by Leah Konen
A girl about our age hands us our orders, and Noah pulls ahead, rolling into a spot.
I unwrap mine on my lap. Then I just stare at it. My stomach was rumbling a minute ago, but now it’s hard to focus on eating, sitting here in the car like this with him.
Noah bites into his. I seriously don’t even understand how he’s eating right now.
“Not hungry after all?” he asks.
I pick a tiny piece off of my hash browns and pop it into my mouth. It’s too greasy, too salty. I lift the sandwich to my mouth but put it down before I can take a bite. I turn to Noah. He’s somehow already polished off his sandwich. “I know I should eat, but it’s hard.”
“Want me to help you with that?” he asks with a smile.
I manage a small smile back.
“Will you be honest with me?” I ask.
He doesn’t look away, doesn’t pause, doesn’t flit his eyes around the car—nothing. “Yes.”
“Did you know when you saw me on the train?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No.”
I believe him.
“What about when I said that my stepmom taught yoga?”
His eyes look away for a second, then back at me. “I thought, that’s funny, Rina’s mom teaches yoga, too. But a lot of people teach yoga in Hudson. And in Woodstock, which is only like forty minutes away. It wouldn’t be that nuts.”
“You could have asked me,” I say. “You could have asked me what her last name was.”
He stares at me. “You could have asked me what Rina’s last name was, too. You could have asked to see a picture. I could have asked what the house looked like, or the exact address you were going to. I could have picked up your phone and saw that you were texting a girl named Kat. But I didn’t. You didn’t. I had no reason to think that something so weird would be true. I had no reason to ask questions, because in my mind, you and Rina were worlds apart.”
I look back at my sandwich, then back at him.
“Okay, so you promised to be honest, right?”
He nods.
“Whatever I ask.”
He nods again.
I take a deep breath. Here goes. “What did you think when I told you my stepsister was named Kat?”
He closes his eyes briefly. Opens them again. I can tell it’s difficult for him. I can see traces of guilt on his face as he speaks. “I hoped it was a coincidence.”
“But you thought . . .”
“I thought I didn’t really care about anything else besides the fact that I wanted to kiss you.”
I look away, embarrassed. And hurt. And excited, all at the same time. Because I was worth it—even with all the guilt he must feel about betraying Kat, even though the prospect of us actually being together is null and void, even with all that—he wanted me so badly that he didn’t care.
And it makes me feel vibrant. Alive.
And horrible just the same.
I turn to look at him, and he’s staring at me, lips parted like he’s got something to say.
“What are you thinking now?” I ask. I’m hoping and praying he’ll say one thing and hoping and praying at the same time that he’ll say the complete opposite.
“I’m thinking I don’t really care about anything else besides the fact that I want to kiss you.”
And that’s what finally gets me to take a bite of my sandwich.
Because I don’t know what on earth I’m supposed to say to that.
NOAH
8:29 A.M.
I PULL OUT OF THE PARKING LOT AS SHE FINISHES her sandwich.
Should I have said anything about wanting to kiss her? Of course not.
I know that Good Noah would have kept his mouth shut.
Good Noah would probably never have kissed her in the first place, if there was even an ounce of worry about her being related to Kat.
Good Noah wouldn’t have exploded at Rina without ever once telling her before how much her trying to change him hurt him.
Or kissed a girl three days later and made the breakup hurt her as badly as it did.
Or any of the thousands of steps that have led me here.
That’s the problem. I am here.
I pull back onto the highway, meet a vision of sky and trees and mountains in the distance. More of the slush has melted, and though there is still white on the ground and in the trees, it’s almost hard to believe the storm happened. Just hours ago, we were spinning off the road, holding on to each other, literally, for dear life. It’s hard to believe I might never see this person I shared this crazy experience with again.
We have fifty miles to go.
I can’t help it that the air in the car feels electric, that I do want to kiss her again. I glance over at Ammy. She’s finished her sandwich and is rolling up the paper, stuffing it in the bag, tucking it into the side door compartment.
Even now, without makeup, with the tiniest bit of ketchup from her hash browns on the corner of her lip, she looks more beautiful than anyone I’ve ever seen.
Even the way she crumples McDonald’s wrappers looks adorable to me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For saying that before.”
She looks at me, but there isn’t anger in her eyes anymore. At least I don’t think there is. She just looks . . . tired. “You don’t have to keep apologizing,” she says. “It doesn’t change things. It doesn’t make it better. And I don’t want you to feel guilty. There’s no point.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
She nods.
“And you promise to answer honestly?”
She purses her lips for a second, as if debating whether she really does want to be honest with me. “All right,” she says. “Go ahead.”
I pick up speed, feel the growl of the Mustang’s engine, marvel, for the smallest of seconds, that I’m driving a Mustang with a beautiful girl through one of the most scenic parts of my home state. I wish I could pull over, take her hand, ask her to come with me and make a snow angel. Our clothes would get wet, and we’d find an adorable café in one of the millions of adorable little towns up here, and we’d get hot chocolates or vanilla lattes, and we’d laugh about how we’d pretended to be kids only moments ago. And then we’d go back to my parents’ basement, and no one would be home, and we’d kiss until our lips hurt. And we’d order pizza from the best place in town, and we’d watch The Godfather: Part II—my favorite, which I’m assuming she also loves because she’s cool like that—and we wouldn’t care if it started snowing again, because we’d have each other, and that would be enough. . . .
