“Thanks.” My voice is tight, and an awful hot lump is swelling in my throat.
I look up at him, suddenly desperate for him to shake his head and relax a little, to tell me that it’s no big deal, that we can talk about this properly. But instead, he stares at me like I’m a stranger and says, in a cool, distant voice, “I’ve got to get ready for work.”
The lump in my throat gets ten times bigger. “Fine,” I say thickly. “I guess I’ll just... go, then.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess you should.”
30
The rest of the week really sucks.
I wish I could find a better way to say it—maybe if I was the type of person who did crossword puzzles, I’d be more eloquent—but honestly, right now, I don’t even have the energy to try. So, there it is. The rest of the weeks reallysucks.
John and I haven’t spoken a word since the breakup, and there isn’t any time for us to sort things out, even if we wanted to. When I finally stopped crying and got around to reading the emails from NYU and the Met, it turns out I wasn’t actually chosen for the internship initially. But one of the people they chose dropped out unexpectedly, and I was their next choice. Which means I have to be in New York City in a week.
Aweek.
I’m conscious, all the time, of how the days would have played out if I’d never started dating John. I would have been deliriously happy. Every phone call, every email, every decision would have been a thrill. Instead, every step that moves me closer to my new life is steeped in a thick layer of misery.
When I call Fred to tell him I’m quitting my receptionist job, he actually drives in from home just to berate me for leaving, pacing furiously around the shop and calling me a “typical flighty woman.” I sit with my hands in my lap, trying not to cry, until he storms out with a final, furious “For fuck’s sake. It’s shit like this that makes me want to sell this damned shop.”
I know John hears what he said, because he’s in the break room when it happens, but he doesn’t say anything to me afterward, not even when Dave makes a point of coming to my desk to thump me on the shoulder and say, “Ignore that old prick.”
When I call the owners of my house to let them know I’m leaving, they drop another misery bomb. It turns out they’ve been thinking of selling the place, and now that I’m moving out, they’re going to put it on the market. I stare at the phone a long while after they hang up, feeling heavy and cold all over. The last few weeks, when I was starting to sketch out my “stay in Waldon” plans, I had this secret dream that John and I would buy this house someday. Now, not only are John and I never going to live together, even if things go to hell in New York I won’t ever be able to come back to my perfect little house.
Telling Mrs. Finnamore, Doris, and Jim the news is its own special species of awful. Well, not Doris, so much—“What are you looking for, girl? A hug goodbye?”—but Mrs. Finnamore and Jim seem genuinely upset to hear that I’m leaving. Mrs. Finnamore is still in the hospital, and when I tell her, she gets this awful crinkle in her forehead and gets uncharacteristically flustered, like she actually was counting on my help when she went home. Jim pats my knee and tells me he’s proud of me, but he’s quieter than usual the rest of the visit, and he stands on the porch with this strange, faraway look in his eyes as he watches me get in my car and drive away.
Rose and Trey, at least, are excited for me, and Kiara does a decent job pretending to be happy, but I can tell she’s totally on John’s side. And why shouldn’t she be? He’s her brother. I’m the jerk who doesn’t think he’s worth staying in Waldon for.
“No, I get it,” she says hollowly, on our last morning coffee date. “It’s like I said, right? Your happiest lives just aren’t compatible.”
I fiddle with my coffee cup. “It’s not just that I’m going to New York. It’s that he doesn’t understandwhyI have to go. Or why I think that he’s... ”
“What?”
I clear my throat. “That he’s settling.”
A strange expression flits over her face, and for a split second, I’m sure she agrees with me. She’s heard John complain about Fred. She’s seen how much happier he is at the racetrack.
John wasn’t lying when he said that he’s happy. He is happy. But he could be happier. And that prickly feeling I’ve had in my gut... it’s the resentment I have toward him for not trying harder.
Kiara is silent for a moment, swirling her coffee around without drinking it. “I think he really loved you,” she says finally.
“I know,” I say quietly. “I think I really loved him too. But love isn’t a substitute for happiness.”
Her lips turn up in a joyless smile. “Love isn’t a substitute for happiness,” she echoes.
From there I go to the bank, where I sign the paperwork for my new student loan. I’ve taken out a federal loan, which I’ll use to pay for NYU as well as the payments on my existing provincial student loan. Because it’s never a bad idea to use one loan to pay off another, right?
I did get a little discount on my dorm room, since I’m moving in at a weird time and agreed to be a dorm supervisor for the younger students, but it’s all still going to cost an atrocious amount of money. I’ll be lucky if I make it out on the other side with less than a hundred thousand in debt.
God, this had better be worth it.
The miserable days tick by, one after another. Even doing Wordle is depressing. All it does is remind me of John, and if I hit three hundred and sixty-five days, I’ll do it alone in New York. Once, at the shop, John walked into the break room while I was doing Wordle, and just for a moment, I thought he wanted to say something. But then Dave ambled in and the moment was broken.
It’s just as well. There’s nothing good that can come of us talking. I’ve argued with him a thousand times in my head, and it always ends up the same way.
Before I know it, it’s my last night in Waldon. I order a pizza (I’ve already spent about a thousand dollars this week on New York stuff, what’s another twenty bucks that I don’t have?) and eat it while I wander the empty rooms of my house. Even though all the furniture is still there—it belongs to the real owners, not me—the house looks barren and depressing without all my stuff, like my fridge magnets and stacks of books. All of those have been stuffed into five large boxes and a suitcase that my parents will pick up when they get back from New Zealand next week to store at their place. The two suitcases I’m taking with me on my flight to New York are already packed and set out by the front door.
