UNTITLED, IN A GOOD WAY

This morning I was up again at sunrise. I recited my speech in a long, hot shower. It’s a beautiful spring day, practically summer. Mom and I had picked out a dress from one of the boutique sale racks earlier this week, simple white with thick lace, and Mom took in the waist and let out the shoulders so it fits just right. She also bought some stuff to make my curls less frizzy, which I worked through my wet tangles, and I even brushed on some of her mascara.

Soon Grandma and Grandpa (just the ones from Dad’s side—Nana can’t make the trip from Canada) will meet us for lunch before the ceremony. Stuart asked if he could take me out before all the craziness and family stuff began, and Mom said yes, since today was a special occasion.

We went to the 4 Aces Diner in Lebanon and sat in a booth. Because I was so nervous and my stomach couldn’t take solid food, and hell, because today was the first day of the rest of my life, I ordered an Oreo milk shake for breakfast. Stuart burst out laughing and ordered one for himself, too.

“You look adorable,” he said as we sucked on our straws.

“I feel like I’m going to start puking into this glass in two seconds.”

“Good puke or bad puke?”

“Both.”

“You probably wouldn’t be the first person to lose it over a milk shake here. They are so good.”

“I can barely taste it.”

Stuart dug in with a spoon. “That’s a tragedy.”

“We’ll have to come back here after this whole thing’s over,” I said.

“Two milk shakes in one day? Living fast and loose.”

I laughed. “No, I mean later this summer.”

Then we were both quiet for a minute. Even though we talked about our futures constantly—Stuart finishing his collection of short stories, me going to NYU—we never really talked about what our future looked like, or whether there was even an our future in the first place. I had moved so fast to make things clear between us, I didn’t really think about why.

Maybe it had a lot to do with the fact that I thought it was almost too good to be true. That I wanted to get as much out of him as I could before he moved back into a world where there were thousands of girls just as smart as me and just as encouraging and ten times more pretty, and there he would move on.

I wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

“Stuart…” I began.

“Yeah?” he asked, still digging into the glass with his spoon.

“Look at me,” I said.

Looking puzzled, he stopped and took my hand across the table. I loved when he did that. I always had the urge to look around to see if anyone was looking at us when we held hands, a sort of silly, vain little thought that they might look at us and think, Aw. That couple is in love.

But my words caught in my throat. Maybe now wasn’t the time to have this conversation, on the brink of one of the biggest moments of my life thus far. And anyway, we had never said “love.” I’ve said it here, but I realize I have a very small understanding. A very true understanding, but a pretty small one.

I took a breath and said, “I should have gotten peanut butter cup.”

“Ha!” he said, shaking his head, and resumed eating. “Oh! You know what?”

“What?”

“This just reminded me—there’s this ice cream parlor in Brooklyn, I can’t remember what it’s called, but they have the best milk shakes. Like maybe even better than here. I’ll have to take you there.”

I swallowed another gulp. “Take me there?” My heart started beating hard. Even harder than it already was, which was very hard.

“Yeah, this fall,” he said, and gradually, my pulse slowed. Relief melted from the top of my head to my toes. This fall. As in, we would be together then. Together enough to go to an ice cream parlor. Suddenly, I got very hungry.

“Thatta girl,” he said, watching me dig in with my own spoon.

I swallowed a mouthful of milk shake, and didn’t try to hide my smile.

“What?” he asked, smiling with me.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just happy.”