Ammy clears her throat. “Um, do you have a question?”
I hesitate for a second, but screw it, I want to know. “All right, if I wasn’t Rina’s—sorry, Kat’s—ex, would you want to see me again?”
She whips her head toward me. “What is the point of that question?”
I sigh. “I don’t know,” I say. “If the answer is no, then I’ll feel a lot better.”
She looks back ahead of her and shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she says.
“You said you’d be honest.”
She looks at me, with her doe eyes and her small mouth and all of the features of her perfect, beautiful face. I want to draw them. I want to learn how to draw just so I can draw her.
“The honest answer isn’t going to make you feel any better.”
AMMY
9:18 A.M.
KAT IS TEXTING ME, AND EVERY SINGLE MESSAGE IS painful, hits a new nerve.
Are you on the road? When do you get here?
I know you missed the wedding, but I can’t wait to see you!
I wanna hear about your night with a stranger . . . get it grrrrrrrrl
I turn to Noah. “What time do you think we’ll get there?”
He glances down at the clock on the dash. “Nine forty-five, I think. We’re only about twenty-five miles away. Is that okay?”
I nod. “I need to let Kat know.”
Her name hangs in the air be
tween us, accusatory and sad.
Noah shakes his head. “I would never intentionally hurt her, you know.”
I bite my lip. “Yeah, me either.”
But it doesn’t change the fact that our very presence here would hurt her if she knew about it.
It doesn’t change the fact that I have no choice but to lie to my stepsister. To my friend.
I text Kat the ETA and assure her that nothing happened with the guy, marvel at how the lies have already begun—and I’m trying to do the right thing, I really am.
But it’s hard to know what in the world the “right” thing is now.
I check for more messages from my mom, but thankfully, there’s nothing, so I put my phone away and stare out the window. It’s beautiful out. The sun is shining, glinting off the snowcapped trees, like we’re driving through some kind of painting or something. There isn’t a billboard in sight, unlike the highways in Virginia—no fast food joints or cheap diesel fuel. It’s just us and the trees.
I let myself pretend, for a minute, that Noah never dated Kat, that he’s just a guy I met, maybe my first year of college, or at my summer job, or through friends, or whatever. I pretend it’s our first road trip. That we’re nervous about taking our relationship to that next level. The one where you don’t just go on dates here and there, you don’t just make out while pretending to play video games, you actually travel together. Go somewhere, just the two of you.
“It is such a gorgeous day,” I’d say, and I’d reach for his hand.
Noah would probably say something cheesy, and I’d roll my eyes. But then all he’d need to do is squeeze my hand, and that would tell me everything. That he’s glad we’re here together, that he’s looking forward to whatever the future brings.
I shake my head. That’s not why we’re here. And pretending won’t change it. Pretending won’t fix a thing.
“I know you never meant to hurt her,” I say, finally getting the nerve to put into words what’s been kicking around in my head since I found out the truth.
“Thanks,” he says, laughing weakly. “You don’t sound very convinced, though.”
I take a deep breath, pause.
He turns to me. “What is it?”
“I’m trying to find the right words. Hold on.”
He smiles. “I like that about you. That you care about finding the right words.”
I feel the now familiar, delicious feeling—that of being appreciated, and not just being appreciated, but being appreciated by someone I truly, genuinely, like. I ignore it.
“It’s just that sometimes even if you don’t mean to hurt people, you do.”
I think about my dad, and for the first time ever I feel the strangest thing—a flash of empathy.
Maybe he never wanted to hurt my mom or me at all. Not really.
“I know,” Noah says. “That’s what’s so hard for me.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He takes a deep breath and flicks on his blinker, pulling into the right lane behind a minivan that can’t be going too much over sixty, almost like he has to slow the car down to have this conversation.
“Hurting people. I don’t like it at all.”
I turn to face him. “No one likes it.”
He shakes his head. “I know. Of course. I don’t mean that you do like it, even if you are a little snarkier than I am.” He looks over and gives me a half smile. “But I really don’t like it. I don’t like arguing. Or confrontation. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I think maybe that’s why I never told Rina how much she was hurting me by cutting me down all the time. I was afraid it was like I was calling her a bad girlfriend or something, and she wasn’t. Really, she wasn’t.”
He takes a deep breath, but he doesn’t stop talking. “Maybe that’s why I wanted to come back here. I thought I wanted her back, I did, but now I think I just wanted to say I was sorry. It all happened so fast that I never really got a chance to do that.”
