The day of my campus tour sneaked up on me. Although I tried to get out of it, my mother insisted. “Go to Portland. Have fun with Allison. And when you come back, I bet you’ll jump right back into everything with gusto!”
Somehow, she assumed (as everyone did) I’d be back to normal eventually.
I had the feeling that “normal” meant something entirely different now.
Allison was meeting me at Lewis & Clark to walk the tour with me and ask questions I might not think of. Frankly, the only thing I was thinking of was Lee. I couldn’t get him out of my mind.
My mom was right, though she didn’t know why. I needed distance. It was too easy to run to Lee whenever I was feeling down. And now, after what had happened between us . . . I needed space more than ever.
I’d been to Lewis & Clark once before with Nate, but as I drove through the gates and winding roads, it looked more foreign to me than I’d expected. I hardly recognized anything at all.
Through the entire tour, I felt like I was in a daze. The buildings were charming, the landscape pretty, and the students seemed perfectly smart and nice. And yet . . .
It didn’t feel right.
It might have been right for Nate, or for Nate and me, but not for me.
Not for me alone.
After the tour, Allison and I found a tiny coffee shop with a sidewalk sign declaring “Love You a Latte!” I let her order for me while I nabbed a table by the window that faced out on the parking lot. I glanced around me, at the tables crowded with students. The air was electric. There was the buzz of caffeine and sugar, combined with demands for quiet hissed by the few students who were actually studying.
I waited until my sister was fully absorbed in ordering coffee before I took out my phone. I’d been patient during the tour, listening to our guide, but now I had to know: Did Lee try to contact me? I held my breath as I turned on my phone, tapping my toes on the tile floor while it tried to find a signal. Ten seconds passed, twenty, a minute, but even as the bars inched upward, not one message loaded. Not a single new voice mail or text. I scrolled through old ones just to be sure, but there was nothing.
My heart sank and I slumped against the chair.
How could he not have called me? The way we left each other . . . didn’t he care?
If he were Nate, he would have called.
But if he were Nate, I wouldn’t have . . .
I blushed, remembering our kiss. Remembering my kiss. I’d never been so aggressive with Nate, so insistent.
Allison interrupted my thoughts as she slid a giant paper cup of coffee across the table at me and tossed some sugar packets after it. “Cute baristas here,” she said with a grin. “They give you free shots of espresso when you give them your phone number.”
“You didn’t.”
She took the plastic lid off her cup and blew across the creamy surface of her coffee, cooling it down. “I gave him a number. Just not mine.” After a few sips, she sat back in her chair and said, “Ahh. That’s better. Now you can talk to me.”
“Who said I have anything to talk about?”
“Please. Mom told me everything.”
Everything? I stared into my coffee, wishing I could dive right down to the bottom and submerge myself with the melting sugar. “Then you don’t need me to tell you.”
“Skipping school, not handing in assignments—that’s not like you, Mid.”
I glanced up sharply. “They told me I didn’t have to go,” I said, my voice rising. “They told me to take it easy and not stress.”
My sister wore a sliver of a smile, as if she understood exactly what I was saying. “Yeah, but they didn’t expect you to take them up on it, at least not for very long. They expected you to go right back to normal.”
“Is that what this is all about?” I waved my hands around the coffee shop, taking in the campus, the students. “Making me normal again?”
“Sure.” Allison laughed. “A road trip to Portland is just the ticket.” Her smile ebbed. “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to come here. Nate picked it for a reason. You picked it for a reason—”
“I picked it because of Nate.”
“So? That doesn’t mean it’s not a good choice for you.”
My sister didn’t usually consider my feelings. “When did you get all nice and philosophical?”
“I have no idea. Maybe it was that women’s studies class I took last year.”
“What if I don’t want to go to college at all?”
“Like, take a gap year? Yeah, you could do that.”
“No, I mean, not go at all. Or maybe go. But later. I don’t know. Do I have to know?”
“Um, you have to go to college.” She sipped her coffee and checked out a couple of guys who’d just walked in. Her eyes followed them to the counter.
“Not everyone does.”
“Don’t be an idiot. Mom and Dad will kill you if you don’t go somewhere.”
We both heard my phone buzz, a signal that a text was coming in. Lee?
My sister grabbed it and gasped. “Uh-oh.”
I snatched it out of her hands and tapped the screen. But it wasn’t Lee. It was . . .
“Wesley? Who’s Wesley?” I opened the text and found a message that was clearly not meant for me. Hey expresso grl!
“‘Expresso’?” I said with a laugh. “Is this”—I glanced up at the counter, where a boy who was clearly too young for Allison lifted two fingers at us—“that guy?” When my sister nodded, I roared. “‘Expresso’! With an x. Oh my god. He makes them, for god’s sake. Ali, you gave him my number? How could you?”
Allison whipped the phone away and her fingers flew over the screen. “I don’t know. It was the first one that came to mind.”
I shook my head. “You better get rid of him. I do not need some coffee clown who can’t spell sending me texts.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, waving me away. She tapped Send and then sat back in the booth. “So, you getting into my old boho clothes?”
“How did you know I was wearing them?”
“Emma texted me.”
“She doesn’t even have a phone!”
“They’re not exactly you, but . . .” Allison’s fingers absently tapped the screen of my phone and she turned it sideways, an expression of surprise on her face. She paged the screen with her finger—again, and again, and . . .
Oh, shit. My selfies with Lee.
I lunged over the table. “Ali, hey, give it here,” I said, but she held it out of my grasp, twisting away from me. She kept her eyes on the phone the entire time.
“Thanks for last night . . . Middie, what the . . .” She paged through a couple of more pictures and then glanced up at me. “What. The. Fuck. What is this?”
She held the phone with her fingertips like it was made of plutonium.
“I can explain, Ali. Lee—”
“Lee Ryan,” she said with a nod. “That’s who this is.”
“I can explain.”
“You said that already.”
“He’s not a bad guy,” I said, trying not to sound incredibly defensive. “He’s just”—I remembered what Lee said about Lex Luthor—“misunderstood.”
Allison folded her arms. “So the lazy-awkward-stoner thing is not true?”
“He’s actually got a job, and . . . and he doesn’t smoke pot,” I said. Sure, there was the “awkward” part, but . . . “He’s really helped me.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” Allison gazed at me disdainfully, looking down her nose. It reminded me of when we were kids and I wasn’t doing what she wanted.
I wanted to laugh. Lee would have laughed, but I gathered joking would not be well tolerated.
“Nate just died,” my sister said with intentional cruelty. “Do you know what this looks like?”
I thought of telling her how he’d comforted me without coddling me, encouraged me without patronizing me. But the photos told a different story. An incomplete one.
I turned my face from hers. No matter how much I explained myself, how many times I defended my actions, I would just look more guilty.
It would look, even more, like I was betraying Nate.
“It’s not like that,” I told her simply. “It isn’t.”
“It’s called a ‘rebound.’ Whatever you think it is, that’s all it is. For both of you. It’s not real.” My sister rose from the table and slurped down the rest of her coffee. “I gotta hit the road.” She leaned down and gave me a hug before she left, calling over her shoulder as if it was an afterthought, “Drive carefully, okay?”
I gazed down at the screen on my phone. Still no word from Lee.
She’s right, I thought. Allison is right.
I was a terrible person. I had betrayed Nate.
Over something that was really nothing at all. There couldn’t be an “us.” There could be no “Lee and me.” I had to let it go—let him go—and get back to school and my friends and my real life.