But she can feel Aidan’s eyes on her, and something about his gaze stops her from saying so. “Well,” she says, “we’re almost out of time, and we’re definitely out of stops, so…”
“Good,” Aidan says, turning the key in the ignition. “Because I thought of one more.”
She doesn’t ask where they’re going. Instead, she rests her head against the cool of the window and tries not to let the motion of the car put her to sleep. Aidan drives slowly, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel to some unknowable tune. Ahead of them, the grayish sky is streaked with pink now, the bright ball of sun just starting to burn through the trees as they head east toward the water.
“We’re not going down to the lake again, are we?” she asks, and Aidan gives her a cryptic look.
“You’ll see.”
But when they reach the entrance to the beach, he turns left instead, and they weave through the quiet neighborhood that sits along the edge of the water. The houses are still mostly dark but for the occasional light in an upstairs window, and Clare realizes that the people inside are preparing themselves to start a brand-new day, while she and Aidan are still finishing out the last one, which somehow manages to feel like both the world’s longest and shortest day all at the same time.
Clare sits up and tucks her hands into the pocket of her hoodie. “I sort of thought you might be going back to check on Rusty.”
“Nah, he’s fine. In fact, I’m sure he’s downright buoyant this morning.”
She rolls her eyes. “We forgot to get a souvenir.”
“There wasn’t much to grab except bolts and screws,” Aidan says, braking to let a squirrel pass on the empty road ahead of them. “And I think that might have been getting into felony territory.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter, anyway. We forgot a bunch of other places, too.”
He nods. “The fountain. And Scotty’s house.”
“And yours. And jail…”
“Oh, I got some pictures of Scotty. I can’t imagine a better souvenir than that. We should have swiped something from Andy Kimball’s house, though. And the bowling alley.”
“Next time I’m there, I’ll be sure to steal a napkin or something.”
“A napkin? Who steals a napkin from a bowling alley? Where’s the challenge in that?”
“It was never supposed to be a challenge,” she tells him. “Just a memento.”
“Yeah, but if you’re gonna do it, you’ve gotta do it right,” he says as he comes to a stop at an intersection. “Smuggling a bowling ball out of there would’ve been amazing.”
“I’m not sure it would make much sense to lug a bowling ball all the way to New Hampshire. But I take your point.”
“Sometimes the hardest things—”
“—are the ones most worth doing,” she finishes, and he looks over at her with a smile, then flicks the button for the radio, which is still tuned to the same bluegrass station from earlier. A song—slow and warbling—fills the car, and Clare lowers her window to let her arm dangle outside, feeling the heat of the still-rising sun, and the wind rushing in, warm and sweet and new.
When she realizes they’re just a few blocks away from the high school, she glances over at Aidan, the question left unspoken, but he shakes his head anyway.
“Nope.”
In town, they pass the fountain in the village square, where a few birds are taking a morning bath, then Slices, which is shuttered and empty at this time of day. It feels like they’re reliving the night all over again, and she wonders if that’s the point of this, or whether the town is just so small that they can’t help passing everything more than once on any given drive.
When they catch a light at the corner near the gas station, Clare remembers the stash of candy still in the back of the car. She grabs a roll of Smarties and offers one to Aidan, who is already holding out a flattened palm.
Finally, as they loop back toward the other end of the main street, she gives up.
“We’re going in circles,” she informs him, and Aidan nods.
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t get it.”
“This is it,” he says, glancing over at her. “This is the last stop.”
“What? The car?”
“Think about it. We’ve probably spent more time together here than anywhere else in the world. How many nights have we just driven around for hours ’cause there’s nothing else to do?”
She knows it’s true. For all the memories of these past two years, this is how she’ll probably think of him most often: his hand slung loosely over the wheel, a lazy smile on his face, the music filling the air around them.
“You’re right,” she says, letting her eyes flutter shut for a moment.
He reaches out and pokes her. “Don’t fall asleep on me now. We’ve made it this far.”
Her eyes flash open again. “But no farther,” she says, the words slipping out before she has a chance to think better of them.
Aidan looks at her sideways, a question behind his eyes.
“It’s just… I heard what you said to your dad.”
“About what?”
“About us. He asked if we were staying together, and you said no. Remember?”
Aidan frowns. “Is this a trick question?”
“No.”
“Well… I thought we decided that hours ago. You decided it.”
“I know,” she says, shifting to face him. “We did. But it was the way you said it. Like it was nothing. Like we were nothing.”
He readjusts his grip on the wheel. “Look, I’m sorry if I did something wrong, but I thought we were both on the same page here. I thought we’d decided—”
“But that was before,” she says in a small voice.
“Before what?”
“Before I said it.”
“Said—” he begins, then stops short. “Oh.”
Clare stares at her knees. There’s a patch over one of them, and she almost laughs, because Aidan is the only person she knows who would mend a pair of sweatpants. He hates to give up on anything.
