You Between the Lines

Chapter Twelve

6 YEARS AGO, VERMONT

T HIS PUB IS BUSIER THAN you’d think on a Sunday afternoon in June. I’m not sure what I expected, but I just want a beer and some peace and quiet. The space is small and cramped and the bartender is a burly, bearded man who grunts when I ask for whatever’s best on tap.

I’m worried. On Monday, the Bread Loaf School of English College Intensive begins, and I’ve already psyched myself out. My mind is on Andrew and his breakup speech, the words of which have swirled relentlessly in my head for the four days since it happened. I just don’t see us matching well long-term. Unsustainable. Too different. Too. Too. Too. It had the echo of things my mom has said to my dad over the years: Could you be more sensitive, Jeff? Why are you making yourself sick over nothing? As if the mature thing is to strangle human emotions into submission, lock them in a cage, throw away the key.

But like adults, Mom and Dad have always worked it out. Andrew didn’t want to work it out.

I’m stewing over the memory of his final touch—what felt like a condescending brush of my cheek—when I see him . The very last person I want to see the weekend before I start a creative writing course.

I thought about it, obviously. I knew he went to Middlebury. But I’ve tried to not give Will Langford much thought in the four years since I saw him on stage at Rowan’s graduation. Though I did explicitly check when Middlebury’s graduation was. Just out of curiosity. Just in case.

He looks exactly the way I remember him, but also nothing like the gawky, boyish high school senior with shoulders too wide for his chest. He’s just as tall, his eyes just as intense, but he’s filled out a bit. He’s softer. Less untouchable.

“Leigh?” Will says in disbelief when he sees me. He’s at the table closest to the bar, the almost-empty cups of probably a couple of friends scattered before him. “What are you doing here?”

He stands with his glass and walks to where I sit at the bar. I wish I’d worn something nicer. I’m in a shapeless tank dress with flip-flops—more of a running-to-Target look than a meet-your-old-crush-at-a-bar look.

“I thought graduation was two weeks ago.” I tuck my hair behind my ears. “I figured you would’ve moved out.”

It’s something in the way he looks at me, maybe the slight flush around his neck, but I can tell he’s had a few beers.

“Yeah, well…” He’s upgraded his glasses to circular frames, far more in fashion than what he wore in high school. “It took me longer than I expected to pack up my place. I move out tomorrow. My parents are driving in tonight to help.”

I study him, taking my time, before opening my mouth again.

“So, uh, how have you been since Rowan?”

His face twists into something blank. “Well, I graduated.”

I laugh, but it’s not with a lot of humor. “Yeah, I know.”

He wasn’t gregarious in high school, either—he talked more in class than out of it. But he never seemed unhappy. Just all-consumed with his studies—that signature soft, intense focus he had when he walked through the halls with a book under his arm. But the Will next to me now seems like he’s been wrung dry.

“So what are you doing here?”

“I’m in the Bread Loaf summer intensive.” I cross my legs and pick at my nails. “It starts tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah. Good for you.”

“Yeah.”

He runs his finger down the sweat of the cold beer in his glass. I press my lips to my own glass and tilt it back until the liquid meets my mouth, but I don’t drink it.

“Can I sit?” he asks.

Maybe it’s because I know he’s tipsy. Maybe it’s because I just want to. But what comes out of my mouth is all bite.

“Oh no, no, I wouldn’t want to bother you with any surface-level chat.”

His eyes widen, and I know for sure he remembers.

“Damn.” And then he sits down next to me at the bar.

I raise my eyebrows. “Good thing you went to a fancy college like this. Only really deep writers here, I bet. We were probably bringing you down in Mrs. Lincoln’s class. I’m sure this place let you spread your wings and fly.”

I let out a giant exhale. It feels great , honestly. Because of Will, I’ve spent the last three years of college afraid of my fellow English majors. For some reason, maybe because I’ll probably never see him again, I don’t care that I’m taking it out on him. I’m so sick of making myself palatable and cool to people like Andrew. Like Will.

Will laughs. “Fancy college, eh? Don’t you go to Tufts?”

My mouth gapes. “How do you know that?”

He shrugs and sips his beer. “Don’t worry, my wings have not spread here. Been clipped, maybe. Torn off, perhaps. Cut, slowly, with dull scissors. Yeah, that one feels right.”

Something in my stomach drops. “Oh.”

Will keeps going, his voice more animated now. He looks past my shoulder and I get the impression this is all maybe for someone else. Maybe just himself.

“Everyone always tells you Don’t major in English if you want to make money . But my dad’s called that misguided advice for years. He says if you major in English, the world is your oyster. I think he expected me to come out with a book deal or, at the very least, a one-way ticket to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, but here I am, blabbering drunk in a Vermont bar. No job prospects whatsoever. Instead, I get the privilege of moving back in with my parents tomorrow. Gonna be a great summer.”

He finally makes eye contact again and almost looks spooked. As if he shouldn’t have said any of that.

I shake my head and roll my eyes. “Come on. You’re very smart. Surely you can get anything you want.”

His pupils are dilated, almost not a stretch of hazel left. “Historically, that hasn’t been the case.”

The way he maintains eye contact is too direct, so I swallow and look down at my hands. The silence presses thickly between us, and I’m immediately aware of how few inches there are between our knees under the bar.

“Why was it so bad?” I ask. “Why the dull scissors?”

