by Ella Fields
The sun was changing color as afternoon dawdled toward early evening. My hands clenched at the skirt of my dress, itching to recreate the color of the golden orange light dancing over the large brick buildings. Flowers littered the stunning greenery of the gardens in almost every color. I made a mental note to do that before classes started and fall slowly leeched the campus of its vibrancy as winter approached.
A giggling girl walked by, dragging her boyfriend behind her. With my chest twinging, I drew in a long breath and slowly let it out.
What if, after all this time, he’d decided not to come here?
It felt so serendipitous to simply show up. As if it was where we were always meant to reconnect and continue our path into the future. Together.
I was a little naïve—always had been—and full of ridiculous notions and far too much trust.
But it was Quinn. If there was anyone I could put my faith into, could leave my heart with for so long, it was him.
Always him.
“Sorry,” Pippa said, stepping outside. “But he said he could probably give me some part-time hours. I just need to recheck my class schedule.”
I stood, smiling at this girl who wasn’t a friend yet but not entirely a stranger either. “Well, that worked out well. Who doesn’t like ice cream?”
“Right?” She clapped her hands, almost ripping her application. “Shit, whoops.”
Laughing, I turned back toward campus. “Your thirty minutes are probably almost up.”
“Oh, yeah.”
We returned to the dorm, where Pippa shared the news of the ice-cream parlor job with her mom, who then insisted on taking us out to dinner before she left.
“I’m good, but thank you,” I said. “I had a big lunch.” It was true, and I didn’t want to intrude on the little time Pippa had left to spend with her mom for what could be months. Plus, I knew I’d feel awkward, not knowing them very well and all. I also needed time to let it settle in. This new place, my feelings, and the racing of my heart whenever I thought too far ahead.
There was nothing I could do. Short of stalking him down at the registrar’s office, if I was even allowed to do that, I’d just have to wait. Besides, my sappy heart had me thinking it would be more romantic to see each other again by chance encounter.
If attending the same college we’d always planned to could even be considered something as simple as chance.
Grabbing my sketchpad, I opened the sheer white threadbare curtain over the window next to my bed. Gazing outside, I drew as the light from the sky drained and the streetlamps lit the sidewalk in puddles of yellow.
After braving the showers and feeling relief at the ample amount of privacy, even if it was still kind of weird, I’d returned to my bed by the time Pippa walked in.
“Oh, Jesus. I thought she’d never leave.” She toed off her ballet flats and locked the door behind her.
I sat up, closing my sketchpad and turning off the music on my phone. “Did she try to take you with her?”
She laughed, plonking face down onto her freshly made bed and propping herself up on an elbow to look at me. “Almost.” Her smile turned sad after a few seconds. “Does it make me a wimp? If I already …”
“Miss her?” I shook my head. “No, it makes you a daughter who loves her mom.”
She stared at me for a moment. “You and me, we’re going to be friends.”
“Yeah?” I tucked my legs underneath me.
“Yep,” she said, popping the p. “I thought I’d get stuck with some horrible roommate, you know, like you hear about and see in the movies.”
“Me too,” I admitted.
“There’s still time.” She raised a sleek brown brow.
Laughing, I nodded. “I‘m not a neat freak. I’m clean, but I like a little clutter.”
Pippa scrunched her nose. “Ugh, no.”
“I’ve also been told I snore if I didn’t get enough sleep the night before.”
She grinned. “I’ll smother you with a pillow.”
“You might kill me.”
She flopped onto her back. “I’ll do it just right.”
We both laughed, and I laid back down, staring at the popcorn ceiling.
“I sometimes talk in my sleep,” Pippa said a minute later.
“I’m a deep sleeper.”
“I’m a neat freak. I’ll probably clean up your stuff, and you’ll wonder where it is.”
“That could be problematic, depending on what it is.”
She hummed. “I also like to do crosswords and word searches in pencil. I’ll steal any pencil I see lying around.”
