It’s probably a good thing that we were interrupted before we did anything stupid, I think. He’s got a girlfriend, and I’m in the middle of a nervous breakdown and dating half the town. But I can’t help but feel a small pang of regret.
The morning has been so quiet that it’s jarring to hear an engine barrel down the road and even more disturbing when a familiar truck pulls up to the curb.
Griffin has just parked in front of my grandparents’ house.
I’m frozen on the step as I watch him get out of his truck and walk up the brick path. His head is down, and he seems to be mumbling to himself. I take these few seconds to stare at him. His brown hair is a little too long, and it looks like he slept in the clothes he’s wearing. The pang in my chest is still as painful now as it was last Friday night at Matt’s party.
When he finally raises his head, he’s so startled that he jumps back and yells loud enough to wake the neighbors.
I can’t help but stare at him. Even after everything that happened, my heart starts beating faster and my palms get sweaty.
“What are you doing here?” I finally ask.
Griffin takes a few steps toward me but stops when he’s a foot or so away. “You wouldn’t talk to me. So I waited as long as I could. I have to talk to you.”
I tug the blanket even closer. After hearing about Margot, I feel like I’m about to fall apart, and seeing Griffin here is not making it any better. Half of me knows it would be so easy to close the distance between us; let him wrap his arms around me and chase away the sadness that seems to have settled just under my skin. It’s easy to ignore him when he’s thirty miles down the road, but seeing him here, looking at his sad face is harder than I imagined it would be.
“I told you, I’m not ready to talk to you yet.”
Griffin puts one foot on the bottom step, but I hold my hand out, stopping him before he can come any closer.
He digs his hands in his pockets and lets out a deep breath. “Please, Sophie. Give me ten minutes.”
“You can say what you want to say, but say it from down there.” I stand and walk to the top of the steps. I need some distance to sort through the tug-of-war going on inside of me right now.
“I screwed up, Sophie. I knew it the second I saw your face.”
I spin around to face him. “I heard you. You were so bummed I wasn’t leaving town. But you’re telling me that feeling changed ten seconds later?”
He throws his head back and his hands come up in front of him. “I’m saying that I’m going crazy. That I have been since you left Matt’s. That I see these pictures of you out with other guys and I want to rip their heads off. I mean, what is going on? There was a picture of you riding a mechanical bull in some formal dress. And then some crazy picture of you with…” His hands flail in front of him like he’s trying to come up with the words. “Lights!” he finally bursts out.
“So you’ve been bothered by seeing pictures of me?” And then I add for emphasis, “Having fun?”
He blows out a deep breath and starts pacing the width of the sidewalk.
I sit down on the top step and say, “I think you only want me back because you’ve seen me with other guys. Would you want me back if I had been tucked away in a room upstairs, crying for the past five days?”
His forehead scrunches up. “I texted you I wanted to talk before I saw the first picture of you with someone else.”
“But what about what you said that night? About how senior year should be fun?”
He runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I mean, we’ve both been so focused on school, and everything else came second. But the closer we get to graduation, the more I wonder about what we’ve missed. This year is almost over and everything is going to change and I just don’t know…”
It’s hard to hear what he’s saying. But it’s even harder to realize there is some truth behind his words. Being with Olivia, Charlie, and Wes this week has reminded me that I used to be different. When we were the Fab Four, things were fun and easy. And then somewhere along the way, schoolwork and clubs and making sure my transcript was perfect took over. I went from one extreme to the other.
And while I think Griffin may miss me, I don’t think what he was feeling has really changed.
“Hearing you say what you did was hard, but it made me start thinking, too,” I say. “I guess we both have a lot to figure out.”
He moves up one step. “I hate seeing you with the other guys, but it’s more than that. Don’t throw what we have away. We can figure it out together.” His voice has gotten louder, and I can’t help but glance back at the front door.
It would be so easy to get back with him. I could say yes and it would be done. But how long would he be happy? And can I go back to how things were before?
“Is everything okay?”
We both turn to see Wes standing in the grass just a few feet away. He’s in gray pajama pants with little Santa hats all over them, and a bright red T-shirt. Even with the thick tension hanging between Griffin and me, I want to giggle at his festive attire.
His eyes go from me to Griffin and back to me. “I heard yelling,” he says.
