by Jenny Han
There was an awkward silence between us, and I had a feeling we were both remembering the same thing. To fill the silence I said brightly, “Gosh, that was, like, a million years ago, huh?”
This time he didn’t reply.
Conrad dropped me off in front of the post office and said he’d be back to pick me up in a few minutes. I hopped out of the car and ran inside.
The line moved quickly, and when it was my turn, I said, “Can I see your love stamp, please?”
The woman behind the counter rifled through her drawer and slid a sheet of stamps over to me. They had wedding bells on them and LOVE was inscribed on a ribbon tying the bells together.
I set my stack of invitations on the counter and counted them quickly. “I’ll take a sheet,” I said.
Eyeing me, she asked, “Are those wedding invitations?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you want to hand cancel them?”
“Pardon?”
“Do you want to hand cancel them?” she repeated, and this time she sounded annoyed.
I panicked. What did “hand cancel” mean? I wanted to text Taylor and ask, but there was a line growing behind me, so I said hastily, “No, thank you.”
After I paid for the stamps, I went outside, sat on the curb, and stamped all my invitations—one for my mother, too. Just in case. She could still change her mind. There was still a chance. Conrad drove up as I was pushing them through the mail slot outside. This was really happening. I was really getting married. No turning back now, not that I wanted to.
Climbing into the car, I asked, “Did you get your new drill?”
“Yep,” he said. “Did you find your love stamps?”
“Yep,” I said. “Hey, what does it mean to hand cancel mail?”
“Canceling is when the post office marks the stamp so it can’t be used again. I guess hand canceling would be doing it by hand instead of machine.”
“How did you know that?” I asked, impressed.
“I used to collect stamps.”
That was right. He had collected stamps. I’d forgotten. He kept them in a photo album his dad gave him.
“I totally forgot about that. Holy crap, you were so serious about your stamps. You wouldn’t even let us touch your book without permission. Remember how Jeremiah stole one and used it to send a postcard and you were so mad you cried?”
“Hey, that was my Abraham Lincoln stamp that my grandpa gave me,” Conrad said defensively. “That was a rare stamp.”
I laughed, and then he did too. It was a nice sound. When was the last time we’d laughed like this?
Shaking his head, he said, “I was such a little geek.”
“No, you weren’t!”
Conrad threw me a look. “Stamp collecting. Chemistry set. Encyclopedia obsession.”
“Yeah, but you made all of that seem cool,” I said. In my memory Conrad was no geek. He was older, smarter, interested in grown-up things.
“You were gullible,” he said. And then, “When you were really little, you hated carrots. You wouldn’t eat them. But then I told you that if you ate carrots, you’d get X-ray vision. And you believed me. You used to believe everything I said.”
I did. I really did.
I believed him when he said that carrots could give me X-ray vision. I believed him when he told me that he’d never cared about me. And then, later that night, when he tried to take it back, I guess I believed him again. Now I didn’t know what to believe. I just knew I didn’t believe in him anymore.
I changed the subject. Abruptly, I asked, “Are you going to stay in California after you graduate?”
“It depends on med school,” he said.
“Are you . . . do you have a girlfriend?”
I saw him start. I saw him hesitate.
“No,” he said.
chapter thirty-two
CONRAD
Her name was Agnes. A lot of people called her Aggie, but I stuck with Agnes. She was in my chem class. On any other girl, a name like Agnes wouldn’t have worked. It was an old-lady name. Agnes had short dirty-blond hair, it was wavy, and she had it cut at her chin. Sometimes she wore glasses, and her skin was as pale as milk. When we were waiting for the lab to open up one day, she asked me out. I was so surprised, I said yes.
We started hanging out a lot. I liked being around her. She was smart, and her hair carried the smell of her shampoo not just fresh out of the shower but for a whole day. We spent most of our time together studying. Sometimes we’d go get pancakes or burgers after, sometimes we’d hook up in her room during a study break when her roommate wasn’t around. But it was all centered around both of us being pre-med. It wasn’t like I spent the night in her room or invited her to stay over in mine. I didn’t hang out with her and her friends or meet her parents, even though they lived nearby.
One day we were studying in the library. The semester was almost over. We’d been dating two, almost three, months.
Out of nowhere, she asked me, “Have you ever been in love?”
Not only was Agnes good at no chem, she was really good at catching me off guard. I looked around to see if anyone was listening. “Have you?”
“I asked you first,” she said.
“Then yes.”
“How many times?”
“Once.”
Agnes absorbed my answer as she chewed on her pencil. “On a scale of one to ten, how in love were you?”
“You can’t put being in love on a scale,” I said. “Either you are or you aren’t.”
“But if you had to say.”
I started flipping through my notes. I didn’t look at her when I said, “Ten.”
“Wow. What was her name?”
“Agnes, come on. We have an exam on Friday.”
Agnes made a pouty face and kicked my leg under the table. “If you don’t tell me, I won’t be able to concentrate. Please? Just humor me.”
I let out a short breath. “Belly. I mean, Isabel. Satisfied?”
Shaking her head, she said, “Uh-uh. Now tell me how you met.”
