Chapter 28 Then Fourteen Years Ago
Then
Fourteen Years Ago
The irony of having a crush on someone is that, most of the time, they wind up crushing you.
For the next couple of weeks I limited my interactions and conversations with Sebastian to only those that were absolutely essential for me to do my job—without coming off like a complete jerk to everyone else.
“Excuse me,” if I needed to get around him in the dining room.
“Thanks,” if he brewed a fresh pot of coffee before I got to it.
If we were tasked with rolling silverware or setting tables together, we did it in silence.
I started riding my bike to and from work again, or, if the weather was bad, one of my parents drove me.
At work and outside of it, I struggled to process what happened on Boardwalk Night.
I felt heartbroken, but at the same time I wondered if I’d even earned the right to that heartbreak.
Sebastian and I were never dating. He hadn’t cheated on me or even dumped me.
He’d kissed me once, then immediately regretted it—that much was clear.
There was no easy terminology for what he’d done to me—what I’d let him do to me—and that only made me feel more pathetic.
At first I worried that Sebastian would try to make amends.
That he’d corner me with pity in his eyes, apologizing for humiliating me while in the same breath saying he’d known how I felt about him all along and was flattered and all, but he didn’t feel the same.
I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
I just wanted to get through the end of the summer.
But it turned out I didn’t have anything to worry about on that front.
Sebastian’s whole demeanor changed during those final weeks.
He didn’t seem to want anything to do with me, or anyone else at the restaurant, for that matter.
I didn’t know what was going on with him—if it had to do with me or something else.
But the humiliation I felt overshadowed any desire I might have had to find out.
Maren was even less sympathetic. In her eyes, Sebastian was public enemy number one. I’d come out of my shell that summer, only to close right back up. She was wracked with guilt for ever encouraging my infatuation with him.
When Chris Cappelli asked me if I wanted to go out with him sometime, I was surprised.
We were running through our closing tasks on Labor Day, which was our last shift before school started back up for the fall.
Sebastian was there, too, but in the kitchen helping Omar close up and, I hoped, out of earshot.
Chris was pretty cute, I realized, with a neat crew cut of light brown hair and big brown eyes to match.
Last year he hadn’t been much taller than me, but he’d shot up this summer.
Why hadn’t I noticed him before? I knew the answer, of course: I’d been so consumed by my attraction to Sebastian that I’d probably failed to notice a lot of other guys—including some, like Chris, who might have even been interested in me.
My ears rang with Sebastian’s words. You don’t need to be so obsessed with me.
“I’ll get back to you,” I told Chris. He was a nice kid. I didn’t want to string him along if my heart wasn’t ready. I certainly knew what that felt like.
I planned to leave my shift that night without saying goodbye to Sebastian, but he ran into me just as I was finishing clearing out my cubby.
“Sorry,” I muttered, maneuvering around him. I’d stuffed all the belongings I’d accumulated over the summer into my backpack: a couple of overdue library books, a thrifted camera and way too many of those silicone bracelets shaped like animals that everyone was obsessed with that year.
He caught my arm, stopping me, and said, “Wait.”
I looked up at him, my skin prickling at his touch. His eyebrows were knit together, and his expression looked almost pained.
“I heard you talking to Chris,” he said.
My pulse started racing, but everything else seemed to slow down as I waited for him to elaborate.
Despite how hurt and angry I still felt, some foolish part of me—the part that would always have hope—wondered if he’d tell me to say no.
If realizing someone else wanted me would make him want me, too.
“You should go out with him,” he said instead, and my heart shattered.
“Thanks, but I don’t need your relationship advice,” I said, tugging my arm away. But instead of taking the hint, he stepped even closer.
“Of course you don’t,” Sebastian said. His voice was infuriatingly gentle. “He’s a good kid, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Is that all?” I asked.
He held my gaze for a few excruciatingly long beats. Then, with a single, nearly imperceptible nod, he said, “Get home safe.”
“Goodbye, Sebastian.”
By the end of that week I officially had my first boyfriend. Chris and I held hands between class periods, and Maren and I joined his friends’ table for lunch.
During our five-month courtship we did things like go to the mall for frozen yogurt and make out while pretending to watch action movies in his basement.
We even went to the homecoming dance together, meeting at the Murphys’ beforehand to take pictures with Maren and her flavor of the month, an artsy freshman she’d met during our short-lived stint in photo club.
I still thought about the falling out with Sebastian more than I wanted to (sulking to Taylor Swift’s “Teardrops on My Guitar” had become a guilty pleasure that even Maren didn’t know about), but it stung a lot less now that I knew someone wanted me back.
It also helped that avoiding Sebastian during the school year was easy, since we’d only ever acted like friends in the summer.
We were in different grades, different social circles, different extracurriculars—different worlds, really.
The occasional times we did cross paths in the hallways or the cafeteria, I offered him no more than a polite smile and nod to give the appearance of being unbothered, and he’d just stare at me in return, those mossy eyes more inscrutable to me than ever.
By February, Chris and I had amicably broken up, agreeing that we were better off as friends.
I was grateful to have the experience of a relationship under my belt—albeit a very high school one—and to have gotten out of it relatively unscathed.
We’d barely rounded second base, and no one had cheated. No harm, no foul.
Around that time is also when the halls began teeming with gossip about the seniors’ college admissions results.
I learned that Sebastian got into his first choice, the University of California, Santa Barbara, from Carly, who worked on the student newspaper with me and who was kept loosely in Sebastian’s orbit thanks to her on-again, off-again flirtation with Andre.
By next year Sebastian would be as far away from Brantley Beach as possible, just like he wanted.