He looked down. “Stop playing with it; you’ll make it bigger.” He swatted my hand away playfully.
“But how did it even happen? How do you have all these tiny holes in your T-shirts?” I asked, finding another one closer to the hem.
“My cat, probably,” he said, swatting my hand away again.
I laughed, hard. “Your cat did not do this,” I said, swiping at the tears in my eyes. “There’s no way.”
“Yes, way,” he said.
I touched the first hole again, laughing harder as I poked it.
“I guess I’ll wait for you to be done,” he said, crossing his arms.
I breathed deeply, letting out one more burst of laughter. I wiped my eyes with the inside of my wrist, smudging my mascara. I sighed loudly as I ran a fingertip under each eye, collecting any stray black smears.
“Have I told you today how beautiful you are?”
“More or less,” I said, wiping my finger on his shirt. “Stop stalling. I need to study.”
“Have I told you how much I like being around you?”
“Again, more or less.” I rolled my eyes with a smirk. He gently ran his thumb from my temple to my chin and then down my neck.
“Have I told you that I think I’m falling in love with you?”
My breath caught in my throat. “Uh, nope. You have not mentioned that.”
“Oh, well, Edie, I think you should know that I am falling in love with you.”
I searched his eyes. I knew he’d wanted to say it; I just wasn’t as prepared to hear it as I thought I would be.
“Are you serious?” I breathed.
“I’m seriously serious.”
“Seriously?” I asked again, unable to believe him. Shocked by his sudden sincerity. “How do you—”
“Yes, seriously.”
“But h-how—” I stuttered, unsure of what to say.
“First of all, I just know. You took care of me, and that means a lot.” His thumbs brushed my temples as he sighed. “That means something to me. You mean something to me.”
“And you think that something is love?”
“It could be,” he said, though I knew he was sure.
“Say it in German,” I teased.
“Ich glaube ich liebe dich.”
“Say it in Spanish,” I said, the heat in my cheeks spreading down my neck.
“Puede ser amor.”
“Say it in French,” I whispered.
“Ça pourrait bien être l’amour,” he said as he pressed his lips to mine.
28
A Picture Says a Thousand Uh-Ohs
“I don’t know, maybe I’ll just come back at the end of the summer,” I said with a shrug, my eyes on the court.
I glanced at Terrance when he didn’t immediately respond, his mouth hanging open. “What?” I asked.
“Are you seriously considering not doing the fall semester all of a sudden?” he asked, his thumb scrolling his phone as he gawked at me.
I shrugged again.
He whistled, low and long. “You’ve got it bad,” he said, his eyes leaving my face and returning to his cell.
I pulled back. “Got it bad for what?” I asked, my attention grabbed by the referee’s whistle. “What just happened?” I motioned toward the court as Terrance’s eyes stayed on his phone.
“No clue,” he said, setting his phone on the bleacher next to him.
“Oh,” I said, watching Serena ready her serve. “Out of bounds, them.”
Terrance nodded, resting his feet on the seat below. He leaned forward, his elbows sliding onto his thighs.
“I know I’ve already told you this—the play was awesome. I loved your lighting; it was gorgeous,” I said, bumping into him.
“Thanks,” he said, tilting his head to look at me. “I’m surprised you saw any of it, though.” He smirked.
“What does that mean?” I asked, watching the other team volley the ball.
“I heard about you and Hudson.”
I scrunched my nose as I glanced his way. “What does that mean?” I asked with more emphasis.
“It means I heard you were more interested in Hudson than you were in the show.” A smile creeped at the left side of his mouth.
“Oh my God,” I said, shoving him lightly.
“And now it seems like you’re more interested in Hudson than Paris—”
“Uh, no,” I interrupted, my stomach dropping in the process.
“Uh, yeah,” he said. “You literally just said you were thinking about coming home at the end of the summer. That was never the plan. Regardless of the question, the answer was always Paris.”
I scratched my head, avoiding eye contact with Terrance, despite his desperate attempt to grab my gaze.
“Am I wrong?” he asked, giving up on trying to make eye contact.
I took a long sip from my water bottle. He wasn’t wrong. The answer to any question had been Paris. It was supposed to stay that way, too.
“Can we just watch the game?” I motioned to the court.
He shook his head slowly. “Whatever you want, Edie.”
* * *
I sat staring at the computer screen. Fifty-nine. The grade on my last French test. It didn’t make sense. I studied for this test. I really studied. I sank my head into my hands as the room door opened behind me.
“What’s up?” Serena asked, setting her bag down hard.
I shook my head. What was there to say?
“What happened?” she asked, crossing the room to stand over my shoulder. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Your overall grade is still a sixty-five, so that’s good.” Her fingertip pressed the screen. “You can recoup.”
I laughed as I lifted my face from my hands. I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes. “I’m not going to make it through this course,” I said, pushing out of the chair and moving to my bed.
“You will. You’re passing,” she said, turning to unpack her bag.
I fell back onto the bed, throwing an arm over my face.
“Hey, so I have something to show you,” Serena said as she shuffled through some papers.
