The Basement
2:33 AM
Outside in Scotty’s driveway, they stand in a circle, feeling the full weight of the moment. The time has come to say goodbye, but the words haven’t caught up just yet.
A breeze sifts through the branches of the trees that lean close to the house, and a few leaves come twirling down. As she watches them in the glow of the floodlights from the garage, all Clare can think is: Another ending.
Right now, together with her best and oldest friends in the deepest part of a late-summer night, she can think of only one thing harder: a new beginning.
“Three months,” she says quietly, and nobody has to ask what she means, because they’re all thinking the same thing. Already, they’re counting the days until Thanksgiving, when they’ll all be together again.
“That’s not so bad,” Stella says, wiggling her toes. She’s barefoot, and without her heels, she’s actually about the same height as Scotty, who is standing just beside her.
“It’ll fly.”
They look at each other with watery smiles, and then Stella lunges at Clare, throwing her arms around her neck. “It’s been… sublime.”
Clare smiles. “New word?”
“New day.”
“You know,” Clare says, her eyes filling as they hug one more time, “Beatrice St. James has nothing on you.”
Stella laughs into her shoulder. “That’s for sure.”
When they pull apart, they see Aidan and Scotty shaking hands, and then, after a pause, thumping each other on the back, before finally working their way up to a hug.
“Don’t worry, dude,” Scotty says as he steps away. “I’ll be sure to look after your sister.”
This time, it’s Stella who hits him, smacking him squarely across the chest so that his eyes widen in surprise. Aidan only laughs.
“I think you’ve got your hands pretty full already,” he says, nodding at Stella, who gives him a little whack for good measure before diving in for a hug.
“No comments from the peanut gallery,” she says into his shoulder, and he laughs again.
“Fair enough. But just know that the peanut gallery is very happy for you.”
Scotty skips across the driveway in Clare’s direction, a huge grin on his inky face. He doesn’t even pause before lifting her off the ground in a giant bear hug.
“Thank you,” he says in her ear, and when he sets her down again, she leans back to look at him.
“For what?”
“For thinking I’m good enough.”
She gives him a stern look. “How many times do we have to tell you it doesn’t matter where you go—”
“No,” he says. “For Stella.”
“Scotty, come on.” She glances over to where Aidan and Stella are waiting near the car. “Of course you’re good enough for her. There’s no one better.”
He grins. “Even though I punched you in the face?”
“So it was you?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “But let’s just say it was. It can be my parting gift to Aidan. And you. This way, you don’t have to go into freshman year with some crazy story about how your boyfriend gave you a black eye.”
“What was that?” Aidan calls out, and Scotty looks over with a laugh.
“I was just telling her that I can’t wait to give you another shiner at Thanksgiving.”
“You must be joking,” Aidan says, puffing out his chest as he strides over. “After a few months of lacrosse practices, you won’t stand a chance.”
He tucks Scotty under his arm, tousling his mop of hair until it’s scrambled as a bird’s nest. But this time, they’re both laughing, and when Scotty wrenches away, he only pauses for a second before throwing himself back at Aidan for one last hug.
“See you soon, buddy,” he says, and Aidan nods.
“I’ll call you,” Stella tells Clare as she ducks into the car. “Incessantly.”
“You’d better,” Clare says through the open window as they pull out of the driveway, leaving behind the two pale figures in the dark, each lifting an opposite hand to wave goodbye. The others are clasped between them.
As they wind their way out of Scotty’s neighborhood, the headlights cutting across darkened houses and too-bright stop signs, neither of them says anything. In the quiet, Clare swallows a few times, trying her best not to fall apart, because the night isn’t over yet, and she knows there are far worse goodbyes still to come.
Beside her, she can tell Aidan is doing the same. After a few minutes, he reaches for the radio, scrolling through channels until he finds something soft and twangy. The glowing clock on the dashboard says it’s 2:41 AM, and they’re not even bothering to hide the fact that they’re yawning now; they just keep passing it back and forth, one and then the other, until they both start to laugh.
“Should we go back to your place?” Aidan asks, and Clare nods hard enough to wake herself up a little.
As they pull into her driveway a few minutes later, they see a shadow pop up in the living room window. Clare unbuckles her seat belt.
