Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between(24)

He pauses for a second, licking his lips, then glancing at Clare, a little wild-eyed, before turning back to Scotty.

“You know what?” Aidan says to him in a low voice. “You belong here.”

For a moment it feels like everything stops, though around them people continue to go about their games, bowling and cheering and drinking and laughing as if Aidan hadn’t just said the exact wrong thing, as if he hadn’t just bulldozed his way right through to his best friend’s worst fears: that not only do they all feel sorry for him, but that nobody is surprised he’s the one to be left behind.

All the color has drained from Scotty’s face, and Clare stares at Aidan, who looks a bit stricken himself. She’s seized by the memory of the first time they came here together, a few months after they started dating, when—after a night of gutter balls and one-pin shots and endless jokes at her expense about the merits of bumper bowling—she’d somehow managed to throw a wobbly and slow-moving strike.

The minute the pins fell, she turned and ran back to the benches with her hands in the air, and before she could say anything, before she could even catch her breath, Aidan had wrapped her in a bear hug, lifting her off her feet and twirling her around, both of them laughing.

When he set her down again, his eyes were shining, and he leaned in close. “I love you,” he’d said, like a kid declaring his feelings for ice cream or bugs or the circus, full of wonder and delight.

Now she realizes she’s standing in the exact same spot, and once again, Aidan is looking at her, only this time his face is completely blank, and something about the emptiness of his gaze makes Clare go cold.

Stella is the first to react. “God, Aidan,” she says, moving closer to Scotty. “You don’t have to be such a prick about it.”

“It’s fine,” Scotty says gruffly, but his eyes are on the floor.

Clare is about to say something to Aidan—though she doesn’t know what yet—when he turns abruptly and starts walking away. She stares after him, shocked that he would leave this unfinished, and on this of all nights. They’ve gotten into countless scuffles before, Aidan and Scotty, but it’s always ended in laughter. Always. Now, though, something feels different. Everything is too fraught, too weighty, too final.

“I’m sorry,” Clare says, whirling back around. “He’s just—he’s not in great form right now. But he shouldn’t be taking it out on everyone else.”

“It’s fine,” Scotty says again.

Clare looks back toward the exit, half expecting to find that Aidan is gone, but instead, she sees that he’s pacing in front of the doors, his head bent and his shoulders curled. She starts to head over to him but then stops, frozen with indecision.

“Go,” Stella says, and though her eyes are still hard, her voice is gentle. “He’s an idiot. But he’s your idiot.”

Clare stares at her for a moment, then nods. “Maybe we’ll see you guys later,” she says without much conviction, and Stella simply lifts a hand in a kind of half wave. It’s impossible to tell whether it means goodbye for now or goodbye for good, and Clare doesn’t stay to find out. Instead, she sets the bag of popcorn on the table, then turns and jogs over toward the exit, her blood pumping loud in her ears.

When she reaches Aidan, he greets her not with an apology or an explanation but just a stubbornly, maddeningly distant expression, and she walks right up to him and jabs a finger into the soft cotton of his shirt, right in the middle of his chest.

“It’s where you first said you loved me,” she says a little breathlessly, hoping to jolt him out of this, to remind him, to reel him back. “That’s why we’re here.”

But when she looks up at him, his eyes are so sad that it pulls her up short. In the silence that follows, it’s almost as if Scotty’s stupid joke has come true. Behind them, pins are crashing to the ground over and over again with a sound like thunder, like something shattering, but right here, in the muffled space between them, it might as well be the quietest place on earth.

“Yeah, well,” Aidan says eventually, just before walking out the door into a dusting of rain, “it’s not like you’ve ever said it back.”

The Mini-Mart

9:41 PM

When she doesn’t find him by the car, Clare walks back around to the side of the building, where Aidan is sitting on the curb, his head bent over his phone. There’s a faint rotten smell coming from the nearby trash bins, blown in their direction by the rain: a fine, clinging mist that feels good after the closeness of the bowling alley.

Clare stands over him for a few seconds, but when he doesn’t show any sign of acknowledging her, she finally joins him on the curb, leaving a few inches between them.

“I’m sorry,” she says, tilting her head to look at him. “I didn’t know it still bothered you.”

Aidan laughs, but there’s nothing funny in the sound of it. “That you don’t love me?”

“That I don’t say it.”

“Same thing.”

“It’s not,” she insists, as she’s done so many times before. “You know how I feel about you.”

“See,” he says, “that’s the problem. Maybe I don’t.”

“Aidan.”

“No wonder you think we should break up,” he says, his eyes flashing with anger. “If you can’t say it now, you probably never will.”