Chapter 2
Can you meet me any earlier this morning? I have news!
My heart leaps, but then immediately deflates when I remember that I already promised Savannah and Rory I’d meet them for breakfast. Even though I could cancel, even though I want to cancel, I need to keep up some semblance of normalcy with other people in my life or they might get suspicious.
And considering I already ghosted them on Friday…
Noon is the earliest I can come today :/ News!? Tell me! I type back.
I’ll tell you when I see you.
Nora! Tell me now! It’s about the apartment isn’t it? Did we get it???
We missed out on our first choice, but the next one we applied for isn’t so bad.
I’ll see you at noon ;) she replies after a minute.
I roll my eyes and let out a grumble as I delete the conversation. Nora loves surprises, and I… can’t stand them.
The moment I step out of my bedroom door, my mood is instantly killed further by the voices of a couch full of Fox News anchors carrying up the stairs.
I thought my dad would be at work by now.
Normally I’d give it a few minutes until the TV clicks off, but I have to get down there and get going or I’ll be late for breakfast and that’ll make me late for Nora.
So I take a deep breath, grit my teeth, and descend the stairs into the living room.
“This guy.” The brown leather couch creaks as my dad turns around to face me, dressed in a semiclean set of coveralls with GREEN’S AUTO REPAIR printed across the back in cracked vinyl lettering.
“This guy ain’t nobody’s fool. Not like those idiots on CNN,” he finishes, his thumb pointed over his broad shoulders.
I tense my jaw, biting back a snide comment. It feels like I have to do that more and more these days, and I’m not sure if he’s getting more intolerant or I’m just becoming less tolerant of him.
“Morning,” I force out instead, but he’s already leaning back in toward the TV, which is mounted on the wall between two deer heads. He’s not even listening.
Good talk.
It wasn’t like this when I was growing up.
Back then we actually enjoyed each other’s company.
He’d let me run the switch on the car lift at the garage all day, or rent a small aluminum boat and take me out fishing on the reservoir, just the two of us.
He listened. But that was before Nora, before I understood just how toxic some of his beliefs are.
And before he became so obsessed with these talking heads that nothing I said could ever change his mind.
When I set our plan in motion, I didn’t foresee that I’d have much trouble at all leaving him behind, considering I can barely stand to be around him now. But somehow I still feel sad about that.
I shake off the thought as I grab my car keys off the hook and head out the front door.
But just as it swings open—Oof.
I almost run smack into my mom on the front porch. She’s clutching a green plastic watering can in one small hand and in the other is the WORLD’S BEST MOM mug that I got her a million years ago.
“Whoa, careful, sweetie.” Her dark brown eyes widen over sun-spotted cheeks as she holds her mug out to steady the sloshing coffee.
“Sorry. I uh… didn’t think you’d be here,” I say, surprised to see her. It would normally take a plague of locusts to keep that lady from her Monday-morning prayer group.
“I decided to play hooky today. I was hoping you and I could hang out for breakfast.”
“I actually have to go,” I reply before I let myself even think about it, slipping past her off the porch, eyes locked on my black car parked in the driveway.
“I thought you didn’t start work until noon today. Where are you headed?” she asks from behind me.
“I’m meeting Savannah and Rory at the Dinor,” I tell her, continuing to walk toward my car. The misspelling is so common around this part of Pennsylvania that it didn’t even strike me as wrong until my sophomore year.
“Well, wait. What time do you get off?” she asks, making me turn around, but I keep my eyes on the stained mug in her hand, focusing on a white chip in the green paint.
“The summer farmers’ market opens today—I was thinking…
maybe you could help me pick out a few flowers for the front step?
” She motions with the mug to the bare concrete step I just walked down.
There’s a big part of me that wishes we could do that together.
Before I can stop myself, I meet her eyes and they absolutely light up as she misinterprets it as an opening.
“And then after, maybe we could take a drive out to that bistro we used to go to all the time! Or head over to Dairy Qu–”
“Yeah, probably not.” I cut her off, trying not to think about that killer chicken sandwich and laughing at our old booth in the corner.
She physically deflates before I can look away.
