Chapter 10 Easton
EASTON
The traffic down to Miami was endless. The traffic from Miami to the Keys is worse. Bumper to bumper, the road ahead nothing but taillights.
We are crawling along at ten miles an hour when Melissa texts.
Melissa
Can I offer some unsolicited advice? Elijah seems like a really, really great guy. But the situation worries me. Just be careful, okay?
My stomach tightens. I knew I’d fucked up. I knew this was going to be an issue at school.
With what?
With him. He’s so in love with you. Don’t let him think there’s more there if there’s not.
I snort. Implying more is there when it’s not is Elijah’s specialty, not mine.
When the guy you’ve loved your entire life tells you he’s not interested and was never interested, you will look for the least likely explanations first.
Even as he’s apologizing, telling you that he tends to say shit he shouldn’t in the moment and what happened was a huge mistake—one he’s super sorry about but you knew his reputation going in—you will search the universe for any conceivable way that he doesn’t really mean it.
Maybe he’s not telling you the truth. Maybe because he lost his dad at a young age, he’s scared of loving anyone. Maybe he already loves you, in particular, so much that the loss would destroy him, or he promised his sister he wouldn’t go there, since you’re her best friend.
Or you live in different places, and he’s never going to leave his mom who needs him.
And then you remember that your life is not a Nicholas Sparks novel, and the guy in question is thirty, and smart, and not scared of anything, and that you’re a big girl, so if he wasn’t willing to do a long-distance relationship he’d just say, “Easton, last night was great, but I can’t do a long-distance relationship,” which would be far less painful than hearing him say, “I’m sorry, but I just don’t see you that way. ”
At which point you finally remove the rose-colored glasses and look back over the past decades with clearer eyes.
How you made your crush so obvious it could be seen by satellite, and he never responded.
How you’ve been an adult for years now and he never once made a move.
That even though you’d felt something there—the way his eyes would catch yours, the way he’d look at you a moment too long—he seemed to be avoiding you over the past few years, always out of town when you were home or too busy with work to catch up.
Which is when you finally admit how asinine it was for you to convince yourself, year after year, that he just didn’t want to mess up your friendship because no guy cares that much about his own friendships and he definitely doesn’t care that much about his sister’s friendships, and also because Elijah was no saint and he’d done plenty of selfish, destructive shit over the course of his life and wouldn’t hesitate to do more.
But I thought of none of this, that night we were together.
I’m a logical girl, but I chose to throw it out the window. That’s how badly I wanted him.
“What’s up?” he asks. “You look pissed.”
“I’m thinking your grandmother will be dead by the time we arrive anyway,” I reply, nodding at the traffic. “So we might want to just do a U-turn and head north right now.”
He laughs. “I’m starting to think her dislike of you wasn’t all that irrational.”
“In my defense, she was probably ambivalent about my death first.”
I yawn and my jaw pops. I’m a stress clencher, which means my jaw is pretty much always clenched. If I had the money, I’d have gotten a decent night guard...which I’d probably need to wear all day too.
I yawn wider, then wince and rub the corner of my mandible, pushing at the tiny needle of pain there until it begins to disperse.
“What’s going on with your jaw?” he asks. “You’ve been clenching it the whole trip, like we’re about to cross enemy lines. This is supposed to be a vacation.”
I nod at the taillights ahead of us. “And what a vacation it is.”
“This isn’t that stressful, Easton,” he goads.
I stare out the window. “It’s been a week, and I really thought I’d have heard from Thomas by now. I’m ninety-nine percent sure that he’s going to change his mind, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. And—” I shrug, wishing I’d just left it alone.
“And?” he prods.
I sigh. “It’s just kind of hitting me how many other things might turn difficult if we stay broken up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Being with Thomas might have opened doors that I didn’t realize were opening for that reason. He and I had just started dating when my research turned promising. It became easier to get what I needed at that point—equipment, assistants—and I thought it was about the research, but maybe it wasn’t.”
“So are you worried that you haven’t earned what you’ve gotten, or are you worried it’s going to stop?”
Both. It’s not as if my results are fake—it’s gone really well—but was the enthusiasm about them genuine?
