by Nella Tyler
“Some Christmas present!” The other four girls examined the pendant on it one by one. “What did you get him?”
“I made some stuff—shaving lotion, moisturizer, a bracelet. Mom made him a scarf.” I giggled and rolled my eyes. “But he liked it a lot, so I guess there’s that.”
“Didn’t you mention something about meeting his parents right before break?” I nodded.
“We went to dinner with them the night before break started,” I said. “They seem pretty nice.” Julie grinned.
“I’m sure they liked you better than the last one,” Julie said.
“What do you mean?” I frowned in confusion, thinking of the girl that I’d seen grinding up against Ty when we’d gone out together weeks before. I had almost completely put her out of my mind. I could still—vaguely—remember Ty saying that she was an ex, that she had been kind of a mess. But I couldn’t think of anything else that we’d said about it, except that I hadn’t really felt completely satisfied by the explanation.
“His last ex, Kelsey,” Julie said. She shrugged. “Word has it she was a complete train wreck, but he stayed with her for three years. He gave her all kinds of gifts, took her out all the time, spoiled her. They only just broke up last year at the end of the year—I think it was even at the formal. His parents must be glad that you at least have something more going on for you than drinking and partying.”
I forced myself to smile, even as the words hit me. Ty had been with that girl for three years? It didn’t make any sense. If Kelsey had been such a hot mess, why would he have stayed with her?
And then the other side of that issue popped into my head. He’d been with her for three years, and they’d only broken up months ago—less than a year, anyway. What if I was just a rebound? He was going to be graduating in a few months, going back to his hometown. How could I have been so stupid?
I managed to finish eating my food mostly because I knew the girls would notice if I suddenly lost my appetite, and somehow I also kept up my end of the conversation, even though my mind was spinning. Ty was sweet, and he was kind—and he had given me the best sex I’d had in my life, not that I had much to compare it to—but it was clear to me that he probably wasn’t thinking about me as a long-term girlfriend. I kept my mouth shut about it, but I was full of doubts, questions spinning around in my head. I didn’t know what I could—what I should—do about it.
Chapter Six
About a week after classes started for spring semester, I sat in my room, waiting to hear back from Nicole about going out to dinner together. I’d barely had time to see her once classes started up, and with the weekend coming I wanted to make up for it. I’d planned a nice dinner off campus, and a little bit of dancing, and then we’d spend the night at a hotel. Dad had given me a gift certificate from one of his clients during break, saying that since he and mom had the house to themselves, they didn’t need to go away for privacy.
My phone buzzed, and I grinned to myself, thinking of how surprised Nicole would be by the date. I just knew that she would love it. I unlocked my screen and opened up my message app; just as I thought, the message was from Nicole. I opened it and started to read. It was longer than I would have expected for a message sent to confirm she was free that night. As I started to read it, really read it though, it became clear to me why.
Hey, Ty. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and I feel like…considering how much I struggled last semester, and how much harder this semester is going to be, we should probably just take a break. For a little bit. Back off of going out and hanging out and stuff like that. I hate that I have to say this when you’re asking me to go out with you tonight. The words hit my stomach like a lead pipe.
I wrote her back quickly. Is something wrong? You seemed okay the other day when we hung out. Whatever’s going on, we can get through it together. I closed my eyes and hit send, thinking of all of the things I had put together for us for that night. I could probably postpone or cancel them—but the thought of losing Nicole altogether was worse even than the feeling of disappointment at losing our dinner reservation, or not getting the value of the hotel certificate. It was a much bigger thing. My phone vibrated in my hand.
It’s nothing wrong. I just feel like I need to focus a lot more on studying and trying to get ahead. I didn’t do that great last semester, and if I want to keep my GPA up, I need to really keep my nose to the grindstone.
I half-smiled, understanding but still absolutely baffled as to why Nicole would pick that moment to back off of our relationship. Hadn’t I done everything I could to support her—just as she’d done everything she could to support me? Hadn’t I helped her out the previous semester, giving her tips and tricks and study time? How could I possibly be a liability to her?
If you feel like you need to focus on schoolwork, we can do that without having to take a break, I wrote back. I really feel like we can probably balance it. I mean I’ve been at this a long time. I can still help you with making the grades. We can work this out, Nicki-babe.
My eyes stung and I took a deep breath. It had to just be stress making her make this decision; I would give her some space, and she would realize she was going overboard in a couple of weeks, and then we could start talking about what was really going on in our relationship.
I know you can balance it, but right now I just can’t. I appreciate all the help you’ve given me, but I need to figure out how to do well on my own. Please, please, please understand where I’m coming from, Ty.
I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth. I did understand where she was coming from; I couldn’t even pretend like it was something terrible she was trying to do. She wanted some space to figure out how to navigate her classes, and I knew that she’d been stressing out at the end of last semester. I cared about her—I owed it to her to give her what she wanted, didn’t I? And if she did figure out that she was overcorrecting, I needed to leave things on good terms so she could feel comfortable coming back to me.
