by Mindy Hayes
“Pete, I know what I’m doing. I know what I want, and what I want is you. If that means going to USC, so be it. I don’t want Duke that badly. But I do want you. If I’ve learned anything this summer, it’s discovering what’s most important to me and seizing it.”
“No.” I shake my head. He’s not thinking straight. What if we don’t last? What if tomorrow he decides we’re over? Anything can happen. “College shouldn’t be decided based on who you’re going with. That never works out. It causes fights and resentment. I don’t ever want to be a source of your bitterness. I care too much about you to let you throw away Duke for me.”
Brodee sits up, taking my shoulders in his hands. He holds on so tightly. “I’m not throwing it away. USC is a great school, too. It’s not like I’m throwing away my future to work at McDonald’s for the rest of my life. I’m just choosing a different school, Pete. This is a good idea. It solves everything.”
“Sleep on it,” I say and kiss him lightly. “Tomorrow, if you feel the same way, we’ll talk about it.” I maneuver off of his bed.
“I won’t change my mind,” he says, resolved.
THIS TIME I’VE been avoiding Brodee all day. I can lie to myself and say it’s because I wanted to give him enough time to think things through, but truly I’m just scared of his answer.
While I realize most girls would think him following me to USC is a romantic gesture, I’m not most girls. There’s too much history between us. This new chapter is only just beginning. He can’t push the climax of our story already. It’s not time.
Though I hadn’t sat down and contemplated what would happen to us, I think I always assumed we’d take this for what it is, and then go our separate ways. Maybe we’d last. Maybe we’d date other people and then find our way back to each other. Maybe we’d go back to being just friends. But I never once expected Brodee to give up Duke for me. It’s too much pressure.
If he slept on it and gives me a valid reason for wanting to go to USC, I’ll accept it. If he slept on it and tells me he had a lapse in judgment and will still be going to Duke, I can’t be upset about that. That’s what I want—for him to choose for himself and no one else. You can’t have it both ways, Peyton.
Brodee once again ignores everyone at dinner, which makes me nervous, like he’s officially decided to ditch Duke and he’s avoiding telling Nick. He only acknowledges me and even then it’s stolen glances as he tries to read me or communicate through eye contact. Sometimes he smiles. Sometimes he merely watches me. I look away every time.
After dinner, the family disperses. Carter heads out to meet up with Chelsea and their friends, while Nick slips away to the study and our moms follow each other upstairs. I sit on the couch, ready to face Brodee. Or not so much ready as I am exhausted from avoiding him.
“So, I slept on it. Slept long and hard, even slept in a little bit,” Brodee says lightly and plants himself beside me on the couch. He offers a heart-stopping smile. “I haven’t changed my mind.”
My heart flutters. I take a deep breath. “Why do you want to go?”
“We went over this, Pete.” He takes my face in his hand. My face loves his hands. I feel adored and cherished. “For you.”
Wrong answer. I want to cry.
“Peyton, we’re it,” he whispers as his thumb grazes my cheek. “Can you feel it? We’re the forever kind. I’m not going to take my chances. The thought of not seeing you every day kills me. I think of not hanging out or surfing, not being able to throw cheesy pick-up lines back and forth every day, and I regret ever mailing in my application to Duke.”
I try really hard not to cry. I don’t know if I want to cry because I’m scared or angry or because I’m grateful, and I realize I might love him. Everything is too much to take in.
But what if we aren’t the forever kind? What if he breaks my heart? What if I break his? He’d have followed me for nothing. You can’t force a destiny. Isn’t there a saying? If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans. I bet the big man upstairs is rolling on the floor right now. We’ll put on an entire improv show for the heavens.
I can’t have that kind of weight on me, on us. For us to succeed. As soon as we set this in stone, something will shatter it. Our plans will disintegrate, and the only thing left will be our broken hearts. I can’t risk losing him forever.