“I’m gonna run in before Bingo starts barking,” she says, already opening the door. She fishes for her keys as she hurries around to the side of the house. As soon as she’s inside, the dog—a floppy-eared, black-and-white tornado of energy—flies at her, thrilled to have some company so long after bedtime.
When Aidan arrives, Bingo goes into overdrive, turning frantic circles at his feet, his tongue lolling out in ecstasy. Clare watches with amusement as Aidan drops to the floor, scratching the dog behind the ears.
In the harsh light of the kitchen, she sees just how terrible his eyes look: two half-moon shadows that will surely turn black and blue before long. His left eye is nearly swollen shut, and below his right eye, the white bandage is now streaked with a thin band of red where the blood is soaking through. She touches a finger lightly to her own temple, conscious of what she must look like as well.
“I think,” Aidan says, laughing as the dog licks his ear, “I might miss Bingo the most.”
Clare gives him a look of exaggerated outrage, but he’s already focused on the dog again, so she wanders over to the kitchen counter, which is tiled with sticky notes covered in her mother’s handwriting: reminders for the morning, last-minute to-do lists, notes for Clare. She pulls one off the counter and holds it up for Aidan, who is now lying on his back on the wooden floor of the kitchen, the dog balanced on his stomach.
“Apparently, there’s a gift for you on the dining room table,” she says, and when he rolls over, Bingo slides right off him into a disgruntled heap.
“For me?” Aidan says, rising to his feet. “That’s so nice.”
“Don’t get too excited,” Clare says, crossing into the dining room, where there’s a flat, rectangular box on the table. She hands it to Aidan. “I have a feeling it’s the same thing they got me.”
He rips apart the paper, which is covered in graduation caps—left over from June, but still vaguely appropriate to the occasion—and opens it to reveal a blue towel with his initials embroidered in white across the bottom.
“Wow,” he says, running a hand across the soft fabric. His face is tipped down, so his expression is hard to read. “This is… so great.”
“You don’t have to use it or anything,” she says, balling up the wrapping paper. “I told my parents it might be weird to parade around the communal bathrooms with your initials on display. But they thought it’d be handy, you know, for when we have roommates and stuff. And they’re obviously big fans of monogramming.”
She sweeps an arm around, indicating the vases, picture frames, tote bags, and various other items all emblazoned with her parents’ initials. The first time he came over, Aidan had stared at all the floating letters in the room, the giant R for Rafferty that hangs above the kitchen sink, the printed dishtowels, even the pens on the counter, and when they were finally alone, he couldn’t help himself.
“Remind me of your last name again…” he’d said, and her cheeks had blazed with heat. But then he’d hooked a finger into the pocket of her jeans, pulling her forward, and kissed her, right there in the kitchen, with her parents in the next room, and she’d forgotten the question entirely.
Now he folds the towel carefully back into the box. “It’s great,” he says again, but there’s something off about his tone, and Clare realizes a moment too late that his own parents must not have given him anything to mark the occasion.
“I’m sorry,” she says, putting a hand on his arm.
“For what?”
Clare shifts from one foot to the other. “Well, your parents…”
“Oh, yeah,” he says, brushing this off. “They definitely didn’t get me anything. Can you imagine my dad buying something like this? Or buying me anything at all?” He shakes his head. “No, I was just thinking about your parents, actually. How good they’ve been to me.”
Clare shrugs. “They’re obsessed with you,” she says, because it’s true. Her parents adore Aidan, who has been around the house constantly over the past couple of years, fixing the cable box, showing them how to save old e-mails, helping her mom slice vegetables before dinner, and taking Bingo for a walk without anyone asking.
“Yeah, but only because you’re obsessed with me,” he says, and before she can even roll her eyes, he corrects himself: “Or were, anyway.”
“For the record, I was never obsessed with you,” she says. “You were obsessed with me.”
“Okay,” he says, holding up his hands. “Let’s just agree that nobody was obsessed with anyone. I only meant that your parents think of me as part of the family, but only because I was your boyfriend. And now I’m not.” He lifts his shoulders. “It sort of feels like I’m breaking up with them, too.”
