Little Do We Know(20)

There was a little flower garden overlooking the parking lot, complete with flamingos and garden gnomes, and it cheered me up a little bit. I sat on the curb and took a few deep breaths, clearing my head. I was about to make my move when my phone buzzed.

I checked the screen.

Luke: Where are you?!?

I typed back.

Emory: Outside

I stood and watched him spin a slow three-sixty, trying to figure out where I was. When he finally spotted me, he furrowed his brow and held up a hand.

I held mine up, too.

“You okay?” he mouthed.

I shrugged.

And then he held up a finger, as if to say, “Wait there,” and I watched him pocket his phone and leave. I returned to my spot on the curb and waited for him to round the corner.

“Hey.” He sat next to me.

“Hi.” I scooted closer to him until our hips were touching and rested my arm on his leg. I looked up at him. “You were amazing tonight. I can’t believe how fast you were out there. Seriously, I had no idea that would be so fun.”

“Addison said she explained the game to you.”

I smiled. “She’s an excellent teacher. I’ve got it down now, so if you need me to explain it to you or anything…”

He smiled back. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Then he bumped his shoulder against mine. “Stop making small talk. What’s up?”

“With me?” I asked.

“No, with that garden gnome behind you,” he said. “Yes, with you.”

“Nothing.” The word caught in my throat. I didn’t want to talk about it. We couldn’t talk about it. We’d promised each other that we wouldn’t even think about it until we were packing our respective bedrooms into boxes and taking trips with our moms to buy new sheets and storage cubbies for our dorm rooms. August was five months away. We were supposed to be making the most of our time together, and that meant ignoring the inevitable end.

Luke looked at me.

“I guess it’s just all hitting me, you know?” I finally said.

I could practically hear the clock ticking in my head and see the second hand speeding up. I bit the inside of my lower lip until it hurt. And finally, I said what I’d been thinking ever since I saw that wedding dress on my table a few days earlier. “I’ve just been wondering if, maybe…we’re making this whole thing harder on ourselves than it needs to be, you know?”

Luke made a face. “No. I don’t know.”

“Do you think we should break up?” I spat the words out as fast as I could before I changed my mind.

Luke started laughing, but when he realized I hadn’t even cracked a smile, he stopped cold. “No. Why would we break up?”

“You’re going to Denver. If I’m lucky, I’ll be at UCLA, and if I’m not, I’ll be at some other California school. But I’ll be here. And you won’t be. You’ll be living a thousand miles away from me.”

“In five months.”

“But it’s inevitable.” I massaged the back of my neck.

“So, you’re saying you want to break up now, because it’s only going to get harder to break up later? You know that’s ridiculous, right?”

The way he said it, the expression on his face, everything about that moment made my heart feel like it was being squeezed in a vise.

“We could try long distance,” he said, as if he’d been thinking about it, and I smiled at him, because it was a sweet thing for him to say, and even sweeter because I could tell he meant it. But we’d already talked about that.

“No, we can’t.” My parents started dating in high school, and they stayed together, even when they went to colleges on opposite sides of the country. Mom never said she regretted it, but I’d always wondered if she had. Either way, it didn’t work out so well for the two of them, and I wasn’t about to go down the same path. “That’s too much pressure. You’re going to meet new people and I’m going to meet new people….It isn’t fair to do that to each other.”

“And spending the next five months apart is?”

I reached down for a pebble and played with it. “Maybe.”

“Well, I disagree.” He shook his head dismissively. “I think this—us—is all worth it, and I’m not giving up a single day because if I do, I know I’ll regret it when it’s over.”

When. I felt that squeeze on my heart again, tight and painful, like someone gave the vise another crank or two.

“Think about it this way,” he continued. “Years from now, when you look back, will you regret this?”

I pictured a future me, thinking back to my senior year at Foothill High School. I’d remember my friends, and the diner, and all the time I spent in the theater, but I had a feeling that the first image that popped into my head would be of Luke. I’d remember Calletti Spaghetti with his family, and the two of us going to the movies, and doing homework in his room, and him sneaking in my window. I’d remember this night, going to his first lacrosse game, and I’d remember the parties I always dreaded but, in the end, never really minded that much. And all I could think was, I’m so in love with this guy. Crazy, giddy, stupid, silly in love with this guy.

“Never,” I said.