Chapter 9
They’re Just Jealous
The day I’d been counting down to for months finally arrived. On the way to the airport, I fretted over being late, having changed my outfit several times, finally settling on the first one I tried on—a brand new sundress. It was a little revealing, and I grabbed a cardigan to wrap around my waist on the way out of my room. I really wanted to wait for Joshua at the gate and not have to meet him somewhere unromantic, like baggage claim. Thankfully, I arrived before his plane.
The moment I saw him walking toward me, I began to cry. We met in the type of embrace that could only happen at the airport pre-9/11. It felt so good to have his arms around me, to smell his cologne and feel the roughness of his five o’clock shadow against my cheek.
“God, Tammy, I’ve missed you.”
“Me too, Baby, oh me too,”
“Let me look at you.” He took a step back as I tightened the sweater around my middle. “You look amazing.”
“You too.” He was dressed in a sleeveless black tank-top so that his tattoo was visible, and tight-fitting green pants. I grinned to myself—if anyone on campus was unaware that Joshua was foreign, his outfit would speak for itself.
“What should we do first?” I asked on our way to the car. Joshua had only a small duffle so we could skip baggage claim.
“Let’s go back to campus. I can’t wait to see your room.” His elbow gently connected with my side.
When we got back to E-C, I drove around the circle, showing him all of my old dorms and where the cafeteria was.
“I’d really love to see the rest of your campus, later,” Joshua said when we’d gotten back in the car after stopping in the book store. He’d bought an Eckhart College T-shirt. “Right now I really want to see the inside of your dorm room.”
I nervously drove to Zeta. The first time we’d made love, I’d had quite a few drinks, not to mention it was in a darkened cabin. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for him to see all of me in the daylight.
Joshua momentarily forgot his mission when we got to our destination. “Wow,” he said, walking over to stand in front of my window. “You weren’t kidding. I can’t believe the view.”
I joined him. “See that pink bird? That’s a spoonbill. Look at its beak.”
“Cool.” He reached up and grabbed the silver beaded cord to shut the venetian blinds. “See you later, Spoonbill.”
The room suitably darkened, Joshua pulled me close to him. “I’ve missed you so much, Tammy.”
I ran my hands down his bare shoulders. His arms were skinny but I could feel the hard muscles underneath. “Me too.”
Joshua, his lips still on mine, steered me toward the bed. I crawled onto it and he lay on top of me, undoing the sweater around my middle. After we kissed for a few minutes, Joshua got up to rumple through his duffle. He came back to me, condom in hand. “Is this okay?”
I nodded, trying to feign like I’d done this more than once. I reached for him. He found the zipper on my dress. I sat up to pull off the sundress as he slid his trousers off and put on the condom.
It still hurt slightly when he slid into me. I covered up my gasp with what I hoped was a sexy groan.
“Still okay?” Joshua asked.
“Of course,” I replied. I wasn’t sure what else to do but lay there as Joshua moved back and forth on top of me. After he was spent, he lay on top of me as I stared up at the ceiling tiles, wondering if I should say something appreciative.
Finally, Joshua got up and redressed. “Bathroom?”
“Upstairs.”
I followed suit by pulling on my dress and heading to the bathroom in the middle of the girls’ floor. When I got back, I pulled open the blinds. The spoonbill had flown away; in its place were a couple of great egrets.
“What now?” I asked Joshua when he returned.
“Are any of your friends around? I’d love to meet them.”
“Lizzie left this morning, but I think Jane’s flight isn’t until later.” I didn’t feel the need to pretend I had anyone else to introduce him too.
He pulled the same tank he’d been wearing earlier back over his lean torso.
“It’s a little chilly outside. Do you want to grab a sweater?” I asked, slipping into my cardigan for emphasis.
“It’s way warmer than Illinois, so to me, it’s like summer.”
Joshua chit-chatted about working in maintenance at camp as we walked over to Jane’s dorm. He fell silent as I knocked on her door, and the silence continued after she gestured for us to come in. I glanced over at my boyfriend and tried to see him as Jane would see him. The urban-warrior outfit and pierced eyebrow that made him seem so different and intriguing at camp looked completely out of place next to Jane’s party lights and college textbooks.
“Jane’s majoring in pre-med,” I stated finally.
“Oh really?” Joshua asked. “That must be tough.”
Jane shrugged. “Not as tough as marine bio, at least according to Tammy.”