That made me gasp. “Oh, nuh-uh.” I opened my nightstand drawer, pencils and brushes rolling around inside it. “These cost a fortune. Paws off, lady.”
Giggling, she asked, “Art major?”
“How’d you guess?” I asked dryly, closing the drawer and lying down again.
“Besides the pencils and the sketchpad, you’ve just got a vibe.”
Vibe? “Can you read people or something?”
“My grandmother liked to dabble in fortune-telling and whatnot. She was a weird lady.” She picked at her cuticles. “Said you could tell a lot about a person by watching their mannerisms. The way they hold themselves. Fidgeting, posture, stuff like that.”
“Interesting.”
“Favorite movie?” she asked.
“The Lion King. You?”
“Oh, Simba is badass. Umm, Anchorman.”
“Good choice. So, what made you choose Gray Springs?”
“Besides the partial scholarship?” She paused. “Would you believe me if I said it felt right? Looking at the pamphlets, the pictures, I just felt it. Right there is where I need to go.”
“I believe you.”
Quiet filled the small room for a minute. “No friends, new people. It seems crazy.”
“Totally crazy,” I agreed, my pulse kicking.
“You don’t know anyone either?”
I rolled over onto my side, mulling over how much I could tell this new friend of mine. I decided to let the truth fall off my tongue to see how it tasted and sounded. I wondered if it’d sound crazy to someone else. “Maybe, I know someone. A guy.”
She rolled over to face me then; her green eyes alight with interest. “Go on …”
“He, well, he’s my best friend. Was, is, I don’t know. We grew up together; it’s the classic tale of childhood friends evolving into first love. We’d planned to come here together after high school.”
“Then you moved away?”
“Then I moved away.” I let the sinking pit in my gut tremble for a moment, then puffed out a sigh. “I haven’t seen him since. It was left so unfinished, but I just couldn’t do it.”
Pippa adjusted her blue pillow under her cheek. “Do what?”
“The long-distance thing. It was killing me. It felt like …” She waited while I tried to find words adequate enough to describe it. “Like every time we spoke, the distance between us could be felt, and we were slipping even further away from each other. Eventually, my parents took my phone from me, and when I got it back and switched it on, I discovered he’d hardly tried to contact me at all.”
She winced. “Ouch, that’s pretty brutal. What did you do?”
“I got angry. I didn’t want us to end, to just fade away by loss of interest and distance. I changed my number and decided that if I was so easy to forget about, I’d make it harder for him to find me when he finally felt like it. It didn’t take long for me to regret it, though.”
Sympathy leeched from Pippa’s creamy face, the softness in her eyes, and I absorbed it, choking up a little as I remembered those dark days. “It was changing me. I was … I don’t get too sad or down. That’s not me. But I didn’t know what was happening to me. So I agreed with my parents, with my friend Alexis back home who I still spoke to sometimes, and cut him loose.”
“And what, you think he still decided to attend college here?”
That
was the terrifying part. What if he didn’t? Then he didn’t. I’d have to get over it once and for all. I couldn’t believe that, though. “We made a promise. And I promised myself that if I crawled out of my funk and remained the girl he once said he loved, then it’d be okay.” I laughed humorlessly. “Sounds so cheesy and dumb, doesn’t it? Who does that?”
Voices traveled out in the hall, doors slamming as we both absorbed the quiet notes of uncertainty that lay ahead. New lives, new beginnings, and a chance to rekindle old flames or find new ones.
“A brave girl who gave her heart away to someone she felt worthy of it. That’s who does it,” Pippa finally said.
A tear snaked its way down my cheek as I smiled at her and repeated her earlier words. “You and me, we’re going to be friends.”
Nine years old
“You’d better be home before dark, missy, or I’ll have to keep you locked up all weekend, you hear?” my mama chided from the front porch of our small cottage, which sat among an acre of wildflowers and long-forgotten gardens and crops.
“I will!” I leaped down the stairs, jumped on my bike, and followed the dusty dirt road for a few minutes until I reached the entrance to the Burnell’s property.
