Chapter 16
Briar
After their morning conversation, things were surprisingly easier between them.
It was like the thing that they’d been avoiding since meeting again was now out of the way, and they could move on.
They loaded up Briar’s car with supplies, stopped at Alice’s house to get her bag, and then were on the highway headed back to camp before noon.
Briar only lasted an hour in their not-quite comfortable silence, before turning off the highway.
‘Where are we going?’ Alice asked, turning off the GPS so it would stop chirping at them to turn around.
‘You’ll see.’
Minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of The Grand Ole Diner, a staple from their counselor days.
Alice clapped excitedly when the building came into sight.
It was a quaint place, overlooked by most in favor of the more convenient fast food places closer to the highway.
They walked in and were immediately met with the sickly-sweet smell of syrup and powdered sugar.
Briar’s stomach growled as they sat in a booth and immediately ordered caffeinated drinks.
‘So, how’s London?’ Briar asked, hoping that hearing Alice talk about her life would cement the fact that she would be returning to it.
She was determined to make it until the end of the summer, be friendly, and part amicably, so that Alice would go back to being someone Briar only wondered about when she couldn’t sleep.
Alice smiled up at the server dropping off their drinks before turning back to Briar. ‘Oh, um, it’s great!’
‘Where do you live?’ Briar asked, sipping her coffee.
‘Shepherd’s Bush,’ Alice said, pouring milk into her tea. ‘It’s a bit of a commute to Oxford, but when Tess moved to London it seemed like the right thing for me too. She thinks it’s mad that I’m still in school, but at least in the city, I have her.’
Briar nodded, pushing away any jealousy towards Tess, and instead tried to remember where Shepherd’s Bush was in relation to her dad’s.
‘I always knew you’d be in school for as long as humanly possible,’ Briar said. ‘I’ve never met someone who likes to learn as much as you.’
Alice shrugged. ‘I like knowing things.’
‘I know.’
There was a beat of silence, and Alice thumbed the edge of her mug. ‘You were good in school, too.’
Briar snorted. ‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘Yes, you were. I cared more maybe, but only because you had an actual life.’
‘You were my life outside of school,’ Briar said, regretting the words as soon as they were out.
Alice didn’t seem to notice. ‘Everyone loved you,’ she said, ducking her head. ‘You were the reason I got invited to parties. Even teachers only tolerated me because we were friends.’
Briar stared into her coffee. Alice hadn’t said anything untrue, but while Briar may have been well liked, she’d only had one real friend. There had only been one person who knew her fully, who she could have shared anything with.
‘You were the one with the boyfriend,’ Briar pointed out instead.
Alice flushed. ‘Yeah, well,’ she muttered, ‘that was the only thing I had going for me.’
‘Says Miss DPhil from Oxford.’
‘And now we’re back to my being good at school,’ Alice said. ‘See, I’ve never been cool.’
Briar paused, her mug poised against her lips. She didn’t know how to say that she’d always found Alice cool, that her favorite thing in the world until she was eighteen had been listening to Alice talk.
‘Are you ready to order?’ Their waitress had returned and Briar glanced at the menu, realizing she’d forgotten to even look.
‘Can I have a stack of chocolate chip pancakes with scrambled eggs, bacon, and a side of hashbrowns?’ Alice jumped in. ‘And some orange juice, please.’
The waitress scribbled the order. She turned to Briar, who stared at Alice in wonder.
‘I’ll have the same.’
The waitress took their menus, and Alice shot her a look. ‘What is it?’
‘I can’t believe you remembered our order,’ Briar said.
Alice shrugged. ‘When I was really homesick, those first few months, this is what I thought about.’ She closed her eyes, breathing deeply.
‘The smell is exactly the same.’ Her eyes snapped open.
‘I even got the curtains right.’ She thumbed the blue gingham, and added, ‘I’d think about this place a lot. ’
Briar swallowed. ‘Me too.’ It was a small concession, but it felt monumental.
‘What about life in DC?’ Alice asked.
She didn’t know where to start, how to catch Alice up on the last decade.
Sticking to the easy stuff, Briar regaled Alice with stories of her different jobs over the years. She told her about the shows she’d seen ushering at a local music venue, the horrendous customers she’d had as a barista, and the funniest pickup lines tried on her at the bar.
Alice laughed so hard at one story that she nearly choked on her orange juice. In turn, she told Briar all about her research, the dissertation process, and how she was only one of three women in her program. Briar couldn’t help but admire the light in Alice’s eyes when she talked about her work.
