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Taylor held her face. “I’m not going to Stanford, I’m not going anywhere without you. I’m signing a letter of intent to the University of Chicago. They’ll give me the most money between athletic and academic scholarships. And it’s the closest place to Minneapolis.”
She pushed his hands away. “That was so stupid, you’re so stupid. You have the best chance of getting into med school if you go to Stanford!”
“I’d be the biggest wreck if I had to live two-thousand miles away from you.” He pinched his mouth, looking out the window.
She inhaled slowly, absorbing this declaration of his.
Taylor reached into his pocket and pulled out a velvet ring box. They both stared at it. He seemed to grope for his next words. “It’s not . . . like this isn’t an official proposal or anything, or maybe it is, I don’t know. But if we got married we could be on our own, free from my dad reminding me of the silver spoon up my ass every time I call him out on being a lying, cheating dick.”
“Taylor, wait—”
“I could apply for whatever loans are left over after my scholarships, we both could. I’ve been thinking about this, researching the whole time I was away . . . ” he trailed off.
“I thought you were going to break up with me,” she confessed quietly.
“Why?”
“But we should.”
“Isa.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing next week,” her tears loosed again, “let alone the rest of my life.” She dug her nails into her thumb. “How can you be so sure of us? Of me? You’ll get so bored.” Letting go, she watched the indentations on her skin rebound. “I’m not good enough.”
Taylor scraped his hair up. A crack formed in his expression, rupturing his mask of self-assuredness. “Do you not read my emails? I haven’t scared you off with how messed up I am? How I worry every single minute of the day that I’m going to fuck something up? Like us? If you don’t wanna be with me, I get it, you don’t have to make up shit to spare my feelings like saying you’re not good enough.”
“You’ll get over me.”
Taylor’s single laugh was hollow and frail. “Because you’ll get over me?”
Her answer, a whisper, came automatic. As if she could ever unstitch her heart from his. “Never.”
His kiss caught her by surprise. The intensity of it drove their bodies together with the same urgency, hands fumbling, unable to keep up.
“Reach into my pocket,” he said, kissing her neck.
Analise quit fighting with her jeans zipper and plunged into the soft folds of his black hoodie, coming up empty. “Which one?” She kissed him again, going for the other pocket.
Taylor checked himself. He cussed. “I think my parents have a pretty good idea of what I’m up to.”
“It fell out?”
“Do you have one?”
Analise rummaged through her purse. “I think I’m due for my period anyway.” Both their phones started going off, one after the next. Their mothers no doubt, like some kind of warning that only intensified the need she felt to lock him inside her. He told her he couldn’t live without her, and Analise told him the same. She feared it wasn’t because he truly loved her but because she was a means to an end, to untether himself from the weight of his world.
Chapter Forty-Two
December 2005
Analise
Analise kept the engagement ring hidden in her closet. It was a simple gold band with a modest diamond, something Taylor said his mother gave to him, with a promise that it could be an engagement ring for whomever he chose to love. But it seemed to take on a haunting presence, a ticking countdown. He didn’t give her any ultimatum about the marriage proposal, and he didn’t pressure her. But the longer she lied to Ulla, the more she feared losing a little of Taylor each day, of losing him altogether. She could maybe get Ulla to come around to boyfriend/girlfriend. Not husband/wife. She could see the disappointment now. The disgusted scoff. A wife, Isa? At eighteen? she would say. That’s what I raised you to aspire to?
She wore the ring once, as if test-driving, when she and Taylor played hooky from school, while his parents were out of town. Separately. His dad on business. His mother at a spa. Analise made him his favorite strawberry waffles for breakfast. They snacked on Lucky Charms, laughing hysterically while watching Napoleon Dynamite. She quizzed him on his AP Euro History final while he bounced a soccer ball off the basement walls. They erased answering machine messages from the school about their absence, took sultry pictures, ran along the lake, and afterward showered together until the water ran cold.
He’d asked her to be his date to his cousin’s wedding on the 23rd, the day before Christmas Eve, her eighteenth birthday. “Lie to your mom, but don’t worry about my parents seeing us together. My mom knows something is up.”
Analise couldn’t accept his invitation. Not yet. She could still hear those two words bouncing off the walls from his soccer ball: not yet—not yet—not yet. On the wedding day, she stewed in her bedroom, spinning the ring on her finger.