“Agnes—”
“I swear I’ll stop if you just answer”—I watched her count in her head—“three more questions. Three and that’s it.”
I didn’t say yes or no, I just looked at her, waiting.
“So, how did you meet?”
“We never really met. I just always knew her.”
“When did you know you were in love?”
I didn’t have an answer to that question. There hadn’t been one specific moment. It was like gradually waking up. You go from being asleep to the space between dreaming and awake and then into consciousness. It’s a slow process, but when you’re awake, there’s no mistaking it. There was no mistaking that it had been love.
But I wasn’t going to say that to Agnes. “I don’t know, it just happened.”
She looked at me, waiting for me to go on.
“You have one more question,” I said.
“Are you in love with me?”
Like I said, this girl was really good at catching me off guard. I didn’t know what to say. Because the answer was no. “Um . . .”
Her face fell, and then she tried to sound upbeat as she said, “So no, huh?”
“Well, are you in love with me?”
“I could be. If I let myself, I think I could be.”
“Oh.” I felt like a piece of shit. “I really do like you, Agnes.”
“I know. I can feel that that’s true. You’re an honest guy, Conrad. But you don’t let people in. It’s impossible to get close to you.” She tried to put her hair in a ponytail, but the front pieces kept falling out because it was so short. Then she released her hair and said, “I think you still love that other girl, at least a little bit. Am I right?”
“No,” I told Belly.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, tilting her head to one side. Teasingly, she said, “If there wasn’t a girl, why would you stay away for so long? There has to be a girl
.”
There was.
I’d stayed away for two years. I had to. I knew I shouldn’t even be at the summer house, because being there, being near her, I would just want what I couldn’t have. It was dangerous. She was the one person I didn’t trust myself around. The day she showed up with Jere, I called my friend Danny to see if I could crash on his couch for a while, and he’d said yes. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t leave.
I knew I had to be careful. I had to keep my distance. If she knew how much I still cared, it was all over. I wouldn’t be able to walk away again. The first time was hard enough.
The promises you make on your mother’s deathbed are promises that are absolute; they’re titanium. There’s no way you’re breaking them. I promised my mother that I would take care of my brother. That I would look after him. I kept my word. I did it the best way I could. By leaving.
I might have been a fuckup and a failure and a disappointment, but I wasn’t a liar.
I did lie to Belly, though. Just that one time in that crappy motel. I did it to protect her. That’s what I kept telling myself. Still, if there was one moment in my life I could redo, one moment out of all the shitty moments, that was the one I’d pick. When I thought back to the look on her face—the way it just crumpled, how she’d sucked in her lips and wrinkled her nose to keep the hurt from showing—it killed me. God, if I could, I’d go back to that moment and say all the right things, I’d tell her I loved her, I’d make it so that she never looked that way again.
chapter thirty-three
CONRAD
That night in the motel, I didn’t sleep. I went over and over everything that had ever happened between us. I couldn’t keep doing it, going back and forth, holding her close and then pushing her away. It wasn’t right.
When Belly got up to shower around dawn, Jere and I got up too. I was folding my blanket up when I said, “It’s okay if you like her.”
Jere stared at me, his mouth hanging open. “What are you talking about?”
I felt like I was choking as I said, “It’s okay with me . . . if you want to be with her.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. I felt like I’d gone crazy. I heard the water in the shower shut off, and I turned away from him and said, “Just take care of her.”
And then, when she came out, dressed, her hair wet, she looked at me with those hopeful eyes, and I looked back at her like I didn’t recognize her. Completely blank. I saw her eyes dim. I saw her love for me die. I’d killed it.
When I thought about it now, that moment in the motel, I understood I was the one who’d set this thing in motion. Pushed them together. It was my doing. I was the one who was going to have to live with it. They were happy.
I’d been doing a pretty good job of making myself scarce, but I happened to be home that Friday afternoon when, out of nowhere, Belly needed me. She was sitting on the living room floor with that stupid binder, papers all around her. She looked freaked out, stressed. She had that worried grimace on her face, the look she’d get when she was working on a math problem and she couldn’t figure it out.
“Jere’s stuck in city traffic,” she said, blowing her hair out of her face. “I told him to leave earlier. I really needed his help today.”
“What did you need him to do?”
“We were gonna go to Michaels. You know, that craft store?”
Drily, I said, “I can’t say I’ve ever been to a Michaels before.” I hesitated, then added, “But if you want, I’ll go with you.”
“Really? Because I’m picking up some heavy stuff today. The store’s all the way over in Plymouth, though.”
“Sure, no problem,” I said, feeling inexplicably gratified to be lifting heavy stuff.
We took her car because it was bigger. She drove. I’d only ever ridden with her a few times. This side of her was new to me. Assured, confident. She drove fast, but she was still in control. I liked it. I found myself sneaking peeks at her, and I had to force myself to cool it.
“You’re not a bad driver,” I said.
She grinned. “Jeremiah taught me well.”
That’s right. He taught her how to drive. “So what else about you has changed?”
“Hey, I was never not a good driver.”