I shake my head, pulling away from his touch. “You’re just scared.” I make up crap. “You don’t think you’ll do well at Duke, that you’ll let everyone down. This isn’t about me.” Why am I doing this?
“Well, I mean sure, there’s a lot of pressure to succeed. You can’t go to Duke and flop.”
“See?”
“No, stop it. That’s not why I changed my mind. We talked about this before you and I began. At the beginning of the summer, I told you I had doubts.”
“Which you said was bogus, that you were still going to go. You can’t have it both ways, Brodee.”
“I was second-guessing it because of us then, too. I just didn’t admit it to myself because I hadn’t accepted my feelings for you yet. No matter how you look at it, whether we’re together or just best friends, it all comes back to you. It will suck to be apart no matter what we decide. We’ve already started experiencing it this summer. Neither one of us want to be left while we’re still here. It’s not going to change when we’re miles away from each other. I feel like that will be worse. It’s less salvageable that way. We have the chance to be together. We shouldn’t squander it.”
He’s making so much sense and none at all. I can’t listen. “I can’t do this.” I get up. “You can’t give up Duke.”
“Pete.” Brodee gets up to follow.
“You can’t.”
“Peyton!”
I hold up my hand to stop him, but don’t look back as I walk to the back door. “Now I need space.” I need to drive the 12. I grab my mom’s keys from the rack and leave. Brodee doesn’t follow me.
AT THE BEGINNING of the summer this was exactly what I wanted. Him. Any way that I could get him. And now I realize how hypocritical I sound by pushing him away. Far away. I’m scared. I know it. He knows it. But it’s a logical argument. Life is unpredictable. Anything could happen. I know firsthand. One day I had my dad, the next day he was gone. An instant. That’s all it takes.
A thought sinks every organ inside of me. What if he’s meant to go to USC and meet someone else? The mere image of him kissing another girl churns my stomach. I hate that thought more than any other. The irony. Following me to USC only to fall in love with another. Wouldn’t that be my luck?
I end up driving the 12 for hours. Brodee calls and texts, but I don’t respond. When I’ve been gone for three hours I get a call from my mom. I tell her I’m alive and that I’ll be back in a little bit. I take a deep breath and focus on the road under the dark sky.
It’s after ten by the time I get back. No one is downstairs except for my mom, so I tell her I’m heading straight to bed and apologize for making her worry. We say goodnight, and I creep up the stairs and down the hall, safely making it to my room without any close encounters. Then there’s a knock at my door, and it’s opening slowly without my permission.
“Pete?” Brodee says around the door, peeking his head inside.
I sit on my bed, watching him enter.
“Do you know how worried I was about you? Why didn’t you respond to me?”
“Sorry.” I really don’t want to keep talking about this right now. I’m too tired to argue. “I needed space. I told you that.”
“A simple text back would’ve sufficed.” He sounds like my mom when I forget to text her back.
“I was driving. And what part of ‘I need space’ means, ‘Call me incessantly, and text me until I want to throw my phone out the window’?”
He grimaces. “Wow. Just a little childish, don’t you think?”
“Childish,” I spat. I can’t believe he called me that. “Excuse me?”
He crosses his arms over his che
st. “Yes, childish. Running away, rather than talking about this with me. I poured out my heart and you bolted.”
“Well, then I can’t image why you’d want to be with such a child. It’s little inappropriate, don’t you think?”
He tenses and takes a step toward me. “That’s not what I meant. Don’t twist my words.”
“No, I’m a child for wanting space. It’s fine. I get it. I’m the one trying to be logical and not just think with my heart, but I’m the childish one.”
Brodee groans in frustration and tries coming closer to me, but I hold up my hands. When he touches me it only muddles my thoughts, and he knows it. This is no time for distractions.
“Pete, c’mon. You know what I meant. You’re being ridiculous.”
“So, I’m ridiculous and childish. Cool.” He rolls his eyes. I exhale.
“I just want to go to bed, Brodee. You should too.”