He sighs. “She might have taken me back, that’s the scary part. I’d have missed her last night because she’d have been at the wedding, but I’d have found her today. And she might have said yes. It would have been bad. I would have hurt her even more. We’re not good for each other anymore. Who knows? Maybe we never really were. I wanted to make it work, but in the end, we weren’t right. She wanted me to be different. She deserves to be with someone who’s exactly what she wants. It was good that I met you, in that way. It was so we didn’t put each other through that.”
His words cut at me, because he’s suddenly so raw, and he’s sharing so much of himself with me, and if it were in any other setting or situation, it would make me feel absolute elation.
But not like this.
“I wish you would have figured that out with someone else,” I say. “Someone at Hunter, whatever. Not me.”
He shakes his head. “No, you don’t.”
“I do,” I say.
But that’s what kills me. I don’t.
After all this, I don’t.
I think about my dad. Was he doing the right thing after all? Does Sophie make him happier than my mom ever could? Would he and my mom have split up even if Sophie had never come into the picture?
Of course he should have figured it out on his own. He shouldn’t have done what he did and broken us apart.
But what if, in some strange, crazy way, it was what was supposed to happen?
If it hadn’t, I’d never have seen him as happy as he seems to be now.
I’d never have even come up here.
I’d never have met Noah.
Still, I think about my mom, about the masses of texts I could barely stand to read, and suddenly it doesn’t matter.
Because sometimes, it doesn’t matter if you’re happier in the end. It doesn’t matter if it was the right thing for you.
Because actions hurt people. They hurt my mom.
And if Noah and I ever did anything, they’d hurt Kat.
And I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.
NOAH
9:46 A.M.
I DON’T KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE DRIVEN DOWN Cortland Road.
Hundreds, if not thousands, in all the years of me and Rina. We’ve made out in my car, parked in front of her house. Argued in the yard. Driven down this street in good moods and bad. Everything in between.
It is weird and odd and unnerving to be driving down this road with Ammy.
I drive past the house Bryson and Rina and I egged once, before we felt so bad that we cleaned it up immediately. The street where Rina’s friend Jessica used to live, before she moved to Florida.
The house that is supposed to have the nicest pool, that Bryson was always trying to get us to sneak into, because they were city people who were only there half the time. We never did, because we were too scared.
There are so many memories on this street. Ones that are supposed to be over. I’m supposed to be moving on from this.
Yet here I am, driving down Cortland Road again.
What memories does this street already hold for Ammy? The nervousness of meeting a new family. The judgy, uppity tone of Rina’s mom. The return from a swim in Claverack Creek, clothes wet and skin burned.
“In point two miles, your destination will be on the left.”
There’s no time left. Ammy’s been quiet since she told me that I was wrong, that she wasn’t glad she met me. Her silence is proof enough that she meant it.
We had our moment—one night that I’ll remember for a long, long time—but it’s over. I’ll never see Ammy again. I’ll never speak to Rina again, even as friends, for fear of lying or hurting her any worse.
I’ll never drive down Cortland Road after this.
“Maybe you should stop a couple of blocks away,” Ammy says. “I don’t want Kat to come out and see you.”
“That’s what I was going to do,” I say. I go another block, then I pull over in front of the big red monstrosity of a house that Rina’s mom always hated.
I put the car into park, let the engine idle.
I wish there was something else to say.
I wish there was anything to say.
Ammy unclicks her seat belt, then stares straight ahead.
“I would help you carry your suitcase,” I say, “but I guess that would defeat the whole point.”
She laughs. It’s forced. “You just couldn’t let me go without trying to carry my suitcase one more time, could you?”
I laugh weakly.
She reaches for the door.
I want to stop her, so badly. I want to reach over and kiss her again, but I know it’s wrong.
I want to find a way for us to be . . . something.
The problem is—I have no idea how.
AMMY
9:48 A.M.
MY HAND SHAKES AS I REACH FOR THE DOOR.
I’m not kidding, it freaking shakes.
And my heart beats fast.
And my face feels hot.
And my body feels all prickly and raw.
“Can you open the trunk?” I ask.
“Sure,” Noah says, and he reaches down and pulls the lever.
I shrug into my coat and finally get the nerve to open the door.
Noah gets out on his side, too.
The tiny trunk is open, and Noah pulls out my bag and pushes it toward me. I grab the handle, laugh to myself about how crazy it was to drag the suitcase over open, snowy fields—only yesterday.
I wish that there was an opportunity for Noah to carry my suitcase again. Even though the whole idea is totally antifeminist and annoying.
I look up at Noah. “Well, thanks,” I say. “For getting me home.”
He nods, closes his eyes, and opens them again.
“Don’t forget to tell your grandkids about our little adventure,” I say.
His mouth forms the smallest of smiles. “You too.”
“Well, this is it, I guess,” I say. The wind blows through the branches above us, and snow falls from the twigs, like it’s a storm again, just for a moment. Just for us.
Noah steps forward, almost like he’s going to hug me, but I’m afraid of what will happen if he does, so I take a step back.
“Good luck at Hunter,” I say. “And let me know how much I owe you for the car and motel and everything. Er, message me on Facebook or something. But don’t friend me. Because, uh—”