Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between, Page 7

  “Yeah, but that was never serious,” Clare tells him, sitting forward. “And I knew Harvard wasn’t, either.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes,” she says firmly, then hesitates, because she knows the only way to get through this is for her to be honest, too. “I mean, maybe there was this tiny little part of me that—”

  He doesn’t even wait for her to finish. “See?”

  “But that’s not the point,” she says, trying to curb her frustration. “If you’d told me you were scrapping the application, I would’ve understood. I would’ve been supportive either way.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Aidan,” she says, cutting him off, “you should’ve just been honest with me.”

  He traces a finger along the ridges of the steering wheel, then leans forward and rests his head against it. “Why are we still talking about this? It doesn’t even matter anymore. It would’ve turned out the same either way.”

  “Yeah, but we’re supposed to be a team. After all this time, you should’ve had more faith in me.”

  “Right. Like you have in us?”

  Clare opens her mouth, then closes it again, not sure what to say to that. Instead, she falls back against the seat with a sigh, and they’re both silent for a minute, then two.

  “The thing is,” Aidan says eventually, “maybe I don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Have enough faith in you.”

  This hits her like a shot—a hard, bright pain in the center of her chest—and she struggles to keep her face neutral. “Then maybe,” she says, unable to look at him, “we have bigger problems.”

  “Maybe we do,” he says, moving a hand to the door. He glances over at her, and there’s a flicker of impatience in his eyes. “Are we done yet?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t feel like talking about this anymore.”

  “Aidan,” she says. “Come on. You can’t just keep avoiding everything.”

  “And you can’t just keep planning everything,” he says, sounding uncharacteristically surly. “This isn’t a homework assignment. There’s not gonna be an answer for everything, okay? There’s just not.”

  He opens his car door, and when the overhead light snaps on, they both blink like stunned animals.

  Clare glances at the green numbers of the dashboard clock. “So, what?” she says in a low voice. “Your plan is just to spend the rest of the night pretending nothing happened? You just want to—what? Go bowling right now?”

  “You’re the one who brought me here,” he says, stepping out of the car. She shoves open her own door, then hops out and glares at him from across the hood.

  “We can leave if you want.”

  Without answering, he begins to cross the parking lot, punching the lock button from over his shoulder. Clare flinches as the car lets out two shrill beeps, then hurries after him toward the giant bowling pins at the entrance.

  “So what is it, anyway?” Aidan asks, pausing just as they reach the door. Inside, the orange light of the lanes gives off a faint glow, and they can hear the cheerful music of the video games in the lobby.

  “What do you mean?”

  “On the list,” he says. “What is this on the list?”

  She frowns at him. “You don’t remember?”

  He remains silent, but there’s something deliberately stubborn about it.

  “Yes, you do,” she tells him, digging in, too.

  “Not really,” he says, just as a group of middle-aged men in blue bowling shirts, their names stitched above the pockets, come lumbering out the door, causing Aidan and Clare to take a step back and away from each other.

  When they’re gone, he turns back to her with glassy eyes.

  “So?” he asks, and she shakes her head, exhausted.

  “Forget it,” she says, pulling open the door and walking inside without him, happy to let the noise and lights of the place wash over her: the bright sound of the balls striking the pins, the clinking of glasses, and the confusion of voices, all of it a hazy, welcome distraction.

  Aidan stalks off toward the snack bar, but Clare stops near the shoe-rental booth, scanning the lanes to see if she recognizes anyone other than Riley, who is wedged on a bench with a couple of her friends, bent forward as she laces up her shoes.

  “Hey,” says a familiar voice behind her, and Clare turns to find Stella balancing two plastic cups and a bag of popcorn under one arm. “I didn’t realize you guys were coming here.”

  “Riley needed a lift,” Clare says, rescuing the popcorn, which is spilling onto the ugly patterned carpet one kernel at a time.

  Stella scans the room. “Where’s Aidan?”

  “No clue,” Clare says shortly.

  “O-kay. Well, we’re over there with Mike and Noah and Kip. They’ve been here for ages, and they’re completely—” She’s using one of the cups to point in the direction of the far lanes, but when she notices Aidan is already over there, she lowers her hand and turns back to Clare with a sheepish look. “Guess we found Aidan.”

