We worked in companionable silence for a while, folding and sorting and setting things to rights. It felt weirdly intimate touching Greer’s stuff like this, lining up the perfume bottles on her dresser and fluffing the throw pillows on her bed. Greer filched a dustbuster from one of her suitemates’ rooms, running it over the rug for good measure. “Good enough,” she decided finally, sitting down on the edge of the mattress and running her hands through her hair. “Thanks, Linden.”
“Yeah, sure thing.” I hesitated for a moment, then sat down in the desk chair. “No big deal.”
“No, it is a big deal,” Greer countered. “You’re a good guy, you know that? I forgot that about you. Or, like, I tried to.”
I glanced at her sidelong, grinning a little. “I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not.”
“It’s a compliment,” she promised, reaching out and nudgingme in the ankle with one white platform sneaker. “I missed you, is what I’m telling you here. Take the win.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “I missed you too.”
“Did you?” she asked. “Say more about that.” Then, when I only mumbled noncommittally: “Oh, come on.” Her voice was warm and familiar, the sound of the heat clanking on in the dorms back at Bartley. “It’s a little late to get shy, good buddy.”
“I’m notshy,” I said, though I was, a little bit. She undid me, Greer. She always had. “I might have checked your Instagram once or twice last year, who can say.”
“Who indeed,” Greer echoed teasingly. “This was in between you running up and down the Eastern Seaboard hooking up with a million other girls, yes?”
“I wasn’t hooking up with a million girls,” I protested, though I was secretly a little pleased she cared enough to be jealous. In fact, I’d hooked up with exactly one girl since Greer—but barely, and only just before she announced with zero equivocation that she never wanted to see me again as long as she lived. She was at Sarah Lawrence now, or that was the rumor; she’d blocked me on all social media platforms, so I couldn’t confirm.
“That’s not what I heard,” Greer said now, taking my hand and tugging me over onto the bed beside her.
“Well, you heard wrong.” I raised my eyebrows, leaning back against the wall. “Why, were you asking around about me?”
She shrugged. “I may have been.”
“Say more aboutthat.”
“I don’t think I will, actually.”
“Hardly seems fair.”
“It doesn’t, does it.”
“Can I ask you something?” I blurted before I could lose my courage, looking at her in the autumn light seeping in through the tall, narrow window, dim even though it was still midday. “What exactly happened between us? After the accident, I mean. It was like one second we were fine, we weregood,and then suddenly after…”
It was the first time either one of us had mentioned it since I’d gotten to campus, and it took Greer a moment to answer. “I don’t know,” she admitted finally, pulling her feet up onto the edge of the wooden bed frame, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I just felt so guilty after everything that happened, you know? I basically ruined your entire life, Linden.”
“You didn’t,” I said immediately. “You didn’t.”
“I mean, maybe not in reality,” Greer pointed out. “It turned out okay. But like…it definitely felt that way at the time. Itdid,” she insisted when I started to protest. “You were hobbling around campus in so much pain, you couldn’t play lacrosse, you were so angry and so miserable—”
“So you thought you’d just cut your losses and ditch me?” It was out before I could stop it.
“I didn’tditchyou, Linden!” Greer sounded wounded. “You barely had two words to say to me, don’t you remember that? Every time we were together it was like this heavy, malignant fog hanging between us. This fucked-up thing had happened, and it was all my fault.” She shrugged. “I guess I thought the best way to handle it was just to leave you alone and let you live your life.”
“Greer,” I started, though even as I opened my mouth to contradict her I knew she wasn’t wrong. As a general rule I tried not to think about the weeks after the accident, the way I couldn’t run or climb stairs or even shower without help. I’d spent ten days back at my mom’s house, where all I did was have doctors’ appointments and watch television and wait for it to be time to take my meds. I was furious. I was terrified. It was like there was poison leaking out of my pores. “I’m sorry.”
“I’msorry,” she countered. “For all of it.”
“It was an accident,” I reminded her, though truthfully there was a part of me that wondered if maybe it had all been avoidable. Greer had never told me the full story of what we’d been doing out there on the road that night, and I’d always been too afraid to push her; even now, it didn’t feel like the right moment to ask. “And it all turned out okay.”
Greer looked over at me then, her shoulder warm against me, her mouth close enough to kiss. “It did, huh?”
“It did.”
Greer grinned. “Come on,” she said, springing to her feet and taking me with her, pulling me gently toward the door. “I’m done for the day, and I vaguely remember somebody saying something about a beach walk. And I will tell you, Linden: suddenly, I seem to be finding myself in a Nicholas Sparks sort of mood.”
“Duly noted,” I said, lacing my fingers through hers and squeezing. Glancing over my shoulder one more time before we left.
