Chapter 13 #2
‘Mom?’ Alice said, poking her head through the door to the study.
Her mom had been out when she’d arrived the day before, and Alice hadn’t had the chance to share her good news from Jeremy.
She also was starting to feel very lonely in the house, which was strange since she spent almost all of her time in London alone without any issues.
‘I was wondering if you wanted to go for a walk or something. Stretch our legs?’
Her mom turned from her hunched position over the keyboard. ‘Oh, Alice,’ she said, seeming faintly surprised even though Alice had told her she’d be back between sessions. ‘You decided to come back from that camp of yours?’
‘Just for the weekend,’ Alice re-explained patiently.
‘Very nice,’ her mom replied, and Alice had the feeling that she hadn’t registered the question about taking a walk. She didn’t try again, knowing her mom didn’t share her love of nature – it had been a pitch made out of desperation. ‘And how are you?’
‘Good,’ Alice said, swallowing hard. She sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a mother who offered comfort, someone to commiserate with rather than hide her feelings from. But hypotheticals like that were hardly useful thought exercises.
‘Glad to hear it,’ her mom said.
‘I actually wanted to talk to you about…’ – Alice searched for some connection, something they could discuss – ‘the wedding,’ she finished, not knowing why she’d said that of all things.
‘The wedding,’ her mother echoed. ‘Whose wedding?’
‘Dad’s,’ Alice said quickly. ‘I mean, I’ve decided I’m not going, and I wanted you to know.’
She wasn’t entirely certain she had decided that until the words were out of her mouth, but they sounded true enough.
It wasn’t as though she was itching to come back to the US in the near future; it had worked out about as poorly as possible this time around.
And, most importantly, they communicated to her mom what was important: Alice took her side in the divorce.
This show of loyalty, unfortunately, seemed to go entirely over her mother’s head. ‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘Because of your dissertation?’
‘Um… yes,’ Alice said. ‘It sounds like Jeremy thinks it will be ready by spring. No need for another year of revisions.’
‘Delighted to hear it,’ her mom said. ‘I’ll come out for the graduation ceremony.’
She didn’t ask what Alice was thinking about doing next, which was relieving but also confusing. Surely, she wanted to know what Alice’s plans were with her degree, and whether she would be staying in London or moving somewhere else.
‘Thanks,’ Alice said, forcing a smile. ‘It would be lovely to have you there.’
She wished she could talk about Briar, about Susan, about the things that had driven her away from this place, or even about something as simple as how terrible the last session had been.
But her mom wouldn’t understand any of it – she would have never cast aside her research over sentimental stuff like old friendship the way Alice had.
She’d advise her to go back to London, if she asked.
And maybe, it struck her, that was the only reasonable thing to do.
Without saying anything else, because she knew her mom considered their conversation finished, she went to the backyard.
Her bare feet sank into the soft, long grass and she felt instant relief.
This was one way in which home was unequivocally better than London.
She had once spent all her time in this yard, grass-stained, staring at the clouds chasing each other through the sky.
Living in the city, it was so easy to forget the life behind what she was studying.
She dug her hand into the cool blades of grass.
Her phone buzzed with an Instagram DM.
noahpinion
hey! party’s in an hour, come through!! :)
She found herself calling Tess.
‘Hiya! Got service again?’ Tess asked, and Alice closed her eyes, treasuring the sound of her voice.
She hadn’t managed to call Tess in a week, because her only free time seemed to be between midnight and two a.m., and she felt like she’d be keeping Briar up if she was on the phone.
Instead, she would stare at the wall and compose emails to Susan in her head.
Dear Susan, I tried to make things better and only made them worse.
Dear Susan, I’m hurting Briar all over again, just by existing.
‘I’m at my mom’s for the weekend,’ Alice explained. ‘The second session starts on Monday and I rode up with Noah and Briar because they have a Fourth of July party between sessions.’
There was a pause, then, ‘And how’s it going?’
Tears fell down her cheeks. Before Susan had died, Alice couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried. Things didn’t usually affect her much. It had taken her childhood ghosts rising back up to make her start feeling again.
‘I’m coming back to London,’ she admitted. She had hoped that saying it out loud would make it any easier. It didn’t.
‘Why?’ Tess asked, thankfully without any hint that she’d noticed Alice crying.
‘I can’t do it,’ Alice said. ‘I’m a disaster. I don’t know why I thought loving camp was enough to be a camp director. I’m letting the kids down,’ she said, thinking of Robin in the director’s office. ‘And… I miss Susan.’ Her voice broke on the word.
‘Well, babe, of course you miss her,’ Tess soothed. ‘But I think you’d miss her just as much if you were here, wouldn’t you?’
‘No,’ Alice said, more forcefully than she’d intended. ‘You don’t understand, everything here reminds me of her. I can’t stop thinking about her, and how I’m failing her.’ The tears were streaming now.
‘Coming home isn’t going to fix that,’ Tess said reasonably.
‘Maybe you’d think about her less if you were here, but thinking about her isn’t a bad thing.
You’re grieving, of course you’re thinking about her.
’ There was a long pause. ‘And if you don’t want to come home a failure, then you only have one option, and that’s to turn things around.
I know you can do it. You’re the most brilliant person I’ve ever met. If anyone can do this, it’s you.’
Alice sat up, wiping at her eyes. ‘God, what have I done to deserve you?’
