He stops. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”
“I —”
“Because I’ll make it up to you — I promise. Tonight, and tomorrow too, the whole day, we can do whatever you want.” Garrett smiles at me again, as charming as he’s always been. “I’ll even let you take me to another one of those alien invasion movies. And I won’t complain, not once!”
I stare at him, lost. This is what I wanted, isn’t it: for Garrett to choose me over his other friends? But just as quickly as that thought comes, it’s replaced with another, louder question.
Why am I doing this all over again?
Waiting for him to choose me. Getting swayed by all his charm and focus. This is exactly why I wanted to get over him, to feel like we were partners, instead of just Garrett and his desperate, pining friend. I spent my summer carefully cutting out my feelings for him, tracing around the outline of my heart because I was so desperate to keep our friendship together, the same as before.
But it can’t be. And more than that, I don’t want it to. Not if “the same” means waiting around for him, having him treat me like the girl I used to be instead of the person I am today.
I feel a rush of calm, cool and easy in my veins. “You know what? I’m beat,” I tell him. “Can you just take me home?”
Garrett’s face falls. “But, are you sure . . . ?”
“Another time, maybe.” I try to smile. “It’s been a long week.”
“There was something I wanted to say,” he begins. “This wasn’t exactly how I pictured saying it, but —”
“Can it wait?” I ask, turning to head back to the parking lot, but before I even have time to think, he closes the distance between us, takes my face in his hands, and kisses me.
This can’t be happening.
I stay frozen in place, his lips on mine, trying to make sense of the impossibility. Garrett moves a hand to my waist and pulls me closer against him. Dazed and reeling, I go. His lips are soft on mine, his skin faintly rough and unfamiliar against my cheek, and for one blissful moment, I sink into it.
Everything I’ve been waiting for — all those sleepless nights imagining this very moment — has come to this. Now. Here.
The kiss deepens, slow and sweet. I barely move. I barely even breathe. This is Garrett, I tell myself, giddy. This is Garrett, kissing me. My heart swells with triumph.
I finally made him love me.
At last, Garrett pulls away. “Hey,” he whispers, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear. He smiles down at me. “I’ve been waiting forever to do that.”
“What . . . ?” I’m dizzy, clutching the front of his shirt for balance. “I mean . . . Why?” Garrett’s still smiling at me, that special smile I’ve longed for for two entire years. The one that says, “You’re the only girl in the world.” The one I’ve seen given to Beth, to Julie, to a parade of other girls, but never to me.
Until now.
“Don’t you know?” He pushes his hair back in a nervous gesture, almost bashful. “I love you, Sadie. I think I always have,” he adds earnestly. “But I was just too stupid to see it. I didn’t realize . . .”
Love. He said he loved me. I stare at him in amazement. But for some reason, the words dance just out of reach, like a language I can’t quite understand.
What does that word even mean to him?
“What?” I ask again, stronger this time. “What didn’t you realize?”
“Well, how great you are.” Garrett laughs. “And how great we could be together.” He traces my lips with his fingertip, then kisses me again. We’re closer than we’ve ever been before, so close I can feel his breath, taste the faint bitterness of coffee from his mouth. But for some reason, Garrett suddenly feels like a stranger to me, a foreign body pressed against mine.
I stay frozen in place on the sidewalk, aware of everything around me. Farther up the street, a group of people emerge from a bar, laughing; couples wait in line outside an Italian restaurant; a boy with scruffy long hair plays guitar on the corner, the faint strains of Jeff Buckley drifting down to us. And Garrett, here against me, but feeling farther away than any of them.
I pull away, that first blissful swoon I felt dissolving now, leaving something else — something cooler, more solid — in its place. A simple question. “What happened with Rhiannon?” I ask softly.
Garrett frowns. “What do you mean?”
“What went wrong?” I take another step back, watching him carefully. The haze is clearing; I can see things for what they are now. “It was only a couple of weeks ago that you were in love with her. You said she was the one. And now, you love me?”
