Time of Our Lives

by Emily Wibberley

  For the first time, I want to put off the future. I want to stay in the present. I want Matt’s arms around me, his heart beating against mine. If I don’t think about tomorrow, then right now, with him, is enough. But his question hangs in the air perilously, waiting to crash down on us.

  “We don’t,” I say when I can’t hold on to the moment any longer.

  He hugs me tighter, and I bunch my hands in his shirt, knowing this is it. We both know. There are no dramatic declarations. No I’m breaking up with you or we’re over or I don’t love you anymore. We hold each other, and it’s the end of us.

  “We could stay together until graduation,” I suggest weakly. We had plans for the rest of this year, plans I’ve daydreamed of and yearned for. Right now, they’re blurring out of focus, fading fast enough to frighten me. There was Valentine’s Day, prom, the senior trip to Lake Placid. I even have his Christmas gift wrapped and hidden in my closet—a Lord of the Rings DVD box set.

  Then there are the bigger plans. The trip we talked about taking to Ireland when we had enough money, the first apartment we’d rent together, what type of dog we’d adopt.

  We’ll never have those plans, but we could have this year.

  He steps out of my arms. “You don’t want that,” he says. I begin to protest, but he continues. “You’re not the kind of girl who holds on to things that are already over. You’ll want to face tomorrow with a fresh start, ready for something new.”

  I close my mouth. He’s right. It hurts how right he is, how well he knows me.

  I don’t deny it. “I want you to have your perfect college experience,” I say instead. He was right. I could have tried harder to understand what he wanted. It’s too painful to admit, the thought tightening my throat. Between him and Fitz, I guess understanding other people’s priorities is something I’m working on. “I know you’ll find the girlfriend who wants to go to parties with you,” I go on, “who will stand at your side for everything that’s exciting to you.” I meet his eyes, finding his expression slightly disbelieving. I know the feeling. A year together, and it ends in a handful of minutes in a New York hotel room. “I’m just not her.”

  “And I’m not the guy who’s going to take on the world with you,” he says. His tears have subsided, leaving his face wrecked.

  “If it’s worth anything, I really wanted you to be.”

  He smiles genuinely, sweet and sad. “Yeah, it’s worth something,” he says. “You know, I still think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and smarter than everyone I know.”

  Then why haven’t you kissed me yet? It’s my line. It’s what I replied the day we started dating. Except the scene’s over. The memory of Matt, confident and cheeky, walking up to me in the school hallway, draws new tears into my eyes. I divert my gaze, not wanting this to feel even worse.

  Matt grabs his bag and jacket from beside the bed, then returns to the doorway. “I’ll stay with Justin tonight,” he says gently, and I catch myself loving him for not dragging out the breakup. Which is such a wrong, confusing thing to love him for that I nearly break down right then. “In the morning I’ll take the bus home,” he continues.

  I look up. “You don’t have to,” I say. “I’ll drive you. Really.”

  But Matt shakes his head. “No,” he replies with intensity I didn’t expect. His eyes meet mine. While they’re watery, they’ve regained the clarity of purpose I remember from batting practices and the moments before kisses and endless—except, I guess, not endless—conversations.

  I’ll probably remember those moments, his eyes, forever.

  “Have your trip,” he tells me. “Have everything, Juniper.”

  I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I’m not used to not knowing what to say, to fumbling for the right words. In student government speeches or confrontations with Tía, they come easily. But what could I possibly say right now? “Thank you”? “Okay”? “What if this is the happiest thing I ever have”?

  With one final smile, tears drying on his face, Matt walks out. He closes the door softly behind him.

  Fitz

  I DON’T KNOW how to read this girl. Or possibly girls in general. But right now, Juniper’s the riddle. Yesterday she texts me for hours while we’re on the road, exchanging favorite words and cities, swapping family stories and photos of the highway. Today, nothing. Well, not nothing—she replies to my texts. But I notice long pauses in between her replies, no punctuation, and none of the ebullience or humor of our conversation yesterday.

