One Year (New & Lengthened Edition)

by Charlotte Byrd

  “What?” Dylan asks.

  Just at that moment, the door to his room opens and Tristan comes out. Perfect timing, as usual.

  “Cynthia? You’re going to ask Cynthia to marry you? Are you insane?” Dylan asks. He’s no longer a scared little boy afraid to make his father mad. He’s now standing right in front of his dad, challenging him. He’s indignant and his mouth is full of anger and venom.

  “Yes, Cynthia.” Mr. Worthington shrugs. He looks as surprised by Dylan’s temperament as we all are.

  “Cynthia is four years older than I am,” Dylan turns to me and explains. “She’s 23 years old. And my dad apparently doesn’t think that there’s anything inappropriate about that.”

  “Age is just a number,” Mr. Worthington says.

  “Yeah right,” Dylan says.

  “But hey, why are you questioning me anyway? I wasn’t the one who secretly got married to a stranger and got her a…” Mr. Worthington looks down at the piece of paper in his hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see that a picture of my ring is at the top. “The 2 carat Tiffany Embrace diamond ring,” he reads from the print out. “Its bead-set diamonds exquisitely accentuate a round brilliant center stone in a setting that evokes glamour and romance. All for a price of $44,100! And you two were engaged for how long? An hour?”

  “You got her a 44 thousand dollar ring?” Juliet whispers. Her eyes light up and I think she’s going to faint.

  Honestly, the ring looked nice, but I had no idea it was so much money.

  “And you know what the best thing is? He put it on his father’s credit card. How perfect is that?” Mr. Worthington says sarcastically.

  “He got you an engagement ring?” Tristan asks quietly. His voice is barely audible, but everyone turns to look at him.

  “I’m not going to keep it,” I say. It’s the only thing I can say.

  “You got her an engagement ring?” he asks Dylan.

  “So what?” Dylan asks. He’s taken aback, I can tell, but I get the feeling that he’s not apologizing as long as his dad’s here.

  “So what?” Mr. Worthington yells. “I was going to get my actual fiancée a $30,000 ring, but my son went out and splurged on 44-grand of my money on some stranger!”

  “She’s not a stranger,” Dylan says. “Alice, this is my dad, Mr. Worthington. Dad, this is Alice Summers. My roommate and wife.”

  “Oh please,” Mr. Worthington rolls his eyes.

  “What? You think this marriage is a joke? Well, it’s not,” Dylan says with a shrug.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I whisper.

  “Look, Dylan, even your wife knows it’s a joke,” Mr. Worthington laughs.

  “Well, it’s not. I wanted to marry her and I did. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  I shake my head. No, no, no. What is he talking about? Suddenly, my whole body starts to shake uncontrollably. I turn to Tristan. He can’t actually believe this. Why is Dylan doing this? But Tristan just grabs his jacket and walks out. I follow him. I can’t stay in that room any longer.

  “Tristan! Tristan!” I run after him catching him by the elevator. “Please, wait,” I say. The button pointing down is lit up and I know we don’t have much time.

  “He gave you a ring?” he asks. There is sadness on his face. And disappointment. It looks like he’s going to cry at any moment. He takes a deep breath, trying to hold back tears.

  “He got me a ring. But I’ve already given it back to him. We’re getting a divorce. This all has been a terrible mistake,” I say. I’m speaking fast, a little fast, but I want to be able to get everything out before the elevator comes.

  “He got you a ring, Alice,” Tristan says with a shrug. As if that means something. As if it signifies something important. “And a really expensive ring,” he adds.

  “So what? That’s Dylan. If he gets something then he goes all out. But it doesn’t mean a thing. I don’t care about that ring.”

  “It’s a 2-carat ring, Alice. It cost almost 50 thousand dollars.”

  “It was just a splurge. A mistake from a night full of mistakes,” I say. “Why does it matter what kind of ring it is?”

  The elevator doors open.

  “I don’t know,” Tristan says, stepping inside, “but it does.”

