“To Southern France? No.”
“You should go. It’s?—”
“Gorgeous. Yeah. You said.” I feel like I was just spun around in circles, then instructed to stay standing.
“Well, I’ve got a couple more bags to grab,” she says brightly, spinning toward the porch. “Don’t you have wor?—”
“Wren.” I grab her hand before she can walk away. “What the actual fuck is going on? You’re—you’re acting like a different person.”
“No.” She shakes her head, yanking out of my grasp. “I was pretending to be a different person.Thisis who I am, Sawyer. I get bored. I don’t waitress. I don’t do … exclusive.”
“Is that what this is really about? Because I asked you about other guys? You’re scared because this thing got real between us?”
“If you’ll recall,” she says icily, “Iwas the one who tried to make this real between us a long time ago. You’re the one who’s been scared.”
“I said I was sorry about that. And I’m not scared now. I’m in this, Wren.”
“Yeah? How often are you planning to fly to California to visit me?”
“I—”
“Or drive intothe city to visit me? How exactly did you think this ‘thing’”—she uses air quotes, which strikes me as unnecessary—“was going to work between us? Or were you expecting me to continue being the one who always comes to see you?”
I don’t have answers, let alone whatever ones she’s looking for. Ijustaccepted that I am, in fact, in love with her, that she isn’t a passing attraction I can successfully ignore.
“Why are you leaving?”
She scoffs. “I just explained?—”
“At all,” I clarify. “Why are you leaving at all? You said when we were sailing that you don’t even want to go to college. So, don’t. Stay here. You have money from waitressing. A trust fund. You have options, Wren, a hell of a lot more than most people do. You’re going to California to, what? Make your family happy? You’re fearless, Wren. You jump off cliffs, and you give me shit. You don’t commit four years of your life to getting a degree you don’t really want, just because it’s what you’re expected to do.”
“You don’t get it,” she says.
“You’re right; I don’t. Stay, Wren.”
“I. Can’t. I-I changed my mind, okay? I’m allowed to do that.”
“Changed your mind about college? Or about me?”
Wren exhales. There’s another spasm of … something on her face, so I push harder.
“Because you seemed sure about not wanting to go to college when we went sailing. And you seemed sure about us when you told me you didn’t want anyone else yesterday. What the fuck changed between then and now?”
She hesitates, and I think something I said finally got through to her.
But then she holds a hand out to me. “Goodbye, Cap.”
I stare at her, not reaching for her offered palm. I shove my hands in my pockets instead. Fuck ending this like a business meeting.
“There were a few moments last night when I thought that … when I thought that we might not make it back to shore. And all I could think about was how much I wanted to have one more conversation with you. What a fucking waste of last words that would have been, huh?”
Then I turn around and walk away.
She says nothing. Does nothing to stop me.
And I’m awfully devastated by it, for someone who was supposedly convinced we’d never work out.
37