  I know I’m reading into it, and I kick myself for playing into introspective-hipster-boy tropes. Teenage ginger Joseph Gordon-Levitt decoding the texts of Zooey Deschanel or Zoey Deutch or other Zoeys while wandering New York City. Find me a Joy Division T-shirt and fancy coffee, and I’m ready for my close-up.

  I really could go for a good coffee, though.

  I’m on my own while Lewis interviews for one of the finance jobs he hopes will keep him from Tilton, New Hampshire. Five hours of interviews for Bright Partners, one of the top VCs in the country, he told me in the hotel this morning, though really it was more like a monologue to himself in the mirror. I thought I caught uncharacteristic nervousness in the waver of his voice. He told me he’d text me for dinner, and emptily I wished him luck. Despite the friendlier moments we’ve had on this trip, I still don’t love the idea of him taking a job in New York.

  I have no college tours today while Lewis interviews. Though I could have made up yesterday’s NYU visit, I found myself interested in the city instead. I decided to walk downtown on Broadway, which is when I began texting Juniper.

  It’s not worth speculating why her replies have changed, I remind myself. Crossing from street corner to corner in packs of pedestrians, it dawns on me that I’m halfway through this trip. In just five days, I’m returning to New Hampshire, to home-cooked meals and familiar friends and the unchanging prospect of SNHU. Those things are your future, I find myself repeating. They’re important.

  Because, I guess, part of me does want more. More new cities. More time with a hypothetical girl who could potentially be interested in architecture and possibly, theoretically want to live “everywhere.”

  It’s better I don’t turn this funny light-speed friendship with Juniper into something more. We’re inchoate. Yet unformed and undefined due to newness. It would only hurt worse when I have to return to my life of waiting for the inevitable. Because I do have to return.

  It’s why I could muster only a hollow “good luck” to Lewis. It won’t be him home with Mom. It’ll be me.

  I know I could have years until Mom declines. I could commit to other schools in other cities. Except I won’t do what Mom did. I won’t go to some other school and then withdraw when her condition worsens. I won’t fall in love with a college or city and have to leave. It’s the same with Juniper. It’s better in the long run if things don’t progress.

  Whatever’s out there, I’m certain of one thing. I would rather never know than force myself to forget.

  It’s within my rights to be frustrated that I’m living like this, always focused on my mom’s health, every decision hinging on her. This isn’t the first time it’s pissed me off, of course. But I guess at some point over the years, I realized if I bothered to resent this reality every single day, I’d burn out. It would be equivalent to resenting the sun for rising and setting. This—the inevitability of me losing some years to responsibilities I’m too young for—won’t change.

  I don’t think Mom fully understands how entirely I’ve structured my life around her well-being. That’s fine with me. It’s not her fault, and it’s the one thing I have the power to keep her from worrying about.

  Resolute, I walk down Broadway, immersing myself in the details. They’re keepsakes. The rare winter sun remediates the chilly weather, lighting the cloud cover blindingly white. I enjoy the crisp warmth on my face. Tras
h overflows from curbside cans and dumpsters in front of buildings. It’s not gross, though. It’s this bold, in-your-face reminder of the towering number of human lives on top of each other in this endless city.

  It’s nothing like home. It’s the exact opposite, in fact. I cross Fourteenth Street in front of Union Square Park, somewhat uncomprehending of the momentum, the sheer concentration of people heading purposefully in every direction. The hectic cacophony of car horns, cyclists whizzing past me, and people in suits talking into headsets. I can’t help imagining future Lewis among them. It’s dizzying, in a good way. The propulsive energy pulls me in.

  I recognize the feeling. Not from this city. From conversations. From debating college over cannoli. From discussing if a boy who dreads the future could become friends with a girl racing for it.