He shakes his head. “It’s not like that. I mean, yes, we were together,” he says, stumbling. “But when she ended things, it made me see what had been right in front of me all along!”
I exhale, disappointment washing over me. “She broke up with you.” In the two years that I’ve known him, Garrett is almost never the dumpee. He’s always the one in control.
Garrett flushes guiltily. “No. I mean, yes, she did, but then I realized, you know — what we have. How special it is. You never let me down, Sadie; you’re always there.” He takes my hands in his, full of emotion. “Don’t you see? We’re meant to be together!”
I stare back at him, his words hitting me with painful force. I never let him down. I was always there for him. And he’s right: I was.
But not anymore.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, pulling my hands away. “It’s too late. I can’t do this.”
The smile slips from Garrett’s face. “I don’t understand.”
Of course he doesn’t.
“You’re not in love with me, not really,” I explain, realizing it for myself even as the words slip out. “You just love the way I always made you feel. Like you were the center of my world. Because you were.” I shrug, helpless. “I would have done anything for you.”
“I’d do anything for you, too!” Garrett says, confused. “That’s why this is meant to be!”
“No,” I say, understanding for the first time the great distance between who I used to be and who I am today. “I don’t love you. I did,” I add. “God, I loved you so much. But it’s over. I’m not that girl anymore.”
“Sadie . . .” He trails off, speechless. There’s nothing for him to say.
“It’s OK.” I smile faintly. “You’ll be fine. But I have to go now.”
I reach up on tiptoes and press a kiss to his forehead, feeling one last pang of regret. However it turned out, Garrett was my first love, my best friend. But it’s over now. All of it. The scene down there at the poetry slam proved it for sure. He sees me as some kind of adoring acolyte, a fan. But I’m more than that now.
“Take care,” I tell him, and then I turn and walk away.
It’s late by the time Mom pulls in to our driveway, but I don’t feel tired at all. I’m still buzzing with a strange adrenaline, a mix of relief and pride and exhilaration all in one. Something ended tonight. Something finally finished for good.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” my mom asks at last. She managed to show amazing self-control all during the drive home, but now she finally breaks. She looks over with concern. “Are you OK?”
I nod. “I’m fine. No, I’m better than fine,” I correct myself, feeling a smile creep across my face. “I’m good.”
“Oh.” Mom is clearly thrown. She waits while we go inside and then broaches the subject again as she crosses the kitchen to the kettle for her ever-present cup of herbal tea. “And is everything all right with Garrett?”
“Not really.” I give her a smile, slinging my purse on the kitchen table. “But that’s OK, too.”
She looks confused, so I reluctantly continue. “I just can’t do it anymore. Being friends with him, or more than friends. . . .” I shrug. “I’ve spent enough of my life revolving around him. I had to stop.”
“Oh, Sadie.” Mom comes over and pulls me into a hug: swift and strong. “I
’m proud of you, sweetie. I know how much he meant to you.”
I blush.
“Don’t look so embarrassed,” she laughs, going back to her tea. “It’s not easy to do, separating yourself from someone like that.”
I pause. “Is that what happened with dad?” I ask slowly.
She looks up, surprised. “Not exactly,” Mom begins, checking to see if I’m really going there. I’ve never asked what happened, not directly. They sat me down, of course, for that talk about how even though they weren’t going to be together anymore, they both still loved me. But as for actual details, the breakdown of what went wrong. I’ve never asked, and she’s never told.
Still, something about tonight makes me tell her, “I want to know.” So she continues.
“Well, you know how he gets so caught up in his music, it’s like nothing else in the world exists? Not even us.” She pours the water carefully, a distant expression flitting across her face, and I can tell she’s back there — in this house, all those years ago. She holds out a mug, and I take it and follow her to the back porch.
