Realizing that Tyler doesn’t seem to have told his friends anything—and I’m not sure if I’m upset about that because it doesn’t matter as much to him or thrilled because it feels like the two of us have our own little secret—I tell Delia everything, starting with the plane ride up until the kiss at the airport before I left (which is one detail I didn’t plan on sharing, but reconnecting with your ex–best friend has a way of making you want to spill all that’s happened to you since you were last together).
When I finish the story, Delia looks shell-shocked. She takes a tentative sip of her Diet Coke while she thinks it over for a second. “Wow,” she finally says, slow and careful. “So clearly, Tyler has some explaining to do about why he’s been keeping all this from me. All I got were a couple of pics of some pretty sunsets and a promise for a pizza night when he gets back.”
“So he hasn’t brought me up at all?” I’m aware of how needy and clingy I sound as soon as it leaves my mouth. Delia sobers and levels me with a stare, stabbing her fork into her salad.
“Not that you have earned any right to know this information yet,” she says. “But no.”
I cling to theyetin her sentence as I pick up my fork and move a few pieces of lettuce around my salad plate. “Maybe he’s still processing it. It’s been a lot for me to wrap my head around, too.”And it’s the truth. After everything that’s happened, it feels like the trip dropped a bomb on my life as I knew it, in more ways than one.
“So now what?” Delia’s voice cuts through the noise in my head, and when I look up from my plate, she’s peering at me curiously. “Are you guys getting back together?”
“Absolutely not.” I shake my head vigorously to emphasize the point. “We may have had a good time together on the trip, but vacation always has a way of making you see everything in a more special light—”
“Yeah, yeah, rose-tinted glasses, I know.” Annoyance creeps into Delia’s voice. “But you’re forgetting that this isn’t some sort of random vacation fling. This is a boy you dated for a long time,whose heart you broke,and who—as you admitted to meyourselfa second ago—you never stopped loving. And, just pointing out, he’shere—he doesn’t live on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.” She pauses. “Well, I mean, he’s not here right this second, but he’ll be back soon, and he lives here. The circumstances have never been more right for you two.”
But he might leave,my spiteful brain reminds me.He might end up living on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean because before you left, you tried to convince him that it wasn’t the worst idea.
I shove down the doubt creeping up in the back of my mind, saying that maybe Delia’s onto something. But I have to stay practical. It’s the only way I won’t end up like my mother, on another date this afternoon with a man she swears is her everything and will probably shatter her heart in two weeks’ time. “I get what you’re saying, Delia, I really do. But it doesn’t mean that the facts have changed. I need stability in my life—someonewith more of a life plan. Tyler is a great guy, but his lifestyle and the way he approaches things just don’t match up with mine. And if it’s already a problem now, I can only imagine how big of a problem it’s going to be down the line.”
Delia groans and stands up from her chair, frustration on her face. “I love you both, I really do, but I swear to god, sometimes you’re both so stupid.”
Her insult hits me like a slap, fresh and stinging, coupled with the confusing lift of my spirits that knowing after everything that went down, she still loves me. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
She fishes around in her bag for her wallet, throwing a couple of bills down on the table before fixing me with aYou are so obliviouslook. “Haven’t you two ever heard of compromising?”
“Of course I have,” I respond, my face starting to heat up. “But there are some things in life you can’t compromise on.”
This earns me an undignified snort. “Yeah, like someone’s stance on gay rights or whether they think murder is an acceptable pastime. But none of the shit you two are working through is unfixable.”
My vision starts to get blurry, frustrated tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. “That’s not true, Delia. You know nothing about it.”
But she isn’t hearing it, shaking her head. “Yeah, Tyler needs to get his shit together a little more and learn how to be a functioning adult person and learn that life is not an endless backpackinglet’s see where this takes metrip around the world. Butyou”—her gaze turns icy—“well, it wouldn’t hurt you to learn to loosen up a little bit, either. You’re so hell-bent on plans, but it looks like every single one you’ve made has failed on you so far.
