down my bag.

  “Hi.” He didn’t look up from the computer. “Did you get the readouts from strain seven last night?” He pointed to one of the green test tubes in the long row. “I don’t see anything here on that.”

  “Let me look in my files,” I replied. Okay. No chit-chat. “I think it’s on the fifth page—”

  “Found it,” he broke in, his tone terse. “We should really cross-reference that with specimen twelve, because they both showed a significant die-off after we introduced the ‘night frost’ variable…”

  I nodded as he shifted slides on our presentation, talking about green levels and efficiency and all the other things that I could usually discuss with him for hours. But not tonight.

  “Dylan—” I could barely get the words out, “—is there something wrong?”

  His shoulders lifted in a shrug.

  A horrible thought occurred to me. It had been a week since those tests. “Is it Hannah? Is she okay?”

  His head still bowed over our work, he replied, “No, she’s really not.”

  My heart stopped. Hannah. “What—what is it?”

  He looked up at me, and his eyes were tired, wrung out. “I broke up with her.”

  I leaned against a stool for support. “You—”

  He let out a long breath. “I broke up with her last night, Tess. It was really unpleasant and I’m not…I’m not happy with myself right now. It’s not your fault. It just is.”

  I didn’t understand. He’d sworn he wouldn’t break up with her until she was out of the woods. “But Hannah—her tests—”

  He threw his pen down on the table. “She’s fine. Her results came back yesterday and she’s fine. The nodule on her thyroid is benign. They’re going to try her on a medication at first and if it continues to bother her, she’s going to have surgery to remove it…but the bottom line is, she’s going to be fine.”

  I slumped against the table. “Thank God.” Hannah would be okay, my dad would be relieved, and Dylan and I—well, we were free.

  And that hope, that anticipation, must have shown on my face, for he shook his head, disgust painted all over his features. “I…wish I wasn’t here, that I wasn’t seeing you. I know this is what we wanted, but right now, I feel like a real asshole.”

  The excitement and relief curdled inside me and I forced myself to nod impassively. “I understand.” And I did. Mostly. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  He looked away. “I haven’t…been with Hannah in quite a while. I couldn’t. Not when all I wanted was to be with you. And last night, after she got her results back, she wanted to celebrate.”

  I take it back. I didn’t want to hear this. Hannah was healthy. They were broken up. That was all I needed to know.

  But Dylan was always one to tell the truth. “And, of course, I didn’t want to. It was a betrayal of you, and then I realized that whatever else I’d been trying to be for the last week, I was betraying her, too. I couldn’t.” He shrugged, helplessly. “So I broke up with her. I told her that I cared about her very much, that I was glad she was going to be okay, and that I thought it best if we went our separate ways.”

  My heart broke for Hannah right then, for my sister who was getting dumped. “What did she say?”

  “What do you think she said!” he snapped. “She cried. I made a really sweet girl cry on the day she found out she didn’t have cancer. I’m a big jerk.”

  For me. He’d done it for me.

  “So if I’m a little grumpy today, you know why.” He bent back over his work.

  I came around the table now and laid my hand on his arm. “Dylan—”

  “Don’t.” He shook me off. “I just…I can’t right now, Tess.” He looked at me, the expression in his blue eyes stark and crossed with pain. “And I’m not here to collect my reward for hurting her, to just jump from her bed into yours like her feelings don’t matter.”

  “I don’t want you to!” I cried. Her feelings did matter. That was what this past week had been about.

  His eyes searched mine, looking for some kind of comfort. “I kissed her last night.”

  I blinked as my stomach dropped to the vicinity of my knees. I knew he must have—on some level, I knew. But knowing it and hearing it was still different.

  “I kissed her when she told me, because…I don’t know. Because of habit? Because she expected me to?”

  I stepped back, and he flinched.

  “Yeah, I thought so,” he said miserably. “I thought you’d react like that. I betrayed her with you, and now I’ve betrayed you with her, because she told me she didn’t have cancer and I was so happy for her I kissed her. Shit.” He stood there for a second, shaking his head, his face downturned. “And then I broke up with her because I realized what an awful thing I was doing. I understand now why you said you didn’t want to see me. And back at the party, why you didn’t want to kiss me. You were right, even though I wasn’t listening to you. It was wrong because it was a lie.”

  My eyes began to burn. Dylan Kingsley had no idea what it was to lie. Not really. “I would have kissed her, too,” I said, honestly. “And I don’t even know her.”

  He laughed mirthlessly.

