“I know, Alex thinks I’m being old-fashioned, too. My first dress was beautiful. Alex thinks it was heinous, with the big puffed sleeves, but Ilovedthat dress.” Her gaze is far away.
“Your new one’s every bit as lovely, I’m sure.”
“It is, it is. Better suited to who I am now, but it’s a good thing I’ve got a red jacket to go with it. Strapless! Who am I, Madonna?But anyway, that’s not what we were talking about—we were talking about you and Alex, together again. The universe works in interesting ways, doesn’t it?”
A jolt wracks me; it only lasts a second, but I’m positive that Kristin sees. “Uh.”
“You and Alex... I know that was long ago,” she says gently, trying to be discreet. “But I hope you don’t mind if I say you and he were wonderful together.”
All of the sweat on my body cools. I open my mouth, then close it. My throat has gone so dry that my eyes water with the urge to cough.
I think about Kristin and Alex holding me while I cried after getting my rejection letter from OSU.
“We’ve only been dating two years,” I had told him. “I don’t know if we can survive so much distance, hardly seeing each other. You’d barely have time for me even if Ididgo to OSU.”
Alex had cupped my face in his hands, eyes bright with panic. “Don’t talk like that. I don’t care that we’ve only been together for two years, Romina, I have loved you since I was fourteen. Nothing’s going to come between us. I won’t go to OSU. I won’t go.We both got into Hocking. We’ll go there. Being together is more important to me than where I get my degree from.”
I recall Kristin’s bloodless face. Her shock painted in stark black and white for me that, as much as I knew she loved me, she’d want what was best for Alex even if it damaged our relationship, because he could go on to have any number of girlfriends in his future but he only had one shot to get into his dream university.Theirdream university.
Her son, her perfect angel who was going to be valedictorian, who hadn’t gotten a B on his grade card since sophomore year. And me, the girl who climbed onto his lap to make himforget all responsibilities while he was trying to study, who kept him tied up on the phone late at night, who was going to derail his immaculate future because he was young and in love, and unable to appreciate the long-term ramifications. In hindsight, I know Kristin must have been thinking about her own high school boyfriends, how fleeting love is when you’re a teenager, even though in the moment you think it’s serious; you think it’s forever.
But she couldn’t verbalize this, because she wasn’t the number one woman in Alex’s life anymore and she knew that if she pushed him too hard she would end up being the one he alienated, not me. I was the girl he’d loved since he was fourteen, long before he ever registered on my radar.
I’d never deserve him. I would always win.
Wonderful together. If we were so wonderful together, then why’d she try to break us up?
A month after we decided we’d go to Hocking together, Kristin pressured us to change those plans, putting Alex back on the Ohio State path while I settled on Columbus State Community College. But since Columbus State didn’t have dorms, we announced we’d get an apartment together. Kristin flipped out. Said he was going to get me pregnant, that we’d both end up dropping out. And that was when she started telling us we were too young to be so serious about each other, that we hadn’t seen the world yet, that we should go experience life separately and, if it was meant to be, we’d find our way back to each other again someday.
I’ve been imagining all this time that she celebrated our breakup with champagne and confetti—surely it was a relief for her, to send him off to Ohio State without me there to distract him. Telling me eleven years later that she thought we were good together is a shove backward off a cliff.
“You and Trevor are serious, then?” she goes on. I force myself to meet her stare with neutrality. She’s rooting for information, and that gleam in her eyes tells me she wants to hearno.
I stiffen. It requires all of my control not to snap at her.
“I hate to pry, but...” She drifts off, whatever she was about to say overshadowed by my jerky standing. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I have to use the bathroom.” I pat her arm and fix on a smile. It feels like swallowing blood. “Thank you for inviting me! So relaxing. I really needed this.”
Chapter Eighteen
GLADIOLUS:
Your words have wounded me.
I don’t see Alex again until the following night.
It’s eleven o’clock when a fist knocks heavily on the door. I’d been lying in bed dwelling on how much work the greenhouse needs, and how I might not get the chance to use it. The abrupt noise has me jumping out of my skin. I already know who’s knocking.
I open the door. He stares at me, haunted and transfixed, almost as if he sleepwalked here and can’t believe where he’s woken up.
“You are my worst nightmare,” Alex says. Then he moves past me into the house. Falls onto the couch.
I turn, processing this. “No, sure, come right on in.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I had anywhere else to go. I slept in an armchair in my cousin’s room at the inn last night, but he found himself more attractive company for tonight.”
He could certainly go home. Oreton isn’tthatfar away. I’m about to point this out, temper rising, when he mumbles, face buried in a pillow: “Why do you think I haven’t been back to town since I left for college? The worst thing that could happento me would be running into you while you’re with someone else.” He laughs tiredly. “Figures.”