Shit. Why does she have to make this so hard?
“I have to stay a little later today, we’re training a new barista,” I lie… again.
“Oh. Of course.” She shakes her head like it’s nothing, like she believes me. “You’re busy.”
“You have a ton of flowers anyways.” I try to change the subject, looking around at the slew of potted plants lining the edge of the porch.
She pulls her cheeks up, the straight line of her lips forming a small smile, but all she says is “Have a nice time with your friends,” then turns her back to me.
I hesitate there for a second, my feet feeling like concrete blocks. It would be so easy to slip back into the past, to go to the farmers’ market and Lola’s Bistro and Dairy Queen, pretend like I’m still the girl she wants me to be, someone she would be proud of.
But things are different now. She made them different, I remind myself.
I’ve spent the past year building up this space between the two of us, but she’s the one who started it.
I’m just making everything easier for when the time comes.
Easier for her and me. Because come August, we won’t be a part of each other’s lives any longer.
So I pick up my feet and continue toward my car.
Still, the guilt bubbles up inside me more and more with every step, so I try to picture Nora and me in California. And when the visual forms, it reminds me that it’ll be worth it. That my real life begins when we get out of here. Together.
The moment I open the heavy metal door into the Dinor, I’m hit with a wave of voices, each one desperately trying to be heard over the next.
The warm yellow lights illuminate the white tables and red booths, all filled with customers.
I love coming here for breakfast because it’s packed to the gills every single morning, a reminder that this town still has some life left in it.
It’s a sharp contrast to the storefronts on either side, both plastered with sun-faded pages from the Wyatt Argus, a newspaper that doesn’t even exist anymore.
I pause in front of the ancient gumball machine, where you can win a free cup of coffee if you can manage to snag the color of the week, but ultimately, I decide to pass.
Last time I got one, it was so old and hard that it honestly might’ve been a jawbreaker.
The jury is still out. Besides, I do technically work at a coffee shop, so free coffee isn’t that much of a prize.
I scan the busy dining room and finally spot Savannah’s fiery ginger hair at a booth next to one of the large windows.
It was easier when she had an absolute mane of curls, but right before senior year, she decided they weren’t in.
So she’s been flat-ironing them every day since, which must take forever.
“I don’t remember, it’s honestly a blur,” Rory is saying as I approach. She throws herself back up against the booth in laughter, her messy bun bobbing around on top of her head. “Stevie!” she says as I slide in opposite them. “Oh my God. You missed the greatest party of all time.”
“What happened?” I ask, though I highly doubt I missed much of anything at Jake Mackey’s graduation party on Friday. I really don’t see why Savannah is with him.
Rory sighs, shaking her head. “You couldn’t even…” She laughs into Savannah, who clutches her arm, giggling and nodding so hard that I worry her head might fall off. “Right?” Rory says to her.
“You kind of had to be there,” Savannah finishes, trying to get herself under control, wiping tears away with a paper towel off the roll at the end of the table.
“Speaking of which, I can’t believe they made you stay so late you couldn’t even celebrate your own graduation with your best friends.
That job is practically slave labor,” she says.
Savannah. I bite the inside of my cheek until I taste metal. It’s like she doesn’t think at all about what things mean before she says them.
“It isn’t so bad,” I tell her, remembering that night. Nora and me lying in my car with the seats reclined, watching stars dot the sky through the moonroof, Phoebe Bridgers’s ghostly voice singing softly through the speakers while we continued planning our future.
“Well, I’m just saying we miss you. I mean, I remember when we used to spend every single weekend together.”
We did, back when we were young enough to want to build forts in the woods behind Rory’s house.
Before Savannah started dating the lovely Jake Mackey, who once jingled around a handful of coins in front of my face and told me that’s how they name kids in China, and all the two of them did was laugh.
Savannah continues as if it’s all still the same.
“It’s been the three of us since preschool, and this is our last summer before college.
It’s already June, and I know you’re not getting out of Wyatt, but I’m going to be all the way across the state in Philly come August, and Rory’s heading to some school in North Carolina,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear to reveal a big hoop earring.