I snorted, then looked out the window. “I think Steve would disagree.”
“He’ll never let me live down what I did to his precious baby.” She shifted gears as we came to a stoplight. “So what else?”
“You wear heels now. At the garden ceremony, you had on high heels.”
There was a minute hesitation before she said, “Yeah, sometimes. I still trip in them, though.” Ruefully she added, “I’m like a real lady now.”
I reached out to touch her hand, but at the last second I pointed instead. “You still bite your nails.”
She curled her fingers around the steering wheel. With a little smile, she said, “You don’t miss a thing.”
“Okay, so, what are we picking up here? Flower holders?”
Belly laughed. “Yeah. Flower holders. In other words, vases.” She grabbed a cart, and I took it from her and pushed it in front of us. “I think we decided on hurricane vases.”
“What’s a hurricane vase? And how the hell does Jere know what one is?”
“I didn’t mean Jere and I decided, I meant me and Taylor.” She grabbed the cart and walked ahead of me. I followed her to aisle twelve.
“See?” Belly held up a fat glass vase.
I crossed my arms. “Very nice,” I said in a bored voice.
She put down the vase and picked up a skinnier one, and she didn’t look at me as she said, “I’m sorry you’re the one stuck doing this with me. I know it’s lame.”
“It’s not—that lame,” I said. I started grabbing vases off the shelf. “How many do we need?”
“Wait! Should we get the big ones or the medium ones? I’m thinking maybe the medium ones,” she said, lifting one up and checking the price tag. “Yeah, definitely the medium ones. I only see a few left. Can you go ask somebody who works here?”
“The big ones,” I said, because I’d already stacked four of the big ones in the cart. “The big ones are much nicer. You can fit more flowers or sand or whatever.”
Belly narrowed her eyes. “You’re just saying that because you don’t want to go find somebody.”
“Okay, yeah, but seriously, I think the big ones are nicer.”
She shrugged and put another big vase in the cart. “I guess we could just have one big vase on each table instead of two medium-size ones.”
“Now what?” I started to push the cart again, and she took it from me.
“Candles.”
I followed her down another aisle, then another. “I don’t think you know where you’re going,” I said.
“I’m taking you on the scenic route,” she said, steering the cart. “Look at all these fake flowers and garlands. Good stuff.”
I stopped. “Should we get some? They might look good on the porch.” I grabbed a bunch of sunflowers and added a few white roses to the bunch. “This looks kind of nice, right?”
“I was kidding,” she said, sucking in her cheeks. I could tell she was trying not to smile. “But yeah, that looks all right. Not great, but all right.”
I put the flowers back. “All right, I give up. From now on, I’ll just do the heavy lifting.”
“Nice effort, though.”
Back at the house, Jeremiah’s car was in the driveway. “Jere and I can unload all of this later,” I said, turning off the ignition.
“I’ll help,” she offered, hopping out of the car. “I’m just gonna say hi first.”
I grabbed a couple of the heavier bags and followed her up the steps and into the house. Jeremiah was lying on the couch watching TV. When he saw us, he sat up. “Where have you guys been?” he asked. He said it casually, but his eyes flickered at me as he spoke.
“At Michaels,” Belly said. “What time did you get here?”
“A little while ago. Why didn’t you wait for me? I told you I’d be here in time.” Jeremiah got up and crossed the room. He pulled Belly toward him for a hug.
“I told you, Michaels closes at nine. I doubt you would have made it in time,” she said, and she sounded pissed, but she let him kiss her.
I turned away. “I’m gonna go unload the car.”
“Wait, I’ll help.” Jeremiah released Belly and slapped his hand on my back. “Con, thanks for pinch-hitting for me today.”
“No problem.”
“It’s after eight,” Belly said. “I’m starving. Let’s all go to Jimmy’s for dinner.”
I shook my head. “Nah, I’m not hungry. You guys go.”
“But you didn’t have any dinner,” Belly said, frowning. “Just come with us.”
“No, thanks,” I said.
She started to protest again, but Jere said, “Bells, he doesn’t want to. Let’s just go.”
“Are you sure?” she asked me.
“I’m good,” I said, and it came out harsher than I meant it.
I guessed it worked though, because they left.
chapter thirty-four
At Jimmy’s, neither of us ordered crabs. I got fried scallops and iced tea, and Jeremiah got a lobster roll and beer. The server asked for his ID and smirked when he saw it, but he still served him a beer.
I shook a few sugar packets into my iced tea, tasted it, then added two more.
“I’m wiped,” Jeremiah said, leaning back into the booth and closing his eyes.
“Well, wake up. We have work to do.”
He opened his eyes. “Like what?”
“What do you mean, like what? Tons of stuff. At David’s Bridal they were asking me all these questions. Like, what’s our color palette? And are you going to wear a suit or a tuxedo?”
Jeremiah snorted. “A tuxedo? On the beach? I probably won’t even wear shoes.”
“Well, yeah, I know, but you should probably figure out what you’re going to wear.”
“I don’t know. You tell me. I’ll wear whatever you and Taylor want me to wear. It’s your guys’s day, right?”