Chapter 32 Clover
Clover
At first, I’m convinced Bennett will come back. It takes me forty-eight hours to realize that he won’t and that waiting around for him won’t change that.
I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to feel lonely in a two-hundred-square-foot room, but when Bennett leaves, everything about our space feels cavernous and drafty.
The threat of bombing the semester and losing my academic scholarship is the only thing that gets me to classes, and the reality that I will have to figure out my own housing next semester is enough for me to show up to work. Even if I am a husk of a person.
Pottery is the only class I am managing to enjoy, and I think I’m going to miss it next semester. I’m probably not even qualified to move on to Pottery 2, but I guess it couldn’t hurt to find out. It would be something to look forward to, at least.
I won’t take Sydney’s money. That is one thing I have decided for sure. No matter how all this plays out, I can’t live with the idea that Bennett would even think I would choose money over him.
On Wednesday night after my library shift, I drag my body down the hallway just as Briar is packing up her grilled cheese operation for the night.
“Hey,” she says. “Bennett out of town?”
I turn to her, my key card in hand, and my resolve immediately crumbles, tears spilling before I can choke out a reply.
“Okay. Fuck. Crying. Not really my wheelhouse.” She turns over her shoulder and waves her arms. “Daisy!”
A moment later, I hear an “Oh!”
Daisy steps around Briar, pulling her baby-pink headphones around her neck.
The second I see her I only start crying harder.
“Hey, hey,” she says, rushing to me as she gives Briar a what-did-you-do look.
Briar shrugs, untying her apron and hanging it on the back of the door. “All I asked is if Bennett was out of town, I swear.”
Daisy guides me into their room and onto her bed. “Take a breath. Just breathe.” She smooths calming circles over my back and points to her pink mini fridge with her free hand.
Briar returns with a very cutesy can of prebiotic soda and opens it for me, encouraging me to take a sip.
The breathing is working, and after a few hiccups, I take the water and concentrate on the cold trickle down my throat. I pat dry my warm cheeks and manage to say, “Thanks. Sorry about that.”
“What’s going on?” Daisy asks. “I’m guessing it’s about Bennett.”
Briar sits down on my other side, and she’s not physically comforting me, but something about her posture makes me feel like she’s standing guard for me.
“He left,” I tell them through a shaky sigh.
Daisy’s eyes go wide for a second before she schools her expression. “Like, temporarily?”
I shake my head because talking is making it all so much worse.
“But you guys are like the picture of domestic bliss,” Briar says, and there’s a hint of sadness in her voice, like our relationship failing is upsetting to her on a personal level. “Honestly, the only example of a healthy marriage in my life.”
The words are right there, sitting on my tongue. I know I shouldn’t. The semester is almost over. But Briar and Daisy are the only friends I have on campus, and I want to trust them. Maybe I can at least finish this semester with the knowledge that I’ve made two friends.
“It was a lie,” I whisper.
They both sit silently, waiting for me to explain.
With their questions and all the relevant background information, it takes almost an hour and a half, three grilled cheese sandwiches, six snack-size pouches of fruit chews, four and a half Diet Cokes, and a trip to the ice machine downstairs to refill our heavy-enough-to-be-murder-weapon water cups.
When my story is complete, the three of us sit in a row on Daisy’s bed wearing under-eye masks and considering toenail polish colors for me because it is something small that we can control.
After Daisy and Briar paint five toes each, we huddle around a phone and watch ridiculous, brain-rotting videos.
Daisy closes her eyes for just a minute sometime around five and ends up with her head in my lap atop a fluffy, lip-shaped throw pillow.
Briar opens a fresh pouch of fruit chews and rolls them all together into one mega fruit chew ball. She takes a bite, and then turns to me. “We could apply for a three-person room.”
“What?” I hear her just fine, but I must be misunderstanding. Most of the time, Briar has me wondering if she even likes me. Surely, she isn’t suggesting that I live with her and Daisy.
“It could be fun,” she says. “And a little bit cheaper.”
“That’s—that’s really kind of you, Briar.”
She snorts. “Don’t make me take it back.”