  Juniper told me she lived in New York City when she was younger. It figures. She has the restlessness of this place, the inertia. I walk the brick pathway into Union Square, picturing her here, on the lawns hemmed in by wrought-iron fences and perusing the crowded farmers’ market on the perimeter.

  There’s nothing wrong with thinking about her in New York, I tell myself. It’s not the same as hoping I’ll start something with her I could never finish. It’s just meaningless wonderings.

  I walk without purpose or destination for I don’t know how long. When I pause for a second to text my mom, I notice I’m in front of a row of red-and-white carts lining the sidewalk, filled with books. Their quantity is like everything in this city—enormous. The edges of the carts, and the red awning of the building behind them, read STRAND BOOKSTORE in white lettering. 18 MILES OF BOOKS.

  Curious, I head inside. I have an enduring love of bookstores from when Mom would take Lewis and me when we were kids. I could honestly devote hours to browsing the collection, crashing in the comfy chairs with the first chapters of whatever intrigues me, and of course, breathing in the heady scent of new pages.

  I bet Juniper likes bookstores, I think, then immediately try to un-think. I can’t go through my day comparing everything to what Juniper I-don’t-even-know-her-last-name likes or dislikes.

  For a bookstore fetishist, the Strand doesn’t disappoint. The stairway in the center faces tables of new releases and bookshelf upon bookshelf. There are notebooks and literary socks, bookish tote bags and T-shirts. Everything is identified in bold red-and-white signs, with “staff pick” cards on the shelves and clever thematic displays. The smell is exactly right.

  I send my mom a picture and head for the fiction and literature section, noticing familiar editions from my mom’s own bookshelves. The Modern Library edition of Ethan Frome, the Norton Critical Edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Jungle. I’m really glad Mom didn’t name me Upton. I pause in the F names, finding The Great Gatsby under the marginally better name she did choose for me. My mom’s shelves hold multiple editions, one recent and two from her PhD program because her notes in each got too numerous and crowded to decipher.

  I don’t know this edition, though. A Penguin Modern Classic. It’s beautiful, with gold designs and lettering on the hardcover’s pristine white jacket.

  I decide I’ll buy it. It’ll thrill her even when she no longer remembers the words. Opening the cover, I find the first line, the one I’ve heard her repeat countless times under her breath and in the SNHU lectures I’d visit every now and then—even to me or Lewis without context or provocation like she just loved the sound out loud. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

  Juniper incredulously asked me how I’d never read the book that inspired my name, and I dodged the question. The truth is, I’ve thought about reading it often. My mother wrote her dissertation on The Great Gatsby. She references it constantly. Besides, it’s not like I don’t enjoy classic literature. I do. I’ve read nearly all of her recommendations.

  Except this one. The biggest one.

  I guess part of me was holding on to it like it could be some safeguard from her disease. How could my mother really get sick, how could she forget her years spent ruminating on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words before I’d had the chance to discuss Gatsby with her?

  It’s stupid. Nothing is going to stop my mom’s illness—not this week pretending I could have a different life, not enrolling in a distant school, and definitely not not reading The Great Gatsby. She will get Alzheimer’s, and I will be home for it. The end.

  I resume reading the first page. Then the next and the next. Before I know it, I’m at the register, then walking out of the store, my finger holding my page.

  I return to Union Square Park. The first free bench I find, I sit and open the book.

  After years of waiting and avoiding, I read without intention of stopping, the constant motion of the city continuing around me.

  Juniper

  I LET THREE alarms go by before I decide to wake up.

  When the first went off at seven this morning, I rolled over to jostle Matt awake—he’s never been good at getting up to an alarm. But when my arm hit his empty pillow, I remembered last night and the reality that I’d never wake up next to Matt again. He was gone, and I was supposed to return to my tour without skipping a step. There were a couple of hours before my Columbia information session, enough time to shower, find breakfast, and navigate the subway to campus.

  I got up to draw the curtains and returned to bed.