He swallows the last sip of his beer, waves over the bartender, and orders an old-fashioned and whatever else I want. But he ignores my question. “How has it been for you?”

“I asked first.”

“Sure, but I’m not going to waste this further with my boring melodrama. I’d rather hear about you.”

Waste this . What the fuck is this ? My cheeks heat, and I fight the urge to run my fingers through my hair.

“Well, I’m also an English major. College has been pretty good, yeah. I think after graduation I’m going to look into copywriting. For an ad agency or something.”

“Copywriting. Cool. What made you interested in that?”

The truth is, that career path hadn’t been on my radar until recently. But my big sis Marnie just graduated and is going to work in marketing; she said it’s exciting and potentially lucrative and far more stable than, say, journalism or, god forbid, poetry, which isn’t really a viable career path at all.

“I just feel like I’d fit in well at a place like that.”

Will leans forward, just a hair, and I peel my hands from each other, palms flat on the counter.

“But do you think it would fit you?”

A vision of high heels tramples across my brain. I’m in glass-walled conference rooms, surrounded by colleagues who stare at me like I’m the brightest thing they’ve ever seen. We laugh and say acronyms like KPIs and ROI . It feels like a team sport, and I’ve always wanted to play on a team.

“Sure,” I say.

He’s quiet. The burly bartender comes back, delivers Will’s old-fashioned and my cranberry vodka. Will tips his glass against mine and nods a Cheers . I feel the blood rush in my veins with the glass’s impact.

“You know,” he says. “Ever since that workshop in Mrs. Lincoln’s class, I’ve felt really bad.”

I shrug it off. “It’s… whatever.”

He shakes his head and leans closer to me, our knees knocking against each other. “No, I was an ass. I just…” He pauses, staring down at his drink. “I’d been having a bad day. I’d gotten into an argument with my dad, I remember…” He drifts off, his jaw tight.

“You were right about my poem, though.” I sigh into my drink. “It was this sort of incomplete piece. I came into that class so desperate to impress everyone. I put things together that looked smart but didn’t have so much behind them. I think I could fool everyone but you.”

He looks down at our knees, hardly a millimeter apart.

“No. I knew you were the best writer in that class, and I think I thought being really critical, making myself sound smart… that I would feel better about my own shit. I was eighteen and insecure. I’m hardly better now unfortunately.”

Despite the seriousness of his tone, I snort in his face. “You did not think I was the best writer in the class.”

“Not only did you get into that class as a junior, which I couldn’t do, but you were the only one trying things out. Not writing about the fucking moon or creeks or ash or smoke or whatever everyone else was doing. You had the freshest voice in the room. All of your work—the feminist poem, the story about your crazy aunt, the other poems… they were really fucking good.”

Something restless in my belly takes over, and I feel like he sees me. I want him to see even more.

“My boyfriend broke up with me four days ago,” I blurt out and the sentence falls between us like a dropped fork, landing with a loud clink.

“Oh. What happened?”

“Not smart enough to keep up with him, I guess.”

“Is that what he said?” Will turns his entire body toward mine, his eyes wide and focused.

I shake my head. “He was stupid smart. Just, like, could rattle off famous writers and would constantly ask who I was reading and, you know, he’s from New York and his dad’s an editor at The Atlantic and I think it became obvious to him that I couldn’t keep up. I just wanted to watch Love Island and he kept wanting me to come to readings with him, but it made me feel like a fraud. In many ways…” The words slosh through me, but I pause, feeling the alcohol in my veins fizzle. It’s always so strange to know you’re saying things you wouldn’t say sober and yet literally be unable to stop yourself.

“What?” Will urges. “In many ways, what?”

I let out a small laugh and look at him. “I think I wanted to prove to myself I could get someone like you. The hot, deep literary guy who made me feel hot and deep and worthwhile by association.”

I’ll never forget what Will’s face does in the aftermath of that sentence. His lips twist into a small, almost internal grin. Like it was more to the voice in his head than anyone else.

“Do you want to help me pack up the last boxes in my apartment?”

Will’s apartment is the exact opposite of my brain at the moment: sparse and quiet. It’s a small, slightly claustrophobic studio, and all that’s left is a tidily made bed, piles of boxes neatly stacked in the corners, and a pair of jeans and a T-shirt on his bedside table, probably for tomorrow. The blinds are open but still down, so only splinters of late afternoon bleed into the room, the light fixtures otherwise packed.

“Do you want a drink or something?” he asks, and I nod. “Just need to find the glasses… maybe check in one of those boxes over there.”

He points to a stack of three near the oven, and I start rummaging. While he goes through another set of boxes, I open the top box and find it filled with tattered notebooks and binders—remnants of four years where he didn’t feel like he was enough.

There’s a pile of what look like poems underneath some notebooks and I’m flipping through them, curious, when the word Cleveland snags my eye.

“‘In a Cleveland Parking Lot, I Break Down,’” I read out loud from the loose paper. It’s the title of a poem. The page says Intro to Fiction he looks detached. Stoic. It wasn’t worth it—being vulnerable. Letting him see me unedited. I cringe at how I laid myself out so naked for him, thinking maybe he saw what I’d seen. A tiny seed of commonality, something we could touch and hold on to. It was a mistake.

“Bye, Leigh.” He turns, he walks back to his apartment, he doesn’t look back.

And then I think, I won’t make that mistake ever again .