Clare isn’t sure what to say. It’s just one more thing she hadn’t considered, and as the idea of it settles over her, she realizes again how entwined their lives are. They’re like two trees whose branches have grown together. Even if you pull them out by the trunks, they’re still going to be twisted and tangled and nearly impossible to separate at the roots.
Just last night at dinner, her dad had asked for the millionth time exactly when Aidan was leaving, and her mom had immediately gotten teary-eyed.
“It’s just that it feels like we’re losing two members of the family,” she said, and Clare had reached out to give her hand a little squeeze.
She can tell they’re hoping she and Aidan will stay together, in spite of their own failed attempts to make high school relationships last. But they’d never say it. They’re trying to give her enough space to figure this out on her own.
Still, she can almost feel them, eager as a couple of puppies, anxiously waiting to hear whether they’ll be able to send Aidan cookies at his new address or wear the UCLA lacrosse shirts he got them or e-mail him when the dishwasher inevitably breaks again.
The dog trots into the dining room with a squeaky toy in his mouth. It used to be a duck, but the head has long since been chewed off, and there’s only one wing still dangling by its side.
“And this guy,” Aidan says, bending to give him a pat. “I’m going to miss him like crazy.”
“I’m starting to get a complex,” Clare says. “I think you might actually like Bingo more than me.”
“I like you both,” he says. “But you I can always call.”
“You can call Bingo, too. My mom leaves him messages on our answering machine all the time. Or you can just wait for Thanksgiving.”
Aidan straightens again, fixing her with a solemn look. “So I can still come visit at Thanksgiving?”
“Of course,” Clare says, about to reach out for him, but then she remembers the state of things, and decides instead on a friendly punch to the shoulder, which is far more awkward than the hug would have been. “My parents would be really sad if you didn’t. So would Bingo.”
“And you?”
“And me,” she says. “Obviously.”
He leans against the table, his arms folded. “Yeah, but what if you have a new boyfriend? What if there’s some nerdy kid with glasses and loafers who reads Shakespeare in his spare time sitting in my spot?”
“It would be nice to have someone who could recite Shakespeare before dinner,” she says, tapping her chin thoughtfully, but Aidan is still watching her with a worried expression.
“Seriously,” he says, and Clare falls back against the table beside him, so that they’re shoulder to shoulder.
“Seriously? I guess it’s possible. You could have a new girlfriend by then, too. I don’t know if you realize this, but you’re kind of a catch.”
“Even though you’re throwing me back,” he says with a half smile. “Like a guppy.”
“I’d say you’re more of a clown fish,” Clare says. “And I’m not throwing you back. I’m setting you free.”
Aidan doesn’t seem satisfied with this. “But it could happen,” he insists. “You and Will Shakespeare. Sitting right here at this table. Eating turkey with your parents. Talking about… I don’t know. The plague?”
“I can’t think of a single thing I’d rather discuss over dinner,” she jokes, but Aidan doesn’t smile, and so she shrugs. “Fine. Yeah, I guess it could happen. For you, too. I mean, it’s California. Every girl out there is supposed to be blond and tan and ridiculously cool, right? You’ll probably meet some model-slash-surfer who plays beach volleyball in her spare time.”
Aidan laughs. “Does she skateboard, too?”
“Totally,” Clare says. “And she probably designed the skateboard herself.”
“She seems talented,” he teases. “Sounds like we did pretty well for ourselves.”
Clare shakes her head. “See? This is why I really don’t want to be thinking about this tonight. Because now I’m getting jealous of some girl who doesn’t even exist. Whatever else happens later, tonight is still about us. So I think we should just cross all those other bridges when we come to them.”
“Easy breezy,” Aidan says with a grin, and Clare nods.
“Easy breezy.”
He studies her for a few seconds without saying anything, then hitches up one shoulder in a sort of half shrug. “Okay, then,” he says finally. “What now?”
They head back into the kitchen to grab a couple of cans of pop from the refrigerator, then slip through the foyer, whispering so they don’t wake her parents. At the door to the basement, they make their way downstairs, leaving Bingo—who is afraid of steps—to stand guard at the top.