It’s dark out in the backyard, so Mom lights the lamps, and we curl up on the long wicker couch with a blanket around our legs. “He was just starting to tour,” she explains. “So I was on my own with you all the time, waiting for him to get back. And my art wasn’t paying anything, and the bills were mounting up, and, well, there came I point when I had to decide.” She gives me a tired smile.
“Decide to divorce him?” I ask.
“No, it wasn’t even that.” She pauses, thoughtful. “It was more about whether I was going to shape our world around him or make a life on my own terms — for the both of us.”
I nod. After this summer, I understand exactly what she means. Even I can see that I’ve had to fold myself into pieces for Dad — making myself small enough to slot into the spaces he has around this show or that session. In twenty years, he’s never put anything — or anyone — ahead of his music, and I doubt he ever will.
“I think you’re right about Europe,” I say at last. She raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t think it through before, what it would actually be like,” I explain. “But Dad will be in rehearsals all day, or on the road, and I . . . well, I’ll probably be waiting around backstage most of the time.”
She smiles, full of regret. “I’m sorry. I wish it were different, but . . .”
“But it’s just the way he is,” I finish for her. Dad, and Garrett, and probably plenty more besides. They live their lives, and in the end, I have to choose to live mine, no matter how much I care.
We sit in comfortable silence a while longer, the crickets sounding out in the dark, and my exhilaration fading into pleasant tiredness. “Do we have any cookie dough?” I ask at last.
“Are you hungry?” Mom asks. “There are some leftovers, I think.”
I shake my head. “I need to apologize to Kayla,” I explain, feeling that guilt push through my fatigue. “And I figured it would go easier with baked goods.”
She smiles. “I think there’s some in the freezer. We’ll whip something up in the morning. But now, bed.” Mom pats my feet decisively. “It’s late, and you’ve had a long day.”
“The longest,” I tell her, but before I get up, I pause, awkward. “Thank you,” I say quietly. “For everything.”
“Always.”
The next morning, I drag myself out of bed extra early, bake two dozen sugar cookies from the pack of instant dough in the freezer, and decorate them with M&M’s reading I’m sorry. I leave them on Kayla’s front steps, along with a copy of Grey Gardens and twenty packs of my mom’s gold stars.
“Is this your way of saying I was right about Garrett?” Kayla opens the door just as I’m nudging a cookie into place. I look up.
“Yes,” I admit, shameful. “I nearly fell back into it again, trailing around after him. But you saw it coming.”
“I’m smarter than I look.” Kayla bites into a cookie, aloof. “My vast wisdom is often underestimated.”
I laugh. She gives me a look. “Sorry,” I mutter. “And I’m sorry for what I said, about you and Blake. I shouldn’t have been so mean.”
“You really can look wretched and pathetic when you want, you know?”
“It’s a skill,” I agree, waiting. Finally, she smiles.
“Fine, OK. Get over here!” She pulls me into a hug.
“Watch out!” I yelp, shifting us out of the path of cookies.
“Whoops.” She grins, then settles on the front steps, still in her penguin-print pajamas. I sit beside her and try a cookie of my own. “And I’m sorry, too,” she adds. “I was kind of a bitch. I just couldn’t stand to see you fall back into the same old pattern again with him.”
“Me neither.”
“So, what finally made you realize he isn’t your soul mate?” Kayla asks, perking up. “The flakiness? The pretentious angst? That hair?”
“All of the above.” I laugh. “And when he decided to declare his love for me.”
“What?” Kayla chokes on an M&M, but I shake my head.
“I’ll tell you later. But can we not talk about Garrett for now? I feel like I’ve spent way too much of my life focused on him. Let’s just say, that thing is done.”
“Thank God.” Kayla reaches for another cookie. “So what now?”
“I don’t know. Work, I guess.” I shrug. “The rest of summer. School.”
“Gee, you make it sound so fun.”
I laugh. “Well, what did you have in mind?”
