Chapter 23
twenty-three
. . .
Confession
Ten years ago
desiree
twenty years old
“I have a confession to make.” Taven sipped his coffee, and I shifted on our park bench, nestled along one of the winding brick pathways of our campus. I draped my arm over the back and turned to face him.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He turned to me, and I took in the signature swoop of his hair, always longer on the top, trimmed short at the sides. We’d known each other for nearly eight years at that point, and I never knew him to have a different haircut.
“It’s one I’m hoping you won’t be surprised to hear,” he said. His tone was serious, and I felt a little nervous at what he was about to say.
As was always the case with Taven, I was firmly back in my hope fantasy. My hope could subside to a dull ache when he was with someone, but would come full force when he was single.
He and Christine were finally through. They had both done a study abroad in Spain together over the summer, which had terrified me. Melissa was in New York and was too caught up in her acting career to stay in touch with me, so I cried to my roommate Katja with the fears that Taven and Christine would fall madly in love over paella on the beach. He would ask her to marry him. They’d have some romantic clandestine overseas wedding, and I’d have to find a way to slowly poison the new Mrs. Carlisle so I could take my rightful place.
Katja, ever the optimist, would laugh and tell me it was a good plan. Then she’d hand me the tissues and hold me in her arms, saying that one of these days, I would need to let him go.
But that’s not how the summer in Spain went down, thankfully.
Apparently, Taven went buck wild with vats of Spanish wine and sunshine, and poor Christine was not one for that kind of thing. She ended it, and when they returned, I cleaned up Taven’s newly bronzed but stupidly broken heart.
I was stuck in a mental loop of convincing myself that this was it. I figured now’s the time, the day he’d finally confess his love for me. Confess the matching agony we both felt, trying to stay true to our families when really, we were destined to be together. In this particular fantasy, we would kiss, probably in the rain after previously attempting to walk away from each other, but then we’d both realize that you can’t sever the cord of true love. The kiss would lead to more, and Taven would guide me inside to my apartment, to my bed, and finally, finally enter my body and make it official, once and for all.
I was still a virgin, my silent vow to hold out for the man I felt in my heart was my person. We would do this. It would be the chance to continue what we had started as kids.
I hated so much that my hope could never just die. It lingered around, torturing me .
I sipped my coffee and smiled over its lid at Taven. “Is this confession that you need to find a new hairdo?” I reached over and rustled my hand through his hair.
It was fall of our junior year, and the leaves were in that beautiful space of fiery oranges and reds, fluttering around us and the red brick buildings of campus. Students walked by with their scarves and laptop bags, and the air smelled like new beginnings.
He combed his hand through his hair to smooth out the mess I made. His dark eyes were pensive, but he said nothing.
“Come on, Vin. What’s this big confession?” I prompted. I stared at his profile, the scruff on his cheek, broken up with a small scar on his jawline. God, he was hot. The boyishness was gone, and in its wake was the makings of a young man with sculpted shoulders and a beard that could be full if he wanted, but he kept it trimmed short. My attraction for him only seemed to grow stronger every year, and my heart beat rapidly with the damn incessant flicker of hope.
He cleared his throat and finally spoke, turning to face me. “I’m thinking of dropping out of school.” I watched as his eyes darted back and forth between mine, looking for my reaction.
I loved that he sought my approval. I hated that his confession wasn’t a love for me.
I pulled my head back in surprise. “What? You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“But why?” I frowned. “That seems…like a bad idea.”
It was all I could think to say as I internally watched my hope fantasy flitter away like a flyer in the wind.
I tried to focus on what he had just said. His idea of dropping out of school. This was big, and our friendship required my friend hat.
I knew he didn’t quite have the same love of school and learning that I always did, but I didn’t think he was miserable, exactly. “You’re halfway done already, why the hell would you stop now?”
He shrugged. “Because I have no idea what I even want to do with this degree. I thought it’d be interesting, that I’d dive into interesting war stories or figure out some secret of ancient civilizations, maybe go into teaching with it. But in actuality it’s boring as all hell and I can’t imagine this being my world for the rest of my life.”
I leaned back in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest. I didn’t like it.
“You’re mad about it,” he said, reading my mind.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
I sighed. “It’s not like I’m mad at you, I’m just…I don’t know.”
“But you are mad,” he confirmed. He cursed and turned away from me, throwing his head back and closing his eyes to the sky. “It’s a dumb idea, you can say it.”
I studied him and the tortured look on his face, so full of self-doubt. I felt bad for conveying my own doubts. It wasn’t what he needed. I reached over to his face and rubbed my hand through the soft spikes of hair along his sideburns. “Hey, Taven,” I whispered, hoping my tone was comforting. He kept his eyes closed, but leaned his head into my hand.
