“Well, you did hurt me,” she says. Then she shakes her head and sighs, leaning her head back against the brick wall of the school. She slides herself down until she collapses into a heap on the ground.
After a second, I sit down next to her. My clothes are already ruined from the cafeteria floor, so there’s no way a little pavement is going to hurt me.
Ava reaches into her bag, pulls out a cigarette, and lights it. I look at her incredulously.
“You smoke now?”
She takes a long, slow drag, blows out the smoke and says, “Yeah.” I must look shocked, because she says, “You’re not the only one who kept secrets this summer. Lulu got me into it.” Wow. I guess Lulu isn’t as crunchy as I thought.
We sit there, not saying anything for a few minutes and then Ava says, “It’s not like I didn’t know something was going on, you know.”
“You did?”
“Yeah,” she says, taking another drag on her cigarette. “You guys with your Boost, and your music, and your dumb private jokes. Plus I could tell by the way he was talking about you all summer.”
“He was talking about me all summer?”
“Yeah.” She taps ashes onto the ground and then turns to look at me, her eyes sad. “And you guys were spending all that time together.” She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds.
“Ava,” I say slowly. “What was up with those guys in the supermarket?”
“What guys?” But I can tell by the look that passes across her face that she knows exactly what I’m talking about.
“The guys you didn’t want to introduce me to.”
She opens her mouth like maybe she’s going to lie, and then thinks better of it. “The tall one? Alex? We hung out a lot over the summer. Nothing happened,” she says. “But we . . . talked a lot.”
I don’t say anything, because in a way, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if she hung out with some guy named Alex, or a bunch of guys, or no guys. It doesn’t matter if she cheated on Noah, or if she didn’t, or if she thought about it.
All that matters is what I did to her. What Ava did doesn’t change the fact that I really, really betrayed her.
“It doesn’t make what I did okay,” I say.
“I know that,” she says. She leans her head back against the wall and stares up at the sky. “Jesus, Hannah, why couldn’t you have waited?”
“Waited for what?”
“Until I got home, until we broke up.”
“What do you mean?”
“It wasn’t working, it . . . it just wasn’t.” She closes her eyes, and a tear slides down her face. “It’s not even that I’m that broken-hearted about him, you know? It’s just that it sucks it’s over.”
“Yeah,” I say. I wonder why she’s being so honest now, why she didn’t think she could tell me about Riker when everything was great between us, and why now she feels comfortable telling me about her and Noah. But maybe it’s because now it’s wrecked, our relationship is smashed, and we don’t have to pretend anymore.
We sit there for a while, not saying anything while Ava smokes her cigarette, and a breeze floats through the trees across the parking lot. Then, finally, without a word, Ava stands up and starts walking back toward the school.
“Avs!” I call after her.
She stops for a second and then turns around. “What?” she says, and she looks small and alone, the breeze now ruffling her hair and her dress.
My voice catches in my throat, and I almost can’t speak. “What’s going to happen to us?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. She looks at me for a long moment, then turns around and goes back into school. And once she’s out of sight, I sit there for a few more moments, then take a deep breath and follow her.
I decide I’m skipping the office, mostly because there’s no way I’m going back to ceramics, and also because I’m just completely and totally sick of this place. If I get in trouble, I get in trouble. I can deal with it tomorrow. But first I head back to my locker to drop off my stuff and get the books I need for my homework.
And when I get there, Sebastian’s waiting for me.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say.
“You want a piece of gum?” he asks, holding out a pack.
“No thanks,” I say. I open my locker door slowly, then exchange the books I’m holding for the ones I need to take home with me.
“You getting out of here?”
“Yeah.”
He nods, even though until today I’ve hardly ever skipped a class in my entire life. “Me too,” he says. “You want me to go with you?”
I hesitate, thinking about how easy it would be to slip back into things with him, to get back together, to maybe forgive him. Sometimes it happens, I think to myself, looking at his deep blue eyes and remembering how his stubble used to leave my face all scratchy after a long make-out session. But I really can’t ever be with Sebastian again. Honestly, I’m not sure if we ever should have been together in the first place, or if I just liked the excitement and the idea of having someone.
Besides, my feelings for Noah are too strong, and there’s nothing I can really do to change that.
“It’s not a good idea,” I tell him, then slam my locker door shut. “But maybe we can be friends.”
“Friends?” He looks confused, then shrugs. “I guess.”
“Good,” I say. “Because I could really use some.”
I text Lacey on the way out of school, and we make plans to meet up at Cooley’s in a couple of hours, to talk and try to figure things out. And then I drive to the beach, mostly because I don’t want to go home. When I get there, it’s pretty deserted and I sit down on the sand right near the water, letting it brush up against my toes. The air has that feel to it, the one that lets you know summer is really over and fall is really coming.
I put my head in my hands and start to cry. It just comes over me, and I’m sobbing hard, my whole body shaking. I’m crying for Ava, for Noah, for Sebastian, for Lacey, for everything I’ve been through this summer. I’m crying because for some reason everything changes, and there’s nothing you can do about it, even though it’s really, really hard to accept.
I cry for myself, for what I’ve done, for how I’ve behaved. It doesn’t matter the reasons, or what kind of problems Ava and I had, or if we even had any problems. All that matters is that I slept with my best friend’s boyfriend. I’m the girl who sleeps with her best friend’s boyfriend. I imagine people at school knowing about it, about what they’re going to say, about how people will talk about it behind my back. How they’ll all take Ava’s side, how they should take Ava’s side, how there’s no excuse for what I’ve done.