“I’m gonna miss this place, too,” Aidan says as they emerge into the coolness of the basement, and Clare laughs, though she knows he’s serious. It’s just that it’s not much to look at: orange carpeting they’ve always meant to replace, a maze of pipes across the ceiling, pocked concrete walls, and a random collection of mismatched old furniture.
“It’s like the Island of Misfit Toys,” her dad had said once, surveying the scene after they’d brought down yet another retired armchair. “This is where good furniture goes to die.”
“What movie were you watching?” Clare said. “Nobody died on the Island of Misfit Toys.”
But she knew what he meant. The basement has always been a kind of way station between the rest of the house and the garbage dump for anything deemed too old. Right now, it holds two mattresses, an ancient couch, an embarrassingly outdated armchair, a scarred coffee table, and a mostly broken TV. The walls are bare except for a single painting of Lake Michigan that her father bought at a garage sale and her mother had already relegated to the basement by the time they made it home.
Aidan walks over to the couch, which is an ugly brown-and-beige plaid, and runs a hand fondly across the back of it. “So,” he says with a grin, “any chance we’re gonna be revisiting another first while we’re here?”
Clare’s eyes move from Aidan to the couch, and she feels a wave of nostalgia at the thought of all the nights they’ve spent curled up there together. It’s tempting now to repeat history: to grab his hand and pull him down beside her, to kiss him long enough that the rest of the world disappears, hard enough that she might forget what tomorrow will bring.
But she knows it’s more complicated than that—there are rules now, and the fact that they were the ones who set them doesn’t matter. The whole thing feels fragile enough without bringing the couch into it.
Besides, she knows exactly what first he’s talking about, and she can’t help flushing at the memory, more recent than some of the others. They’d waited more than a year, until they were both sure, until they were both ready. And then one night last winter, when her parents were out of town, it had happened right here on this couch. Ever since then, they always find themselves smiling in the goofiest possible way whenever they walk down here, as if the couch itself were a shared secret, something too big and too good to remain unnoticed for long.
Now, though, it sits between them like an oversize reminder of all that they’re losing.
“We’re broken up,” she points out, dragging her eyes away from it.
“We could postpone it,” he says hopefully. “It seems kind of silly to break up while we’re still in the same place, don’t you think?”
Clare shakes her head. “It’ll just make it worse.”
“I highly doubt that,” he says, walking over to her with a new sense of purpose. He looks at her intently, then starts to lower his head, and for a moment she feels herself falling under the spell of him all over again, this boy with the red hair and bright eyes. Even with all his cuts and bruises, she’s struck by how familiar the terrain of his face is, all the many freckles and lines, and she wonders if she’ll ever know another person by heart like this. But just before his lips touch hers, she snaps back, remembering all over again, and leans away.
“Aidan,” she says in a low voice, and he stands very still for a few beats, his mouth parted. Then he shakes his head and straightens up again.
“Yeah,” he says. “You’re right.”
They blink at each other, neither of them moving.
“It’s just that—”
“I know,” he says. “You don’t have to explain. We broke up. This is part of it. I guess I just didn’t want it to be. At least for a little while.”
“I know,” she says, looking away. She takes a few steps backward, bumping into the Ping-Pong table, which is the only thing actually purchased specifically for this room. She reaches behind her for one of the worn paddles, relieved to have stumbled across a distraction, and holds it up.
“Should we try one last time?”
“Sure,” he says, walking over to the other side of the table. “But this isn’t going to be half as much fun as what I had in mind.”
“It will if we break our record.”
“It’s been forever since we’ve even come close,” he says, picking up the paddle and giving it a twirl. “But I’m game if you are.”
“Oh, I’m game,” she says, serving the ball to him. He lobs it back in her direction, and then she does the same, again and again until the orange ball is nothing but a blur. There are plenty of opportunities for them to wing it hard at each other, but instead, they do their best to continue the rally, both of them counting silently as the ball flies back and forth, back and forth, until Aidan finally sends it spinning into the net.
“Sixty-two,” Clare announces. “Not even close.”
“Pitiful,” he agrees. “We can do better.”
They volley for a while longer, and this time the long chain is broken when Clare accidentally slices a shot hard to the left, the ball hitting the very edge of the table before it sails past Aidan and rolls under the couch.
