Open Road Summer(81)

Her brows furrow. “How did you know?”

“Lissa texted me.” I sit beside her on the couch. “I had no idea you were still mad at me. I know we never really talked about the fight, but I didn’t mean any of that, you know, and—”

“What? No. It’s not that.” She stares into her lap. “I know you didn’t mean it. I didn’t either. I’d basically forgotten the whole thing.”

“Then what did I do? Is it that I’m not coming to the show tonight, because—”

This time I cut myself off. The real problem is so obvious that I can’t believe I didn’t see it the moment I walked in.

There’s a huge bouquet of irises and wild daisies on the side table nearest the couch. Only one person in the world has ever given her such a bouquet: Jimmy. And he would never send her those flowers without an accompanying card.

I place my hand on her knee. “What did the note say?”

She flashes the card at me. Handwritten, five letters, no signature: IWLYF. Dee and Jimmy used to write each other notes during class using almost all acronyms, and Dee and I would spend our lunch period laughing and trying to guess them. IASB: I am so bored. WDYWTDTW?: What do you want to do this weekend? Eventually, he started signing IWLYF to all of them, in every note, every card, every e-mail. I Will Love You Forever. Cheesy, sure. But I envied it all the same. It seemed more powerful to me than “I love you” or “love always” or “love.” I will love you forever. Simple, declarative, infinite.

Dee reexamines the card in her hand, like it will reveal a hidden message. “Did I ever tell you why he came up with it?”

I shake my head. It’s easy to forget that there are so many pieces of Dee and Jimmy’s relationship that I don’t know—that I’ll never know. “We were thirteen. He’d heard you and I say ‘infinity’ to each other, and he thought we should have something like that, too. The first time he wrote ‘IWLYF’ in a note, I knew what it meant. It probably sounds really dumb to you, but I also knew he meant it, and I did, too.”

“It doesn’t sound dumb at all.” I’m trying to understand why Jimmy would send this note. It seems like a specific kind of cruelty, like lobbing a brick of your love through someone’s window and running off. “So what does this even mean—sending you flowers with this note and nothing else?”

Dee props her chin against a cupped hand. “I think . . . I think it’s all that’s left, you know? He doesn’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to do this. But we’ll love each other forever.”

With her free hand, she’s twisting her necklace. “I keep thinking about how he wanted an acronym because you and I had ‘infinity.’ You and I had a friend thing, and he wanted a friend thing, too. Other than you, he’s the best friend I’ve ever had in my life. And I think I’ve been missing that more than I realized. He was my friend.”

It takes a long time to learn someone. It takes a long time to see a person as a whole spectrum, from worst to best—from the mismanaged heartache that lands them in AA to the pancake dinners, from the hurtful things shouted in a dressing room to the huge-hearted strength that only a best friend can understand. Once you get there, it’s forever.

“So . . . does this mean you’re getting back together?”

Dee looks up at me, seemingly ignoring my question. “Do you remember when Ginger had her foal, when were in junior high?”

Of course I remember it, how Dee’s mom drove us to the Colliers’ barn in the middle of the night so we could watch a baby horse come into the world. But I have no idea what that has to do with this. “Um, yeah?”

“Do you remember the way she couldn’t stand up at first? How her knobby little legs buckled beneath her? How helpless she was?”

“I remember.”

“That’s how it felt after Jimmy ended it. I felt like I knew nothing about myself or the world. I felt like I couldn’t even stand on my own.” She twists her necklace, looping it around her pointer finger. “But I’m doing it now, and I want to see where it takes me.”

I open my mouth, but no words come out. In all the scenarios that Dee and I have talked about this year—all the ways that her relationship with Jimmy could go—never once did it involve Dee pushing him away. “But . . .”

“I know. I can’t explain it, but ever since the flowers showed up, I’ve been thinking: I’m not there yet. I don’t even know what that means. And I’m freaking out because, like, this is not how I expected to feel, and I don’t know what to do. . . .”

I pose exactly this question to Dee. “Well . . . what do you want to do?”

She takes a deep breath in. “I don’t know. I guess I want to have my own life, too, here in Nashville, and my own apartment. I don’t want him to come home from college every weekend that I’m home so we can be together. But I want to be able to go get coffee with him when he’s home from school and hear about his life. I want to text him when I see something that reminds me of him. I want to leave that door cracked open, because what if we do decide we want to walk through it someday?”

At first, I don’t disturb the silence as it falls around us. It’s like Dee has dammed up her truest wants this entire summer, and now she has flooded the room with them.