I shook my head vigorously as Jane rolled her eyes. “What’s your major?” she asked Joshua. “Is that what they call it in England?”
“I’m not in school.”
“What do you do when you’re not working at a summer camp?” Jane asked.
If Joshua noticed the patronizing tone in her voice, he didn’t let on. “I work at a clothing store. It’s sort of the equivalent of your Gap.”
She nodded. “And is that what you’re going to do when you get back?”
“For a few months, yes. But then I’m going to be back in the States in April. I’ll be in the front office of our summer camp,” he mimicked Jane’s earlier phrasing, “recruiting counselors and doing registration.”
I raised my eyebrows at her, willing her not to ask any more probing questions, but my attempt failed. “And so you and Tammy plan on being together while you’re back in England?”
“Jane!” The admonishment slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. Both her and Joshua stared at me. “Jane,” I said more calmly. “You probably have a lot of last minute packing to do.”
“Actually…” she gestured toward a suitcase by the door.
“Anyway,” I got up to give her a hug, knowing that Jane had probably already been packed for a week. “We’re going to get takeout from the cafeteria and go back and hang out.”
“It was nice meeting you, Jane,” Joshua said, holding out his hand.
Jane shook it. I could feel her eyes on my back as we left her room.
“So that’s Jane,” Joshua said casually on our way to the cafeteria.
“I’m sorry about the way she was acting.”
Joshua laughed. “From the way you described her, I imagined much worse. She wasn’t nearly as bad as Shazzer.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that? None of my friends like you.”
“They’re just jealous,” Joshua said, holding the cafeteria door open for me. At six o’clock, the cafeteria was uncharacteristically empty. Only a few underclassmen were scattered among the tables. I was disappointed. In the last four years, the cafeteria had come to be the bane of my existence. Jane, Lizzie and I were usually relegated to a four-top table instead of the long ones. If neither of them could make our customary meal time, I would usually just get a Styrofoam takeout tray and eat in my room next to the TV. Although that was the plan for tonight, I was still hoping to show the world of E-C’s mess hall that I really did have a boyfriend, to no avail. There was only one other person in the food line, a guy of Asian descent I recognized as living in Nishaan’s international dorm. He sidled his tray next to Joshua’s as he bent over to grab some salad. He nodded at the two of us when he stood back up, his gaze lingering on Joshua’s tattoo. Suddenly the guy started laughing.
“What?” Joshua asked.
He pointed to Joshua’s arm and asked in a heavy accent, “What do you think that tattoo means?”
“It means ‘Heaven’ in Chinese.” Joshua replied.
“No,” the guy said, shaking his head before erupting in more laughter. “It means ‘Pig’ in Mandarin. Next time you want to get a tattoo, take a translator with you.” He walked away, still shaking his head.
Joshua turned to me in bewilderment. I could only shrug.
The weekend I had with Joshua passed by in a blur. I had planned outings to the bars, the zoo, and the amusement park, most of it on my dime. The majority of the money I’d made at camp had disappeared and my work-study income was meager, so I used my credit card. Monday, the day before he was scheduled to leave, we decided to go to the beach. At least it was free, with the exception of the half-dollar toll to get to St. Pete.
“I love that suit on you,” he told me.
I adjusted the straps. It was still a one-piece, but the cut-out in the middle showed nearly the same amount of skin as a bikini. “Thanks,” I told him, walking toward the mirror. Like at camp, I’d gotten up super early to put my “face” on every day, and left my eye make-up on all night, washing it off in the morning right before I reapplied it. Joshua had yet to see me without mascara. I rubbed at the dark flakes under my eyes, deciding that, even though I planned on going in the water, it was best to leave on my make-up.
“Will you put lotion on my back?” he asked after we found a spot on the beach. He handed me a bottle and then plopped down in the sand.
His back, predictably pale considering that it was fall in Illinois, was dotted with sparse black hairs and a few small pimples. I reminded myself that this was my boyfriend and I’d finally earned the right to exchange sunscreen rubbing duties with a guy. No longer would I have to make Lizzie or Jane do it, or look super awkward in the mirror as I tried to do it myself. The thought cheered me only a little: I’d always imagined my sunscreen rubbing to be a lot more erotic than it was. When Joshua was suitably covered, he and I switched places. He got my shoulders and I stood before he could go any lower.
One of the provisions I’d bought for Joshua’s trip was a two-person foam raft. We spent the day splashing each other and knocking each other off the raft until, spent, we floated in the waves together.
