Chapter 20 Now
Now
“I can’t believe you’re leaving Sunday,” I say to Maren. “This summer has flown.”
We’re seated at the Murphys’ expansive kitchen island on a Thursday night, drinking too-strong margaritas and flipping through both of our old yearbooks. We always get nostalgic during Maren’s last week home.
“If we stop talking about it, maybe it won’t have to be true,” Maren says.
“Look at this one!” She points to one of the collages, which includes a tiny picture of us during Battle of the Classes.
The freshmen wore red that year, and Maren had made us matching outfits: She’d added fringe to our class T-shirts and complemented them with Soffe shorts and tie-dyed soccer socks.
We’d even box-dyed the tips of our hair, much to my mother’s dismay.
To this day my bathroom sink at my parents’ house still has a faint pink tinge.
I laugh. “We look …”
“Happy,” Maren supplies.
“I was going to say like we’re about to get our asses kicked in dodgeball.”
“Well. That too.”
I flip to the back of the book—it’s one of the ones I brought over—where all the signatures are, and run my fingers over the ink-rippled pages.
Maren’s LYLAS!!! takes up half a page. HAGS!
See you at the beach! wrote Tara Rizzo from Algebra I.
Billy Wortman (a kid who had a standing table in detention) wanted me to HAKAS, which is an acronym I can’t say I remember.
I Google it now: Have a Kick-Ass Summer.
How edgy. Then I spot Sebastian’s loopy signature in the bottom corner.
I remember working up the courage to ask him to sign my yearbook during lunch.
He smiled and asked if I had a pen. I proudly handed him a Sharpie.
He finished quickly, then closed the book and handed it back to me.
I made myself wait until I was sitting in World History the following period to read it, only to find that there was no message (however short) for me to decode.
He’d only written his name. The friendly two-sentence message I’d drafted in a notebook and memorized before writing in his suddenly felt like an embarrassing love letter.
My phone buzzes on the counter, and the screen illuminates with a new message. I press the lock button and the screen fades to black before Maren notices.
I’d mentally prepared myself for Sebastian to pull back after what happened at my apartment.
He’s the one who stopped whatever might have happened next, after all.
But he wound up texting me a niche New Jersey meme a couple of days later, which sparked a good-natured debate about whether jughandles actually help traffic or worsen it.
We’ve been texting pretty regularly ever since, mostly humorous observations about our days or more discussions about how Brantley Beach has changed since Sebastian last spent a significant amount of time here.
I know we’re dancing around the elephant in the room, but I can’t bring myself to be the one to bring it up.
To say that it’s been difficult to concentrate at work this week is an understatement.
I find myself glancing at my phone between every task, hoping to catch Sebastian’s name on my screen.
In the evenings, I force myself to keep my phone buried in my bag so I can focus on whatever story Maren is telling me over dinner, or the movie we’re seeing.
Then the moment I get back to my apartment I pull my phone back out with relief, and text with Sebastian until I can’t keep my eyes open.
“Are you seeing him again soon?” Maren asks, eyes still on a cringe-worthy picture of us at the winter ball. I should know by now that nothing gets past her.
I’m sure Maren hasn’t been blind to my distracted state, but it’s the first time she’s probed since I gave her the rundown of what happened at my apartment.
She’d been decidedly less encouraging than David.
To Maren, what happened indicated that Sebastian is just as unpredictable and indecisive as ever.
It’s not like me to hide things from Maren, but the situation feels new and fragile, so I’m protective of it, worried that if we talk about it too much I’ll start overthinking and morph it into something else entirely.
Plus, I only have a few days left on the same continent as my best friend. I need to keep my priorities straight.
“Eventually, maybe?” I say, like I don’t care either way.
(We both know that I do.) He’d asked what I was doing this weekend, and I reminded him I’d be at the wedding Friday and was throwing Maren a small going away party Saturday night.
I considered inviting him, but thought better of it.
This weekend I need to focus on work and Maren, and that requires keeping Sebastian at a safe distance. The texting is distracting enough.
Maren narrows her eyes at me but doesn’t push for more, which I appreciate. She knows me well enough to understand that when I’m ready to fill her in, I will.
“Another?” I ask, twirling her empty glass.
“After I pee.”
When I hear the bathroom door shut I swipe open Sebastian’s message. It’s the Google Maps listing for a coffee shop on LBI called How You Brewin’? I save it to my “Want to Go” list for this weekend, then get to work on the margaritas.