“You’re in a class together?”
“Yeah. Cool, huh?” She taps her pen against her notebook and her eyes drop to her book, and back to me, then back to her book. She’s staring at a page but I can tell she wants to say something. I’m relieved when she doesn’t.
We sit in silence through the afternoon, and when five o’clock rolls around, I ask her to throw me my phone from my desk. I type in ten numbers and leave a message on the voice mail, letting them know I won’t be at practice tonight, because I’m sick.
“What practice do you have?”
“I’m doing a stroke clinic with a local club team once a week.”
“Really?”
“Yup.” I roll onto my back again and look up at the ceiling. I’m not really in the mood to share right now, but she’s looking at me like she wants to know more, and it’s awkward to be trapped in such a small space with someone and refuse to talk. “I’m majoring in sports psychology. It’s part of my long-term plan to coach.” I keep going before she can start asking questions. “I’ll work with club teams the next few years, then hopefully once I graduate I can get an assistant spot somewhere while I get my master’s.” I shrug.
“That’s awesome.” Sidney’s voice is soft, and a little sad. “So you told your dad you didn’t want to be his mini-me, huh?”
“Yep.” I don’t want to get into details about this, don’t want to tell her that her breaking up with me was the catalyst for making sure I didn’t lose the other things I wanted in life.
Doors are slamming down the hallway as guys are coming and going from dinner. “You should go,” I say. Sidney has been sitting here all day, occasionally eating one of the crackers she brought me. She must be starving. “I feel a lot better. Thanks for hanging out today.”
Sid nods, and tucks her things back into her backpack. She sets the bottle of ibuprofen on my desk where I can reach it, and tells me I should eat my soup once I’ve gone a few hours without puking.
Her hand is resting on the doorknob when she says, “I’m sorry. About everything.”
I don’t say anything because I think I know what she’s talking about, but I don’t want to risk it.
“I know you fixed everything with Nadine.” Her voice is soft. “I’m sorry I accused you of setting that all up. I just—I overreacted. And I would have known even if I hadn’t talked to Lindsay. I mean, Iknowyou wouldn’t do that, I never should have implied you would. I just—I’m sorry.”
“Okay.” It’s the only thing I can think to say.
“Okay?”
I nod, and Sidney pulls the door shut behind her.
34 DAYS AFTER
Sidney
Asher jogs past my dorm every morning. I saw him the first time by accident, when Ellie and I were walking to the café across from our building to meet the girls for breakfast. It’s not weird or even intentional that he runs by—my building is at a major crossroads where paths from all of the living centers converge at one of the campus’s three dining spots.
The second time I saw him, a few days after what I will always think of asthe day of puke,I waved. Like an idiot. It took a monumental effort to make my arm move, and it’s too early to know, but I suspect I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. Someday when I’m lying on my deathbed, I’ll regret never climbing a mountain or doing something to better humanity, and that one time I waved to Asher Marin on a cold morning in the middle of September my freshman year. Because Asher didn’t wave, but some random dude coming out of the café did. And to save face I had to pretend I recognized him from my biology lecture, and I wasn’t hopelessly waving at my ex-boyfriend.Look at me, making friends everywhere I go.Between team breakfasts and this, I have officially reached social butterfly status. My certificate’s obviously lost in the mail.
I get that I did something horrible, but Ididapologize. And it’s been over a month now—weeks of me giving him space and watching him avoid me—and we can’t be like this forever. I don’t want to lose Asher completely.
Whether he saw me or not, there was no wave. Asher is normally like a distracted dog when he runs, checking out everything going on around him, but when he passes my dorm, he is laser-focused on one thing: not seeing me.
I waved four more different times when I saw him. On the fifth time, I decided I’d be proactive. I sat on a bench along the walkway, clearly in his sightline. And still, nothing.
So now, three weeks into classes, I’m finally fed up. I pull on my running shoes. Usually I run on the track, but today I’m going to make an exception. I’m waiting outside my dorm when Asher passes, and I fall in step beside him. I can’t be sure, but it feels like he speeds up, and quickly I fall a step behind, and then two. It takes a near-sprint for my considerably shorter legs to keep up with him. Words come out of me in an explosion. “You’re avoiding me.”
Asher raises his voice so he doesn’t have to turn around. His voice is even. “I’m not.”
“You are.”
“Okay—” He stops in front of me so quickly I nearly run into him. And when he turns to face me, it makes my heart jump into my throat, because we haven’t been this close in months now, not even in his dorm room. I have a ridiculous urge to touch him. “I’m avoiding you.” He pulls up the collar of his T-shirt and wipes the sweat from his face, exposing a little of his stomach.Do not stare, Sidney.“You’re my ex-girlfriend. That’s what people do.”
It’s a lot harder doing this when he’s giving me his full attention—I wish we could keep running. “It’s not a requirement, is it?” Obviously I know people do this, I just didn’t expectthat Asher would be one of those people. “You’re not friends with any of your ex-girlfriends? You have, what? At least four of them, right?”Wow, okay, Sid. You’ve veered down a very unfriendly road.“I mean—I’m sorry. Just. You’re not friends with any of your exes? You said you’re still friendly with Jordan. And you called Lindsay, she wouldn’t have helped you if you weren’t—”
“Lindsay and I were never together.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, and I think maybe it’s to keep from strangling me, because he looks like he wants to. “And Jordan’s different. It’s not the same.”