“I don’t want to go home,” Joshua said when we got back into the car, breaking a comfortable silence that had started on the raft.
“I don’t want you go, either.” Through tear-pricked eyes, I saw that the drawbridge lights were flashing and I came to a stop as the bridge rose to let a sailboat cruise through. I flipped down the driver side mirror to check my make-up. To my horror, my mascara had become two dark smudges under my eyes. I looked like a football player trying to reduce the sun’s glare, only flesh-colored tear tracks ran through my eye black.
“What’s wrong?” Joshua asked.
“Nothing.” I closed the mirror and readjusted my giant sunglasses. Corrie had made fun of my sunglasses when I bought them, saying I looked like a bee. Although she made buzzing noises every time I wore them, I was never more grateful for their half-face covering style as I was at that moment.
I immediately went to shower and blow-dry my hair. When I returned to my room, Joshua was sitting on the bed, staring forlornly at the phone in his hand.
“Anything wrong?” I asked him, figuring that he was upset about leaving, again.
But the expected reply never came. He glanced at me, tears threatening in his eyes. “Denny just called. There’s something wrong with my father’s lungs.”
“What do you mean?” I sat on the bed beside him.
“Well, it’s probably nothing, but he has to get more tests done—they found some tumors. It’s probably nothing,” he said again, not sounding convinced.
He got off the bed and began to throw some of his stuff into his duffle.
“Are you packing now?”
“I just thought I’d make some space.” He had a point. Between my bed, desk, and couch, I could barely maneuver around my room on my own, even without Joshua and his duffle bag. He paused, feeling around for something. He pulled out a stuffed bear before walking over to my dresser and grabbing his cologne bottle and showering the bear before handing it to me. “I want you to keep this and remember me. When you are upset, you can cuddle with it and it will almost be like cuddling with me.”
I turned the bear over. It was a pale colored bear wearing a white T-shirt with a red letter J. Someone had driven a barbell through its eyebrow. “Where did you get it?”
“A friend.”
“What’s his name?”
Joshua shrugged.
I breathed in Joshua’s cologne from its fur before declaring that his name was now J.T. I quickly glanced at my own collection of stuffed animals lining my bookshelf. Penny the Seal was my lovey that I had had since I was a baby. I couldn’t sleep without Penny beside me until I was twelve, and then she kept watch at my bedside every night after that. I started towards her, but realized that I wasn’t ready to part with Penny yet. Instead, I picked up Chomps, a stuffed shark that my mom had given me before I left for college. I mimicked Joshua by spraying Chomps with my perfume.
“This is for you to remember me,” I told him.
“Tammy,” he breathed.
I sensed I knew what was coming. After this weekend, even though some of the time I’d been stand-offish, I wasn’t ready to let him go. If this was time for The Talk, I wasn’t going to let him have it. “Let’s go out to dinner,” I told him.
“I don’t think I can afford it. And you can’t either. I should be the one treating you, but I can’t. Not yet.”
I picked up my purse. “That’s what credit cards are for, right?”
We went to one of my favorite seafood restaurants, Crabby Mikes, the kind that has walls covered with cryptic messages written on dollar bills and live lobsters writhing in fish tanks in the entryway. When I’d gone there with my parents, we’d usually sat at one of the communal picnic tables in the center of the room, but the waitress must have sensed our mood because she sat us at a small table near the window, giving us a view of the ocean.
“I’m really going to miss Florida,” Joshua said once the hostess had disappeared.
“I’m going to miss you,” I stated.
The waitress arrived to take our drink order.
“I’m going to have a margarita.”
Joshua looked at me with raised eyebrows.
“He’ll take one too,” I told the waitress. “We might as well enjoy our last night to the fullest,” I said after she’d left.
Joshua studied something over my left shoulder. I peeked behind me to see a wall full of dollar bills. “What are you looking at?”
“All those messages.”
“Yeah, what a waste of a dollar.” I’d once gotten one from a gas station with the words, “All Horse Players Die Broke,” written on the back. It was shortly after my Dallas obsession, and, at the time, I thought it was a sign that Dallas and I were meant to be together. I kept it for three years, even though, after Horseboy had rejected me, I’d come to view it as bad luck. Unknowingly, when Drew had found it in my storage bin, he pinned it to my bulletin board. The other day Jane had wanted to get a smoothie after class. After I’d gone back to my room to grab some change and—realizing that I didn’t have enough to even buy a soft-serve—grabbed it. Now it was probably in someone else’s wallet, bestowing its bad luck upon them.