  “Do you think I’m mad at you?” I asked, incredulous. “Because you kissed your girlfriend when you were planning to break up with her?” Oh, boy. He had no idea who he was speaking to, did he? My dad had spent twenty years sleeping with my mother and his wife, and never once had he felt guilty enough about it to stop being with either one of them.

  “No, Tess.” He turned to me again. “I’m mad at me.”

  My heart pumped ice through my arteries. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong here.
This whole time, I’d trusted Dylan to tell me that this would be okay. That he would break up with Hannah and get together with me and it was all possible. That this was something normal, healthy people with positive relationship examples did. How was I supposed to know—me, the dirty little secret who had no basis to judge—what was right and what was wrong?

  He’d sounded so reasonable when we’d made our plan. I don’t want to be with Hannah. I want to be with you. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I can’t lie to Hannah. The path seemed simple: break up with Hannah, in the kindest way possible, and then we’d be able to be together.

  Were we kidding ourselves? Were we poisoned now because of the way we’d begun?

  “But it’s over now,” I said, nearly desperate. “It’s over.”

  “Yeah,” he replied flatly. “But it’s not that easy.”

  None of this was easy. It hadn’t ever been with Dylan. It never would be with Hannah. I’d known it wasn’t going to be easy. But I thought it would be enough. Hard, yes, and maybe unpleasant for a little while, but worth it in the end because we loved each other. We wouldn’t have bothered with all of this unless we truly loved each other.

  “Tell me what you want,” I said to him. “Do you want me to go away? Do you want us…to…wait? Do you—” A lump formed in my throat and I found I couldn’t speak anymore. Do you not want to be with me now?

  I felt like I could handle any option but that last one. The silver T around my neck seemed heavy enough to leave a mark. What had all this been for? How could I face the rest of the semester, the rest of this project, without Dylan?

  “I don’t know.” His jaw was clenched. His hands gripped the table. “I shouldn’t have come here tonight. I’m not ready. I need to work some things out.”

  “Work some things out”? I repeated. The room closed around me. I couldn’t breathe. I was standing here, wearing his necklace like a talisman, waiting for him like it would be okay, like it would happen, like I deserved to be happy after I’d stolen my sister’s boyfriend…and of course I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. I wasn’t that kind of girl. I was the kind you sneaked around with, the kind who was only exciting if it meant sneaking around.

  I whirled on my heel and headed back to my bag. It was self-preservation, really. If I didn’t leave, I was going to fall to my knees and beg. “Fine, you work some things out. I’m going home.”

  “No, wait. It’s not like that. I just—it’s just really complicated, and I—”

  Oh, did I ever understand how complicated it was. I had a lifetime worth of experience with complications. He had no idea how complicated it all was. And he never would. I made a beeline for the door, not even daring to look back. It was against the rules. All of this was against the rules, and I’d been a fool to think I could break them.

  ***

  On Thursday, I was the one to skip Biotransport. I didn’t want to see Dylan. Clearly, I needed space just as much as he did.

  I logged on to Facebook. I’d been so good all this time. But I had to know. Hannah’s profile had, in fact, been updated. It listed her status as “Single” and her wall was filled with “you go, girl” and “he doesn’t deserve you” posts from those pretty blonde friends of hers. I thought of what Dylan had said about the lack of support she’d been getting from her female friends over the past week. I didn’t know her relationship with the redhead in the coffee shop, but Hannah had kept quiet about her medical news to her. Was Hannah as self-contained in her way as I was in mine? I wondered how many of these posts were from people who really knew Hannah, who knew what she’d been dealing with, who knew how she felt about Dylan, what she wanted from him.

  If she loved him.

  There was no message from her, no comment about why they’d broken up. Nothing at all, really, in her updates except pictures of her and her mother on their recent trip to Manhattan. Marie Swift was very pretty. A good decade, at least, older than my mom, and blonde, like Hannah and Dad were, her hair a sleek cap that shimmered on her shoulders.

  But there was little hint as to Hannah’s state of mind. Was she happy about her medical news? Devastated by Dylan dumping her? Had she been talking to friends about it? Had she gone out drinking with a bunch of Ladies Who Lunch to drown her sorrows in martinis and girl-power anthems? If so, it hadn’t been at Verde. Sylvia would have told me.

  I did finally drag myself away from my laptop and go to Verde for my shift, but around three thirty, I asked Sylvia if I could go home. I claimed a headache, but the pain was much farther down. Close to my heart.