“I’m sorry,” she says, when she can’t stand the silence any longer. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected that it would change anything. I’m not even sure I want it to, but hearing you say it to your dad like that… I don’t know. Something about it seemed so simple. You made it sound almost easy.”
“Clare,” he says, easing the car onto the side of the road in front of a house that looks like all the others, with flowerpots and a basketball hoop and a wooden mailbox. “There’s nothing easy about this. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And the worst part is… it’s just the beginning. This is going to be hard every single minute of every single day for a really long time.”
This time, she doesn’t stop herself. She reaches over and lays a hand on top of his. His face is clouded over, but his eyes, when he looks up at her, are very clear. She wants to say: It doesn’t have to be this hard. She wants to say: It’s not too late to change our minds. But instead, she just says: “I know.”
“We decided this for a reason. All that stuff you were saying before. About how we should be jumping into our new lives with both feet…”
“That makes it sound like hopscotch,” she says, pulling her hand back.
“Okay, well, maybe it was something about diving in. Or was that my thing? I don’t remember exactly. The point is that you had a whole list of reasons. Remember?”
Clare nods miserably.
“And you know this obviously wasn’t what I wanted—or at least it isn’t what I thought I wanted. But now? I don’t know. I actually think you might be right.”
As she listens to him, it starts to feel like there’s something heavy on her chest. She takes a few shallow breaths. “I’m not always right, you know.”
He laughs. “Yes, you are.”
“But what if I’m wrong about this? What if the hardest thing isn’t breaking up? What
if it’s staying together—making this work in spite of the distance, in spite of everything—and that’s what we’re supposed to be doing?”
“Clare—”
“No, seriously. What if I’m being a complete idiot and just playing it safe like I always do?” She’s aware of the slightly hysterical tinge to her voice, but she’s powerless to stop it. “What if I’m really just ruining everything?”
He gives her a steady look, his eyes full of a warmth that makes this all so much worse. “But what if you’re not?” he asks quietly. “I think maybe it’s true, what you said before—that we can either end things on our own terms now or let it fizzle out. And I sort of feel like I have this responsibility to—I don’t know—not let you get caught up in the moment and decide the wrong thing.”
She feels suddenly weary. Out the window, the sun is tinting the street a shade of orange so bright it doesn’t seem real, a wash of color so brilliant it almost hurts.
“Look,” he says, ducking his head and rubbing at the back of his neck. “You’re my best friend. And my family. You’re my whole life, really.”
“Aidan—”
“So this thing between us? It’s way too important to let it just fall apart. I don’t want to break up in a few days or weeks or months for some really dumb reason. We’re not that couple. If we’re gonna break up, it can’t be because of the guy always hanging around your dorm room or because I’m sitting by my phone and you’re never calling, or because I’m too busy with lacrosse to text you back, and it starts driving you nuts. If we’re gonna break up, it has to be for a good reason.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t think of a single good reason to break up with you right now.”
“That’s because you’re not thinking big enough,” he says. “It’s gotta be something huge, something grand.”
“Like world peace?”
“If world peace were a possible side effect of you breaking up with me, then yes, sure, that would definitely count as a noble reason.”
“Maybe,” she says after a moment, “it’s just that we love each other too much.”
He looks at her thoughtfully. “I like that.”
“But it’s still a bullshit reason.”
“It’s actually the opposite of bullshit. We love each other too much to get dragged down by any bullshit. We’re above bullshit. What’s the scientific term for that? Not sub, but…”
“Super,” she says. “It’s super bullshit.”
“Super Bullshit: worst superhero ever,” he says with a laugh, but Clare only stares at the patch on her knee with a sinking heart.
“So that’s it, then?” she asks, and he nods.
“That’s our reason: We dove each other way too much.”
She rolls her eyes. “That was only cute once.”
He grins. “So was the whole I dove you thing in the first place.”
“Fair enough,” she says. “But I do.”
“Dove me?”
“Love you,” she says, waiting for him to smile again. But he doesn’t. Instead, he looks at her for a long time, his eyes taking her in as if trying to memorize her. Then, finally, he nods.
“Seems like a worthy reason to me.”
The End
6:24 AM
Aidan is still sitting exactly where Clare left him: in one of the huge wooden rocking chairs on the front porch. When she steps outside, Bingo shoves past her through the open door, charging over to greet him with a dramatic display of wiggling and whining before launching himself up into his lap.
Aidan wrestles the dog into a hug, then glances up at Clare.
“Were they mad?” he asks, looking a little worried. He’s grown accustomed to disappointing his own father, but Clare’s parents hold him in such high esteem that he’s made it his mission to prove that they’re right about him.
“About what?” she asks, sitting down in the other chair. From inside the house, she can still hear the muffled voices of her parents calling back and forth to each other as they make last-minute preparations for the drive, gathering snacks and road maps and water bottles. The trip will take four days: two heading east with all three of them, and then another two returning west after having dropped her off in New Hampshire.
“Well,” Aidan says, scratching Bingo behind the ears, “the black eye, for one.”