‘I believe you made the great sacrifice of buying me a drink at a seedy bar when we were eighteen and haven’t managed to shake me since.’
She choked out a laugh. ‘Can’t believe you were bought for six quid. Ought to raise your rates.’
‘I have,’ Tess said drily. ‘But I was both skint and dazzled by your eyes.’
‘I love you and your faith in me,’ Alice said seriously. ‘But I really don’t think there’s a point in sticking around. Briar is planning on selling the camp at the end of the summer.’
‘So give everyone one last great summer to remember the camp by.’ When Alice didn’t respond, Tess kept going, her tone soft. ‘Anyway, you’re leaving, so it’s not like it makes much of a difference to you if it’s sold or not.’
‘Right,’ she said, because of course Tess would think that, even though it felt like the most catastrophic loss in the world to Alice. There was only so much about who she was when she was here that she could ever expect Tess to understand.
‘And Briar?’
‘Umm…’ Alice stalled, trying to think of anything other than Briar’s lips brushing hers. She was beginning to accept that it might be the only thing she’d think about for the rest of her life.
‘Ah,’ Tess said, in a knowing tone.
‘What?’
‘Something happened,’ Tess said, and Alice considered rescinding her just-uttered declaration of love. ‘That’s why you’re trying to leave, isn’t it?’
Alice groaned, putting her head between her knees.
‘No, nothing happened.’ Tess didn’t respond, waiting for her to say more.
‘Like I’d do something as incredibly idiotic as come back home and try to make amends with my ex-best friend who I kissed and then ran away from, only to kiss her and run away from her all over again. ’
She hadn’t thought about it that way until it had come out of her mouth, and it made going back to London seem like the cowardly option.
‘You kissed her?!’ Tess exclaimed.
‘Well, that’s a slight exaggeration,’ Alice said.
She thought back to Briar’s breath on her cheeks, her hazel eyes flashing.
The first time they had kissed, Alice hadn’t been able to look at Briar without her whole life realigning before her eyes.
Briar had made her thoughts too dangerous, and that was what Alice had been running from the whole time.
Looking at Briar had made anything seem possible, when Alice knew it wasn’t.
She was worried the same thing was happening again now.
‘How slight?’ Tess asked.
Their lips had touched, hadn’t they? She could remember the feeling of it, just barely, but maybe that was her overactive imagination after years of picturing their lips touching again. In her mind, she and Briar had already kissed a thousand times.
‘It was over before it started,’ she said. ‘Noah interrupted us.’
‘Noah was there?!’ Tess nearly screeched. ‘The most interesting thing to happen to either of us in years and you didn’t call me immediately? Tell me everything, now, and maybe I’ll find it in my heart to forgive you.’
‘It wasn’t like that. He didn’t know anything happened, he just knocked on the door and we were, um, startled.’ An alarming thought occurred to Alice. ‘Unless Briar’s told him already, which I guess she probably has— Shit. There goes Noah not completely hating me.’
‘Alice, focus,’ Tess chided. ‘We don’t have time for boys right now. You just kissed the girl you’ve been in love with for ten years. Have you talked to Briar about what this means?’
‘I’m not in love with her,’ Alice said, burying her face in her hands.
‘I know you’re still stuck on that, but can we please move on?
I was infatuated with her once. I’m not anymore.
And am I really supposed to talk to her about what it means that I’ve kissed her twice now when she wasn’t asking for or expecting it?
Sounds like an exercise in humiliation.’
‘After all that, you think the best option is to leave?’ Tess asked, incredulous. ‘Is it really about the kiss, or is it something else?’
‘Of course it’s not just the kiss. It’s the way she looks at me like she hates me, or worse, doesn’t know who I am. I thought I’d feel less alone in losing Susan if I was with her, but I feel more alone than ever. And I’m worried she feels the same.’
‘I’ll never forgive you if you leave without talking to her,’ Tess said, and Alice snorted.
‘I’m not having a laugh, I’m serious. No one to tell you to get your shit together like your best mate.
And you need to get your shit together in a big way.
I’m not going to let you do what you did last time and take another ten years to recover from it.
If you’re going to leave, you at least need to tell Briar to her face what you’re doing and why. ’
‘That sounds horrible,’ Alice mumbled.
‘Sometimes the right thing is horrible,’ Tess said cheerily. ‘It’s called being an adult.’
She groaned. ‘Why are you always right?’
‘So,’ Tess continued, not letting her off easily, ‘when are you going to talk to her, then?’
‘Her party’s in an hour, so I guess I’ll call her tomorrow morning before she drives back to camp.’
‘How do you know when the party starts?’ Tess asked, suspicious.
‘Noah invited me’ – she sucked in a breath before Tess could interrupt – ‘not because anyone actually wants me there, but because he’s physically incapable of not being a ray of fucking sunshine.’
Tess gasped, much to Alice’s chagrin. ‘Oh, you’ve got to go to the party.’
‘I’m not going—’
‘You will not deny me this drama. You’re going to the party and you’re going to drink some beer and make merry or whatever it is you Yanks do, and then you’re going to grow up and have an honest conversation with Briar, because she deserves that.’
‘Well, the last part, sure…’ Alice said dubiously.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, do you have other plans? To putter around the house and feel sorry for yourself?’
Alice thought of another night with nothing to do in her silent, uncreaky house with her silent, uncaring mother and shivered in the nearly hundred-degree humidity.
‘Okay, I’ll go.’