They were technically our neighbors, though if I were to walk, it’d take me ten minutes to get there. Their farm was huge. Quinn’s daddy was a dairy farmer, and the fields were littered with livestock and hay bales as far as the eye could see.
Waving at Quinn’s mom, who was sitting on the porch with her book and a cup of tea, I rode around the side of their house until I reached the ladder.
Quinn had put it there a little over a year ago, making it easier for me to come and go when I pleased.
His dad wasn’t impressed and told him I should just use the front door. But then his mom gave him a look that had him affixing it to Quinn’s window so there was less of a chance for me to fall.
Sticking my feet in the rungs, I climbed and then stopped just as my head neared the top.
His window was cracked open, just enough for me to hear him gently humming something and the sound of repetitive whacking.
Leaning up farther, I looked in and saw him lying on his bed, his football flying over his head before landing back in his palm. Over and over.
I pushed the window all the way open. “Boo!”
“Knew you were there,” he mumbled without turning his head.
Tumbling to the rug on his floor, I tilted my head, watching him, before getting up and sitting on his bed. “Why so glum, chum?”
Taking the football from him, I frowned at it when I threw it and missed catching it.
“Butter fingers.” He chuckled, rolling over to get it from the floor beside his bed. “And I’m not glum. Just tired.”
I scooted over farther until my back met the wall and my legs rested sideways over his shins.
“Tryouts?”
He nodded, swinging those hazel eyes to me. “I don’t know if I’ll even make the team this year.”
Scoffing, I poked him in his hard stomach, making him smile. “You’re full of it, Q tip. You know you will. Just wait, you’re going to get drafted as soon as you get to Gray Springs.”
He hummed. “Better not, you promised you were coming with me. So I’ll be busy waiting for you.”
My heart leapt into my throat at hearing the familiar promise we’d made a few years ago when we barely knew what college was. In fact, if I was being honest, I still didn’t really understand it. I just knew it was where I had to go. “You’d better be.”
“You know I will.” He grabbed my hand, tugging it closer and peering at it. “Drawing in math again today?”
Confused, I glanced at my hand. He ran his finger softly over the charcoal smudges on my palm. “Quit.” I giggled, my face reddening at the fluttery feeling that erupted in my stomach from his touch.
He frowned as I tugged my hand away, but let it go. “What’d you draw?”
You. I didn’t say that, though. I had drawn many things over the years, but the easiest was always him. Mama teased me by saying that creating something was always effortless when the heart was involved.
“Frederick,” I lied, glancing away.
“Quinn! Daisy!” his mom hollered. “Alexis is here.”
I smiled at Quinn’s scowl, knowing he wasn’t in the mood for any company this afternoon, but he didn’t get a choice with me. Besides, we hung out so much that our parents joked about us becoming part of the furniture in each of their homes. So I didn’t think I really counted.
Alexis swung open the door, her dark brown hair pulled tight into a bun and her blue eyes glittering with her smile. “Hey.” She closed the door and took a seat on the floor, pulling out her homework.
We didn’t talk about it, but we knew the Brooks family wasn’t one that went unnoticed.
Alexis’s mom worked at the bar in town, and her dad stayed home, drinking away all her mom’s hard-earned tips.
Regardless, Alexis was popular at school. She was too pretty not to be. Sometimes, I got the feeling she hung out with us because we knew about her home life and didn’t judge. No, instead, our moms would send her off with snacks and a belly full of whatever meal she’d arrived in time to eat.
She could be a bit blunt, but she was our friend and always stuck up for me if someone tried to give me trouble and Quinn wasn’t around.
Shoving my glasses farther up my nose, I asked, “Math?”
Alexis groaned. “Yes. I swear, they taught us this crud last year.”
“Highly likely,” Quinn surmised, tossing his football into the air again.
Leaning over him to his nightstand, I tugged the drawer open and pulled out my sketchpad and pencil that I kept there. If they were going to be boring, I’d draw.