Joshua pulled out his billfold. “I might not have much, but I can spare a dollar.” He pulled one out, and, when the waitress reappeared with our margaritas, he asked her for a permanent marker. He printed, “Joshua loves Tammy forever,” across the Washington side. “I will, you know,” he told me, reaching for my hand.
“I know. Me too”
We tried to make the best of our last dinner, ordering alligator nuggets for fun (tasted like chicken, only really chewy) and splitting a seafood platter. I tried not to pay too much attention to the bill total when it came. The 20% tip alone came to almost a week’s worth of my work-study wages in the mailroom.
After I’d paid, we walked down the boardwalk to the beach to watch the sunset. We held hands and walked along the shore holding hands, our jeans rolled up to feel the crashing surf.
I finally broke the silence to ask, “What about your father? Are you still concerned about him?”
“Nah. He’s had health scares before. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”
I sat down in the sand. “Are you scared about the future at all?”
He squatted beside me, hands perched on his legs. “Of course I’m scared about the future, but it’s what we make it, not what someone else decides is gonna happen. I know that I want you, more than ever each day I’m away from you. I want us to experience what other couples do: I want someone that I can say goodnight to, each time my eyes close when the day is ending, I want you beside me.”
“I want that too.” I smoothed the ripples in the sand with my foot, picturing what I would have to face when he was gone: all those empty nights waiting for nine o’clock to come. Not having any physical contact with him for months. “I hate college. I should just quit and go home with you.”
“Tammy.” He found my hand as he settled down beside me. “I know you hate school, but don’t let it beat you down. Even though I won’t be here physically, I’m here with you, in your mind and heart. Don’t ever think that I’m not thinking about you, because I will be. You can get through the next few months if you just think that you’re working for our future. It’s all for us.”
“For us,” I repeated.
“Listen,” he said, turning to face me. “There, of course, will be challenges in the future, but it’s nothing that we can’t overcome together. If you’re scared, I will guide you, if you fall I will pick you up. I’m here for you, now and forever, I will protect you.”
“I know,” I told him, but my insides were disagreeing. He couldn’t be there every day in QFM when I had to sit in the same room with Dallas. Or interact with all the rich people around me while feeling like an outcast. Or hear about how I wouldn’t have a job when I graduated. It felt like lip service, like Joshua was repeating the inside of a Bon Voyage Hallmark card. “It’s going to feel like forever before it's April and you’re at least back in the country.”
“I know. I can’t wait to be back at camp. And it’s only five months. When you plan on being with someone the rest of your life, five months is not too long in the grand scheme of things.”
“Did Denny guarantee you a job?”
He leaned over and kissed me softly before replying, “In the front office. I’ll be admin. We will definitely be the #1 Camp Couple next summer.”
I smiled despite myself. “If we weren’t that last summer. And then, after I graduate, I’ll go to grad school in Ann Arbor so I can be near you. They have a pretty decent MS program for bio. You can come down and hang out on campus on the weekends.”
“And then when you’re done with grad school, we’ll move to California. I’ll find a job somewhere and you can be a marine biologist. We’ll get an apartment and paint all our rooms blue, just like the ocean.” He squeezed my hand before turning toward the waterfront.
I pulled out my camera and took a photograph of him looking out to sea. After he left, whenever I closed my eyes and thought of him, that’s the picture that I saw. Even though he was facing away from the camera, I could read his thoughts in his posture. Thoughts about his father. Thoughts about me, his girlfriend that he loved and was leaving for a very long time. Him against the ocean, against the world. There was a sadness in his stance. Whenever I looked at it, I could feel his pain, hear the waves crashing against the shore.
We stayed out that night, just walking and talking along the beach, as he convinced me that we had a future, as he made his dreams my own, and vice versa. We strolled along the water’s edge until the sun disappeared behind the endless expanse of the ocean.
We stopped at a liquor store on the way back to campus. Joshua bought a bottle of rum, and we drank rum runners and made love one last time before he left to return to Michigan in the morning.
“I love you, my princess,” Joshua whispered before turning onto his side to fall asleep. “This fairy tale is just beginning.”
I woke up late the next morning and had to rush to get to QFM on time. “Are you sure you don’t mind me leaving you?” I asked Joshua.