If that’s what you feel like you need to do right now, I replied, typing as fast as my fingers could go on the little keyboard, then I’m not going to try and make you feel bad for putting classes first. But just remember my door is open, okay? If you want to talk about anything. Let’s at least be friends while we give each other space.
I felt like I’d gone out on a limb, right where it started to go thin, far away from the trunk, and handed two hundred-pound weights.
I’ll try and keep you in the loop, Nicole wrote back. I do love you a lot, Ty. You know that, right? I smiled to myself sadly, trying to remember if either of us had actually worked up the gumption to tell the other one in person, to their face, that we loved them.
At least, I thought, it was good to know that she wasn’t trying to ditch me because she didn’t have feelings for me, or because she found someone else. I wrote to her that I loved her back, and that I would be around if she changed her mind or wanted to talk. It was all that I could do.
I told myself over and over again that it was just stress making her do it, and that as soon as she got into the rhythm of the semester, she would come back to me, shaking her head at her own silliness, and we would be back together.
I felt for her in a way that I’d never felt about Kelsey or any of the girls I’d dated in high school. I really and truly wanted to be with Nicole for—if not the rest of my life, then for as long as I could plan into the future. I wanted to know that when I graduated, I would still have her there.
I wanted to be able to keep seeing her even once I became a CPA, and to start working on a future for us together. I wanted to get a little apartment in my hometown, and have Nicole there with me during summer and winter break, at least for a little while. I wanted to have her in my bed with me every night.
All of those thoughts—all of the things I really wanted—I didn’t even really realize in a solid way until Nicole had sent me the texts asking for space. I had known that I cared about her, that when she was stressed out I ach
ed for her, but I hadn’t really realized just how much I wanted her in my life, and how much I cared about her, until she cut things off between us.
I told myself before I went to bed that night, and every day that followed, that it was a temporary thing. A person couldn’t be that much in love with another person without there being something more to it than just random feelings. Nicole would catch on, she would feel the loss of me just as I felt the lack of her in my life, and then everything would be fine again.
But days stretched into a week, and I noticed that somehow I wasn’t running into her on campus the way that I used to. Somehow, no matter which of my normal paths I took to class, or when I ended up visiting the dining hall, I never encountered Nicole on the way. I never saw her anywhere; it was as if she had completely and totally disappeared, or withdrew from the school. I was tempted to even ask her friend Ashley—who had made very good friends with my roommate Alex—if she knew anything about it, if Nicole had gotten sick or had some kind of family emergency.
But I realized before I even asked around that it was a way simpler explanation than that: Nicole was avoiding me. I hated that she felt like she had to do that. It made me actually cry over her for the first time—and it was the first time I had cried over any woman since I’d forced myself to break things off with Kelsey, long before the actual breakup itself happened.
I did ask Ashley in passing if Nicole was okay; and she answered that Nicole was spending almost all of her time either in classes, in the dorms, or haunting the library. At least I had the relief of knowing that she’d told me the truth—that it wasn’t a cover story for something else. I had even started to suspect that she had found someone else, and was just too ashamed to admit it; but I believed Ashley.
As much as it hurt me, I knew that if I let myself dwell on the way things had fallen apart between Nicole and I, I was just going to end up screwing up my last semester—and why would I work so hard for three and a half years just to have to retake my last few classes? I decided to follow Nicole’s example and just bury myself in work, although I had to avoid going to the library too often—I would either see her, or it would look like I was trying to stalk her.
Instead, I spent a lot of time in the computer lab running through simulations on the CPA exam prep software there, and doing research that would help me to cross-train later on. If things weren’t going to work out magically between Nicole and me, I would just have to keep looking forward, and keep doing what I’d come to college to do. As heartbroken as I was, I had to just focus on becoming a CPA, passing my exams and getting the job my dad was trying to hold onto for me at the firm he worked at. It was what I had left, and I couldn’t let even heartbreak screw that up for me.
Chapter Seven
I made it to midterms holding my grades up much more easily than I had in the fall; at least there was that much for me to feel happy about, even if I was miserable otherwise. I felt terrible for the way I’d pushed Ty aside. As days turned into weeks, and weeks went over a month, and then two months, I hoped that I’d eventually get over the pain.
After all, I’d broken up with Dillon and managed to rebound. I hadn’t dated in between the breakup and meeting Ty, but that didn’t mean anything. I told myself again and again that it would get easier, that I would find someone new to date, or at the very least the pain would go away, but nothing changed at all.
I hated the fact that I was avoiding him; Ty had been so open, so pleasant about giving me space, and he had said at the time that I could come to him if I changed my mind, or if I wanted to talk about anything.
There were so many nights after that when I found myself alone in my dorm, missing Ty, that I wanted to text him and tell him that I had been an idiot, and that I wanted to get back together with him. But I managed to stop myself just short of sending them.
The reason I was actually managing to do halfway decently during the spring semester was because my preferred method of avoiding Ty was to spend as much time as possible in study groups and review groups for my classes; I was in the library, in my classes, or my dorm room almost all the time—I barely went into the dining hall to get food, and almost always took it to go.
