Picture Us In The Light(82)
“I don’t mean it’s not terrible,” he says quickly. “I just—okay. As long as you—okay.” He exhales. “Okay.” He catches his bottom lip with his teeth for a second like he’s considering something. “Also, I wanted to tell you something. I got into Princeton.”
“You—what?” The words come as if from another lifetime, folded like those origami notes all the girls used to give each other in junior high. I have to fumble to unfurl them. “You just found out?”
“I got the letter yesterday.”
“What’d they say?” Stupid question.
“The usual. Congratulations, welcome.”
Was this why he came, so he could tell me this? Am I supposed to be thrilled for him? A heat starts to spread behind my eyes, prickling across my cheeks and the bridge of my nose. Why the hell would he tell me this right now? “So that’s it, then? You’re moving to New Jersey next year?”
The look he gives me—he wants me to understand something, but I don’t know what that is. “I have to, right?” He yanks at the string on his sweatshirt, knotting it into something elaborate he probably learned as an Eagle Scout. “I’d be stupid to turn it down.”
What was it, exactly, that I was hoping for—that for how impeccably he’s crafted his application package the past four years he’d somehow only get into the one exact school that’s close to me? That he’d get in nowhere at all and would move to Providence just for the hell of it? That he’d decide, suddenly, the thing he’s wanted all this time doesn’t really matter to him? That now that I can’t go to Providence after all he’d say, oh, what the hell, I’ll just stay in Cupertino then? Still, I can barely speak. “Yeah.”
“I didn’t think I’d get in.”
In some parallel universe where I just left the election alone—then what? Would that have hurt his application enough that he wouldn’t be destined for a future he only wants because it’s in the one place he thinks will feel all his? Would Sandra be here still? Sometimes when it’s dark and I’m alone I torment myself with tests of my own morality: Could I say, honestly, that if it meant bringing Sandra back, I’d give up Harry forever? Could I do that? But in the end, it turns out, I get neither.
“What about Regina?” I blurt out. It’s not even what I meant to say. My skin feels hot all over, ragged at its seams.
“Assuming her parents let her, she’ll go to Northwestern. If not, she’ll go to UCLA.”
“So you’ll just—be in completely different parts of the country? You’ll never even see each other?”
“I mean, if we can somehow find some kind of transportation device that will lift us through the air and—”
“Yeah, but what, three, four times a year you’ll see each other? Are you really in love with her?”
“Why do you always ask me that?” He takes his eyes off his knot to look at me, but I can’t read his expression. Then he returns his gaze to the knot, and I feel like someone shoveled out the contents of my chest.
“I just want you to be happy.”
“I’m happy.”
“Are you really in love with her, though? You never actually answered me.”
He starts dismantling his knot. There’s a tremulousness in my voice that I hate, that I can’t scrub out, but his tone stays low and steady. “Yes. Right? I think so. But I started thinking about asking if she thought we should break up before college and I almost broke out in hives. I can’t do that to her. If she wants to break up, that’s fine, I’ll get over it, but you don’t break up with someone whose best friend died a year ago. You just don’t.”
Not with that attitude, I think wildly. There’s a porousness in my head, like words might starting leaking out too fast for me to stanch them. “You’re really just never going to break up with her? What if she never wants to break up?”
His smile feels forced. “Then I’m a lucky bastard. Regina’s a ten.”
“You’d literally get married to her and spend your whole life with her just because you don’t want to break up with her?”
“You’ve made promises to yourself, right? I know you have.” He drops the strings and doesn’t look at me. “That one was mine. Right after Sandra. Anyway, I could do a hell of a lot worse than Regina.”
Of all the stupid scenarios I always imagined where I’d find the limits of his loyalty, it’s the most obvious one that I’ll have to live with: he’ll stay with Regina and move across the country, probably make a bunch of new fratty friends, let me fade from his life. And maybe not even because he loves her, but because it feels like the right thing.
I don’t know why I can’t think of anything to say, or why he can’t, either, but the silence holds us, descends over us like a tarp. I sit next to him, still touching him, without moving, and I think how strange it is that you can know someone so well and feel them threaded through your life in more ways than you can count and then still they build out these places inside themselves that they retreat to and you can’t follow, can’t even really see.
I feel light-headed. A car backfires outside, making both of us jump. The spell evaporates, and Harry reaches out and thumps me gently on the back. “I gotta get home. I’m still grounded.” He pulls his phone from his pocket and navigates it with his thumb. “There’s an Uber four minutes away.”