“And you’ve still got your head in your ass—we haven’t talked about what’s going on with meonceduring this entire exchange except for the first obligatory two minutes. Or how my parents have been handling—or more likenothandling—me coming out. Or about how hellish my life has been at home lately.” She takes a shaky breath, visibly trying to compose herself.
“Maybe it would do you some good to get a breath of fresh air and notice the people that are standing right in front of you from time to time, Olive. Maybe then you’d finally realize that the boy who’s loved you forever is still waiting hopelessly for you out there, and everyone just wants to see you both happy. And that there are other people in this world with struggles who aren’t you. You’re just stuck in this weird headspace of trying to force yourself to grow up so fast, like you can bypass all of the stupid mistakes we’re supposed to make and try to fix as we become adults.”Like you can bypass all of the stupid mistakes your mom made,is what she doesn’t say, but it floats in the air between us all the same. “But newsflash for you, Olive. Youcan’t.You’re going to make those mistakes whether you want to or not. You don’t even realize that you’re so intent on building this ‘structured’ life that you cling to it so hard, and everyone notices.”
With those parting daggers disguised as words, she storms out of the café, leaving me sitting there with a pile of crumpled bills and emotional whiplash.
But she’s not wrong. I know she isn’t. Every single life plan I’ve made for myself so farhasfailed. Both the thought of thatandthe fact that other patrons are staring at me quizzically after our scene has my cheeks reddening in mortification and shame. But it’s not as scary as reevaluating my whole strategy.
I want nothing more right now than to pick up the phone andcall Tyler, but after the weirdness of the past few days, it’s best I leave him alone, at least for now. Maybe he’s still struggling with the thought of staying friends, like he talked to Lucas about. Maybe he’s focusing on spending time with his family before he has to fly back home. Or maybe he realizes that I’m better off not being a part of his life.
For once, I don’t really want to know what he’s thinking. It feels like whatever the answer is, it’s going to hurt.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
After that disaster of a lunch, I spend some time wandering around town and popping in and out of local shops before going back to my house. It feels weird to be alone for the first time in forever—I was with Tyler on the flight, then with Jack in his dorm (however short-lived that was), then started hanging out with Tyler again, and then Delia…but now I have nobody’s dismal company except my own as I half-heartedly flip through new releases at the bookstore and try chocolate samples from the new sweets shop.
I get home (sans any new books or chocolate, which is a direct indicator of how dire my mood is) just as Connor is dropping Mom off after their date, and she’s practically glowing as she floats through the front door. She even invites Connor in for introductions, which goes fine—he seems perfectly nice and friendly and has that same rosy lovesick glow on his cheeks as Mom—but I can’t help the sour feeling curdling in my stomach. The introductions are usually the first step toward the end, because this is where things are going to pick up speed, and go way too fast, and go off the rails, and then I’ll be left picking up the pieces, just like I always am.
Enough, Olive,my brain reminds me, as if it hasn’t done enough mental torturing today.Let her be happy. Not everyone’s doomed to a life of miserable singledom the way that you are.
As hard as I try to tamp those feelings deep down and not let them surface, I’m sure the emotions—paired with the fact that I can’t shake having heard how Tyler feels about me—are showing on my face. Still, I push on through for my mother’s sake, because I’m just going to be a people pleaser until the end, I guess.
I exchange pleasantries with Connor for a few minutes while Mom putters around the kitchen getting glasses of water, but once they both have their beverages, I make an excuse to slip off and settle in the living room armchair, scrolling through social media on my phone and trying my best not to open my text thread with Tyler, staring at our lack of messages. It feels eerily like it did back in junior year when I was staring down the barrel of radio silence after blowing everything up. And it hits me with a cold shock that, in a roundabout way, I’ve just made the same mistake again, a year and a half later.
Tyler and I were building something good, and I destroyed it. And even if in the moment it felt like the right thing to do, as I sit here now—and as I sat there in my bed after our initial breakup, heartsick and lonely—I can’t really remember why.