“Go, Tammy. I’m going to sleep in a bit and then have a shower. Wave ‘hi’ to the Horse for me.”
I swatted him playfully before I left. I’d told him all about my Dallas delusion, even down to the tape, although I left out the part where I’d actually given Dallas and his roommate said tape as a Christmas gift.
“You okay?” the guy from the paper, whose name was actually Phil, asked me when I sat in the desk across from him.
“I’m as okay as I can be, considering my boyfriend is leaving today.” I couldn’t help the stress my lips made on the ‘b’ in boyfriend. I also couldn’t help the tick in my neck which caused me to glance sideways at Dallas. He held the same blank expression he’d always had.
“How long have you guys been together?” the girl sitting on the other side of Phil asked.
“Since June,” I shot back over my shoulder, turning as our QFM teacher entered the classroom. She was the head of the library, and, as she didn’t have a doctorate, asked us to call her by her first name, Helen. In my head I nicknamed her Helen the Librarian. She began passing out papers. When she got to my desk, she put the paper down and tapped the top of it, where she’d written, “Please see me after class.”
As stimulating as QFM usually was, I wouldn’t have been able to repeat a word that was said. When I wasn’t thinking of my upcoming trip to the airport and subsequent goodbye to Joshua for the next six months, I was wondering what Helen the Librarian’s cryptic message meant.
When Helen finally dismissed the class, she stood right next to my desk. Any hope I’d had of hightailing out of the room was shattered as she got comfortable in the newly unoccupied desk across from me.
“Tammy, that paper you turned in on the Ten Commandments of Being Green was excellent.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’ve been reading your newspaper columns. I think you’re an amazingly talented writer, and could do so much more at the paper. You’re a marine bio major, correct?”
I nodded.
“How’s seminar going?”
I shrugged. On Wednesdays, all seniors were required to go to seminars in their majors. Jane’s concentrated on helping her and her fellow pre-med students perfect their medical school application. The sole purpose of the marine bio seminar, from what I could tell, was to wax on about the lack of science jobs as a whole, not to mention the amount of education needed to scrape by at a menial job counting acorn worms.
“I probably know exactly how it’s going. Did you know I graduated from Eckhart with a marine bio degree as well?” She peered at me as I shook my head. “Even though that was quite a few years ago, I’m aware the job market hasn’t changed much. That’s why I ended up getting my Masters in Library Science.”
“And then they hired you here?”
“After a few years at another school.” She waved her hand. “That’s not my point. Tammy, as your QFM teacher, I see myself as a mentor. I know you’re a senior and it might be a little late for this, but I’d like you to consider taking on a writing major, or at least a minor.”
“I don’t have room in my schedule for that. I’ll be taking two labs each semester as it is, plus this class, seminar, and Spanish II.”
“Have you ever thought about adding on another semester?”
I refrained from laughing out loud. “No,” I replied, deciding not to elaborate on a) how ticked my dad would be to add another semester at a private school to my educational expense or b) how anxious I was to leave Eckhart. Especially now.
She reached out to put her hand on top of mine for a brief second before getting up from the desk. “All I’m saying is that you consider other career possibilities. Just in case.”
“Thank you, Helen.”
I trudged out of the room. I wanted to catch up to Nishaan to see if he’d take notes for me in O-chem, but my heart weighed down my gait. Helen’s comments, meant as sound advice, had given me even more qualms about my future after graduation. I’d felt similar feelings last week when Dr. Shu had one of his former students present at seminar. I was excited to hear her talk since she was a PhD candidate doing research on manatee populations, but she spent the seminar telling us what a hassle applying to grad school was and how she worked 60-hour weeks for practically nothing.
“For us,” I thought to myself, echoing Joshua’s words on the beach last night. “It’s all for us.” I had a hard time believing I’d find a job to support myself, let alone Joshua, his job in the front office at camp notwithstanding. Granted I hadn’t grown up as rich as many of my E-C counterparts, but I’d never been exactly poor, either. I couldn’t picture my unemployed self standing in a welfare line, but supposed it might be worth it as long as I had Joshua to go home to.
“What’s wrong?” Nishaan asked when I caught up to him. He was the second person to ask that same question that morning. I knew we’d stayed up late and drank a lot last night, but I didn’t realize my peers would be able to see the evidence.
“I have to take Joshua to the airport.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’ll make copies of whatever we go over today for you.”
