I'm Thinking of Ending Things(33)

The machine whirls on. Of course, none of these girls wants to be here. This antiseptic Dairy Queen with fridges and freezers and fluorescent lighting and metal appliances and red spoons, straws wrapped in plastic, and cup dispensers and the quiet but constant buzz overhead.

It would be even harder if two of your coworkers were picking on you. Is that why the skinny girl seems distraught?

It’s not just this Dairy Queen—it’s this place, this town, if it is a town. I’m unclear what makes a town a town, or when a town becomes a city. Maybe this isn’t either. It feels lost, detached. Hidden from the world. I’d go moldy out here if I couldn’t leave, if there was nowhere else to go.

Somewhere inside the silver machine, ice is being crushed and blended with concentrated lemon juice and lots of liquid sugar. No dairy, but it’ll be sweet, I’m sure of that.

The icy lemonade flows out of the machine into the second cup. When it’s full, the machine stops, and the girl puts a plastic cover on it, too. She carries them over to where I’m standing. Up close, she looks even worse. It’s her eyes.

“Thanks,” I say, reaching for the lemonade. I’m not expecting an answer, so I am taken aback when she speaks.

“I’m worried,” she mumbles, more to herself than me. I look around to see if the other girls hear her. They aren’t paying attention. Neither is Jake.

“Excuse me?”

She’s looking down at the floor. She’s holding her hands in front of her.

“I shouldn’t be saying this, I know I shouldn’t. I know what happens. I’m scared. I know. It’s not good. It’s bad.”

“Are you okay?”

“You don’t have to go.”

I can feel my pulse skipping ahead. Jake is getting straws, I think, and napkins from the dispenser. We won’t need spoons after all.

One of the girls laughs, louder this time. The skinny girl in front of me is still looking down, hair covering her face.

“What are you scared of?”

“It’s not what I’m scared of. It’s who I’m scared for.”

“Who are you scared for?”

She picks up the cups. “For you,” she says, handing me the cups before disappearing back into the kitchen.

JAKE IS OBLIVIOUS, AS USUAL. We get back to the car, and he doesn’t mention anything about the girls in the Dairy Queen. At times he can be very unaware, very self-obsessed.

“Did you see that girl?”

“Which one?”

“The one who made the lemonades?”

“There were several girls.”

“No, only one girl made the drinks. Skinny. Long hair.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know. Weren’t they all skinny?”

I want to say more. I want to talk about that girl and her rash and her sad eyes. I want to tell him what she said. I hope she has someone to talk to. I want to understand why she’s afraid. It doesn’t make sense for her to be afraid for me.

“How’s your drink?” Jake asks. “Too sweet?”

“It’s okay. Not too sweet.”

“That’s why I don’t like getting those iced drinks, the lemonades and slushies, because they’re always cloyingly sweet. I should have gotten a Blizzard.”

“It must be nice to be able to have ice cream when you want it.”

“You know what I’m saying.”

I shake the cup in my hand and push the straw down and up, the friction making a squeaking sound. “It’s sour, too,” I say. “Fake sour, but sour. It evens out the sweet.”

Jake’s drink is melting in the cup holder. Soon it will be completely liquid. He’s drunk about half.

“I always forget how hard these are to finish. I only needed a small. There’s nothing medium about the medium.”

I lean forward and turn up the heat.

“Cold?” asks Jake.

“Yeah, a little. Probably from the lemonade.”

“We’re also in a snowstorm. Whose idea was it to get iced drinks, anyway?”

He looks at me and raises his eyebrows.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he says. “I get sick of these after four sips.”

“I’m not saying anything,” I say, raising both hands. “Not a word.”

We both laugh.

This will probably be the last time I’m in a car with Jake. It seems a shame when he’s like this, joking, almost happy. Maybe I shouldn’t end things. Maybe I should stop thinking about it and just enjoy him. Enjoy us. Enjoy getting to know someone. Why am I putting so much pressure on us? Maybe I will eventually fall in love and lose any fears I have. Maybe it will get better. Maybe that’s possible. Maybe that’s how it works with time and effort. But if you can’t tell the other person what you’re thinking, what does that mean?

I think that’s a bad sign. What if he was thinking the same things about me right now? What if he was the one thinking about ending things but also was still having fun, or not entirely sick of me yet, so was keeping me around just to see what would happen. If that’s what was going on in his head, I’d be upset.

I should end it. I have to.

Whenever I hear the “it’s not you, it’s me” cliché, it’s hard not to laugh. But it really is true in this case. Jake is just Jake. He’s a good person. He’s smart and handsome, in his way. If he were an * or stupid or mean or ugly or anything, then it would be his fault that I end things, kind of. But he’s not any of those things. He’s a person. I just don’t think the two of us are a match. An ingredient is missing, and, if I’m being honest, it always has been.