“Hi, you,” Clark said, standing in the kitchen doorway. He had the rumpled, unfocused look that I had learned meant he’d been writing all day, his eyes bleary behind his smudged glasses.
I made myself look away from him, back down to Bertie’s leash, which I was coiling in a loop. “Hey.”
“How are you doing?” Clark asked, walking over to me. He wasn’t asking it in the rhetorical way, where you don’t even really expect an answer. He asking it in the careful way you ask people who’ve just suffered a loss or undergone a trauma. After all, he knew the bare bones of what was happening—I’d texted him the situation that morning.
I shrugged, then shook my head. “Not so good.” Clark reached out for my hand, but I took a step back from him and picked up Bertie’s leash. “I have to take him out,” I said, looking away from Clark. “Bertie, now,” I yelled, willing the dog to listen to me just this once.
“Hey,” Clark said, taking a step toward me. He wrapped his arms around me, and for a moment I leaned against them and let my eyes close. There was a piece of me, a big one, that just wanted to let everything out. To hug him back, to cry on his shoulder, to tell him everything and talk about it together—things always seemed a little better once I’d talked to Clark about them—and he’d tell me that everything was going to be okay. But that thought jerked me out of the fantasy, as appealing as it was. Because everything very possibly wasn’t going to be okay.
I broke away from him and picked up Bertie’s leash. I saw a flash of hurt cross Clark’s face, but I made myself look away from it. I took a breath to yell for Bertie again at the moment he came barreling into the kitchen, nails scrabbling on the wooden floors. Clark reached out for him and so did I, and we managed to corral him between the two of us. I snapped on his leash, then straightened up. “See you in a few,” I said, realizing that it would probably be best to put some distance between us, just so I could try to get my emotions under control and stop this powder-keg feeling that was getting stronger by the minute.
“I’ll come with you,” Clark said, giving me a full-dimple smile. “I could use a break anyway.”
I didn’t know how to tell him that I wanted to be alone, especially since I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted. After all, I’d been alone all afternoon and had hated it. So I gave him something between a shrug and a nod and headed out the front door, half running behind Bertie, who was straining as hard as he could against the leash. We stepped outside, and I was about to pull out my keys, but Clark was already locking the door with his set. I saw him reach down for my hand and quickly transferred Bertie’s leash to that hand. I was feeling that if I really let Clark touch me for too long, if I let myself feel everything I was feeling, I would be venturing into dangerous territory, where if I started to cry in front of him, I wasn’t sure when I’d stop.
“So what’s been happening?” he asked after we’d walked for a few seconds in silence, Bertie bounding ahead, trying to sniff four things at once, then doubling back to smell what he might have missed. “Any change?”
“No,” I said, feeling the weight of the word even as I said it, like a bowling ball dropping into my stomach. I took a shaky breath, then let it out. “I’m not sure,” I started, then had to make myself go on, say the rest of the sentence. “I’m not sure we’re going to come back from this.”
Clark looked over at me, a furrow appearing between his brows. “Of course you are,” he said, but I could hear the worry creeping into his voice as well. “I mean . . . you guys are best friends. You’re not going to fall apart over this. You’ll get past it.”
“We might not, okay?” I snapped, and my voice was sharp and spiky. I bit my lip. “I’m sorry,” I said, looping Bertie’s leash around my wrist and then unlooping it. “I’m just . . .” Taking it out on you flashed through my head before I could stop it.
“So,” Clark said, looking over at me, and I could see the same realization I’d been having all morning was dawning for him, as well, and he looked just as happy about it as I was. “It’s just over? All of us this summer? It’s just—gone?”
I could hear the hurt in his voice, and I knew that he was also losing his friends. But he’d known them for two months, not years and years, and there was a piece of me that didn’t want to accept that he would be hurt by this too. I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak just then. Bertie stopped by his favorite tree, and Clark stopped as well, reaching out for my other hand.
“Andie, I’m here. It’s okay.”
I looked up at him, at the sunlight filtering through the trees and landing across his face, and I wanted to tell him everything I was feeling. I wanted to have someone I could talk to about this, someone who would face this—however it turned out—alongside me. But I couldn’t rely on Clark to help me, just like I couldn’t rely on my dad. Clark was leaving in just a few weeks, and I never should have let myself forget that, not for a moment. Both of them were heading out the door any minute now. I couldn’t tell Clark what I was feeling, couldn’t get used to him in my life like this, because at the end of the summer he would leave, and then I’d be truly alone.
“I don’t know why you’re so upset about this,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t fair. “I mean, you’re going to leave in a couple weeks anyway.”
Bertie, done with his tree, started walking again, and I looked over at Clark, expecting him to be angry or hurt. But he was giving me a small, nervous smile, putting his hands in his pockets and then taking them out again. “Actually,” he said, then took a deep breath, “I wanted to talk to you about that.”
“Talk to me about what?”
“Me staying here.” My head snapped up, and I stared at him, pulling back against the leash harder than I needed to, sending Bertie stumbling back a few steps.
