She shakes her head but won’t meet my eye. “No. Just go, Reeve.” She lets go of my arm and moves past me.
I’m frozen in place. I see them get in Sam’s car, but I’m not really watching. I don’t think I’m even blinking. Something inside me shuts down.
Like something out of a movie, I see myself standing alone in the parking lot, watching the girl I’m in love with walk away with someone who only ever hurt her, and I see myself for what I am: completely at a girl’s mercy, unable to think about anything but her, losing focus on the only thing I’ve ever cared about or worked for because I need her so badly. Pathetic. The man I swore I’d never be.
FORTY
jade
I walk numblytoward Sam’s car and get in. This should feel familiar, sliding into his Toyota next to him, but it doesn’t. It feels foreign. Like a mistake I can’t take back. I know why I’m here, but I still can’t believe I am. I need to understand something about myself and why I always end up blindsided in relationships, and if I don’t have the answer and my friends and my boyfriend don’t, maybe Sam will. I don’t look at Reeve as we pull away, but I know he’s watching me. I don’t know what I just did, but I know it’s not okay.
“So talk,” I tell Sam.
“Jeez, does that guy have ’roid rage or what?” Sam nods at the rearview mirror. “I heard you were dating him, but it’s so weird to see you with someone like that. I thought you hated meatheads.”
“I do. Get to the point. By the way, I hate you for doing this.”
Sam chuckles. “Always a straight shooter.”
“Stop trying to be cute, and say what you came to say, because once this car is in front of my house, I’m not listening anymore.”
“Okay, take it easy.” He sighs. “I wanted to apologize for myactions, both during and after our relationship.” I wait, and he continues: “I’m embarrassed I treated you badly after the breakup. And you know I’ve always tried to be an honest person, so the way I carried on with another girl when you and I were talking about getting back together is inexcusable.”
Sam’s always been the most sincere person I know, which is why you have to listen for what he’s not saying. “Those things didn’t send me into a tailspin. The breakup did,” I say.
“Right. Well, I apologized in the past that it probably seemed out of left field. I should have told you I wasn’t happy long before it all blew up like that.” His voice borders on testy, and I’m sure he’s expecting to have his apologies reciprocated, but I’ve already done that more times than I can count, and I’m not in the mood to revisit past weaknesses.
“I don’t care about that anymore. But since I’m trapped in this car with you discussing our failed relationship, tell me something: Why didn’t I see it coming? Why did I think what we had was solid when you were totally miserable?”
He gives me a quizzical look. “Is this a trick question?”
“No. I want to know.”
“Well, that’s simple. You see what you want to see, Jade. And you filter out the rest.”
My mind spins. He’s wrong. “But you always told me how much you loved me. Remember you’d do that stupid Lou Gehrig imitation about being the luckiest guy on the face of the earth when we kissed? You didn’t really mean those things?”
“Of course I did. When I said them, I meant them. But I wasn’t saying those things by the end, was I?” He looks straight ahead. “I finally realized you never said them back.”
Regret moves through me, a painful tug, at all the things I should have said and done differently. But my tenderness toward Sam is fleeting, replaced quickly by thoughts of Reeve. How many chances have I had—and turned down—to tell himwhat he means to me? Too many to count. Maybe if I had taken just one of them, he wouldn’t have found the idea of seeing me in Spain so shocking. So many mistakes, and here I am living out another one.
“You just missed the turn,” I tell Sam as the road that leads back to campus whizzes by my window.
“I’m taking the long way.”
“Um, why? I want to get home.”
“Just give me a few more minutes. Please. I wanted to make things right with you because I have a feeling we may be seeing more of each other.”
My mouth goes sour. “Why?”
“I start grad school at Stanford next summer.”
Stanford has one of the best aerospace engineering programs in the world. It also happens to be next to my hometown. “So you didn’t get into MIT.”
“I did, but I’m opting for Stanford, instead.”
“Congratulations, Sam. You deserve it.”