Clare shrugs. “I told them I joined a fight club.”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously? I just told them the truth.”
He shakes his head. “I always forget that’s an option.”
“They weren’t thrilled, obviously, but there’s not much to do about it now. My mom’s running around trying to find some makeup to pack, so I don’t look quite so intimidating when I show up to meet Beatrice St. James.”
“And they didn’t care that you were out all night?”
“Nah,” she says, pushing back so that her chair beats a low, thumping rhythm on the hollow slats of the porch. It’s fully light now, but the sun is hidden behind the clouds, which are low and heavy, a scrim of gray across the horizon. “They told me that, starting tomorrow, I’ll be free to stay out all night every night without them knowing, so it’s just as well I got a head start.”
Aidan laughs. “I had that exact same argument all ready for my parents. I guess yours are a step ahead of even me.”
Above them, a bird lands on the roof, making little scratching noises as it hops across the shingles, and Bingo goes stiff at the sound, letting out a single warning bark before burying himself in the crook of Aidan’s elbow again. The rain has returned, or is about to; the air is heavy with the scent of it, and in the distance, there’s a long rumble of thunder. It almost feels to Clare like the world is holding its breath.
“Remember that time we watched the storm out here?” she asks, and Aidan’s hand goes still over the dog’s soft coat, his eyes creasing at the corners as he calls up the memory.
“That lightning was crazy,” he says. “It lit up the entire block.”
“And the whole house was shaking from the thunder.”
“And you wanted to go inside.…”
“No, I didn’t,” she says, but when he arches an eyebrow, she gives in. “Okay, maybe. But only because we were getting soaked.” She leans her head back against the wooden chair and stares up at the eaves of the porch. “I’m really gonna miss this.”
“The rain?” Aidan says. “I’m pretty sure they’ll have some at Dartmouth.”
“Not the rain,” she says, sitting up again. “All the rest of it. Of this.”
“I know,” he says. “Me too.”
“I’ve been thinking…” she says, curling her fingers around the arms of the chair, trying to work up the resolve to say what needs to be said. “I wonder if this would all be easier if we didn’t talk for a little while.”
She braves a glance in Aidan’s direction in time to see his eyes flash with surprise. “Really? That’s what you want?”
“I wouldn’t say I want it,” Clare says. “But this is gonna be hard enough as it is. And if we’re really trying to move on, which we probably should, then maybe there’s something to be said for all or nothing.”
She glances down to where she’s been chipping at a cracked piece of paint on the chair without even realizing it, picking it clean off like a scab. When she looks up again, Aidan is watching her, and she has to steel herself before continuing, her voice cracking a little on the words. “I mean… how am I ever supposed to stop missing you if you’re only a phone call away?”
He nods, absently patting the dog, who is nearly asleep on his lap now. “I guess that makes sense,” he says with a frown. “But it just seems so… final.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be forever—”
“I hope not,” he interrupts her, looking stricken.
“—but maybe just for a little while. Until we get used to this.”
He lets out a humorless laugh. “I feel like you just took away my security blanket or someth
ing. This whole thing was a lot easier to get my head around when I thought I could still call you tonight.”
“Yeah, but see? That’s the problem. We’ll never move on if we’re still talking all the time.”
He rubs at his forehead. “I know. You’re right. But still.”
“It won’t be so bad,” she says, though she feels nervous even at the thought of it. “We’ll just have to quit each other cold turkey.”
“Is that code for ‘until Thanksgiving’?” he asks with a weak smile.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe. It actually kind of makes sense, since it’ll be the next time we see each other in person. And it’ll give us enough time to really try at school, you know? To make a real effort to live our own lives without depending on each other all the time.”
“Yeah,” Aidan says, “but it’s about a million years away.”
Clare smiles. “It’s three months.”
“That’s a long time.”
“It’ll go fast,” she promises, but he only shakes his head.
“Not fast enough.”
Beyond the edges of the porch, the rain arrives all at once, sweeping over the house in a fine mist that sends Bingo scrambling off Aidan’s lap and over to the door, where he scratches insistently. Clare is about to get up and let him in when her mother appears, and the dog goes flying inside without a backward glance.
“Ten-minute warning, you two,” she says, poking her head out and giving Aidan a little wave. She glances over at Clare, who is still wearing his oversize sweats. “Uh, were you gonna change… ?”
“I’m okay,” she says. “We’ll be in soon.”
Once they’re alone again, Clare can still feel Aidan watching her, but now his mouth is twisted up in an effort not to laugh.
“What?” she asks, tucking her feet up beneath her.
“Nothing. It’s just a good look for you. And the perfume is nice, too.”
“Perfume?”
“We stink,” he says with a grin. “Like fish.”
Clare rolls her eyes. “My parents won’t care. And we’re staying in a hotel tonight, so it’s just for the car ride.” She tugs on the drawstrings of the hoodie. “But just for that, you’re not getting this back.”