He grunts, but doesn’t argue with me as he nearly slams the door behind him. I grab a throw pillow from my bed and hurl it at the door with a thud. I fall back on my bed and stare at the ceiling.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
BRODEE MADE SURE to give me space the following day. I couldn’t reach him on his cell phone because he’d turned it off. Tatum wasn’t even allowed to tell me where he was. Now who’s the childish one?
The house is so quiet. Tate is the only one home, but I don’t want to bug her while she’s relaxing and has the house to herself. With no car, all I can do is surf, and so that’s what I do. I stay out in the ocean for hours. I don’t come inside until I hear the bell.
Brodee doesn’t even come home for dinner. Tatum can’t tell me when he’s coming home. I guess he’s getting his payback. Jerk.
While I’m finishing helping my mom and Tatum with the dishes, I say, “I’m gonna take a walk up the beach.”
“Bring your phone with you,” my mom says.
“Good idea,” Tatum says. “The sunset is gorgeous tonight. You should go watch it. Head to the tip of the cape. It’s always best from there.”
And so I do. I walk the shoreline as colors paint the sky above the ocean and night falls.
I think more about Brodee going to USC. I think about what a comfort it will be to have him with me—the adventures we’ll have and the new memories we’ll share. I think of never having to say goodbye. I hate goodbyes. The more it sets in, the more I accept it. The less upset I am, the happier I am.
“Pete?”
My heart jumps at the sound of his voice in the dark. I search the shore and find Brodee sitting on a blanket spread across a small sand dune. Tatum knew where he was. She knew where to guide me. It’s only been a day, and I missed him so much. It’s pathetic. I’ll never be able to lose him to Duke.
“Have you been out here all day?”
“No, I’ve been around. I came here about an hour ago. The ocean air helps clear my head, and you know how much I like watching the stars.”
I nod, but I’m not sure if he can actually see me.
“Will you join me?” I hesitate. Though I’m annoyed he ditched me today, I don’t want to fight anymore. With only days left in Hatteras, I don’t want to waste it.
He scoots over on the blanket to give me room to sit beside him, and then he lies back, lifting his arms under his head like a pillow. I flip my hood up and tug my flannel shirt tightly around me before following suit. I stretch out beside him with one arm under my head, the other resting across my stomach.
We remain that way for a while. Gazing at the backlit sky in silence. Our bodies are so close, yet only the warmth radiating between us touches. The calming swish of the ocean and Brodee’s steady breathing are almost enough to put me to sleep.
“You said something to me once about the stars.” His voice isn’t loud, but with only the waves lapping the sand and the wind licking my ears, I jolt at the sound.
I hear his quiet chuckle of amusement at my expense.
“‘When I’m at home looking at the stars and thinking of you, I wonder if you’re at home looking at the same stars, thinking of me,’” he repeats the words as they scroll through my mind.
We used to lie on the trampoline in his backyard, looking for shooting stars and pointing out different constellations. We couldn’t have been more than thirteen. I was in love with the idea of love. Brodee was hardly on my crush radar, but he was the only boy I was friends with, so he got the majority of my failed attempts at flirting. I thought I was so clever and romantic. He never made fun of me or took me seriously. Thankfully.
“I wish I could go back and change the past, Pete. I would have taken my chances sooner. You and I would’ve had longer to explore this.” He drops an arm between us and he lifts himself to his side to face me. “Maybe if I had I’d never have applied to Duke in the first place, and we wouldn’t have to be here.”
I don’t want to think about the what ifs. They do nothing but give you regrets.
“I think this is the longest you’ve ever gone without speaking,” he says. “Normally, I’d say it was a gift to me, but right now it feels more like a slap across the face.”
I only shift my eyes. “I’m not sure what exactly you want me to respond to first.” He stays quiet. “You’re forgiven if that is what you were looking for.” My eyes go back to searching the bright speckles above us. I hate myself for giving in, but I don’t have it in me to stay mad at him anymore, not when he looks at me like that.
