Chapter Twenty-Three

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Leah

 

 

 

Crying in the back of a cab on the way to my dad’s office, I was pretty sure I’d hit a new low. My heart hurt like a physical thing, and my stomach was shriveled up tight like I could be sick. Why had I thought this was a good idea? How had I not anticipated the shock of hurt I would feel if he rejected me? This was why I’d made the list. Everything should have been neat, simple, and in control. A summer fling with someone I’d remember fondly, at most, when it was over. Instead I’d fucked up and gotten together with someone I actually liked, and now I was sitting in a cab red-faced and sobbing and feeling like I’d lost something huge. Not only Dom, but some part of myself I’d never be able to get back.

At the office I spent about twenty minutes in the bathroom trying to pull myself together, splashing water on my face so no one would know I’d been crying, then I texted my dad to let him know I was there and needed a ride home. I expected him to be in a meeting or something, but he came out to greet me almost immediately, and I could tell he wasn’t happy about my appearance.

“This is what you’re doing without your guards? Traipsing all over New York?” He said it like he was joking, but I knew he wasn’t.

“Not all over,” was all I could manage. He stared at me for a moment and it felt like he could see everything of me, but then he just told me to wait in the reception area for one of the team members.

Back home, I put music on to drown out my thoughts and finished packing everything I was taking with me to my apartment the next day. I moved like I was on autopilot, refusing to think about any of it, even though there was still a gnawing sensation in my stomach I couldn’t quite get rid of. Eleanor looked at me oddly through dinner, which I barely ate, but she didn’t say anything until she followed me upstairs to my room after.

“It didn’t go well, I’m guessing?” She gently closed the door behind her and went to sit in my computer chair, spinning around in it like a little kid.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Do you want these sweaters? I’m not taking them with me.”

She eyed the sweaters in question, then looked back at me. “Sure.”

“Don’t take them if you don’t want them. You’re not going to hurt my feelings. I just want to get rid of them so I can start clearing out my room.”

“You don’t have to clear the room out. You know Dad’s never going to do anything with it. It’ll probably still be the exact same in ten years when you come to visit with your stockbroker husband and two perfect little children.”

“Gross,” I muttered, though I wasn’t really sure to which part. Probably all of it. I was just in a bad mood and nothing related to marriage and kids would have sounded appealing to me in that moment.

“But, yeah, I’ll take the sweaters. I know a women’s shelter I can donate them to. Let me know if you have anything else.”

This kind of shamed me, because I’d been ready to throw them out. Eleanor was such a good person, and I never felt like I could measure up to her. But that was one of the reasons I’d wanted to break free of my dad’s security, and my own personal prison. I wanted to start being a part of the world around me, which it turned out, was pretty damn big. “That’s a good idea. Can I go with you?”

Her eyes widened in excitement. “Sure! We can go the day after tomorrow if that works for you.”

“Yeah, it works.” I zipped my suitcase closed as she spun around in my chair, facing my laptop that was sitting open on the desk.

“Come here, I wanted to show you this video where a cat sings the theme song to…” She trailed off, and I glanced up to see she had inadvertently pulled up the tab I’d left this morning. The one with the library that contained all my summer pics. Now I didn’t even want to think about them, and I knew I wouldn’t be touching the half-finished photo project again.

“These are your photos from this summer,” she said. “Can I look at them?”

Trying to remain casual, I said, “Go for it.”

So then I had to pretend to be busy, which I did by carefully folding the sweaters, while Eleanor looked through every single one of the pictures. I listened to her comments with a lump in my throat that I couldn’t speak past.

“Oh my gosh, is that the guy from this summer? He looks like a total douche, Leah. Your mom’s town is actually really nice, though. It looks like a movie set. Aw, and there’s your compass tattoo. It’s so cute. I’m loving these festival pictures. It looks like you and Audrey had such a good time.”