  “Guess so,” Clare says, aware of the edge to her voice.

  “Everything okay? You seem a little…”

  “Annoyed?”

  “I was gonna say pissed, but sure, annoyed.”

  “Aidan’s…” She hesitates, not sure how to finish that sentence. “An idiot.”

  “Is that all?” Stella asks, laughing. “He’s always been an idiot. You can’t break up with him because of that. It’s a preexisting condition.”

  “We haven’t broken up,” Clare says quickly, surprised at the way her heart picks up speed at the thought. “We’re still just…”

  “Talking,” Stella says.

  “Talking,” she agrees.

  “Were you at your house?”

  “His,” she says. “And we stopped by the beach, too.”

  “Don’t suppose you managed to save poor Rusty?”

  Clare manages a small smile. “No. I think he’s just gonna have to survive on his own till we all get back at Thanksgiving.”

  “So is Scotty,” Stella says, her expression turning serious. “And I’m not sure he’s handling it so well.”

  “He’ll be fine. He’s Scotty. He’s always fine.”

  “I guess,” Stella says, though she doesn’t sound quite convinced. Her eyes drift back to where the boys are all gathered around the scoring machine at the very last lane, and Clare watches her carefully.

  “Why are you so worried about Scotty?” she says, and Stella looks back at her, surprised.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I’m not.”

  “You hate Scotty,” Clare reminds her. “You guys aren’t even really friends.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “You and me,” she says, feeling suddenly annoyed, “we’ve been friends our whole lives.”

  “I know.”

  “And we’re both leaving tomorrow.”

  Stella looks unsure about where this might be headed. “Yeah…”

  “So why don’t you try caring about that for a minute?” Clare asks with a frown, and in the quiet that follows, they stare at each other, both a little stunned by the words, which sounded harsher than intended. But it’s a thought that’s been stuck in the back of Clare’s throat for a while now; it was only a matter of time before it came tumbling out.

  “I do,” Stella says in an appeasing tone.

  “Not really. You haven’t been around for weeks. And until tonight, you’ve barely even bothered to ask about the whole Aidan thing.”

  “That’s because we’ve been talking about it for months.”

  “Yeah, but that was all just hypothetical. Now it’s actually happening. Now is when I actually need you.”

  Stella lifts her shoulders. “I’m right here.”

  “No, you’re not,” Clare says, shaking her head. “Not really. And it’s too late, anyway.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry if—”

  “Forget it,” Clare says, cutting
her off. She blinks at her friend, feeling a lump rise in her throat. Because this isn’t the way their last night was supposed to go. She and Stella have been inseparable since they were little. They’d sat together in kindergarten, learned to ride bikes the same day, thrown joint birthday parties as kids. They’d shared books and lunches, stickers and clothes—at least until eighth grade, when Stella had decided that black was her color. They’d shared pretty much everything.

  All this time, they’d been running a marathon together. And now, with only yards left to go, Stella has fallen away, and Clare can’t for the life of her figure out why.

  “You haven’t been there,” she says, trying to keep her lip from trembling. “You were supposed to be there.”

  “Clare.”

  “No, it’s fine,” she says, giving Stella a hard look. “This is just part of it, right? I guess we’re supposed to be moving on.”

  “Not like this.”

  Clare shrugs, and a few pieces of popcorn fall to the floor. “Starting next week, none of this will matter, anyway. We’ll each have a whole new group of friends.…”

  “What, like Beatrice St. James?” Stella asks, arching an eyebrow.

  “Well, yeah,” Clare says. “Maybe. Probably.”

  “Clare, come on.”

  “No, maybe it’s better this way. Maybe we just have to learn to stop needing each other so much.”

  She waits for Stella to disagree, or to tell her she’s being stupid, but she doesn’t. Instead, her shoulders slump, and she stares down at the drinks in her hands for what feels like a very long time. Then, finally, she looks right at Clare.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she says, entirely blank-faced, and then, without another word, she brushes past her, hurrying down the steps to the lanes.

  Clare stands there, watching her go, her feet strangely heavy. After a moment, she takes a shaky breath.

  Fine, she thinks. One less goodbye.