“I don’t know. My friends used to joke about it, like.
..if they needed tissue samples they’d suggest I order double because I’d definitely get it.
Maybe they weren’t entirely joking. And if we don’t get back together and my research starts to flounder.
..are people going to assume Thomas’s hand was on the scale before?
I guess I’m just worried that they’ve been giving him credit all along, and that things will get harder and—”
My jaw clenches again and I catch it.
“If he’s actually a decent guy, the way you claim, he won’t let that happen,” Elijah insists. “And odds are that if your research has gone well thus far, it’ll continue to, yeah? So maybe you’ll finally get all the credit you deserve.”
I force a smile. “Yeah, maybe.”
Except it sort of misses the point: dating Thomas made my life easier, but my life still wasn’t easy.
So how much harder does it become if we’re not together when I return to school this fall?
We finally reach the bridge through the Keys. It’s actually seventy bridges, but it sort of feels like one, and even if traffic’s heavy, it’s not as bad as it was and the view is unreal—nothing but water on both sides as far as the eye can see, the sun a gloss resting gently upon its surface.
“Can you do me a favor?” Elijah asks, handing me his phone an hour later. “Open the rental app and get the street address of this place where we’re staying.”
I stare at his outstretched hand without accepting the phone. “Doesn’t your grandmother have a house? Why aren’t we just staying there?”
He hitches a shoulder, his face unreadable. “Her place is kind of small. I just figured it would be more comfortable to be elsewhere.”
It can’t be that small—Elijah and Kelsey and their mother used to stay with her for weeks at a time. Which means she either doesn’t want me staying there, or Elijah thinks she’ll be awful to me if I do.
I release an unhappy breath. “You can stay with her, Elijah. I’m not trying to ruin your grandmother bonding time. Cancel the rental, and I’ll find something on my own.”
He frowns at me. “It’s too late to cancel the rental anyway, and you can’t possibly think that I’m going to let you stay on your own in Key West.”
I laugh. “We’re not staying on Cannibal Island. I think I’m probably safe.”
He shakes his head. “It just takes one drunk idiot following you around to make it not safe, and in Key West, there are a lot of drunk idiots.”
I groan. “I promise to be careful. I won’t even leave the rental. Go spend time with your grandmother. As you said yourself in various ways, these aren’t opportunities you’ll have forever.”
His face is carved in stone, with no give at all. He’s not even going to consider my request. “I would worry about you if we were in separate places. It’s just not worth it.”
Great. Add that to the long list of things his grandmother is going to blame me for when this is all said and done.
“At least go out to dinner with her or something.”
“We are going to dinner with her tonight. It’s already set up. And you’re awfully worried about a woman you were ready to let die a couple hours ago.”
I roll down the window and stretch my arm out into the breeze. “By pretending I’m concerned about her welfare now, I’ll have some plausible deniability when I fail to save her life later.”
He grins. “I’m pretty sure that only works if you don’t announce that plan to me in advance.”
Eventually, we reach Key West. As a kid I hungered to be included on these trips with the Cabots, though I never was. Key West, back then, seemed infinitely glamorous—1930 preserved, with Ernest Hemingway sitting on his porch and girls in tea-length dresses riding on trolleys down to a soda shop.
It’s not much like that, but I wouldn’t have been disappointed. I just wanted to be here with them, the Cabots, but of course they never asked.
I made excuses for it when I was younger.
But once Judy started avoiding me, once Elijah used me and sent me packing…
I saw it all more clearly. As Kelsey’s best friend living a few houses away, I was not expendable.
As someone living seventeen hours north, they didn’t need to pretend.
My mother was furious when I refused to move with her.
“You think the Cabots love you? They don’t.
They put up with you. See how interested Judy is once Kelsey’s got her own life.
See how interested Kelsey is once she’s out of this fucking town. ”
If my mother and I were still speaking, I’d probably admit she was right about some of that.
Elijah pulls up to an adorable little cottage that sits right near the heart of the island, with a white picket fence and a wraparound porch.
The Easton of a decade ago would have used this as an opportunity to fantasize about married life with Elijah.
Now, however, I simply pretend that I don’t still possess the impulse to do so.