“Okay,” I said, not taking my arm off my eyes.
She moved to the side of my bed. “Did you want to see it, or…?”
I groaned as I pulled my arm from my face, dropping it dramatically onto the bed next to me.
Serena waved for me to sit up.
“Do I have to?”
She listed her head, her hand on her hip as she looked down at me.
“Fine,” I whined as I pushed myself up. I opened my arms as if to present myself.
“So, I was going through my pictures.” She held her tablet toward me. “Selecting pictures and editing and whatever, and I found these.…” She handed me the tablet. The first picture was of me sitting at my desk, my dress pooled in my lap. My face downcast, smiling. A pin between my lips.
I flipped to the next. And then another. “What are these?” I asked as I got to a picture that instantly knotted my stomach.
It was me and Hudson. Nose to nose at the theater. Serena must have snapped it right before she scolded us. His fingers twisted in the end of my hair, my mouth open in a smile.
I looked up at Serena, her eyebrows raised in response. There was a picture of us walking away from Serena. Hudson with his hands shoved into his pockets, my arm looped through his. My head on his shoulder.
“What is this?” I asked, holding the tablet toward her.
She laughed as she ran a hand through her hair. “That’s you falling in love with Wes Hudson.”
“Jesus…” I dropped the tablet. “There have to be more than twenty pictures on there.”
“Twenty-seven, actually,” Serena said, biting the inside of her cheek. “It’s a really beautiful progression, Edie, and I—”
I looked up at her. “You want to use those for your project now instead of the dress pictures?”
She paused, still chewing on the inside of h
er cheek. She raised her eyebrows questioningly.
“I promise I will still take pictures for your portfolio,” Serena said, flipping through her tablet and turning it toward me to show me a photo of me pulling out a hem. “I still have so many good pictures of you with The Dress.”
I rubbed my hands down my face. “Do you think the pictures stand a chance to get the gallery spot?” I asked.
Serena shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I do.”
“Shit,” I breathed.
“It’s totally up to you, Edie,” she said, crossing her arms. “I promised you final say, and I meant it.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Just go with your gut.” I fell back onto my bed.
“You’re sure?”
I nodded, throwing my arms over my eyes again.
“Do you want to see the rest of the pictures? You only saw, like, three pictures; there are a lot—”
“Nope,” I interrupted. I did not want to see the rest of the pictures. “I trust you,” I said. It was myself that I didn’t trust. How could I have allowed Hudson to derail me like this?
29
This Misery Does Not Love Your Company, FYI
We’d agreed to meet in Hudson’s room to study. One, because I didn’t want an audience for this conversation and I knew Serena would want to be there, camera at the ready. And two, because it was easier to walk away than it was to ask him to leave, in so many ways.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t have a pit in my stomach over this. I didn’t want to end things with Hudson, but I had to. I’d gotten in too deep and broken all my rules. What we’d had was fun. It was supposed to stay fun. It was supposed to stay easy, not get in the way of everything else going on in my life … but it did and now it had to end.
Hudson’s head was down, my notebook rested in his lap. I watched him as he ran a finger over the words I’d written, reading them. Checking for any mistakes.
“You know, when I’m in Paris, I don’t think … you know, we need to be…” I motioned between us, using it as the end of the sentence.
Hudson narrowed his eyes. “You don’t think we need to be…?”
“Like, a thing,” I said, not wanting to use the word couple. Or boyfriend. Or girlfriend. Or relationship. Not wanting any of those words.
He sat up straight, his palms pressed into the bed. “Are you preemptively breaking up with me?” he asked, his eyes shining in the soft light of his room. He bit at his bottom lip, holding back a smile.
I opened my mouth to respond, but closed it before I could say something stupid. I shook my head, trying to sort my thoughts.
“Oh my God,” he said, pulling back. His face falling. “You are, aren’t you?”
“Hudson, I just thought—”
His eyebrows knitted together before I could finish my sentence. “You thought what? That this thing between us was going to stay cool, as you put it?” he said, using air quotes.
“Hudson, no.” I pushed out of the chair and stood in front of him. “I still need you. I still need help—”
“Why am I even helping you, Edie?” he asked, tossing my notebook toward me. “So you can leave the country and not think about me again until you return?”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, though it was kind of what I’d meant, but also he was absolutely getting in the way of me passing French when he was meant to get me through it.
He pressed his fingers into his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose. “Don’t do this, Edie,” he said, taking another deep breath before looking up at me.
“Hudson, I—”
“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.”
I closed my eyes. Maybe it didn’t have to be all or nothing, but it had to be over.
“I still want to see you. I don’t want this to be over.”
I crossed my arms, holding myself together. I didn’t want it to be over, either, not really, but I had other priorities. There was no way I was going to let myself make Hudson a priority over all the things I’d worked so hard to achieve.
“You knew it would be like this,” I started to say, stopping when Hudson pushed off the bed. “And we aren’t breaking up, I mean, we aren’t even really together.”