  It’s supposed to make her lighter, this thought, but all she feels is hollow as she starts to walk in the direction of her friends, picking her way around the discarded shoes that litter the sticky floor.

  As she approaches the last lane, she can see that the rest of the guys—Noah and Mike and Kip—are messing around with the scoreboard, picking ridiculous names for everyone, and Scotty is staggering around with a hot-pink bowling ball under his arm, doubled over in laughter.

  Only Aidan is standing apart, still scowling at nothing in particular, and when Clare tries to catch his eye, he just folds his arms across his chest and looks off toward the six pins still upright at the end of the lane.

  “Hey, Stells,” Scotty says, swaying slightly in the way that he does when he’s drunk. Clare raises her eyebrows at the nickname, but Stella only rolls her eyes at him as he attempts to spin the bowling ball on his finger like a basketball. It falls to the floor with a bone-rattling thud. “I’ve got a joke for you.”

  “What is it?” Clare asks when nobody else does. With both Aidan and Stella acting like jerks, she feels a sudden surge of affection for Scotty. He looks so eager, standing there in his red-and-blue bowling shoes, which he bought last year, even though he’s a truly terrible bowler. He ended up loving them so much that he started wearing them to school, sliding up and down the hallways between classes.

  “Why is a bowling alley the quietest place on earth?” he asks, looking pleased with himself. He doesn’t have the patience to wait for an answer. He just rushes on, eager to tell them. “Because you can hear a pin drop!”

  Clare can’t help laughing a little at this, but Stella just shakes her head, walking over to scoop up the bowling ball. Aidan ignores him entirely, glancing up to check the score on the screens overhead, where his name is now listed as A-Dog and Clare’s is C-Money. Nobody else seems to notice except for Scotty, who takes a few lurching steps in Aidan’s direction, scowling at him.

  “What?” he says, his face a little too red. “Not funny enough for you?”

  Aidan turns around, clearly surprised. “Just not in the mood for jokes, I guess.”

  “Why not?” Scotty demands. “Did you guys finally break up or something?”

  “Scotty,” Stella says, taking him by the arm before he can reach for his cup again. She shoves the pink bowling ball at him, and he lets out a little grunt as it hits him in the stomach. “I think you’re up.”

  “No, Kip’s not done,” he says, pointing at the six pins still standing, but Kip—who has been watching this all unfold with benign amusement—waves an arm.

  “All you, big guy,” he says with a lazy smile. “You can finish up for me.”

  Scotty shrugs, then saunters up to the lane, turning once to wink at them before tossing the ball straight into the gutter. He stands there watching it whizz away, steady as a pinball, and once it disappears at the end of the lane, he turns around with his arms raised in triumph.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Clare notices Riley waving at her from somewhere in the middle of all the lanes, and she lifts a hand to wave back. But when she hears a roar of laughter behind her, she realizes Scotty has seen her, too.

  “Is that why you’re in such a terrible mood, buddy?” he asks Aidan with an off-kilter grin, once again in good humor. “Because your sister followed me here?”

  “Cut it out, Scotty,” Aidan says, giving him a hard look. Clare can see that his face is flushed behind his freckles, and she knows that this is the quickest way to rankle him, not because it’s a real possibility anymore—Scotty and Riley—but because he’s protective and a little bit sensitive and, most of all, because he’s a good older brother, all things she usually admires about him.

  But tonight isn’t the night to tease him about it, and she widens her eyes and shakes her head at Scotty, trying to communicate this to him, though she knows it’s probably hopeless. He’s still smiling, a goofy, lopsided smile, and she can tell he’s only just warming up.

  “What can I do?” he says, all innocence and charm, his hair sticking up at the back in a way that makes him look like a cartoon character. “You know how the girls all love me. It’s not her fault she can’t stay away.…”

  “Grow up,” Aidan says, spinning around to leave. He takes two long strides, then stops and turns back again, and Clare can tell that he’s gone from annoyed to angry, something that usually only happens when he’s arguing with his father. “Actually, forget it. You’re never gonna grow up, are you? There’s a reason you’re getting left behind in this stupid town with all these stupid high schoolers. It’s because you still act like one.”

  He pauses for a second, licking his lips, and then glances 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.<
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  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.”