  Mom was out when I got home, off helping an artist friend with a studio crisis, so I curled up on the couch and watched mindless TV for hours. At some point I realized I hadn’t eaten, so I grabbed some junk from the kitchen and snacked, flipping channels. How long had it been since I’d just vegged out? Forgot about work, about classes, about the lab—just let everything go? No wonder I hadn’t been thinking straight. I hadn’t even given myself time to think.

  Not that I was deep in contemplation now. I wouldn’t let myself be. If I found my mind wandering to anything other than the show I was watching, I flipped channels. Thrillers, sitcoms, reality shows—it didn’t matter. Anything to distract me from obsessing over whatever had gotten Dylan and me so messed up. Anything to keep from wondering if all along, our case had been hopeless.

  After a while, though, the thoughts crowded in, too adamant to ignore.

  Fact: He’d been mine first.

  Fact: He’d told me he didn’t love Hannah and wanted to be with me.

  Fact: No one was married. No one was even engaged. We were just in college. It was normal to date lots of people, to break up with lots of people. What, he should marry Hannah just because he’d dated her?

  Fact: I’d been fair to Hannah. I’d refused to sleep with her boyfriend while she was still with him.

  All of this was fine. But I didn’t think I’d spent enough time thinking through the rest of it.

  Fact: Even if Dylan didn’t love Hannah, he broke up with her for me. For me.

  Fact: Dylan wasn’t used to deception, and he’d deceived her twice. First when he’d kept dating her after we’d made out. Second, when he didn’t tell her he was dumping her for me.

  Fact: I was deceiving Dylan, too. If he knew Hannah was my sister, he’d never be with me.

  Fact: Never.

  Because of me, Dylan had become a liar. Maybe this was my fate. I was the child of lies. Everything I did was touched by that poison. I’d been so stupid to think there was a happy ending here. Every time Dylan looked at me, he’d remember the look on Hannah’s face when he broke her heart. And really, if I stepped back from it all, what did I envision? Keeping my connection to Hannah a secret from him forever? What did my parents envision? What became of our rules when I got old enough to actually bring a guy home, to start my own family? Who was my “father” on the day I got married? Had my parents thought about it at all? Did Dad expect me to wear his aunt’s heirloom pearls on my wedding day? Would he even come to my wedding?

  Ugh, I was really going down the rabbit hole now. I wasn’t getting married, to Dylan or anyone else. I was barely twenty-one. Like Mom had said, I had a whole PhD to wrangle before I started making those kinds of life decisions.

  I picked up the remote and switched channels again, finding some sort of home improvement show marathon. Good. No familial dramas there.

  I awoke a few hours later to the jingle of Mom’s keys in the door. Outside the apartment, the windows were dark, which meant it could be any time from six to eleven.

  “Hey, sweetie. I didn’t expect to see you home. No work tonight?”

  “I was feeling a little under the weather,” I lied. Again. All I did was lie.

  She switched on the light and looked at me as I blinked. “I’m worried you’re pushing yourself too hard. Is it a cold? Did you take anything for it?”

  There was nothing to take. And as I sat there under her examination, it all bubbled
up inside me, hot and slimy and impossible to ignore. My throat closed up, my eyes burned, and before I knew it, I was overflowing, tears rolling from my eyes and choking sobs emanating from my throat.

  “Oh, honey! Honey, what’s wrong?” She sat down beside me and slid an arm around my back. “What’s going on? Is it your classes?”

  I shook my head miserably.

  “Is it the money? Because if I get this new commission, I’ll be able to help you some with those costs. I knew it was going to be more expensive than you’d figured—”

  Another shake of my head. I buried my face in her shoulder. I’d heard the “new commission” talk before, and it never amounted to anything.

  “Sweetie, talk to me.”

  No way. What was I going to say? Mom, I’m a real chip off the old block. I make men into cheaters, too. Sure, I did insist the guy break up with his girlfriend if he wanted me, but it turns out that doesn’t make it any better.

  “I messed up with a boy,” I sniffled at last.

  She squeezed me tight. “A boy? For real? Oh, Tess…” She chuckled a bit. “You know, most moms I know would figure that was it first off. It says a lot about you that I didn’t even think of it.” Taking me by the shoulders, she looked into my face. “What happened?”

  “I…thought we were going to be together, and we’re not.”

  She gave a knowing nod. “Well, that one, sadly, I have some experience with. Is it Mr. Necklace?” She gestured to the silver T.

  I bit my lip, tears flowing anew.