“Um, how about more beach time? And some parties. Ooh, and a road trip!” Kayla lights up. “The brat camp finishes next week, and then I’m free! Broke, but free.”
“You should come work at Totally Wired,” I suggest, reaching for another cookie. “We’ve got an open slot now that Dominique’s fled the state. I’m going to keep some shifts even when school starts, which means we could work together. I’ll put in a good word for you.”
“You really think they’d hire me?” Kayla asks hopefully. “Because that would be the best. If I have to wipe up after another leaking kid, I think I’m going to start shoving corks somewhere corks aren’t designed to go.”
I laugh. “There’s wiping, sure, but no bodily fluids,” I promise. “And Carlos is still permanently hungover, he’ll say yes for sure — if we ask really loudly.”
“Yay!” Kayla claps. “OK, I have this family thing with Aunt June today, but you want to hang out tonight? I could call the girls and do a movie slumber party thing?”
“Sounds great,” I say. Just then, a familiar-sounding engine cuts through the silence. Kayla looks past me and breaks out into a smug little smile.
“Helllooo.”
“What?” I ask, turning. Josh’s mud-splattered truck is pulling to a stop in front of my house. He climbs down from the driver’s cab and nods over at us, tugging on his cap sheepishly. “What’s he doing here?” I whisper.
“Duh.” Kayla laughs. “Go on!” She’s already pushing me off the step. “But you better tell me everything!”
“Kayla . . .”
“Everything.” She grins, then gets up and disappears back into her house, leaving me with no reason to linger here. I take a deep breath and head back across the street, inexplicably nervous. “Hey.” I stop beside the truck. “What’s up?”
“Sorry to just show up, but you didn’t answer your phone,” Josh starts, running one hand over the top of his head, messing his hair even more. His skin is tan against the red of that zombie shirt, his eyes bright but bashful. “I was just heading out to the beach for the day, and I wondered . . . if you want to come.”
He looks up at that last part, meeting my eyes with a look that is definitely not just platonic.
I feel a thrill. “You mean . . . like a date?” I venture, suddenly needing to know exactly what this is we’re doing here. No more unspoken agreements and blurry lines. I need some clarity, this time around.
“Maybe,” Josh ventures, starting to smil
e. “If you want it to be. Or it could be just date-ish.”
“Date-like,” I reply, relaxing. “Date-esque.”
“A quasi-date,” he agrees. We grin at each other awkwardly.
“Yes,” I decide. “I’m in, but . . . would you wait, just five minutes? I need to grab my stuff.”
“Sure,” he keeps smiling. “Take as long as you need.”
I bound inside, thundering up the stairs to assemble my beach bag in two minutes flat. Sneakers, sunscreen, my iPod for the drive . . .
There’s only one thing left to do. I walk over to my computer and sit down. A few quick clicks and I have it up on-screen: the whole website, every perfect relationship, every great romantic couple. Years of work. A lifetime of dreaming. A shrine to something that I now know doesn’t exist — not in real life. Not so neatly. No, Kayla is right: real love is a whole lot messier — and maybe a whole lot more fun.
I click again and type in my password. A window pops up.
Are you sure you want to delete the database?
I hit the enter key without hesitation and bound back downstairs, out into the sunshine.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A huge thank you to everyone who works so hard to make my books a reality: to Kaylan, Liz, Tracy, Jenny, and the team at Candlewick; Mara and the Walker crew; to Rosemary Stimola, Tyler Ruggeri, and Elisabeth Donnelly.
ABBY McDONALD is the author of three other young adult novels: Sophomore Switch; Boys, Bears, and a Serious Pair of Hiking Boots; and The Anti-Prom. She graduated from Oxford University in 2006 with a degree in politics, philosophy, and economics and is an entertainment critic turned full-time author. Originally from Sussex, England, Abby McDonald lives in Los Angeles.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2012 by Abby McDonald
Cover photograph copyright © 2012 by John
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