Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between(15)

Clare gives him a wounded look. “That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?” Aidan says without meeting her eyes. “It’s like that time we carried that table down to the basement for your parents. We both had it, and it was going fine. And then you dropped your side of it, and the whole thing turned into this huge mess, with the drywall and the broken leaf and my shoulder—”

“I get it,” Clare says, stopping him short. “You think I’m giving up on this. But I’m not. I’m just trying to save us the trouble.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want to be saved,” he says, finally looking at her. “Maybe I believe in this enough for both of us.”

“You can’t wish this into working,” she says, feeling miserable even as she does. She can see the anger draining out of Aidan, his eyes going distant, and she wants to take it all back, to say something reassuring, to give him some thread of hope. But it’s too late for that. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them. Instead, she reaches for his hand, but he pulls it away, and she sighs. “I’m sorry, but believing isn’t enough.”

Aidan stares out over the water, his forehead crinkled. “How do you know unless you’ve tried?”

“I just know,” Clare says quietly. “I just have this feeling.”

“Well,” Aidan says, “so do I.”

She waits for him to say more, but he doesn’t. Instead, he lets out a long breath, running a hand over the top of his head, where his hair used to stick up in a way that Clare always found oddly charming, and her heart seizes at even this smallest of changes: his new college haircut. It’s hard not to think about how many more are still to come.

“I think I liked it better when we were avoiding talking about all this,” he says eventually, and Clare nods.

“Me too,” she admits. “But we have to figure it out. The clock is ticking.”

“You make it sound like a bomb,” he says. “You make us sound like a bomb.”

“Maybe we are.”

There’s nothing either of them can say to that; they don’t even bother to try. Instead, they look out toward the horizon, the last streaks of pink and the first few visible stars and the drowning robot, forever destined to flail hopelessly in the darkening water. Clare pulls her knees up to her chest, shivering a little, though she doesn’t feel cold.

After a moment, Aidan leans forward and picks up another small stone. “Your souvenir,” he says quietly as he hands it over to her.

“My collection,” she says, slipping it into her bag, “is gonna get pretty heavy.”

“I’ll help you carry it.”

“You won’t be there,” she tells him, blinking fast, willing herself not to cry.

“I will for now,” he says, reaching into her bag and taking out both rocks, then raising his eyebrows when he feels the Parmesan shaker. As he lifts it, some of the flakes go floating off in the breeze, and for a second it almost looks like snow.

“Okay,” she agrees. “For now.”

“For now,” he repeats, as if getting used to the sound of it, and then he leans forward to kiss her again, and this time there’s nothing showy about it; this time it’s just right: sad and sweet and heartbreakingly familiar.

“Much better,” she says, cupping his hands in hers.

The Gallaghers’ House

8:40 PM

They’re nearly back to the car when Aidan pauses to fish his phone out of his back pocket. He stands for a moment in the middle of the parking lot, his face lit by the bluish light of the screen, before looking up at Clare with a sigh.

“I don’t suppose my house was on the list, was it?”

“Not other than meeting you there,” she says as they reach the car. “But we can definitely stop by again. I should probably say goodbye to your parents, anyway. How come?”

“Riley needs a ride to the bowling alley,” he says, leaning against the trunk. There’s a Harvard sticker on the bumper that’s peeling at the corner, and he chips at it with the heel of his sneaker.

“That’s totally fine,” she says. “Bowling is on the list anyhow.”

“Next?”

“No, but we can switch around the order. I mean, it doesn’t really matter, right?”

He smiles. “Look at you, being so flexible.”

“That’s me,” she says, bending down to brush the sand from her legs, and then opening the passenger-side door. “Rolling with the punches. Come what may. Easy breezy.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says, grinning at her over the top of the car. “Super breezy.”

By the time they turn onto Aidan’s street, it’s fully dark, and as usual, the whole block is already lit up, the windows blazing. When he pulls into the driveway, they sit there for a minute, the engine still ticking, and then he turns to Clare with a weary smile.

“Let’s make this really quick, okay?”

She nods. “Hi and bye.”

“I like that,” he says. “Hi and bye. Quick and painless.”

As they walk up the stone path that leads to the side door, Clare remembers the first time she ever came over. It was just before Christmas, and she’d assumed the giant gold cross and elaborate nativity scene set up on a table in the foyer were seasonal decorations. She’d been wrong. As it turned out, they lived there all year, alongside an impressive collection of cross-stitched prayers in delicate frames and pillows with Irish blessings and shamrocks all over them.