“Pete.” My heart sighs at his tender tone, as if my name is something to handle with care.
I swallow and brave the look I know I’ll see in his eyes. His eyes are soft, pleading, yearning for answers. I can’t tell him to give up Duke.
“You have to know I can never stay mad at you. That much has to be obvious.” I sigh.
“Nothing’s ever obvious with you.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I would gladly make myself clear. Right now.”
I place my hand on his chest before he can make me lose my mind. My words will fall right out of my head if he kisses me right now. “What if we don’t last, and you give up Duke for nothing?”
Brodee’s face falls. “Are you saying you don’t think we’ll last? Do you not want me to go to USC?”
“No, yes. I mean. I do…want you to go to USC if it’s for the right reasons. Brodee, it’s just…we can’t make promises to each other that we can’t keep. We made a pact at the beginning of summer that we wouldn’t drift apart. What if you following me to USC causes us to drift apart? Or what if you go and you hate it, and you’re stuck at a school you didn’t want to go to in the first place? What if we lose what we have? I can’t risk losing you.”
“What if going to Duke causes us to drift apart? What if an asteroid falls from the sky and strikes me dead? What if the Earth opens up and swallows USC whole with you in it?” I snort a laugh. “Where I go to school isn’t going to affect you and me. It’s up to you and me. If we don’t last, we don’t last. But it won’t be because we didn’t do everything we could to make it work. You can’t lose something you cling to. I’m willing to work my butt off if you are.”
I can’t speak. How I keep my breathing steady is a mystery to me. As if my heart hadn’t been beating fast enough before, when he reaches up and brushes my bangs aside, leaving his hand resting in my hair, I think I might spontaneously combust.
“You do something to me when you look at me like that.”
I know my voice will shake when I let the words out, but it suddenly doesn’t matter anymore. “How exactly am I looking at you?”
“With this innocence and yet uncontrolled desire. You really don’t know the effect you have on me.”
I feel the grains of sand shift under the blanket as he moves to hover on top of me. His breathing is heavy. His heart races so fast under my fingertips I wonder if it’s actually possible for a heart to beat out of a chest. Brodee lowers himself inches from my lips, watching my expression. Do I have to beg? I don’t brea
k my gaze even though my nerves are out of control.
When our lips connect, something happens in that moment. It isn’t fireworks or an uncontainable fire igniting, but a deep burn that flows like lava, coursing through every vein in my body. I melt under his touch, and yet I can’t keep my hands from twisting into the hair on the nape of his neck and securing myself as closely as possible to every inch of his body.
Brodee’s hand grips my bare waist where my shirt has ridden up. His hand clenches so tightly as though it’s trying to behave. It trembles, attempting to control the yearning to wander. He reaches one hand to my cheek and brushes his thumb along my jaw, quivering with every stroke. I kiss him with everything I’ve been holding back—trying to show him with my mouth everything I don’t know how to put into words.
“Please let me keep you.” His voice shakes.
I exhale against his mouth and pull back so I can look him in the eyes. “Okay.”
“I’m going to USC.”
“I know,” I yield. I want him to look at my face. I want him to know how badly I need him. There isn’t anything in this world that I would let get between us. I know that now.
“What about Nick? How are you going to break it to him?”
“Screw Nick.” I’m so caught off guard by his response I chuckle. He doesn’t smile back at first. “He doesn’t get a say anymore. It’s my life. And I choose you.”
“I choose you back.”
He closes his eyes tightly, inhaling deeply, then opens them momentarily before pressing his lips back to mine.
We kiss for hours…minutes…seconds? I can’t keep track of time with his hard body against mine, his tongue intertwining with mine. We kiss as if tonight is all we have. When we slow down he softly touches his lips to mine once. Twice. Three times.
“I love you, Pete,” he breathes against my mouth.
My mind awakens from the kissing haze. A couple breaths pass my lips.