“What . . . ,” I started, then shook my head. “What do you mean? Here at the house?” As far as I’d understood it, Clark’s arrangement with his publisher has been just for the summer. I was sure of it.
“No,” Clark said. “I mean . . . not going back to Colorado. I was thinking about going to Stanwich College. Taking some classes. I e-mailed the dean about it last week. I really should be in college now anyway. And that way . . . I could stay around here.” He gave me a shy half smile, and there was such open, aching vulnerability in it that I had to force myself not to look away. “So . . . what do you think?”
He was nervous. I could hear it in his voice. A part of me wanted tell him what great news this was, let myself be happy about it. This was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? An answer to what was going to happen to us at the end of the summer?
But another part of me—a bigger part—felt myself pulling away, backing up, slamming all the doors tightly. Because it was one thing for Clark to be here for a season. But this was already the longest relationship I’d ever had. Did I really think I was going to be able to keep this up for months and months longer? I’d already managed to wreck the best friendships I’d ever had—of course I would wreck this, too. At some point he’d see who I really was, and then it would be over and I’d be worse off than I was now. So I pushed down what I was really feeling, all the hurt and hope and fear, and reached for anger instead.
“Were you even going to ask me about this?” I asked, walking a few steps away from him, pulling Bertie’s head up from where he’d been straining to get to a particular rock, knowing I wouldn’t be able to say these things if I had to look at Clark’s face.
“I . . . thought you’d be happy,” he said. “I thought the other night, when you brought it up . . .” I could hear the confusion in his voice, but I made myself push on anyway.
“Maybe I just want someone to ask me what I want, for once. Maybe I just want someone to consult me before there’s another huge change that impacts me.” I started walking faster. I was feeling reckless and angry and like I was just going to keep going down this road I was pretty sure I didn’t even want to be on.
“I thought that’s what I was doing,”
Clark said, shaking his head. “I was talking to you about it.” Clark stopped walking. I stopped too, and Bertie took the opportunity to start sniffing our shoes, weaving in and around our legs. “So . . . you don’t want me to stay?” I could hear how hurt Clark was, how he wasn’t even trying to hide it, wasn’t masking his feelings and running away from them like I was.
We looked at each other, and it was very quiet, no cars on the road, just the birds in the trees, a far-off lawn mower, the dog snuffling at our feet. I could feel that we were at a threshold, that things could go different ways from here, but that a gauntlet had been thrown, and we wouldn’t, at this point, be able to go back to where we’d been twenty minutes before. That things had changed, were changing, right now. That a decision had to be made.
And even as I looked at him in the sunlight, with his face that had become so precious to me, with his kindness and his humor and his patience, with him holding his heart out to me so bravely, I felt myself backing away. Him—this—everything it would mean to continue with this was too scary. It was too much. I would hurt him in the end, and he would hurt me, much worse than either of us were hurting now. So I made myself say it, knowing that, deep down, it was probably the truth. “I don’t think it would work out.”
“What are you saying?” Clark asked, his eyes searching mine, like he could find the truth in them, find what I was really feeling behind the walls I was putting up as fast as I could.
“This was always supposed to be for the summer, right? That’s what I thought.” I looked away from him, down at Bertie, so he wouldn’t see the tears that were forming in my eyes.
“Andie, this isn’t you.”
“It is, though,” I said, fighting back the sob that was forming somewhere in the back of my throat. “Our first date?” I asked, and he nodded. “That was me. We can pretend to be different people for a few months, but . . .” I flashed to my dad, back in his work uniform like nothing had happened, like the entire summer we’d spent could just be erased. “In the end, people don’t change who they are.” I could hear the conviction in my voice as I said this, and as I looked across at Clark, I saw that he was finally starting to believe me.
Bertie flopped down on the ground between us, his head resting on my feet and his tail on Clark’s, but despite how close we were, I could feel a gulf splitting open between us, widening and widening with every passing second.
“Do you really believe that?” he asked, and I knew this was his last shot. His last attempt, my final chance to change our course.
I nodded, swallowing hard. “I do.”
Clark looked away, down the road. When he turned back to me, I could see that he was suddenly farther away from me now, even though he hadn’t actually moved. There was a distance in his eyes that hadn’t been there a moment before. “It’s probably for the best,” he said, his voice still raw but getting more composed with every word. “I mean, I have a lot of work to do. I should probably focus on my book now anyway.”
I nodded, wondering why it hurt me so much to hear him say it when this was my idea and I was the one bringing it about. “Right,” I said, nodding, hoping what I was feeling wasn’t clear in my voice. “Sure.”
I pulled Bertie to his feet and we started walking back toward the house, more space between us than before—we were practically on opposite sides of the road. Neither of us was speaking, and Bertie was walking between us, happily sniffing, not aware that anything had changed. For him, things were still the same—sun and grass and things to smell—while Clark and I were standing in the rubble of what only minutes ago had been our relationship.
The silence seemed to get more oppressive with every step, until I was sure I wouldn’t be able to handle it for much longer. It was like the silence in the car after our first disastrous date, but exponentially worse, since I knew him now—knew who he was, how much he’d meant to me, and exactly what I was walking away from.