I tried to explain. “I’m not mad and I don’t think it’s a dumb idea, okay?”
He opened his eyes and glanced at me. “You don’t?”
“No,” I reassured. “It just caught me off guard, that’s all.” That, and I hoped your confession was that you still love me.
“It’s not some impulsive decision,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”
I nodded and withdrew my hand, facing forward in my seat once again. “I guess I’m more mad at your parents for forcing you to go to school if that wasn’t really something you wanted to do.”
He reached for my hand and laced our fingers together, patting the bundle on my thigh. “It’s not my parents. They want what’s best for me, and I went along with it thinking college would be fun.” He grinned. “And it definitely has been.”
“Don’t I know it,” I chided. There may or may not have been some late-night drunk calls where I’d have to go pick him up and let him sleep it off in my dorm room or apartment. “So glad college has all been such a blast for you.”
I was irritated, but couldn’t quite pinpoint the source of it. Maybe it was his cavalier attitude about the whole thing. Maybe it was because his schooling was paid for, whereas mine was not. I would graduate with student loans, then pile on more for med school. I’d be in debt until I was three thousand years old, all thanks to my parents’ bad luck and worse business decisions. Dylan, my big brother NFL football star, had offered to pay, but I wouldn’t let him. He worked his ass off to be where he is, and I didn’t want him blowing it all on me or my education, especially when I was on track to have a whole lot more schooling ahead of me.
Besides, I liked the idea of my independence, doing this all on my own.
And yet, here I was, doing exactly what my parents always wanted me to do and pursuing that good old title “Dr.”, all so that my dad could resurrect his bizarre dream of the prestige of medicine. I tried to tell myself that it was also out of my own love for the field. You never knew if my mom’s cancer might return, and it sure would be nice to have the added bonus of my medical expertise to tackle that if or when it happened.
I stared down at our clasped hands and focused on the feel of his pulse against my wrist. “If you drop out, then what?” I asked.
“I haven’t made any final decisions yet. It’s just a thought, but I wanted your opinion before I do anything.”
“Okay?”
“Look, I mean—why continue to waste the money on an education I have no plans to utilize, right?” He released my hand and sipped his coffee again, and I wrapped both my hands around the cardboard of my coffee cup, willing its warmth to seep into my skin. I sipped the pumpkin-flavored concoction, noting that it had way too much nutmeg. I regretted falling prey to the seasonal fad.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I asked him after a minute. “Don’t overthink it, just say the first thing that comes to mind.”
“A mechanic,” he said without hesitation.
It didn’t surprise me. He and Inferno had continued their love affair, with Taven always tinkering and doing this and that. That car was his baby, and he treated it with care. “Your parents will be thrilled, I’m sure,” I joked. I watched as a guy zipped past us on his bicycle, rolling off the brick pathway and into the grass to pass the slow group of walkers in front of him.
Taven shrugged. “They’ll be pissed at first, but oh well. Doesn’t matter. I’ll open up my own shop. Maybe even get into a side business of vintage car sales.”
“Vintage car sales?” I wouldn’t even know where to start with something like that. But Taven could do it. I know he could. He always had that natural ease with people, he could figure it out, make the right contacts and that kind of thing.
He nodded. “Yeah. I may not like school, but I do like being comfortable financially,” he grinned. “One thing my parents have definitely taught me is not to take that for granted.”
I envied him in that moment. Taven back to his usual cool and chill demeanor, so confident in the things he wanted. Me, on the other hand—I’d be second guessing every single little thing, destroying an idea of what I wanted to the point of it being unrecognizable, and I’d be thrown right back into a blank territory wondering what my original dream was in the first place. Like now, did I even like medicine? Or was it just something I was doing solely for my dad? My mom too, though she wasn’t as pushy. I knew she loved the idea, though, of me being a plastic surgeon, probably already planning out the work she’d have done. And I wanted to be able to give her what she thought she needed, happy to just have her alive and well. Still, I couldn’t be sure if it was actually my passion, or if was simply absorbing my parents’ dreams.
Taven stood up and grabbed my elbow, pulling me up as well. “Come on. Let’s go get really drunk. We need to celebrate.”
“You deciding to quit school requires celebrating?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yup. I feel a million times lighter already.”
“Then I guess we’ll go get really drunk and celebrate.”
Let this be a lesson to you all—when the crush of your life disappoints you with a confession that you hoped would be that he’s in love with you, but instead was his decision of a newfound path in life, and he now wants to get rip-roaring drunk, don’t go along with him.
Trust me on this.