‘Seems like you’re really busy,’ she said when Alice stopped to breathe. They’d finished their food, but Briar hadn’t even noticed the time passing. ‘Doesn’t leave a lot of time for dating.’
It had been a stupid thing to say. They’d recovered spectacularly from the awkwardness of the morning and now she was veering towards dangerous territory again.
Alice pursed her lips. ‘It doesn’t.’ She swirled her spoon in the puddle of syrup on her plate, not looking up at Briar. ‘What about you?’
‘Well, being a bartender might get you hit on a lot, but it doesn’t lend itself to starting relationships.’
‘But you have dated…’ Alice trailed off.
Briar shrugged. ‘Yeah. There was Riley in college. First girlfriend, first of mostly everything…’ She cleared her throat.
‘We broke up when my mom got sick. We were in different places in our lives.’ She didn’t mention that Riley had tried to convince her to stay in school.
In the end, Riley hadn’t been able to understand the lengths Briar would go to for her family.
Alice hummed. ‘That sounds hard. I can’t imagine.’
She reached out and grasped Briar’s hand.
Briar knew that Alice wasn’t talking about the breakup, but about Susan’s cancer, about Briar having to drop out of school – and she couldn’t talk about that yet, not with Alice.
If they only had the summer to be friends again, she didn’t want to spend it stewing over how different her life would have been if Alice had been around for the hard parts.
She looked away from their overlapping fingers.
‘And then there was Miles,’ Briar said, moving into easier territory. ‘He was nice.’
It was a terrible summary of her last relationship.
She and Miles had dated for just over a year, and he had been there for a very low point in her life.
Her mother had been in remission, but Briar had been stuck, unable to make any decisions without having a panic attack at the thought that her mother would die without her there.
‘Just nice?’ Alice asked, sipping her tea.
‘He was safe,’ Briar said, not loving that descriptor either.
Miles had supported her through her mom’s move closer to camp, Briar finding and losing several jobs, and her preoccupation with the twins’ college admissions process and RJ’s job search.
He had been a stable presence and had made Briar feel saner, but then he’d gotten a promotion to Chicago, and she hadn’t gone with him.
She hadn’t been able to leave her mother.
He’d accused her of never completely letting him in, which was eerily similar to what Riley had said during their breakup.
And Briar couldn’t deny that. She hadn’t let anyone fully in since she’d lost the person who had meant the most to her.
Neither of them had known about Alice, but both had seemed to sense that hole in her life.
Alice nodded, seeming to accept that answer, and Briar jumped at the chance to take the focus off of her.
‘And you and Tess?’ she asked, managing to make the question sound light-hearted.
Finding out about Tess had been one of the worst moments of Briar’s life.
Seeing Alice’s post on Instagram with her face pressed against another woman’s, smiling for the camera, had broken Briar’s heart all over again.
Briar had been desperately trying to convince herself that the problem between them had been Alice’s inability to accept her sexuality.
But the post made it clear that coming out hadn’t been the issue, she just hadn’t wanted Briar as anything more than an experiment.
Alice grimaced. ‘I suppose we just decided we were better off as friends?’
It wasn’t a good enough explanation for Briar, who had built the idea of Tess up in her head for so long.
She was the one who got to date Alice while Briar watched from an ocean away.
Briar had spent countless nights looking at the photos of them on Alice’s Instagram, finding Tess’s Tumblr in second semester and poring over her poetry wondering which ones were about Alice.
She had combed through the details of every line, looking for Alice’s influence.
‘Who decided?’ she asked, wondering if Alice had treated Tess the same way she’d treated Briar, brushing off whatever they’d had without a backwards glance.
‘She did,’ Alice said, then shook her head. ‘I don’t know, maybe it was mutual.’
Briar raised an eyebrow, and Alice sighed.
‘She knew I wasn’t in a place to be dating anyone, emotionally speaking,’ Alice said, looking at their hands again. Briar fidgeted, moving her hand away under the guise of grabbing her coffee.
‘You didn’t agree?’ Briar asked.
‘Not at first,’ Alice said. ‘But eventually, yes. She was right; what I needed was a friend.’
Briar’s heart clenched uncomfortably. Part of her wanted to point out that she had been Alice’s friend, that she would’ve continued to be, even after everything, if Alice had just let her.
‘Right,’ she said instead. ‘And there hasn’t been anyone else?’
‘Nope,’ Alice said. ‘Too busy, as previously noted.’
Briar nodded, not fully satisfied with that answer, but not wanting to push her luck. She glanced at the bill between them and finally picked it up. ‘We should head out. I hate driving at night.’
‘I remember,’ Alice said, slipping out of the booth.