“Something just doesn’t feel right,” I say while fiddling with the cool metal of the seat’s buckle. “I keep trying to tell myself I’m crazy, or I’m paranoid, or maybe he’s busy with classes—”
“Bullshit.” The warmth in Tyler’s voice is gone, now hard as flint. “Anyone who knows even a single thing about you would know you’re too great of a person to ignore. He’s an idiot if he can’t see that. When we were dating—” He stops there, jaw set in a hard line, but the rest of his sentence floats in my mind, asif he’d spoken it aloud, my heart filling in the blanks.When we were dating, there was never a day where I wouldn’t talk to you.
Just because he’s right doesn’t mean that I can let us walk back into the past. Not when I know that road isn’t leading to any sort of good future. “When we were dating was different, Tyler. We…we didn’t work out.”
He shakes his head vigorously, upset. “That’s not true.Youthought we wouldn’t work out in the long-term. You never gave me the chance to even prove to you that I could change. That I could be better. That I could come up with a solid life plan that satisfied you—”
If my knees weren’t crammed against the seat in front of me, this would be the perfect moment to stand up in frustration. “That’s part of the problem!” My whisper-hissing must be loud, because the disgruntled father of two rowdy toddlers in front of me whips his head around and gives me a pleading look.
They just fell asleep,he mouths, motioning to the seats on either side of him, presumably containing the sleeping toddlers in question. Not wanting to be one of Those People™on the plane, I slump back against my seat and sigh. “That’s part of the problem, Tyler. I didn’twantyou to come up with a random career or a random life plan to keep me and to make me happy. I wantedyouto want it. I wanted you to be more responsible. Because it’s not a big deal now, but we’re going to get older, and it’s going to become a much bigger deal. I can’t be with someone who isn’t ready to face the future in the same way I am. And I didn’t want to stay in a relationship where I saw the dead end coming from a mile away.”
He looks like I’ve slapped him, leaning so far back over thearmrest of his seat that he’s practically in the aisle. “Is that what you saw us as, Olive? A dead end?” The hurt is written clear as day across his face, sharp and brutal.
And it makes me feel like a monster. My chest constricts so tight that I wish the oxygen masks would drop down from above our seats so I could push some cool, clean air into my lungs and revive myself after realizing that I said an awful, awful thing that I never should have.
“Bad choice of words,” Cranky Lady mutters under her breath next to me, refreshed from her nap and now toying with her e-reader. And yeah, maybe they weren’t the best words I could’ve used, but it doesn’t make them any less true.
But, based on the way Tyler’s looking at me with such a wounded expression, it doesn’t make me any less monstrous, either.
A flight attendant comes by again with the drink cart, glancing at us as she scoots by, sensing we aren’t in the mood for refreshments.
My voice is quiet. “We were just too different. Too different where it matters. The kind of different that can’t be fixed.”
Tyler won’t have it. “Or you’re afraid of ending up in a situation like your mom. A situation I swore I’d never put you in, and even up until our last day together, I never had any intentions of doing that. I had my own way of doing things, and you didn’t like it.” He’s fidgeting around in his seat now, knuckles turning white as he grips the armrests, eyes darting to the air-conditioning vents, the screens, the other passengers—anything but my face.
I feel naked and cold, sliced clean through with his accusation about my mother. “That’s not it, Tyler. We weren’t a goodmatch. Sometimes good things just run their course. It was never anything more sinister.”
Tyler sighs, muttering something under his breath that I can’t catch, only grasping the tail end: “…agree with that.” Then he shakes his head, standing up abruptly and stepping into the aisle. A mix of anger and hurt is radiating across his face. “I’m sorry, Olive. I need a breather.” He leaves me blinking in surprise, watching him take off down the crowded aisle.
Chapter Ten
At my first-ever sleepover—which was held at the embarrassing age of seventeen—Delia warned me about Tyler’s tendency to retreat into himself.
“He just…gets like that sometimes.” She shrugged, shoving a handful of popcorn in her mouth as we sprawled out on my bed. Mom had ordered us pizza for dinner and Delia had picked up ingredients for ice cream sundaes on her way over, and even after packing down all that food, we found ourselves tiptoeing into the kitchen at 2:00a.m. for some microwave popcorn before we put on our next movie—a gory slasher that Delia was excited for and I was mildly dreading but still curious about.
“You don’t feel weird that I’m practically poaching your best friend?” I’d asked Tyler earlier that afternoon, when Delia texted me to hang out and I decided to take the leap and extend the sleepover invitation. Tyler, however, wasn’t bothered in the slightest.
“Of course not,” he’d said, kissing the back of my hand that was threaded in his while we drove back from a slushy run. “It makes me happy to see my two favorite girls hanging out together.”
I wonder if he’d say the same knowing that we were gossiping about him during said hangout, but alas.
“I guess that’s true,” I’d finally replied into my bowl of buttery goodness, unable to keep the frown from slipping into my expression. While things with Tyler had been generally great up until that point, he’d gotten into a particularly rough argument with his parents about college choices earlier that day and had been spotty over our text thread ever since. Even the slushy run didn’t do much, other than give him a sugar high and me anxiety when I’d notice the strained way he smiled on the drive.
“I’m serious,” Delia emphasized, leaning down until the indigo tendrils of her hair were brushing the edges of my popcorn bowl, her piercings glinting in the lamplight as she met my gaze. “It’s nothing to take personally, Olive. When Tyler has something that he needs to work out, he just wants to slink off and do it in his own head. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you—it just means that he needs a second to process things.”
And while I knew, deep down, that she was right, it was still such a relief to hear it come out of her mouth. The relief must’ve been evident on my face, because in that moment, Delia Franklin did the one thing I’d never seen her do before. While I’d seen her break her wrist on a skateboard and get up laughing, or give herself a stick-and-poke tattoo in her cramped bathroom, or drive with only her knees, I’d never seen her give anyone a hug.
But that’s exactly what she did—she placed her bowl of popcorn to the side and reached over to wrap her arms around my neck and squeeze me tight. After squeaking out a surprised littleoof,I’d recognized the moment for the monumental occurrencethat it was and squeezed back, breathing in the tangy scent of her perfume and feeling the tight pressure of her embrace.
I can’t wait to text Tyler about this,I remember thinking.He’s going to go berserk when he finds out that Deliavoluntarilygave someone a hug.
When we pulled apart, Delia looked at me strangely.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, running my tongue over my teeth to catch any stray popcorn kernels, suddenly self-conscious that I was making myself look like an idiot somehow at my first-ever sleepover. This is why the “first sleepover” milestone was meant to be for literal children with teddy bears and socially acceptable homesickness levels for their age, and yet here I was, almost a senior in high school and completely unaware of the social etiquette involved in having a friend stay over.
“Nothing,” Delia replied slowly, chewing on her lip as she fell deeper in thought. “It’s just…I think I just realized that you’re kind of one of my closest friends now, and that’s kind of weird, because I don’t really make new friends.”
“Oh my god.” I clasped my hands to my chest in dramatic shock. “For real? I made the cut? Are we closer than you and Tyler?”