She mercifully didn’t comment on any pictures of Dominic, until she got close to the end. And then it was just a quiet, “Wow.”

I looked up and saw that she was staring at the selfie I took of me and Dominic in the hotel room bed. Unable to stop myself, I walked closer to get a better look. I hadn’t really looked at it since right after I took it. It was one of those shots where somehow the lighting, the angle, and the poses were just right, almost to the effect of an editorial ad. To my admittedly untrained eye, anyway. His face was half obscured because he was kissing my neck, and I was smiling into the camera with a beam that lightened my whole face and made my eyes practically sparkle. His muscled arm was visible as it wrapped around me, and my bare arm was in obvious selfie position.

“Are you naked in this?”

I couldn’t take my attention off the picture enough to even be slightly amused at my sister’s question. “Yeah.”

“Normally I’d be completely grossed out by that, but Leah. You look so beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look like this. You look so pure and happy.”

That was what I’d lost, what I didn’t think I’d ever get back. That pureness. The happiness I’d felt with him. The girl in that picture. It was all gone, snuffed out like a life. And just like that, I felt my face crumble as I started to cry, while Elle’s eyes popped open and she scrambled to back out of the picture so it no longer filled the screen.

“I’m sorry! God, I’m so dumb. Lee Bee, come here.” She rose and pulled me into a hug. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay. I promise.”

“I know,” I said into her hair, my tears probably messing up at least an hour of work.

“He sucks. He’s weak, Leah. You’re strong, you’re amazing. And you had an amazing summer, you really did. Don’t let him take that away from you.” She continued her assurances, a stream that I let myself be lulled by until my tears stopped and I was back to feeling dead inside. It was vastly preferable to feeling emotions.

“It’s okay,” I said, stepping back. “I mean, it sucks, but whatever. I’ll get over it. He was probably right. Everything he said was practical. I just couldn’t hear it over my dumb girl emotions.”

“You are not dumb for feeling emotions for a guy you hung out with over the summer and had sex with. That’s, like, normal. You’re the normal one. He’s the one who’s being dumb. If he was really worth being with, he wouldn’t care about practicality.”

“It’s not that simple,” I murmured. “It affects his life, his job. How could I ask him to risk that?”

“Because you’re worth it,” she replied without missing a beat, her voice full of conviction. “And if he doesn’t see that, then eff him. Move on. You’ll eventually find someone who’d risk anything for you, no questions asked.”

“What if I don’t? What if love like that doesn’t really exist?”

“Then we’ll be single forever and get an apartment and live together with cats and do whatever the heck we want. That scenario actually sounds great to me. I’d take it over settling. Wouldn’t you?”

After a moment, I nodded, feeling something almost like a smile threaten. “I love you, Elle.”

Her answering smile had nothing holding it back. “I love you, too. You’re my idol, my absolute favorite.”

Somewhere things had evolved between Eleanor and me, and I wasn’t sure exactly when it had happened. I’d always loved her as a little sister, but that was the first moment in my life when our age gap felt smaller, putting us more on equal footing. I was starting to realize she was actually my best friend, and probably always would be. I could definitely see us being little old ladies together, and she was right – the idea of it didn’t sound that bad. And that was something pretty great. I poked her with my elbow and gave her another quick hug, and then we went to my closet to pick out all the clothes we could take to the women’s shelter.

I went through the next few days getting settled into my apartment and meeting some of my neighbors, though some of them I already knew. A lot of tenants in the building were students at O’Fallon. Being so busy was actually a blessing because it afforded me less time to think. I threw myself into the new year with a quiet, impatient fury. I went to orientation, met my professors, and cooked up a game plan. Next year this would be gone and my life would be so different. I hated how things always came back to Dom, but he’d been right about that. I couldn’t spend my senior year wishing it would be over, because soon it would be. Instead I was going to soak it up, make memories, and appreciate every moment. And if my heart was still weighing me down, I’d learn to ignore it. Someday that, too, would be gone.