He crossed his arms. “What do you mean we aren’t really together? And be like what? That you would fall for me and then run away? No, actually I didn’t know it would be like that.”
I shook my head. That wasn’t what I’d meant. Sure, I’d fallen for him, but in my head, there was always an end date. A time stamp. “I don’t have time for this, Hudson. I need to pass the final, and I need you to help me. This is why I didn’t want a boyfriend.… This is why I told you that I just needed you as a tutor.”
He let his head fall back, his eyes on the ceiling. “You’ve been using me,” he said with a realization that overtook him. He righted his head, any glimmer in his eyes gone.
“I never used you,” I said, my finger pointed in his direction. I took a deep breath before I spoke again. “I’m sorry if it came off that way.”
“I get why you’re pushing me away right now, but it doesn’t have to be like this—”
I put my hand up to stop him. “Hudson, I don’t have time for conversations like this, either.”
He took a step back, his forehead scrunched. “Are you serious right now?” he asked, his voice rising.
I opened my mouth to respond, but he jumped in.
“You don’t have time to talk to me about something you brought up? Something that’s your issue, not mine? Edie, this is bullshit.”
I picked at my cardigan, dropping mustard yellow puffs to the floor.
“Just tell me what’s really going on, please?”
I shook my head. What was really going on was that I didn’t want to regret going to Paris. I didn’t want anything holding me back. I didn’t want to split my time between my dream and a boy.
“This is how it is,” I said, taking my notebook off the bed and putting it into my bag. “My priority is to pass this class and go to Paris.” I hiked my tote onto my shoulder. “I’m sorry, but I don’t plan on changing that anytime soon.”
* * *
I’d slept an exhausted sleep. A sleep that only comes after you’ve been broken down past the point of no return. I slept a sleep that didn’t refresh me. I slept a sleep that left me filled with dread that only deepened when I woke. Dread I’d brought on myself. The conversation with Hudson hadn’t ended when I left his room. He’d texted me twice, both times trying to justify why we should stay together. Telling me that he wasn’t going anywhere. That he would be there for me when I came around. The problem was that I had no intention of coming around.
I walked into class just as it started. I was no longer going to show up ten minutes early. I walked to the front of the classroom and set the transmitter on the table, not bothering to look at either Dr. Clément or Hudson. I hated that I still needed him. I hated that I was teetering on a D and needed every moment of this lecture. I hated that I could feel his eyes on me.
I slid into my seat, taking a deep breath as I pulled out my notebook and slipped the earpiece onto my ear.
“I miss you,” he whispered.
I kept my eyes on my desk and shook my head.
“Edie, I—”
I pulled the earpiece out of my ear and dropped it on my desk. I couldn’t listen to him. I couldn’t do this.
I needed at least a sixty-five on the final to pass the class. That sixty-five may as well have been a hundred at this rate. I felt less confident than ever, and the pressure was on full force. I no longer had the luxury of studying with the TA. I no longer had the luxury of knowing someone had my back, either.
I stayed in my seat as the room cleared. I needed to get the transmitter back, and I felt like such a fool. This was more embarrassing than anything that had happened to me in middle school. This was worse than any teasing that was dished out by my classmates.
Hudson set
the transmitter on my desk, and I kept my eyes down. I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want him to see me, either.
“Edie, just—can we talk?” he pleaded.
“I warned you,” I said, finally looking into his eyes. He looked like he’d slept the same exhausted sleep as me. He looked like he’d been through hell. He was disheveled in all the worst ways. He wasn’t even wearing his maroon beanie. His shirt was wrinkled. He was in sweatpants. Actual athletic sweatpants.
He took a step back so that I could pass him. His eyes begging for me to reconsider. I held it together until I was out of the building, but couldn’t keep the tears from coming once I was in the light of day.
Only five more French classes until the semester ended. Only five more interactions with him. Only five more heartbreaks.
Paris, Paris, Paris, I reminded myself.
30
It Matters How This Ends
Serena and I walked arm in arm toward the arts building. My insides quaked, torn between not wanting to see myself in those photos and wanting to support my best friend.
“You are way too dressed up for this,” Serena said as she eyed my heeled booties, skinny jeans, and plum-colored cashmere V-neck. “As my date, I feel as though I have to tell you this.”
I cleared my throat. “I am not.” I ran my hand against my sweater. “This is a special occasion, and I think one should dress accordingly … and I’m only your date because Michael is taking a final.”
“But you’re still my date.” Serena laughed. “And I should be the one dressing accordingly, but you’re just a spectator.”
“I am not just a spectator,” I said, pulling her to a stop. “I’m featured in these photographs and I want my best self represented.”
“You want your best self represented even when you’re not featured,” she laughed, pulling me toward the building.
“I like dressing up,” I said.
“I know. You’d get all dressed up to do something like go to Pizza Hut for dinner or play checkers in a park.”
I smiled at my roommate despite my annoyance. She knew me too well. My idea of a perfect date included being impeccably dressed and doing something totally normal. I’d even made her get dressed up to go out to the movies a couple times.
Meet Me in Outer Space Page 14