All We Can Do Is Wait(19)
Scott saw the “read” receipt pop up and waited for the little bubbles indicating that Aimee was writing back. But they never showed up. Aimee had seen the text and decided not to respond. Scott waited what he felt was a reasonable amount of time, and then wrote another message: hangin at delvecchios. hes still in luv w taissa lmao. what r u doin. This time, the message didn’t switch to “read,” and Scott became immediately convinced that Aimee was at some college party, making out with some pretentious theater guy, deliberately ignoring her buzzing phone, knowing that it was just a dumb text from her stupid high school boyfriend.
He told Pete he had to leave, Pete protesting that Scott was only leaving because he was losing at FIFA. Scott walked the few frigid blocks home and retreated up to his room, torturing himself by looking at old Instagrams of him and Aimee in what now seemed like happier times. Him and Aimee at Six Flags New England at the end of the school year last year, a sunny and exhausting and entirely thrilling day that had culminated with, back in Newton, Scott losing his virginity to Aimee.
In another photo, Scott and Aimee were at a table at J.P. Licks with Taissa and Cara and some of Aimee’s other theater friends after the spring musical, Pippin, most of their faces still pancaked with stage makeup. Scrolling through Aimee’s feed (Scott never posted much on Instagram, though he loved being tagged), Scott realized he had his arm tightly around Aimee in a lot of the photos, like he was always trying to keep her close to him. It hadn’t worked, though, and now Scott was convinced Aimee would return from her trip and promptly break up with him. He checked his phone one last time—still nothing—and drifted off into a restless, unhappy sleep.
The next morning, he was cheered to wake up to a bunch of texts from Aimee, who was apologetic about not writing back. my dad got mad at me for looking @ my phone @ dinner. said i had to turn it off. then i forgot. ilu. Scott felt an immense amount of relief, though he wasn’t entirely sure how Aimee—as frequently glued to her phone as anyone else—would have forgotten to turn the thing back on. Still, she sent him a cute picture of herself, looking coy in a drab hotel bed, and they had a little back-and-forth about mundane stuff, and Scott felt better.
When they finally met up after her trip, though, things seemed different. Scott went over to Aimee’s house, saying hi to her parents as they cleaned up dinner. “Aimee’s upstairs, sweetie,” Aimee’s mom said, and Scott climbed the stairs, excited and expectant, hoping Aimee would say she hated the Midwest, that it was too cold, even colder than Boston, and that she’d decided to stay put.
To his great dismay, he instead found her cheery and gushing, talking about how beautiful all the theater facilities had been at the schools, how talented everyone seemed. She’d seen two plays, one weird avant-garde thing at Oberlin and Picasso at the Lapin Agile at Northwestern.
“Oh my God, they were like real actors, Scott. And the sets were so cool. It was so professional. It was amazing.”
“That’s . . . great,” Scott said, not doing much to mask his disappointment. “That’s really cool.”
Aimee turned from her unpacking and looked him, hurt or annoyed or both. “Gee, don’t sound so excited.”
“I am excited!” Scott replied weakly. “It’s just . . . Ohio and Illinois are really far away.”
“I know,” Aimee said, walking over to give Scott a hug. She kissed him, running a hand through his hair and smiling. “But they’re not that far. Plus, we’re talking about a year and a half from now.”
She continued to go on at length about how incredible everything and everyone had been, how the professors had these lengthy résumés and how intense the classes were. Scott sat glumly on her bed while Aimee flitted around the room, putting clothes away and chattering. He had thought that maybe they’d just have a quiet night in together—Aimee’s parents usually let Scott stay until midnight, largely unbothered—but now he wasn’t so sure he wanted to just sit there while Aimee waxed rhapsodic about how perfect and dynamic her life was going to be when she finally left Newton.
“There’s a party at Sam Stein’s house tonight,” Scott interrupted.
Aimee wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Sam Stein?” Sam was a senior on the soccer team, a known asshole who barely gave Scott the time of day, except to yell at him when Scott screwed something up at practice or, worse, during a game. “Why would you want to go to a party at Sam Stein’s house?”
Scott was irritable. “Because he’s on the team with me. I don’t know. I was invited. We were invited.”
Aimee let out a little scoff. “Everyone on the team is invited to those parties. Isn’t it, like, a bylaw?”
“Why are you being a bitch about this, Aims?” Scott spat out, immediately regretting it.
Her eyes darkened and she stopped unpacking. “Uh. Whoa. What the fuck, Scotty?”
“Sorry, it’s just, like, I haven’t seen you in a week and I just want to do something with you. Why do you have to make fun of me for that?”
“I wasn’t making fun of you, Scott! I just didn’t think you liked Sam freaking Stein. I mean, you don’t care about soccer parties all year and then suddenly you’re, like, dying to hang out with the worst soccer guys?”
“We met at a soccer party!” Scott said indignantly.