“Jeez,” he says as he flattens himself on the carpet, reaching for the ball. “You’re kind of intimidating with that shiner.”
Clare spins her paddle a few times and makes a menacing face. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says, returning with the dusty ball. “Quite the bruiser.”
“You too,” she says. “Double bruiser.”
They begin again, and this time they make it to ninety-eight before Clare misses.
“Not bad,” she says as she retrieves the ball. “Have you been practicing without me?”
“No,” he says stiffly.
She frowns at him. “I’m only kidding. It’s fine if you were.”
Aidan has a Ping-Pong table in his own basement, but the only time Clare was ever down there, she noticed that it was completely covered with piles of laundry and oversize boxes of paper towels.
“We haven’t used ours since I was little,” he says, swinging the paddle absently. “I tried to get Riley to play a couple months ago, but it’s not really her thing.”
“Do you ever…”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“No,” he says. “Do I ever what?”
“Play with your dad?”
He snorts. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Of course not,” he says, rubbing at an invisible spot on the table with this thumb. “That would be considered fun. And my dad doesn’t do fun. My dad only does what he wants to do.…” His voice breaks, and he lifts his eyes to meet Clare’s. “I bet he won’t even see me off tomorrow.”
“Of course he will,” she says, troubled at the thought. “They’re driving you to the airport, right? That’s all part of the whole college deal. The dramatic goodbye, the bear hugs, looking back to see them waiting while you get in line at security…”
“I think you’re describing a different movie than mine,” he says with a pained smile. “At this point, I’ll be lucky if he even says goodbye before my mom and I head out.”
“You had a fight. That’s all. He’ll be over it by tomorrow,” she says, trying to sound more certain than she feels, then adds, “It’s too big a deal not to be.”
“Maybe,” Aidan says, but he doesn’t sound convinced. He juts his chin in Clare’s direction, and she realizes she’s still clutching the tiny orange ball. “Let’s play.”
It takes a while for them to get a good rhythm going again; each time they get past twenty or so, one of them whiffs.
“We can always stop, you know,” Clare says, but Aidan’s face is set with determination, and instead of answering, he just widens his stance and holds up his paddle, so she serves it to him yet again.
Over and over, they try and fail. The ball glances off the corner of the table, or Clare misjudges the distance and misses entirely, or Aidan spikes it into the net with more force than seems strictly necessary.
They’re both tired. Clare’s limbs feel heavy, and she can see that Aidan is fighting back yawns between rallies. With each new attempt, they seem to fall apart quicker. But every time she moves to end the game, Aidan just frowns and motions for her to continue.
“We can do this,” he says. “We’ve done it before.”
“That was a million years ago,” she points out. Soon after they started dating, they’d wandered down here and picked up the paddles, half-jokingly. But after a few practice swings, they realized they were both pretty good, and they managed to keep it going for 188 consecutive volleys, whooping and cheering after the ball finally sailed away. Right now, though, that feels like a very long time ago. “We’re nowhere close. We might set the record for number of attempts at the record, but that’s about it.”
Aidan only shakes his head. “Let’s go,” he says, so they try again.
After a while, in the middle of a rally, Clare feels a wave of exhaustion wash over her, and without thinking about it, she simply snatches the ball out of the air when it comes spinning in her direction.
“I can’t,” she says, when she sees Aidan’s crestfallen expression. “I’m too tired.”
“But we were so close,” he says, though they both know that’s not true. “We can do it. We have to.”
Clare leans forward on the table and fixes him with an even look. “I’m going to tell you the same thing you told me earlier,” she says. “This is not a metaphor.”
His face doesn’t change, so she tries again.
“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a stupid challenge.”
“Yeah, but”—he tosses his paddle onto the table in frustration—“if we beat the record…”
“What?” she asks impatiently.
He lowers his eyes. “Then the whole night won’t just be about us breaking up.”
“Aidan,” she says, softening a bit. “It won’t be. Look how much we’ve done tonight. If anything, it’ll be the night we picked Scotty up from jail. Or the night he gave himself about a thousand tattoos.”