  The elevator doors close and he disappears, leaving me alone. I’ve never felt so alone before. This is over. Really over. My legs crumple underneath me. I drop to the floor. Tears rush down my face. I can’t stop them even if I want to. I just let them wash over me. Maybe they can wash away my mistakes. Probably not.

  22

  Day turns into night and into day again. I lose track of time. I cry for so long that my eyes feel like someone’s slicing them with razor blades and my chest starts to physically hurt from the pain. Eventually, the tears dry up. There are no more. The pain remains, but it’s as if it’s happening to someone else. I’m detached from it. Separated, somehow. Now, there’s just a dark cloud that descends around me. One that I can’t shake no matter what I do.

  The next two weeks are consumed by melancholy. Hours blend into days and days into nights. I become something of a zombie. I don’t cry much anymore, I just wander around lost. Detached from the world. Unreachable. I avoid everyone. I stay on campus for as long as I can, wandering the busy stacks of the library. And when I do come home, I avoid everyone except Juliet, whom I can’t really avoid, even if I try. Luckily, she has the good sense to pretty much leave me to my own devices. She doesn’t pester me with questions and she doesn’t ask me how I’m feeling. Mainly, she just leaves me be, which is exactly what I want. As for Tristan and Dylan, I don’t see them at all. I can’t. I don’t think I’d have the strength to deal with my feelings if I were to see Tristan again. And I’m too mad at Dylan. I can’t believe that he went out of his way to say those things to his father—those things that hurt me to the bottom of my core. He doesn’t want to be married to me. He doesn’t want to be engaged to me. I, of all people, know how much he has regretted marrying me instead of Peyton. At least with Peyton, there’s a history. They love each other. And they have for a long time. And even if they were to marry by accident and then get divorced…well, that seems just like something out of their story.

  So, if that’s true, why did he have to go and tell everyone that he wanted to marry me? Why did he have to get such a big ring? And why did he have to throw it in his father’s face? There are some things that I will probably never understand. But I will talk about it with him, one of these days. Just not now. Not yet.

  Despite all of my melancholy and lonesomeness, I did manage to come to a decision. A pretty important one, too. I’m going to transfer to University of Southern California next year. It’s something that I had been thinking about ever since this whole mess with Tristan happened. And now I think that getting out of town and going to a completely different school will be the answer to my problems. I know it looks like I’m running away. It sort of feels like that too. But I honestly don’t think I can solve my problems by staying here. They are too complicated and convoluted. No amount of talking will make Tristan understand what happened, or forgive me for what I’ve done. No amount of talking will allow me to forgive him for sleeping with Kathryn or for starting this whole thing in the first place. At this point, it feels like all we can hope for is space. Distance. Space, distance, and time will allow both of us to move on and, perhaps one day, be in that nice space again where we can talk to each other without wanting to kill each other.

  USC will be my opportunity to start over. It’s a good school in a warm climate near my home. I know LA. LA is my home. Nothing bad, nothing this bad, has ever happened to me there. And it sounds like the best thing. I’m only in my freshman year and I can barely see myself making it through this winter intact.

  It is with this attitude of cautious optimism and hopefulness that I walk into my public speaking class that Friday and raise my hand to make my first real speech. I have not had anything to
drink, and I’m under no mind-altering substances, not even caffeine. Surprisingly, the jitters and the fear that plagued my other speeches didn’t accompany this one. No, it’s like I’m a completely different person now. I clear my throat and look down at my notecards. The assignment is to give a public speech in a professional situation and I’ve prepared a lecture on Jane Austen. I did my midterm paper on Jane Austen for my Victorian Literature class and I give a cautious, but thorough, speech on her life and work. Yes, I rely on the notecards a little too much. Yes, I avoid eye contact with almost all students in the class and instead choose to look out into space, somewhere beyond their sight lines. But overall? Overall, the speech goes incredibly well. I speak clearly and my voice only shakes a little bit when I forget to breathe. I take a few sips of water as my mouth runs dry, but I don’t rush through them and I don’t worry about tipping over the water bottle and everyone laughing at me.

