Serena and I walked arm in arm toward the arts building. My insides quaked, torn between not wanting to see myself in those photos and wanting to support my best friend.
“You are way too dressed up for this,” Serena said as she eyed my heeled booties, skinny jeans, and plum-colored cashmere V-neck. “As my date, I feel as though I have to tell you this.”
I cleared my throat. “I am not.” I ran my hand against my sweater. “This is a special occasion, and I think one should dress accordingly … and I’m only your date because Michael is taking a final.”
“But you’re still my date.” Serena laughed. “And I should be the one dressing accordingly, but you’re just a spectator.”
“I am not just a spectator,” I said, pulling her to a stop. “I’m featured in these photographs and I want my best self represented.”
“You want your best self represented even when you’re not featured,” she laughed, pulling me toward the building.
“I like dressing up,” I said.
“I know. You’d get all dressed up to do something like go to Pizza Hut for dinner or play checkers in a park.”
I smiled at my roommate despite my annoyance. She knew me too well. My idea of a perfect date included being impeccably dressed and doing something totally normal. I’d even made her get dressed up to go out to the movies a couple times.
“Like the time I desperately wanted to go to Trader Joe’s for the squishy penguin gummies and you wouldn’t go with me unless I wore that gray boatneck sweater and pink chiffon skirt?”
“First of all, it wasn’t pink, it was champagne … and it wasn’t gray, it was smoke; and secondly, it was gorgeous and you looked amazing, so whatever,” I said, flicking my wrist at her commentary.
* * *
The gallery was packed, and between the photographs and the buzz of low conversation, all my attention was occupied as I moved slowly from one photo to the next. It was impossible to deny what Serena had captured, falling in love. A feeling so many have tried to explain through words and art and dance, but for me never quite hit the mark. But these photos hit the mark. It was all over my face in every picture. My body language. My hands. My eyes. Everything aglow with new love.
New love.
I stopped at a photo I had seen earlier in the week, the one with my dress pooled in my lap, pins in my mouth. That was who I was. The Edie who had dreams, ideas, goals yet achieved. I’d snipped away a piece of that Edie to make room for Hudson. Carefully trimming my edges and serging him in without even realizing it.
I let my head fall forward, closing my eyes. It was all too much. The movement. The whispered conversations. The heating system blowing. The glass doors whooshing every time someone entered the gallery.
“Edie.”
I turned to see Cody. “I called your name like three times,” he said.
“Oh, hey,” I said, looking at my feet. He probably had, but there was too much going on in the gallery for me to focus. “Sorry.” I waved my hand around. “You know.”
He nodded, rocking back on his heels. He snapped his fingers, clapping his hand against his fist. “So,” he said, motioning to a portrait of me, my face illuminated by my cell phone, a slow smile on my face.
I released a sharp breath. “Yeah.” I looked at the portrait. It was the riddle text conversation. The wet umbrella pun. I turned back to Cody with a shrug.
He shook his head, turning to look at the picture behind us. The one of Hudson and me nose to nose in the theater. “I just—”
“Cody,” I started.
“No.” He put up his hand. “Edie, I just feel like things could have been different between us.”
I breathed unevenly, my shoulder slumping forward. I shook my head. “Maybe.”
“Yeah…,” he said, crossing his arms. “So, did you, uh, do the same thing to this poor kid?” He rubbed the back of his neck before returning his arm to the crossed position.
I blinked. “No,” I lied. “It wasn’t like that.”
He nodded, his eyes wandering to the other photos of me. “So, you and he were never a thing?”
“We weren’t supposed to be,” I said, trying to convince myself.
“But you and I, we were a thing,” he said, his eyes meeting mine.
I nodded. Cody and I had been a thing. I’d never put a title on it. In fact, I’d gone out of my way to not put a title on it. We didn’t go on dates, we hung out. We weren’t seeing each other. We weren’t friends with benefits. He was exactly what I wanted him to be … an arm’s length away, but within reach.
He pressed his lips together “Well, thanks for finally admitting to that,” he said.
I let my head fall back, focusing on the ceiling fans above, cycling out of sync.
“It’s just that it would have been easier if you actually broke up with me, you know?” he said. When I looked at him, his eyes were down.
“Instead of just an ‘It’s over’ text. If you’d had the balls to tell me the truth.” His voice was barely a whisper.
“I should never have done that,” I said, guilt filling my stomach. There I was, surrounded by pictures of me and Hudson, talking to Cody about how our non-relationship relationship crapped out before it could even begin. “I’m sorry.”
Cody laughed, forced and harsh. “You’re sorry?”
I winced.
“You break up with me, for all intents and purposes, and then ghost me for weeks.” He put his hands on his hips. “Dead air for days, like I never even existed to you, and then when you do reach out it’s nonsense.”
It was all true, but it was for a reason.
“Listen, all I want to say is that if I were this guy”—he motioned toward a picture of me and Hudson—“I wouldn’t let you go. I’d fight to the death for you. I’d fight until you were on the plane, taking off into the air.”
I took a step back.
“Hey, you two,” Serena said, resting her arms on my shoulders. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Cody said. “We’re good. I was actually just about to leave.” He motioned over his shoulder with his thumb.
I forced a smile, wrapping my arms around my middle.
“Well, thanks for coming,” Serena said, gracious as always. “I hope you, uh—liked it…?”
Cody shoved his hands into his pockets. “You did a great job, Serena. Congrats.” He smiled at her before turning away.
The moment Cody was out of sight Serena turned to me. “What was that?” she asked through a forced smile.
“How much did you hear?” I asked, running my hand through my hair.
“It wasn’t so much what I heard, it was more like what I saw. Your body language and his.”
I huffed, dropping my folded arms. “Well, whatever it was that you saw, I deserved.”
“How do you figure?” Serena asked. “Just like you don’t owe Hudson anything, you don’t owe Cody anything, either. At least with Cody you were more upfront from the beginning.… He just thought he’d change your mind.”
“He sure did,” I said, rolling my eyes at the memory of him asking me not to go to Paris and to spend the summer with him at his family’s place in Martha’s Vineyard.
“Listen, as much as I don’t want to see you hurting, you have a right to make your own choices. If Paris is the priority, which we all know it is, then that’s it. I respect that … but it doesn’t have to be black and white.”
“That’s basically what Hudson said.”
She gestured with her hands. “See?”
“That doesn’t mean he’s right … or that you are.”
She turned to me, her hands on her hips. “You can live without Wesley Hudson. I have no doubt about that. But you don’t have to. You don’t have to let it end like this. It matters how this ends, Edie. It matters because there will be life after French 102 and Paris in the fall. Give yourself a break, okay? Get out of the right now and think about the after for a second.”