I cry for a long time, and when I look up, Noah’s standing there, looking down at me, his face worried.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Crying,” I say. “What does it look like?” I start to get up, to leave, to get far, far away from him. I don’t want to be around him after he ignored me all day at school. Everything’s too much of a mess for me to start talking to Noah.
“I know you’re crying,” he says. “But why?”
I look at him incredulously. “Are you actually asking me that?”
“Good point.”
I’m standing up now, and I say, “Well, I actually have to meet Lacey, so . . .”
“Okay.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks like he wants to say something else. But he doesn’t, so I turn and start to walk to my car.
“Hannah!”
I turn around. “It’s not your fault, you know.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Half of it’s mine.”
I think about this, but then I realize it’s not true. Yes, he cheated on Ava. Yes, he slept with me. Yes, he has half the responsibility for the situation. But my friendship with Ava is one hundred percent mine.
“My friendship with Ava is one hundred percent my responsibility,” I say. “I came to
you last night, I . . .” I think about last night, how I came bursting into the diner, and my face gets red.
“I know,” he says. He takes a step toward me. “But I didn’t have to do anything.”
“Oh, thanks,” I say.
“No, that’s not . . . that’s not what I meant.” He sighs. “Look, can we sit down?”
I want to. I really, really, really want to. But I know I shouldn’t. “Please,” he says.
So I slide down onto the sand, and he sits down next to me. “I shouldn’t have been with you before I broke up with Ava,” he says.
“That’s your own problem,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “But what I mean is . . . we shouldn’t have done anything until we had a chance to talk to her.” And then he reaches over and takes my hand. It feels warm and comforting, and all I want to do is be close to him, to melt into him, for us to be the way we were last night. “I thought I could hold off, I was thinking about you all summer, ever since that night at the show, you were so cute and after that, I couldn’t get you out of my head. And when I came to you that night, when I showed up at one in the morning, I realized what would have happened if Sebastian hadn’t been there, and I knew I had to stay away from you.”
“If it’s true,” I say, “then why didn’t you just break up with her?”
“I don’t know,” he says. He looks out across the water, squinting in the sunlight, the breeze ruffling his hair. “Probably the same reason you didn’t want to tell her. It’s not something you really want to get in to over the phone.”
“I guess,” I say. “Although, looking back, a phone breakup would have been preferable to what went down today.”
“I’m sorry about today,” he says. “I should have been there for you. You didn’t deserve to take the heat on yourself.”
“Then why did you let me?”
“I just . . . ” he says with a sigh. “I didn’t want to be the reason that you and Ava stopped talking. I didn’t want to be the reason your friendship broke up. I couldn’t do that to you, even if it meant I couldn’t be with you.”
“You wanted to be with me?”
“Of course,” he says. “I told you, all summer, you’re all I’ve been able to think about. But I didn’t want to cost you your friendship with Ava, I never wanted to do that to you, Hannah. I knew how much that would hurt you, and so I felt like I had to stay away from you.” He sighs. “I just . . . I screwed everything up. I wanted to wait until Ava got home from camp, I thought . . .” He shakes his head and looks out toward the water.
“You thought what?”
“I thought we could talk to her together, that we could explain to her what happened, and maybe she would understand.”
“But we never . . . me and you never even talked about it, not just today, but the whole summer, you didn’t even . . . I mean, I wasn’t sure you even . . .”
“I know,” he says. “How could I? I couldn’t tell you how I felt before talking to Ava, and I felt like I couldn’t talk to Ava until she got back. But then last night, there you were, and you looked so beautiful, and I couldn’t stop myself anymore. But I shouldn’t have done it, I should have stopped it, I should have put you first. I was trying to do the right thing, but all I did was fuck everything up. With you, with Ava, with your friendship . . .”
“You’re not the reason Ava and I are having problems,” I say. He opens his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. “I mean, you are the reason we fought today, why everything exploded. But the problems between me and Ava, those are . . . they go deeper, you know?”
“I know,” he says. “But I still should have stopped it.” He stares out across the water, and so do I. The wind is getting stronger now, and he takes off his sweatshirt and drapes it over both of us, pulling me close. He looks down at me, his eyes searching mine. “I put my own feelings before what was right for you, for us. And I shouldn’t have done that. Seriously, I fucked it all up.”
I look up at him, my heart in my throat. It’s the first time we’ve been close like this since Ava found out, and I feel something loosen inside me. “You did fuck it all up,” I agree. “We fucked it all up.”
“Can it still be fixed?” he asks. And he’s so close I can feel his breath on my face and his cheek against mine, and his arms are around me and his lips are right there.
“I hope so,” I say. “I really, really hope so.” And then, finally, he kisses me. It’s soft and sweet and wonderful, different than the way he was kissing me last night. Last night it felt like we were doing something wrong, like something had to happen before we got caught. Now it feels slow and wonderful and like the beginning of something. I kiss him back, and I wonder why the only time I’ve felt right all day is now, with him, being close, when it’s the very thing that’s responsible for all that’s happened today.
“So what now?” I ask when I finally pull away. I bury my head into his shoulder, not sure I want to know the answer.
But when I look at him, his face is surprised, like it should be obvious. “Now,” he says, “we figure it out together.”
We sit there for a long time with our hands intertwined, watching the water lapping up over the sand, over our toes. And then, finally, he takes me to meet Lacey.
Lauren Barnholdt, Sometimes It Happens
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