My mom always said that as soon as I could hold a crayon, I’d decorate any surface available. They chalked it up to me getting bored easily. I agreed, in a sense, but really, I just didn’t like to sit idle with nothing to do. I was never much of a reader or one for too much TV, so drawing and painting it was.
“Where’d you put that picture you made me last week?” Alexis asked a while later.
Glancing up from the smudged lines of the football I’d been sketching, I blinked. “What?”
Alexis stretched her legs out then crossed them again. “You know, the one you drew of me.”
“Oh.” I vaguely remembered slipping it inside one of her books at recess and told her as much.
Her blue eyes seemed to glaze over with sadness, her chest heaving with a quiet sigh.
“What’s up?” I asked. Glancing over at Quinn, I saw that he was sound asleep. Huh, he really must’ve been tired.
“It’s nothing.” She picked up her sheet of paper, inspecting the answers she’d finished. Alexis was smart, but she had to earn it rather than it coming naturally. She took school so seriously that one time Quinn told her it was only elementary school and to maybe take it easy while she still could.
She’d met his eyes with a hard look and told him that she’d be better equipped for high school if she wasn’t completely clueless.
That shut him up.
But I couldn’t let it go. Something about the melancholy that passed over her face had me wanting to discover its source. I climbed off the bed and took a seat beside her on the floor, the sound of Quinn’s soft snores filling the room.
Taking her hand in mine, I gave it a gentle squeeze. She eyed the stains on my hands but didn’t pull her hand away. “Tell me.”
Tucking her lip between her teeth, she met my eyes and said quietly, “My dad spilled his bourbon all over my English book last week.” My brows furrowed. I felt annoyed on her behalf. She continued, “You said you put the picture in one of my books.”
“Oh,” I breathed, wincing apologetically. “Crap.”
“Yeah, it was soaked, so I had no choice. Threw it right in the trash.”
“I’ll draw you another one.” I nodded eagerly, willing to do
anything to erase the disappointment that radiated from her in harsh waves.
Her eyes watered. “You’d … you’d do that?”
I released her hand and shoved my glasses up the bridge of my nose again. “Ugh, I’m going to have to get these refitted.”
Alexis giggled. “In order to do that, you’d need to actually remember to ask your mom.”
I shrugged. “True.”
Smiling, she reached over to gently situate my new purple frames on my face properly. “I like these glasses. They make you look …”
“Smart?” I waggled my brows. “Mature and wise beyond my years?” Shoulders slumping, I murmured, “Or just plain stupid.”
I’d been getting purple frames for years. I knew I should stop it at some point because I wasn’t a little kid anymore, but I couldn’t.
“Never stupid.” Her smile was soft and followed by a wink. “But maybe, they do make you look smarter.”
Grinning, I breathed out a laugh, then quickly glanced at the bed to make sure I didn’t wake Quinn. “I’ll bring you in a new picture tomorrow. Okay?”
Alexis just stared at me, but after a moment, she threw her arms around my shoulders. We fell to the floor giggling until we heard Quinn’s mom, Amy, calling us down for dinner.
We both stood, and I looked at Quinn. “Should we wake him?”
Alexis looked over at him, too, then back at me with a smirk and swung her arm around my shoulders. “Nah.”
Present
Days passed, classes began, and my head swam in a sea of shark-infested waters as I tried to stay afloat and keep clear of the razor-sharp teeth.
While the upperclassmen watched with giddy fascination from the sidelines, freshmen scampered around in a haze of stressed-out confusion or excitement, inundating the campus.
“Shit on a stick of shit,” Pippa hissed one night at the local diner. “I’m so tired. I feel like my eyeballs are going to fall out, and my savings account is dying. I’m going to starve. Die from no sleep and starvation, I tell you.”
Her green eyes were wide and full of playful fear. I smirked, lifting a piece of cheese pizza to my mouth and inhaling it. “We’ll be fine. It’s just a matter of getting used to it, I guess.”
