Chapter Twelve
The worst part about all this drama is that it has me seriously out of shape.
All the morning activities on the itinerary have replaced my early-morning running habit, and I refuse to allow my second-place classmate Sarah Muller to beat me out when we get back onto the track at the start of next year.
Besides, running has always been the best—the only—way to clear my head.
The music blasting through my headphones drowns out any other sound, and all I can focus on is my sneaker soles hitting the pavement.
I steer myself uphill, hoping to end up with a nice view of the ocean.
It’s still dark out, but dawn is hinting on the horizon well enough that I can see the path in front of me.
I wish I could say the same for the day.
There’s a text from Melanie sitting in my phone, one I have no idea how to respond to.
Good night! Can we hang tomorrow? xx
It’s a perfectly reasonable text. I want to answer with a wholehearted Yes, of course! She makes me laugh, makes me forget how far I am from home. It’s the easiest yes.
Or at least it should be, but the thought of it is enough to send me back into a spiral that not even running can fend off all the way. Because what if Liam gets even angrier with me? What if Lucy notices, and the whole cohort starts taunting me about dating again?
Wading through this mess, even if it’s just to answer a text, feels impossible.
I’m completely locked in my own head. All I can do is keep running, oxygen slamming into my lungs with every breath, until I make it to the top of this hill.
I focus on the dirt that stirs between my footsteps, the lizards ducking under rocks as I pass, the call of a bird in the trees overhead.
My lungs heave in the freshness of the clean air, carrying the scent of summer leaves and sunshine even this early in the morning.
At least I was right. I do get a good view of the ocean through the trees, the water just beginning to sparkle under the rising sun.
In that moment, it feels so clear. I can see all the way down to the shimmering waves, and I watch them crash against the beach, my pulse thudding hard from the uphill run.
But not everything in my life has to feel like an uphill run.
Maybe I can let some things just happen.
I’ve told Melanie I don’t want us to turn into anything serious or all-consuming.
What harm can one more night together do?
I text back, Yes.
—
The Temple of Apollo in Corinth is one of the earliest-known Doric temples in the Greek mainland.
This is all I have written in my notebook, and I knew this before I showed up.
But the vibes are distinctly weird today.
Melanie’s taken off from the tour to visit some cousins, and the cohort has stopped all pretense of getting along.
Amalia and George stay pointedly on opposite sides of any space we enter, Henry flitting awkwardly between the two like a confused puppy.
Lucy sticks by Amalia, while Liam and I hover in the entryway, unsure where to go next.
The midday sun beats down on us, the ruins offering no hint of shade. Everything about how we’re acting is illuminated in the harshest noon light.
“This is exactly what it felt like last year,” Liam mutters. “Except this time nothing’s really happened.”
I think back to Amalia and George’s first argument that day in Athens.
It feels like so long ago, their bickering clouding over our visit to Monastiraki.
Lucy was so committed to group-togetherness then, and now her arm is looped protectively around Amalia’s as they examine one of the columns with overly close attention.
Bodhi stands by them with his arms crossed, nodding along to everything they say.
Even Henry, who mastered the art of the go-between last year, is starting to linger longer at George’s side.
Liam and I pretend not to notice.
“We should do something,” I tell him as we make it around to another side of the temple. It’s a rectangular structure; many of its columns remain, but little else still stands. “This trip wasn’t supposed to destroy us.”
“What’s really being destroyed, though?” Liam mutters. “It was like this last year.”
“And you worked through it,” I remind him. “You can do that again. I don’t think we should write people off completely for a mistake.”
“But is this a mistake or a pattern?” Liam points out.
This forces me to fall silent as I mull over the wisdom in his words.
I pause under the rare shade cast by one of the columns, and I stare off to the rocky mountain looming in the distance.
Between us lies a long stretch of dried grass, patches of trees shooting up toward the watchful sky.
He’s right, of course. Forgiving a friend for a mistake is one thing, but looking past the same mistake over and over again is a different story.
So where does that leave me? Because in spite of all my best efforts, I always seem to end up trying to claw myself out of the same hole, the same spiral pulling me ever downward. I feel utterly trapped in this pattern. But Liam doesn’t have to be.
“Are you mad at me?” I ask him quietly.
He puts an arm around my shoulders. “Of course not. Why would I be?”
I can think of many reasons, and they’re all numbered in the bucket list still scribbled in his notebook. We haven’t done a single item on it together, but I’ve already checked most of them off.
Now could be the time to tell him. To confess everything and apologize. But then his hand would fall from my shoulder, and I’d be alone forever, and everything I’ve sacrificed to keep our friendship alive would have been for nothing.
I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m an awful friend. Trapped, still, in the same pattern.
—
Melanie texts me as soon as she’s back at the hotel, and I bounce down to the lobby to meet her as fast as I can.
I’m determined to break at least one pattern today.
Fleeing from her can be the one, though the feeling I had on my run this morning feels harder to grasp on to after the simmering tension of the day.
I want to find a way to make this work. All of it—love in all its forms, the way so many people seem to manage it without any of the difficulties I create for myself in its path.
When I see Melanie, I break out into an easy grin.
“Sorry I’ve been so weird lately,” I tell her as she loops her arm around mine.
“As long as we’re okay,” Melanie says softly.
I nod. “Of course we are.”
We walk through the hotel doors and into the cool night air. There’s no particular destination in mind, but aimlessly wandering the streets on a warm summer evening with her hand in mine sounds like a destination enough.
“I was a little thrown,” Melanie admits. “I wasn’t sure what prompted you to feel that way.”
“It’s not you,” I tell her quickly.
“ ‘It’s me’?” Melanie quips.
“It sounds hokey, but it’s true,” I insist. “At the very least, it’s my…” I’m not sure how much I want to admit. I’ve already told her some things, but I haven’t even told Liam that Paige has me formally diagnosed. The label isn’t something I’ve wanted to advertise to anyone.
But I want Melanie to understand me, I realize.
“I was diagnosed with OCD this year,” I tell Melanie at last. “It hasn’t been easy to process. I think it’s sort of helping me understand how my brain works, but it’s also making me completely rethink everything I thought I knew about myself.”
In the moments when I’m willing to admit that Paige is probably right, I can make sense of the patterns that drag my thoughts down and tank my emotions with them. I just still have no idea how to claw my way out of the hole these patterns have dug for me.
“Whoa,” Melanie says. “That sounds hard.”
“So I guess I’m just…skittish about new romance,” I say quietly. The soft night air rustles around us, almost swallowing my words.
There’s more I could say. I know that. I could tell her about what it feels like when I think about falling in love—like the steel jaws of a trap are closing around me.
I could confess that, no matter how much I love the time we spend together, there’s always a part of me that’s crouched at the starting line, poised to run at any moment.
That I have no idea how to turn that part off.
Or if I even should, if that part is protecting me.
I know what Liam and Lucy would say about it. Maybe that’s why I haven’t told them. I certainly know how it would make Melanie feel.
So I keep my mouth shut.
“I don’t mind taking things slow,” Melanie tells me. “I just want to be clear on where we stand.”
“Of course,” I say. “I should’ve just been up-front about how I’ve been feeling.”
“It’s a hard thing to talk about,” Melanie says. “Thank you for telling me.”
I answer her with a kiss, and we spend the rest of the evening much better occupied.