  “I don’t know what it is, but something about me feels different now,” I tell Dr. Greyson at our next meeting. I’m going on and on about the success of my speech and how in awe I am over the whole experience.

  “What do you think it is?” she asks, taking off her reading glasses and letting them dangle around her neck on the ornate leather rope.

  “I’m not sure,” I shrug and really think about it. “But I sort of think it has something to do with everything that has happened. In the beginning of the semester, I was so focused on Tristan and our relationship and how he wasn’t helping me prepare for the speeches that I was paralyzed by them. And now—now that everything happened as it happened—I don’t know, it feels like I’ve been through too much to almost care what those people think.”

  “Very good,” Dr. Greyson says, nodding approvingly. “I’m very proud of you for making so much progress, Alice.”

  “What progress did I make?” I ask.

  “You’re giving yourself a voice. When you first came here, you were lost in your own mind. You didn’t care what you thought and felt. You only seemed to care about what other people thought and felt about you. It’s almost like you, the inside you, didn’t exist. And now…here she is. You’re embracing your flaws and mistakes. You’re owning them. But you’re not letting them dominate your life. You’re no longer silencing yourself.”

  I think about that for a second. She’s right. Of course she’s right. I have been silencing myself for way too long. I’ve been living trapped in my own fears and insecurities instead of simply embracing myself for who I am. The ironic thing is that the more I seem to embrace myself and my insecurities, the less insecurities I seem to have. It’s as if I have only been manifesting them as a way to protect myself, when in reality, they’ve been hurting me more than they have been helping me.

  23

  Spring break couldn’t come soon enough. I am going back home to California. I am going to spend the week watching beautiful sunsets over the green valley below my parents’ house, swinging in the hammock on our wraparound deck and eating oranges straight from my mom’s carefully maintained orange tree.

  By the time my mom picks me up from the airport and we finish eating dinner in front of their new wall of windows looking out onto the valley spotted with wildflowers, I forget all about my life in New York. It’s as if absolutely no time has passed. I feel like I had never left at all.

  “So, tell us everything that has been going on,” my mom announces.

  We talk every day and I keep her up to date on my everyday life, but she still demands an update as if we haven’t seen each other in ages.

  “Nothing.” I shrug. “Just school stuff. Lots of papers. Midterms. Didn’t do very well on my Victorian Literature midterm, unfortunately.”

  “Like an A-?” my dad jokes.

  “No.” I shake my head. “Like a C.”

  “Oh wow,” my mom says. “Well, that’s good.”

  “What?” I gasp.

  “It’ll build character. I don’t think you’ve ever gotten a C before and this is good for you. To know that you are capable of making mistakes. That you’re not such a know-it-all.”

  She’s joking of course. Trying to make me feel better. I appreciate it. My mom can always be counted on for that. She doesn’t take things too seriously. At least, not anything that shouldn’t be taken seriously. In fact, she always has a way of putting life in perspective. “Don’t sweat the small stuff” is pretty much her motto.

  And that’s precisely why I feel so terrible about keeping the events of the last month or so secret. I should tell her. She probably won’t freak out. At least, I hope not. Honestly, I have no idea how she would react. But I can’t. I’m scared. So, for now, all my mom knows is that Tristan and I broke up. Again. This time for good. So instead of telling her what’s really going on, I focus on my grades and school.

  “I did a speech for public speaking last week,” I say. “And it actually went okay.”

  “Oh, I knew you’d do great!” my mom says, clinking her glass to mine. We’re drinking her specialty—sangria. She makes amazing sangria.

  “You know, you can’t get sangria anywhere in New York,” I say wistfully. “I guess it doesn’t fit the climate; it’s all grey skies and bleakness over there now. But I honestly think that a little sangria would do New York some good.”

  My mom flashes her pearly whites.

  “Speaking of grey,” she says, “you’re looking a little grey.”