I’d told Ashley about breaking up with Ty, and she’d told me, point blank, that I was an idiot. “He’s a gorgeous guy, smart as a whip, and sweet as hell—what is wrong with you?” I hadn’t been able to admit the real reason that I’d called things off between the two of us. I couldn’t tell anyone that I was insecure and worried that Ty would just write me off as soon as he graduated.
“I need to put my focus onto my studies,” I had told her instead. “I need to get my GPA up, and figure out what I want to study for my major.”
“Right, because it’s impossible to do that and have a relationship,” Ashley had countered. “Nobody ever manages to balance the two.” I had shrugged.
“I barely scraped by with passing grades last semester,” I had pointed out. “Obviously I need to put more of my energy—all of it—into getting my grades in line. Maybe…maybe sometime once I’ve got everything in order, I can talk to him about it and we can see if there’s still something there.”
But I knew that there wasn’t really a chance for that to happen. Ty hadn’t tried to call me, hadn’t really tried to text me, ever since we’d agreed to give each other space. If he wasn’t going to put much effort into trying to get back together with me, I would just assume that he was letting me go, just like I was letting him go. I knew it wasn’t completely rational; I knew I was just justifying things. But I couldn’t let myself think that Ty might still have any feelings at all for me, or else I might give into my weakness and get back together with him.
Sometimes I wondered if the reasons—the real ones—behind why I’d broken up with him were even real. I had assumed that he wouldn’t want to commit to someone after such a long relationship as he’d had with Kelsey. The fact that he’d been so curt about explaining his relationship with her the night after I’d seen her grinding on him at the club seemed to be evidence that there was more going on between him and Kelsey than a failed relationship that he had put behind him.
I remembered the way that he had just stood there in the club, the fact that he hadn’t come after Ashley and me when we left. Had he gone home with her? I didn’t know, and the fact that I didn’t know for sure—and the fact that I was afraid to ask—made it impossible for me to want to try and make things right between us.
I kept my head up as much as I could, and kept away from Ty as much as possible. I talked to Ashley, Elise, Julie, and Magda about whatever was on my mind instead of talking to Ty; they couldn’t give me the kind of stress relief that Ty was so good at—that would also just flat-out be weird—but there were people I could talk to, there were people who would listen to me and give me ideas for how to deal with what was going on in my classes.
I was walking across campus one day, thinking about the English Literature After 1920 class that I had just left. I was actually enjoying it—of the classes I had taken so far, it was one of the few that seemed to really appeal to me.
We were discussing Jean Rhys in class, and I was thinking about what I could write my next essay on. I had been avoiding Ty for weeks, doing everything I could to avoid even seeing him. I thought that if I did, I wouldn’t be able to help myself; I’d end up running up to him, I’d end up acting like an idiot—the same way his drunken ex had acted the night at the club.
I looked up from my phone and spotted him, walking the other direction, totally oblivious to my existence. The sight of Ty, even at a distance, hit me like a ton of bricks, and all I could do was just stand there, frozen in place, watching him. He looked every bit as gorgeous as he had the first time I had ever seen him, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and a pair of sneakers.
It was basic—it was the college uniform—but somehow on Ty it looked like it was just perfect. He’d cut his hair during winter break, but he’d let it grow out a bit and it hung around his face
and head in snarled, messy curls that my fingers itched to run through. As Ty moved away from me I found myself following him almost, walking far enough back to never catch up to him or quite end up in his line of sight, but so completely intrigued by just the sight of him after two months of avoiding seeing him altogether that I couldn’t just let him walk away or make myself turn around.
When Ty turned toward the dorms I stopped myself and found an empty table outside of the dining hall to sit down at. I shook my head, thinking what an idiot I had been; at any moment, Ty could have turned around and seen me following him, staring at him. It would have been humiliating.
I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t even see Ashley approaching me until she appeared at the table, sitting down across from me. “Hey—what are you sitting out here for?” I blushed and shrugged.
“I just kind of ended up here,” I said, looking around. It was three in the afternoon; no one was really going to the dining hall for anything. Ashley must have spotted me before I’d even sat down.
“I saw you walking,” Ashley said, looking at me intently. “You looked like you were lost in a dream.” My blush deepened.
“Fine,” I said, closing my eyes and taking a quick, deep breath. “If you must know, I saw Ty for the first time in like…two months or something.” I swallowed and opened my eyes, meeting Ashley’s gaze. “I just kind of…got distracted by him.”
“Got distracted? Girl, you were stalking him, weren’t you?” I cringed, looking around to make sure that no one was eavesdropping on us.
“I wasn’t stalking,” I said, knowing I was being defensive and not entirely caring. “I just…it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him, and it was…” I shrugged. “It was weird. I just couldn’t let myself let him out of my sight for a minute.”
“Nic,” Ashley said, shaking her head. “I am ashamed of you. Ty hasn’t been seeing anyone since the two of you broke up for whatever reason it was you gave him. He’s single. If you want to see him, you can just see him!”