Chapter 47 #2
I feel every minute that passes, feel it like you can feel walls closing in around you even when they’re not touching you yet.
My heart pounds in my ears. Finally, I find the right floor.
A woman is taking names and handing out name tag stickers, but she lets me pass quickly when I say I’m here to wait for my friend.
I enter a wide, foyer-like room with a table in the center holding a massive vase of flowers, and then I proceed to a smaller room where students sit perched nervously on the edge of the built-in bench lining the walls.
The sight of Jade stops me cold. In the car I had a dramatic and pretty douchey fantasy of me running across the room to stop a sad-looking Jade before she walks into the interview room and makes the biggest mistake of her life.
That’s what I get for getting sucked into that stupid rom-com Minnie had on TV last night.
But this isn’t the kind of room you go running across, and Jade isn’t looking sad at all.
She’s not broken and hopeless like I feel inside.
She looks poised and ready and a little nervous, and even if she’s dressed a bit like Career Girl Barbie, it works for her.
I can’t take my eyes off her, and I can’t take another step toward her.
She’s sitting next to Lenni on the bench.
She doesn’t see me, instead staring straight ahead, and I know exactly what she’s seeing.
She’s far beyond this room and this interview that she’s about to dominate.
She’s in Spain doing whatever it is she thinks is going to make her so happy.
I know that look because I’ve been there a hundred times, standing on the sidelines just before kickoff but seeing my life far beyond that moment, because imagining it is the only way I know to make it real.
I can’t do this to her.
Stepping back into the first room, I drop into a chair next to the doorway, Jade now out of sight.
Every so often a man’s voice calls out someone’s name for an interview, and the two rooms quiet momentarily until a door closes behind the newest interviewee.
Minutes tick by, and I wonder what I’m doing.
I made it. I got here in time to tell her everything, and now I’m sitting here waiting for her to slip through my fingers.
I put my hands on my thighs to quiet my restless legs. My throat is dry, and the water cooler on the opposite side of the room is calling my name, but I won’t stand up and risk Jade seeing me. I stare at the carpet, counting the tiny overlapping triangles in the blue pattern.
“Jade Kelly,” the man from the other room finally announces.
I picture her standing up, tossing her shoulders back, and walking through the doorway with her chin high, like it always is.
When I hear the door close, I let out a sigh that feels like defeat and victory. At least I’m a better man than my dad.
I close my eyes and say a silent prayer that she rocks this interview. I pray that Jade’s dream comes true.
By the time I move into the other room, only a few people remain.
Lenni’s gone, probably down in the lobby hoping to head me off.
Someone’s left a newspaper on the bench so I grab it and proceed to reread the same three lines without absorbing a word before giving up.
I ball up my jacket in my hands over and over.
Should I be rehearsing what I’ll say when she walks out?
Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore. Jade knows what she wants. The right words won’t make or break us.
Finally, she emerges, her face unreadable. I stand up. When her eyes land on me, she stops and the tension in her posture softens.
“Oh,” she says quietly.
I walk over to her. “?Cómo te fue?” How did it go?
“I don’t know. Good? Maybe?” She shakes her head, then looks at me curiously, like she just figured out who I was. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have your event today?”
“I needed to talk to you.”
“Now? Aren’t you supposed to be at some media thing?”
“Not until four.”
“It’s three thirty.”
Shit. “So I’ll be a little late. I need to do this first.”
She searches my face. “Do what, Reeve?”
I take her gently by the elbow, and we move into the first room, which is empty, and sit down. Jade smooths her skirt over her thighs, then does it again. Finally, she looks up at me, her eyes round and vulnerable. “So tell me.” She offers me a tiny smile, and it’s all the encouragement I need.
“Ever since we broke up, I feel like I’ve been sleepwalking; going through the motions but just waiting to wake up and figure out how I got to this place where we don’t even talk anymore.
And where I’m finally about to land the future I’ve been working half my life for, and it all feels meaningless because you’re not in it. ”
Jade’s eyelashes flutter, and she looks down at her lap.
“And then I found out you were here and I finally woke up. I couldn’t wait another minute to try to get you back.”
“I’m not getting on a plane today. It’s just an interview.”
“It didn’t feel that way. It felt like now or never.”
She nods. “Yeah, it did.”
“I came here to stop you from walking into that interview.”
“You’re a little late,” she says with a wistful smile.
“No, I was here. I saw you sitting outside the door, waiting to be called in, and I realized stopping you would be the biggest mistake I could make. Because the only thing worse than not having you would be having you hate me because I asked you to give up your dreams and called it love.”
She takes a shaky breath. “Then why are you here?”
I swallow. “Because I’m in love with you, Jade. I figured that out a long time ago, but I was too scared to say it. Today I figured out I’m more scared of what’ll happen if I don’t.”
Jade looks back at me, her eyes full of emotion.
Every movement she’s made since she walked out of the interview has been tiny and careful, like she’s afraid she’ll break something, but in one instant it all falls away.
She smiles, and her smile quickly melts into tears.
She puts her arms around my neck and leans into me like the weight of the world is falling off her.
“I love you too,” she whispers into my ear, and lets out a soft sob.
“I’ve owed you these words for a long time. I love you, Reeve.”
I swallow down the emotion that threatens to overtake me.
Instead, I pull her closer and hold her tight.
I bury my nose in her hair and breathe in her intoxicating scent, and I remember what it’s like to feel strong.
To know that I’m going to be okay. To be wide awake.
“I’m never going to let you go,” I tell her.
“No matter where you go. We belong together.”
She sits up, wiping the tears off her cheeks. “Promise?”
“Promise.” I kiss her slowly, tasting the salt on her lips. The warmth of her mouth is everything. “We’ll do long distance, we’ll visit every chance we get, and when you’ve had enough of Spain, you’ll come home to me forever.”
She nods. “We’ll make it work.”
“And hey, maybe I won’t even get drafted, and then I can follow you around the world.”
“Don’t you dare speak those words into the universe, Reeve Dalton.”
“I would, though. If that’s what it took to keep you, I’d give it all up.”
She drops a soft kiss at the corner of my mouth. “Good. But you need to hurry up and leave. It’s Friday afternoon in Manhattan. There’s no way you’re not going to be late.”
“Would you leave me if I was?”
She sniffs. “What? No, of course not.”
“Then it’s all good. Can’t nothing wipe this smile off my face.”
She laughs but drags me to my feet. “Go. I mean it. And turn on your charm like you’ve never turned it on before, because I will not be the reason Reeve Dalton disgraces Shafer University and the entire Heisman ceremony.”
She’s right. I’m late. I’m in trouble—just a little. And none of it matters because I turn on the charm like she told me to, and while my co-finalists stumble their way through a series of media questions, I sit with my million-dollar smile and talk my way back into everyone’s good graces.
One reporter jokes that I must know something the rest of them don’t because I’m grinning like I’ve already won.
“What can I say?” I tell them. “I’m a Heisman finalist and I’m in love. Far as I’m concerned, I’m on top of the world.”
A few of the journalists in the audience love this. A few of them look confused. All three of the guys I share the stage with look at me like they’re checking to see if I’m high.
I don’t give a fuck. These fools are wishing today was over so they can wake up tomorrow and maybe have a chance at happiness, and here I am, alive and grinning because today is the best day of my life.
I’ve already won it all.