  I look down at myself as if I can see my face. “I know,” I say with a shrug, “but I haven’t seen the sun in close to a month. Honestly, it gets really depressing sometimes. More like all the time, actually.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” My mom pats my hand.

  Unlike me, my mom looks radiant. Both of my parents are doctors, but they’re not working as many hours as they used to anymore and now it looks like they’re glowing. Gone are the dark circles and the tired eyes. Their skin looks sun-kissed and they’re as fit as ever—given their daily tennis matches at the Calabasas Country Club.

  “So how’s the business going?” I ask.

  My parents started a clinical research organization, which runs pharmaceutical trials. It took a few years for it to get off the ground, but now they have more time and more than we’ve ever had.

  “Really, really good.” My mom smiles. “I’m so glad I’m not killing myself at the hospital anymore. Now, I actually have time to do my makeup every day and get my hair done every week. Can you believe that? Me actually taking care of myself?”

  “I’m so happy for you,” I say.

  And I mean it. They’ve been working so hard for as long as I can remember, missing my sisters’ and my games, events, and special occasions. And now, everything is finally falling into place. They have time for themselves. Time for each other.

  “So, okay,” I say, taking a deep breath, “there is something I’ve been meaning to talk to you two about.”

  “Wait, wait,” my dad says and pours himself another glass of wine. My mom laughs.

  “You ready?” I ask. He takes a sip and nods.

  “Okay, so…I’ve been thinking about something.” I don’t know how to say it without actually just coming out and saying it. I look at my parents. They are waiting for the news patiently but eagerly. “I’ve been thinking of transferring to USC next year.”

  The table gets so quiet, I hear the hummingbirds flapping their wings as they angle for some syrup out of the feeder.

  “Oh wow, that’s a surprise,” my dad finally says.

  “But we thought that you loved Columbia,” my mom says. I know she’s serious because she puts her glass of sangria down and leans closer to me.

  “I did. I mean, I do. But it’s just tough, you know. Winter. All that darkness and the cold.”

  “Well, spring is coming,” my mom says.

  “Hey, if she wants to go to USC, that’s awesome. Why are you trying to talk her out of it?” my dad asks.

  “It’s not that. I’m just confused. I thought you loved New York.
This is the first I’m hearing about how you don’t.”

  “It’s not that. It’s not just New York. I mean, it is, but it isn’t,” I say. I’m grasping at straws. The truth is that I don’t know what it is. I just don’t want to be there anymore. I don’t want to deal with the cold and all of the bad choices that I made there. But I can’t really come out and say that. Any of it.

  “Well, I don’t know about your mom,” my dad says, “but I, for one, would love to have you close by. You can visit on weekends. Go surfing anytime.”

  I smile. That sounds…amazing. Exactly what I want.

  After my dad goes inside to answer a few emails, my mom stays out with me on the deck.

  She takes a sip of her sangria and taps her manicured nails on the table. I’m well familiar with this nervous habit of hers. Except this time, something jingles along with it. I look at her wrist. She’s wearing a white gold Tiffany’s bracelet.

  “Is that new?” I ask, even though I know it is. Why did it have to be from Tiffany’s? It reminds me of everything I want to forget back in New York. I can’t bear to look at it.

  “Yes,” she says. “Your dad got it for me for our anniversary.”

  “Wow, really?” I ask. My dad has a lot of good qualities, but buying jewelry isn’t one of them.

  “Yes, and I didn’t even have to pick it out myself. He just went out and bought it. All on his own.”

  “Oh my God,” I whisper.

  “I know,” she says with a laugh. “I thought that maybe he’d had a stroke.”

  I smile. It’s nice to know that no matter how old I or my parents get, they always have the ability to surprise me. I think that’s important in life—the ability to surprise others.

  I look at my phone. The high of being home is wearing off and I’m starting to feel more and more tired with every minute that passes.

  “I think I’m going to go lie down for a bit,” I say. “I’m really tired from the flight.”

  “Okay.” My mom nods. “But before you go, Alice, can I ask you something?”