VANGUARD(13)

Sophie nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks. She tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. They might be among the most brilliant young people in the world, but, she finally understood, that didn’t mean either of them knew anything about love.

She opened her mouth to try to speak again, but he brushed his fingers over her lips.

“Hush. I know. Do not blame yourself,” he whispered. “Mana mila, I have missed you terribly.” Sophie removed his finger from her lips and kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her and they stood in the fog, lost in one another.

God, how I love him.

The thought floated down into her consciousness like a feather falling from a great height. It didn’t shock her. She had known it all along.

After a while, his mouth shifted to scatter kisses across her face. Then his lips came back to press against hers one last time. He took her hands in his, foreheads touching. His eyes met hers. She could see the question rising there.

What now?

Her future beyond this year, beyond GYL…what then? Michael would go to Harvard Medical School. She had a conditional acceptance at Stanford University to study international development on the opposite side of the country. And Matt, waiting patiently for her to return.

Sophie couldn’t lose Michael; she’d already spent too much of this year apart from him. But neither could she imagine him as part of her carefully planned, ambitious dreams. She had no way to control her rampaging feelings for him, no strategy to neatly cubbyhole his impulsive, explosive personality into her orderly plans to change the world. Their love would undo her.

She had to follow her own dreams. For now, at least.

For a moment, she looked back at him, her heart in her eyes. Then she shifted her gaze over his shoulder, eyes on the mist beyond. She felt a shiver of reaction pass through his body. He understood the magnitude of what had just been decided between them.

“I love you, Sophie.”

“I love you too, Mikael.”

It was the only time Sophie would hear those words from Michael in a decade.





-





The end of their year came too soon, and it hurt worse than Sophie had imagined. Saying goodbye to the people who had been family, friends, and colleagues for the last 365 days was wrenching. She’d never cried so much as she did that day, each farewell more painful than the last on the GYL campus, back where they had begun. But the most important person was nowhere to be found.

“Where’s Michael?” she asked Carter frantically.

“He’s gone,” he replied. “His parents picked him up early this morning. He didn’t want to say goodbye to you, to anyone. He doesn’t think it proper for a man to cry, especially in front of a woman.”

Heartsick, Sophie stumbled onto the shuttle bus to catch her flight back to California.





-





The years passed. Sophie got her undergraduate degree and her masters in international development at Stanford. Learned to speak French. Remained in constant touch with Will Temple, who grew from being a casual acquaintance to her greatest mentor and teacher.

She returned to Matt Cain, grieving and guilt-ridden. He accepted her confession surprisingly well, and they remained together for the next two years. Their relationship was calm and conflict-free, if not a little boring. Matt became a lawyer, moved to New Jersey, and married. Sophie consulted him for all her legal matters.

She stood as the maid of honor in Ana and Raphael’s wedding in S?o Paulo, and attended the gigantic bash when Mirielle and Kyle married in 2005. Thirty-seven of the GYL02 class made it to that affair. Understandably, Michael Nariovsky-Trent did not attend.

Michael and Sophie stayed in touch from opposite sides of the country. The night Sophie broke up with Matt, Michael had sat up with her on the phone assuring her that she’d made the right choice. Partway through his third year, Michael had almost given up on his grueling medical studies, and it had been Sophie’s turn to support him.

Sophie dated, fell in and out of love, met some terrific guys. Moved in with a man she’d met in Bangladesh on a field placement, but moved out soon after when she realized he wasn’t so wonderful in real life. Michael dated casually over the years, but never settled down.

She saw him again in 2008 at Carter’s wedding. Walking into Michael’s arms felt like coming home. He was Carter’s best man, and she thought she’d faint at the sight of him in a tuxedo. When he took her out on to the dance floor at the reception, the years melted away.