Chapter Thirty-Seven #2
“Love is really tough, Chen. In fact, it downright fucking sucks. I don’t know what to tell you.
I mean, don’t think for a second that my guy and I just found each other and bang, we lived happily ever after.
I kissed a series of frogs, you might say.
Actually, toads would be more accurate. And teenage first love, it’s the hardest.”
Sabrina felt a tear trickle down her face. She wanted to stop, but she couldn’t. It had started now.
“This Dave character, I mean, he was a little punk to your friend, I think we can both agree on that. But it sounds like he’s trying to salvage something between the two of you.
Whatever it is you guys found this summer is important to him.
Sounds like he couldn’t give a shit about his relationship with your buddy, though, but whatever he has with you, he might just treasure it.
So the ball’s in your court. Do you want to cherish it too?
Is the dent in your pride worth taking in exchange for a friendship that might just last longer than any little flash-in-the-pan romance pre-college, anyway?
Or were you planning on some kind of arranged high school marriage kind of thing with him and do we need to involve your moms in this? ”
Sabrina laughed. It was the first time her tear-soaked skin had felt the stretch of a smile pull on the sides of her mouth in a while. It felt good.
“I care about the friendship. It matters to me,” she said finally.
Eva Kim nodded. Then she slowly cleaned the lens of her glasses with a tissue on her desk.
“Well, then. You know what to do. Sometimes the pain is just what you need to realize how important something is to you.” She placed her glasses back on and tapped the keyboard to her computer again to bring the monitor back to life.
Eva Kim typed on her computer for a while, and then suddenly took her glasses off and looked at Sabrina again.
“There are going to be more Daves, Sabrina. He will always mean something to you because he’s your first. But you have a lot to offer the world.
And one day some guy is going to see the whole of you.
And you will find yourself fitting with him, able to be the exact person you are striving to be because he accepts and sees you for exactly the wonderful person that you are.
That person is going to be the smartest person you’ve ever met in your life, after me, of course.
And maybe Dave will still be in your life then.
Maybe he’ll be watching in the wings, wishing he hadn’t blown it with you that day in the parking lot of that stupid uppity country club you’re working at.
Or maybe it will be the kick in the ass he needed to actually realize what he’s missing out on.
Or maybe you will have lost touch by then and you’ll just look back on him and say to yourself What the hell was I thinking?
He was such a wet rag. But when you meet that person, you’ll feel like you want to fly straight out of whatever self-limiting cage you’ve built around yourself.
And here’s the real shocker. That person, might even be you …
you just haven’t met this version of yourself yet. ”
“You think I’m in a cage?”
“I think you think you need to keep yourself small, and that you only deserve certain things. You deserve everything and more than the next person. But you’ll get there. Now stop moping around and get on with your work.” Eva snapped with laughter and pointed to the computer in front of Sabrina.
After work Sabrina walked and walked, all the way up to the bus stop and beyond, and into the Wissahickon Valley Park.
The river rushed past her, and she felt the warmth of the day settle on her bare arms. The clouds floated along the wide blue horizon she saw beyond the trees, as she looped out of the forest and around toward the rolling groomed greens of the golf course near the country club.
She passed the grand houses that led up to her old school.
Another five messages from Dave. She opened none of them, she couldn’t bear to see what he didn’t say.
···
“What is wrong with you, Sabrina, you are acting so strange lately. No energy, your face, look at it,” Lee Lee snapped the following day at breakfast.
“I’m fine, Mom. Really.”
“You don’t look fine. You are slouching into the chair. Sit up straight. I don’t know what’s happened but come on, pull yourself up.”
Sabrina wanted to tell her mother what had happened, she wanted to cry into her mother’s arms like she did when she was a child. But she knew how Lee Lee would react if she admitted to feeling this magnitude of emotion as the result of a boy.
How can you cry over a boy? Nobody is worth those tears. Don’t embarrass yourself , she would say.
So instead, Sabrina swallowed down the bitterness that threatened to escape her mouth.
“I’m just tired, I’ll be fine. See you tonight,” she said and walked out of her house.
···
Dave sat on the cement bumper of his usual parking space facing the club. He stood as soon as he saw her walk up from her bus stop.
“Hey.”
She stared through him and didn’t change her expression. He slowed his pace to hers, and their steps were in unison. She felt the same momentary flutter she did at the party when he was waiting for her after the fight.
“I don’t want to talk, Dave,” she finally said, without turning to him.
“We have to talk, Rina.”
Her silence weighed down the air between them. He tried to take her hand in his.
“I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”
“Maybe I don’t care that much. Maybe we’re about to head off to college and I can just forget this all ever happened. Maybe you’re forgettable to me.” She hated the way her voice sounded.
“Maybe I am. But I care a lot.”
She didn’t say anything. She wanted him to stop talking. The words he said made her want to cry more. She hardened her mouth, a stiff line across her face, but she felt the tears come to her eyes, and they began to fall down her cheeks. Stupid, stupid tears.
Dave waited. His eyes were always the same. He stopped to listen to her. He took in everything she said and listened to everything she didn’t say. He waited for her to speak. It was her turn. She couldn’t hide from him anymore.
“It hurts,” she said finally. “I hate that it hurts.”
“I hate that too, Rina.”
“Really though? Do you even care about that? Look how you were to Kit. You didn’t care about hurting her.”
He nodded and she felt his gaze on her face.
“You’re right, I didn’t care that much with Kit. I was too selfish to care about how I treated Kit.”
“So how is that any different with me? You just don’t like me enough in that way, you just don’t want to do the things you did with her.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to do those things with you.
But I do love you as a friend, and I really, really care about our friendship.
This is pure to me. When I think of how I acted toward Kit all that time and admitting it to you, I felt so ashamed.
But I feel like it would be worse for me to lie.
Because it matters what you think about me, Rina.
And I want to be here for you. You can have a friendship that is full of love too, right?
I want to see you take on the world and jump into the future you have with college and everything else.
I’m excited to be here with you. I don’t want to mess this all up.
Isn’t that worth more than a little summer fling or whatever? ”
She held on to his words. They managed to hurt and soothe her at the same time.
“I just wish you thought of me like a girlfriend too, I guess.”
“I know, but I can’t force it. And my hope is that this makes for something that lasts. I don’t know if that’s better or not, but I’m starting to think it could be.”
She turned to him finally, and he stood in front of her and opened his arms. She stood stiff against him and let him hug her. The tears started to pour now, a cascade of salty warm drops falling from her eyes. She wanted to let out a loud sob. His T-shirt got soaked through.
When she pulled away, he laughed. “This is my favorite T-shirt.”