  The thought of continuing the trip without Matt, driving in my empty car to D.C. and then Charlottesville, was too huge an undertaking. Climbing Everest in a snowstorm.

  It’s not that I won’t do it. I just need time. I need to let my heart finish breaking.

  Around ten, I admit I’m too hungry to stay in bed. There’s no way to make the Columbia tour. Part of me is pissed at myself for sleeping through it, for missing the chance to see a school because of a boy. But the other part of me, the bruised part that can still smell Matt on my shirt, is glad. Ending our relationship deserves a moment of pause. A moment to recognize there will be no more of Matt’s easy smiles at my locker, no more daydreams of our future together, no more hurried kisses in his car five minutes before curfew.

  It hurts, and I let it. It hurts every time I think of what Matt and I used to have. The past versions of ourselves who worked perfectly together in ways we don’t now. It’s the undeniable truth, and it’s awful, and it recedes into healing with every passing hour.

  I haul myself into the shower, hardly feeling the warm water against my skin.

  Pulling on my parka, I head downstairs, ferociously blocking out the thought that the last time I walked down this hallway, I was following Matt. It’s funny how places can feel completely different depending on who you’re with, or who you’re not.

  Downstairs, I quickly find a hole-in-the-wall bagel shop, the line spilling onto the sidewalk. It moves quickly enough I’m not convinced there isn’t magic involved, and in ten head-spinning minutes I’m standing on the street corner again holding my everything bagel with cream cheese.

  I gaze up.

  The Chrysler Building soars into the sky in front of me. I study the iconic spire, the way the curves cascade unconventionally into the needle point. Facts explode in my head. The building was the tallest in the world for eleven months in 1931, until the Empire State Building was finished. The thirty-first floor displays replicas of the 1929 Chrysler hood ornament. With the details comes the realization I’m in New York City.

  I’m in one of the greatest cities in the country for the thing I love. The thing I want to devote my entire academic and professional life to. I grew up here, but I was too young to understand or appreciate the architecture of New York the way I do now. I resolve right here, with the curb under my feet and the titanic towers over my head, to throw myself into an architectural tour of the city. Even though I sk
ipped Columbia, I won’t waste today. I’ll let my dreams of the future heal the wounds of the past.

  It takes me twenty minutes to compile my itinerary for the day. I pick five buildings spread across Manhattan along Fifth Avenue. The architectural greatest hits of the city, from historic to modern, Gothic to art deco.

  I begin with the Flatiron Building. I know the history of the wedge-shaped structure. I can summon a perfect image of it in my mind’s eye. The limestone changing to terra-cotta as the building rises. The rounded corner at the peak of the triangle. It’s a perfect medley of styles from antiquity to the Renaissance Revival.

  In person, it’s more than that.

  The point of the building rises between the streets like the prow of a ship cutting through the sea, the entire city expanding behind its hull. Taxis glide along its smooth sides like waves. In a city of colossal skyscrapers and more than eight million people, the Flatiron still manages to command attention.

  I stand on the sidewalk for several minutes, admiring the shadows cast by the skyline against its windowed walls. No wonder the surrounding neighborhood took the building’s name. The Flatiron District—a place of people and businesses defined by a single structure. Not everyone understands the influence of architecture. But here, under this twenty-two-story sentinel, it’s undeniable.

  I soak up the view until the alarm I programmed into my phone to keep me on my itinerary rings in my hand. It’s not a long walk to my next stop—the Empire State Building.

  I’m reaching the skyscraper when my phone vibrates once more. It’s not my alarm this time, though. It’s Fitz.

  Is New York everything you remembered?

  I stare at his name on the phone, at the trail of our previous messages leading down the screen. Talking with him was effortless yesterday. I have a feeling I could fall back into those conversations today without thinking. I could let Fitz into my heartache. He’d probably have the perfect word to describe it. He’d hand me some centuries-old adjective that wraps up the cyclone of emotions in my heart in a way that makes them understandable and easier to bear.