When we reached the driveway, I stopped, having reached my limit. “Here,” I said, holding out Bertie’s leash to him, glad that I had my keys in my pocket and that he had his own, and we didn’t have to continue this into the kitchen and have what had the potential to be the world’s most awkward good-bye. Clark took it from me, and Bertie didn’t even seem to notice the handoff, just sat down and started scratching his ear with his back paw. “I’ll tell Maya someone else needs to start walking him now.”
Clark just looked at me for a moment and gave me a smile with no happiness in it. “It’s not necessary,” he said. “I can walk Bert. I mostly just called Maya because I was hoping to see you again.”
It felt like someone had reached into my chest and squeezed my heart, and this continued as he turned away and walked toward the house, Bertie trailing behind him. As I watched them go, my throat got tighter, like it was getting harder to breathe. Was this really how it was going to end? Without saying anything else, without even getting to hug Bertie one last time?
“Clark,” I called, when he was almost to the door. He turned back to me slowly, keys still in his hand, his expression wary. “What happens?” I blurted, before I could stop myself. “With Karl and Marjorie?” It was such a small thing compared to everything that had just happened, but it was a world we had built together, and I needed to know.
Clark looked at me for a moment, then unlocked the door. I thought for a second he was going to ignore me, but then I saw him unclip Bertie’s leash and let him in before he turned and crossed the driveway toward me, stopping when there were still several feet between us. “You really want to know?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, Marjorie kills Karl.”
I drew in a breath—it felt like someone had just pressed on a bruise. “What?”
“Oh, yeah,” Clark said, his voice certain, like this was the only answer, like there was no other way this could go. “She finally remembered that she was an assassin. She was just pretending to be someone else, but in the end, it wasn’t who she was.”
Clark’s voice was cold and dispassionate, and I had never heard him speak that way before. When I thought about the gentle way he’d talked to me when I’d first arrived at the house, not even an hour before, I knew that he sounded this way because of me—that I was the one who’d done this to him. I bit my lip hard and felt tears, the ones that had been lurking behind my eyes, threaten to emerge. “No,” I managed, shaking my head, but before I could say more, Clark was continuing on.
“And then Marjorie dies too,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “After she kills Karl. The king’s men kill her in a tavern. They can’t have her talking. It’s best to just erase the evidence, so it’s like it never happened. The end.”
“You can’t just do that.”
Clark looked at me for a long moment. “I just did,” he said, then turned and walked back up the driveway, then into the house, letting the door slam behind him.
I walked to my car, and my hands were shaking so hard it took two attempts to get my key in the ignition, and it wasn’t until I’d gotten the car started and driven two streets away that I pulled over and really let myself cry.
Chapter EIGHTEEN
Maya looked at me from across the table at Flask’s, concern on her face that didn’t seem to match her purple and pink hair. She pushed aside her blended coffee drink—pumpkin spice. It was the last week of August, but apparently, as far as Flask’s was concerned, that meant it was fall. “How are you doing?” she asked, leaning toward me.
“I’m fine,” I said automatically, taking a drink of my iced latte, since this was just what I said now.
It was what I told my dad when I passed him in the kitchen or the hallway. We weren’t doing our Sundays in the study with movies anymore, and we hadn’t had a dinner, just the two of us, since Peter had appeared in the kitchen. My dad was busier now, but he was still suggesting places we could eat and threatening to make me watch more Westerns. But I had a feeling he was just going through the motions. And even though
he kept telling me he hadn’t decided if he was running again, I could read the writing on the wall. So I found a way out of everything he proposed. I told him I was busy, that I had plans with my friends, that I had to work. I didn’t want to fall back into the habit of spending time with him like he was going to be around, when clearly he had one foot out the door.
It had been two weeks since my friends and I had imploded, two weeks since Clark and I had broken up, and it felt more like months. For the first few days I was texting everyone—both on our group thread and individually—but when the silence became deafening, I stopped. The silence of my phone just underscored how alone I was now. I could sometimes get Tom to text me back, but never for very long. He was clearly worried he was being disloyal to Palmer and quickly told me he had to go. I’d gone to the opening night of Bug Juice alone, sitting by myself in the back row, looking around for my friends but not seeing them, barely paying attention to the play as I scanned the theater for Clark, sure I saw him dozens of times before the guy would turn his head and I’d realize it wasn’t him—and then feeling like an idiot for thinking it could have been. But the whole show had run smoothly, and I’d been so proud of Palmer, sitting in the sound booth, pulling it off without a hitch.
I’d told Maya I had to stop walking Bertie, and to make up for it—and to distract myself from my friendless state—I’d been taking on as many clients as she could give me. I was out of the house every morning early, with extra leashes and plastic bags and treats, and didn’t return until early evening, tired and sunburned. And then at night I’d work my way through my organic chemistry textbook, trying not to notice how little I was interested in it any longer, telling myself firmly that this was normal, that nobody liked organic chemistry.
“Really?” Maya asked, her brows knitting together. “Because I’m worried you’ve taken on too much. I can take over some of these walks, or Dave can. It’s summer, after all. You should be out having fun with your friends.”