Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between(61)

“We’ll miss you,” she says. “Good luck out there, okay?”

“Okay,” Aidan manages. “And thanks for everything.”

Her dad claps him on the shoulder, which turns into a hug. “Take care of yourself.”

Aidan nods. “Drive safe.”

And then they’re getting into the car, the engine rumbling to life and the windshield wipers squealing, and Clare is struck by a panic so strong that she feels her heart might gallop straight out of her chest.

This is it, she thinks, frozen in place. Even after all these hours—all these months, really—she’s still oddly stunned to have arrived here in this moment, which feels like it’s happening both much too fast and far too slowly.

She wipes some rain out of her eyes and forces herself to look up at Aidan, who is standing a few feet away from her, his face pale and his eyes filled with dread.

“Last chance to run away together,” he says, attempting a smile, though there’s something wobbly about it. “I hear Canada is nice this time of year.”

“I think I’d prefer the desert island.”

“Even if I refuse to wear a hula skirt?”

“Even then,” says, reaching out to take his hand, terrified about what happens next. Because how do you say goodbye to a piece of yourself? She examines his hand, tracing a finger over his palm, playing connect-the-dots with the constellation of freckles on his wrist. “This is the worst, huh?”

“It’s definitely not the best.”

“Do you think we’ll be miserable?”

“Yes,” he says simply. “For a while, anyway.”

“And then?”

“And then it’ll get easier.”

“Promise?”

“No,” he says with a feeble smile. “So… really no contact at all?”

For a moment, she wants desperately to take it back. Because it’s hard to imagine not being able to text him on the drive out there, not being able to call after she meets Beatrice, not getting messages from him between classes. But she knows this is the way it has to be, and so, with great effort, she shakes her head.

Aidan nods. “No phone calls?”

“Nope.”

“Texts?”

“Nope.”

“E-mails? Letters? Postcards?”

“Sorry.”

“Carrier pigeons?”

“Oh, sure,” she says. “Pigeons are totally fine.”

“Well, at least there’s something,” he says with a grin.

“Aidan,” she says, grabbing the front of his shirt and giving it a little tug. Somewhere inside her, an army of tears is on the move, the pressure building behind her eyes and in her throat. Soon, it will be too much. Whatever dams might exist—whatever walls she’s managed to throw up—will surely break, and all the many hollows of her heart will be flooded. It takes all her strength to fight against it, because there are still things to be said, and she can’t bear for them to be muddled.

But even this seems beyond her at the moment.

“I don’t…” she begins, but quickly falters.

Aidan only nods. “Me neither.”

“I wish…”

“I know,” he says. “Me too.”

She gives up then, stepping into his arms and resting her head against his chest, but then she hears the soft thud of his heart, and she knows there’s only one thing left that matters. “I love you,” she says, the words clear and steady and true, and she can hear the smile in his voice as he says it back: “And I dove you.”

“Shut up,” she says, but they’re both laughing a little bit now. When she tilts her head back, he kisses her for the last time, and all she can think is that this is another kind of first, something she hadn’t counted when she made her list: their first goodbye.

“Have a good trip,” he says as they pull apart again, and this—finally—is what tips her over the edge. She can’t help it: She begins to cry, swiping uselessly at the tears, but unable to stop, because it’s such an ordinary thing to say in a moment that feels so fantastically unreal.

But when it’s her turn, she can do no better. “I’ll miss you,” she tells him, holding on for a second more, though the car is puffing out clouds of exhaust, and the rain is coming down harder all around them, and the end of all this—the end of them—is finally here after all this time, rushing up to meet them like a freight train, noisy and unstoppable, the sound of it loud in her ears.

Aidan kisses her once more on the top of her head, and she clings to his hand for another few seconds before letting go. When she finally does, she can’t bear to look, or she’s certain she might never actually leave, and so instead, she squares her shoulders and breathes in and out, walking straight over to the car and climbing inside with her heart skidding around in her chest and the tears all mixed up with the rain on her face.

“You okay?” her mom asks, once she’s shut the door, but Clare has no idea how to answer that, because she is and she isn’t, because she’s stuck somewhere between the end and the beginning, and the only way to get unstuck, it seems, is to keep moving.

So she nods. “Let’s go,” she says as Bingo clambers onto her lap, his tail fanning the air. Her dad throws the car into gear, and they back out of the driveway with the dog looking out the rain-streaked window as they pass Aidan, because Clare can’t seem to bring herself to do it. But once they’re on the street, she changes her mind, struck by an urgent need to see him one more time, so she twists around in her seat, peering between the boxes piled in back.