“Maybe you should talk to Daisy first.”
“About what? Every night will be a sleepover for her. In fact, if I didn’t ask you to move in with us, she’d probably do that thing where she puts her hands on her hips and scolds me.”
“Well, I should at least think about it, right?”
“Sure. I think the late housing change request is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, so you have a little while.”
We sit there in silence, my eyes finally becoming heavy.
“I’m surprised he hasn’t come back yet,” she says.
“Who?”
“You know who. Bennett. That time you were sick … he was practically manic. And ever since the beginning of the semester, he has waited up for you to get home from your late nights at the library. I would always see him with the light on. It only took a few weeks to pick up on the pattern.”
I shake my head at her. “But … the lights were always off when I got back.”
She looks at me pointedly, and I realize that he probably turned them off just before I normally arrived home.
“I am the last person anyone should take relationship advice from,” she starts.
“But it sounds like you both want the same thing in different ways. And he spent all those nights waiting, right? So maybe he just needs to cool down. I think if you want to backpedal things a little, he would be willing to wait some more.”
Backpedal. I hate the sound of that. Like we’ve gained progress and would just lose it all if we simply relabeled our relationship.
“Why does it matter to you so much?” she asks. “The whole not-being-married thing.”
“Because what if someday we actually want this for real?”
“And it doesn’t feel real now?”
I pause, trying to parse out how to respond.
When I think of the moments that were supposedly fake, I have to admit that even those made me feel something.
Every touch and kiss led us here. I can still feel the carpet of the library on the backs of my thighs and picture the sight of the gas fireplace flickering shadows across the room. That was all very much real to me.
“Of course it does,” I tell her.
“So then what’s the point of waiting? Why does it all have to happen in some sort of order?
You’ve got now. Right this moment, and that’s as far as life’s guarantee goes.
” She studies me as I feel my brow furrow, and my memories channel back to the dozens of times Bennett would smooth his thumb over my forehead, like he could erase my worries.
“My aunt,” Briar says. “She would always say don’t save the good stuff.
Clothes, dresses, dishes … whatever. Because we could just die.
We could just wake up one day and think it’s any other day and we could leave the new dress with tags in the closet for another, better day, but that day might never come. And then you’re well and truly fucked.”
“That … is so depressing.”
She nods. “Yeah, life is pretty bleak. But I think you gotta ask yourself: Is Bennett the good stuff? Is he the dress with tags? Is he the fancy-as-shit china? And if that’s the case, what are you waiting for?”
I let that settle for a minute. What am I waiting for? Is this really about reserving the someday possibility of marrying on our own terms? Or is this about waiting for the perfect day—the perfect season of our lives—that might never come?
I spend the next night in Briar and Daisy’s dorm.
We pool our resources and make a rather comfy bed of blankets and pillows.
Daisy and I help each other study for our Geology 1 class, which we take from the same professor at different times.
Every once in a while, we help Briar with her seemingly endless customers.
And by the time I fall asleep, I can clearly see how simple it would be if the three of us did take the roommate plunge.
Especially considering that I would have my own bed and wouldn’t be relegated to the floor.
On Saturday morning, Mom picks me up after I ask if I can spend the night at home and catch up with her.
“Lucky me,” she says as I buckle my seat belt. “A slumber party with my favorite girl.”
“Can we make pizzas for dinner?” I ask. “The ones with the pesto on top.”
“Looking for some comfort food?”
“Something like that.”
I begin to tell her what happened while we eat dinner on the couch.
She lets me curl up against her, and to my surprise she doesn’t immediately advocate for me and Bennett to get a divorce.
She frowns when I mention Sydney’s birthday dinner and our conversation, but I can’t tell if it’s because she wasn’t included or because Sydney offered me money. Probably a little bit of both.
The conversation happens in waves. We watch thirty minutes of a movie, and something new occurs to me. It’s not until we’re falling asleep in her bed that she finally says her piece.
I’ve been waiting for her to express her disappointment and say all the things she couldn’t say in front of Bennett and Sydney, or anyone else for that matter. Instead, she kisses my forehead and says, “Love isn’t really concerned with timing, is it?”