Aidan smiles, but there’s something somber about it. “The rest of it doesn’t matter,” he says. “Trust me. When we look back on tonight, all we’re gonna remember is that we broke up.”
“And you think Ping-Pong will help?”
“Maybe,” he says, and he looks so earnest right now, so sincere, that it’s all she can do to stay on her side of the table. “It could have been the night we set the Ping-Pong record instead.”
She laughs. “You’re crazy if you think that would outrank our breakup. You think I’d look back one day and remember this”—she holds up the ball—“instead of losing you?”
He moves around the table, taking a few slow steps in her direction. “It was worth a try,” he says, closing the space between them. When they’re only a few inches apart, she tips her head back to look at him. “And you’re not losing me. I’m losing you.”
“Either way,” she manages to say around the knot that’s formed in her throat.
He reaches out and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then lets his hand linger on her neck, and the feel of his skin on hers sends a shot of electricity through her. She can see the couch out of the corner of her eye, and her face prickles with a sudden warmth.
This is the thing about Aidan. This has always been the thing about him. He makes her forget all her reasons and rules and plans.
He makes her forget about everything but him.
“It’d have to be something a lot bigger,” she says, and he widens his eyes in exaggerated astonishment.
“Bigger than hitting a Ping-Pong ball a hundred and eighty-nine times in a row?”
She nods.
“What could be bigger than that?” he says, but even as he does, Clare sees it happen: his gaze falling on the only painting to brighten the concrete walls, a sweeping watercolor of Lake Michigan in the winter, icy and hardened and dusted with snow. When his eyes flick back to her, she’s already shaking her head.
“No.”
He grins. “Yes.”
“No way,” she says more firmly, but it doesn’t matter: He’s already pacing back and forth in excitement.
“It’s perfect,” he says, turning away. “No, it’s epic. Nobody’s ever done it. And there’s no way it wouldn’t be memorable.” He pauses in front of the couch, turning to her with a triumphant look. “It’s just big enough.”
“It’s too big,” she says flatly. “And too stupid.”
“Sorry,” he says, clapping his hands. “It’s a done deal. This is happening.”
“You seriously want to jump into Lake Michigan right now? Think about how cold it will be. And aren’t you tired?”
“Nope,” he says with a laugh. “I’m wide awake.”
Clare’s eyes wander over to the couch again, and then back to Aidan. He’s all lit up by his idea, smiling so hard that the bandage beneath his eye is losing its grip. Something about the sight of him—so eager to make the best of this night—makes her heart swell, and she sets down her Ping-Pong paddle.
“Well,” she says. “Don’t I at least get to suggest something, too?”
He gives her a skeptical look. “There’s no way you have a better idea.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Better than saving Rusty?” he asks, clearly tickled at the prospect. “Not possible.”
“You don’t even want to hear it?”
He shakes his head. “Nope,” he says. “There’s literally nothing in the world that I want to do more than save that stupid robot right now.”
“Okay,” Clare says, walking over to the couch, next to where Aidan has stopped his pacing just beside the coffee table. “I’m in.”
“Great,” he says with an officious nod. “Then we should probably get going.”
But just before he can walk away, she reaches out and grabs his hand. He spins around again, the smile slipping from his face, replaced by a look of confusion.
“I’m in,” she repeats, feeling uncharacteristically bold. “But I still think we should try mine first.”
It takes a moment for this to register—the way she’s looking at him, the way her hand is clasped in his—and when it does, his expression changes to one of surprise.
“Oh,” he says, his mouth caught in the shape of the word. His eyebrows shoot up high on his forehead, loosening the bandage further. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” she says, tugging him a little closer. “What do you think?”
A few seconds pass as they study each other, and then his face cracks open again, his smile broadening, and he dives onto the couch without letting go of her hand, pulling her down with him, so that they end up tangled there together.
“I think,” he says, as they rearrange themselves, his face very close to hers, his breath warm and sweet, “that it sounds like a very good plan.”
She reaches up and runs her fingers over the bandage beneath his right eye, pressing it gently back into place. “Good.”
“Though still not as good as mine.”
“Shut up,” she says, but even as she does, his lips are meeting hers, and they’re both fighting back smiles, because for once, he already has.