Gabe slumped. ‘Because of you.’
My stomach lurched and did a weird little buzzy thing that felt new but familiar all at once. ‘Me? I … sorry, I don’t think …’
‘No!’ Gabe put up his hands. ‘No, no, I didn’t break up with himforyou.’
And every muscle in my body eased. I felt relief, actually. After everything Gabe and I had been through over the past several months, I had realized that he wasn’t the same boy I fell in love with when we first met. He wasn’t better or worse in any way. It wasn’t like who he was changed on an X-Y axis – or whatever; not the best at math. But he wasn’t this perfect dream boy I had put on a pedestal. For a split second there, though – only for a second – if he had said he had dumped his boyfriend for me and asked me out, I might have caved and said yes.
But he wasn’t doing that. And knowing he wasn’t doing that, I felt relief. Like we could finally move past all our shit. I could take him from that pedestal – hell, I could demolish that pedestal and never put another boy I liked back up on it – and we could be better.
He continued. ‘It was what you said. You were right, Vic was manipulative. Clearly – look at what he did when I dumped him. He went right to my friends and family and tried to turn them against me so I’d have to come back to him. And I need to apologize to you.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘Then I want to, so let me do it. I’m sorry. I knew he was manipulative before, but I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself. So when you came along and I started to like you, I think I started subconsciously pushing Vic away and trying to pull you into it. I guess I was hoping Vic would get pissed off and finally be the one to dump me, so I wouldn’t have to make the choice. And so I made a bunch of bad decisions because I didn’t want to make the one decision I knew I had to. Because at the time I did still like him. And I also liked you.’
‘I liked you, too. I mean, I’m sure the making out was a dead giveaway.’
He laughed. ‘Sorry I was such a mess.’
‘Girl, I was a mess, too. Remember when I performed my own amputation?’ I held up my hand to him. ‘Stop being so hard on yourself. I’m not totally innocent, either. I was there and trying to get you to fall for me so you’d dump him. So … sorry I was a mess, too.’
‘So does this mean we’re friends again?’ he asked.
Did I want to be his friend? It wasn’t a want –couldI be his friend was the real question. I had wanted more than that for months, and then we were nothing. But I did like Gabe, even if that like was now just in a friendly way. Friends was better than nothing. Tonight felt good, helping him. Standing up for him. It was what friends did.
‘Allies?’ I asked, putting out a hand.
He smiled, and his dimples returned. He pulled me into a hug. ‘Rule number one: always trust your allies.’
When I got home, there was an email notification on my phone:
From:[email protected]
Subject: LA MÈRE LABONT – NYC APPLICATIONPORTAL UPDATE
I didn’t race into the house. In fact, I stared at my phone for a few minutes, reading the email and then just sitting. Though the email didn’t provide any answers other than ‘there has been an update to your application. Click here to open the portal and review your documents’.
In all honesty, I should have been so excited to get the email. I imagined myself clicking it and freaking out then and there in the car. But I couldn’t click the link.
Maybe I wanted someone to share the excitement with?
So I got out of the car and went into the house, where my mom was on the couch watching TV. I must have looked some type of way, because she asked me what was wrong.
‘I got an email from La Mère.’
Her eyes went wide. ‘Did you …’ Get in? Get rejected? What was she going to say? What were her instincts saying?
When it was clear she wasn’t going to finish her sentence, I said, ‘I didn’t open it yet.’
She patted the space on the couch beside her and I sat, my phone still unlocked in my hand and the email on the screen. She waited silently, and I clicked the link.
When I signed into the portal, there was a new document link below my application, titledADMISSION DECISION – DEES, THOMAS.
I put my finger to the screen, and even before the document loaded, I felt different. None of this was how I’d imagined. I’d thought I would be excited, but I think it was more anxiety and worry than anything else. It was like that moment before I took the lid off a Dutch oven – or a bread cloche – to see if my bread had risen properly.
It was a lot of effort for something you’d put together, hoping it all worked out.
But sometimes it didn’t.