“Thanks,” I turned to head toward the cafeteria.
“Good luck!” he shouted as the rest of our classmates filed into the lecture hall.
Joshua was sitting on the couch when I got back, brandishing a Styrofoam box overfilled with food.
“I got you a root beer,” I said, handing him the cup.
“Thanks.”
I sat next to him and we both picked at the food without eating it. Finally he turned to look at my alarm clock. “I guess we should get going.”
“I guess so.” I closed the lid of the takeout box as he stood.
He reached for my hand and helped me up. I grabbed my oversized sunglasses on my way out the door.
I cried all the way to the airport, tears slipping silently down my face. This time I made no move to hide them. The ride there was silent, except for the radio and the sound of Joshua and I sniveling.
As Joshua stood in line for his boarding pass, I went to the bathroom. Taking off my sunglasses for the first time, I saw the damage my crying had done to my face.
“I don’t care,” I told myself, splashing cold water onto my face. But it didn’t help. My knees folded and I had to steady myself on the counter to keep from collapsing. “I don’t know how to do this,” I declared to the mirror. “I don’t know how to say goodbye to him.” Damn you, guardian angel. Damn you for dangling a boyfriend in front of me for the first time, and then taking him away from me.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed as I stood with my face planted next to the dirty bathroom sink. I was forced back into reality when someone else entered. I straightened up and headed for the door, dabbing at the evidence of my tears with a scratchy paper towel, before the newcomer could question me.
“Are you okay?” Joshua stood outside. His own eyes were red-rimmed.
I shook my head.
He grasped my hand. “We can get through this. We will get through this, together.” He had to practically pull me to his gate, which was already loading when we got there.
He wrapped his arms around me and whispered into my ear. “Tammy, I love you. I’m yours now and that won’t ever change… that I swear. Never be afraid because someday I’ll be standing next to you, never leaving your side, my princess.”
But not right now, I thought as he dropped his arms. “Last call for flight 504,” the heartless steward bellowed into the microphone at the desk in front of us.
“I have to go,” Joshua told me.
I hugged him one last time, arms tight enough to not let him go. But of course I had to.
I stayed rooted at the window to watch his plane leave. Saw it taxi down the runway and lift-off, carrying Joshua away from me. Twenty-one years of having things not work out in my favor made me doubt whether I’d ever see him again. But he promised he’d be back. I had to hold on to that promise—otherwise I wouldn’t be able to make it through the next eight months of the same old Eckhart.
I managed to make it through the drive home, suppressing the tears the best I could. But as soon as I got back to my dorm room and saw the remains of our lunch still sitting on my battered coffee table, I lost it yet again, my crying bordering on hysterical. I grabbed the stuffed dog Joshua had given me. I could smell his cologne, which set the tears off again. The hysterics eventually faded into sobbing, which lasted until I fell asleep.
I woke up shortly before 9 p.m. As I’d slept through dinner, I was starving, but I didn’t have time to run out and grab something before our nightly phone date. I thought I had cried myself dry, but as soon as I heard his voice on the other end of the phone, the tears came again, so violent that Joshua asked if I needed a moment.
I found my voice. “Yes. I’m sorry, Baby. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” Might as well not waste my precious calling card minutes. I took a series of deep breaths before I dialed again.
The tears still threatened, but I swallowed them back as Joshua told me about his flight. “I am so miserable without you.”
“Me too,” I replied.
“Is Jakey there?” I cast my eyes around my room, wondering what he was referring to, until my gaze landed on the dog with the pierced brow lying on the floor, where he’d landed after my earlier hysterics. I knew enough to suspect that some girl had given it to him, but I didn’t care. “He’s here,” I said, walking over and grabbing him. I hugged him tightly to my chest. “He misses you, too.”
“I have Chomps right here, too. I held him all during the plane ride. Denny gave me a weird look when he picked me up at the airport, but he didn’t ask any questions.”
We hung up after declaring our love for one another a few more times. As we’d just seen each other, there wasn’t that much to talk about. After I’d hit the END button on the phone, I sat fingering the receiver. I wasn’t sure I could handle any more emotional scenes like earlier today. I’d never cried so much in my life. I felt powerless over the situation—I wouldn’t see my boyfriend for more than six months, and there was no way I could afford to call him that often when he left for England in a few weeks, on Halloween. My stomach grumbled, announcing another fact: that sometimes I felt chained to our nine o’clock phone call.