Rhode Island
Senior Year
The closer I got, the more it seemed like a bad idea.
What if no one was home?
What if Violet was over?
What in the hell was I expecting to happen, anyway?
The questions needled into my gut like pins into a pincushion, but I kept driving anyway.
I couldn’t tell if I was disappointed or relieved when only Mr. Kerrigan’s car sat in the driveway. Maybe a little of both. At any rate, I wasn’t going to turn back. Taking a deep breath, I grabbed two containers of cookies and scampered through the rain to the back porch.
Mr. Kerrigan’s face lit up when he saw me on the other side of the door. “Kelsey!” he cried. “Come in, come in! Are you looking for David?”
“Actually, I’m here to see you.” I held the containers out toward him. “I believe I owe you some cookies.”
“Oh, what a sweet girl you are. You cheered my evening right up.”
My face fell. “Why do you need cheering? Is something wrong?”
“No, no! I’m fine, nothing like that.” He guided me into the kitchen and pulled out a chair, but I stopped short and gasped when I realized how different it looked. “You remodeled the kitchen!” I cried. The cabinets were new and white and the stone countertops gleamed. “It looks amazing!”
“So glad you like it! David and I did most of the work ourselves. Have a seat and I’ll get us some milk. You can help me make a dent in these wonderful cookies, not that I’ll need help once David sees them.”
“Um, where is David?”
“He took Violet to a movie. Should be back soon.” He took a carton of milk from the fridge. “Nice girl, that Violet. A little flighty, but she’s good to my boy.” He paused to pour the milk. “Anyhow, what I meant before is that it’s been a bit crazy around here. Getting David ready for college, getting the house ready for the market, getting ready to move again. David is a huge help of course, and it’s a godsend that I work from home. But still—whew—this year went by in a blink.”
He placed a glass of milk in front of me with a flourish and a smile, but I didn’t smile back. He’d lost me a few seconds ago. Somewhere around “getting ready to move again.”
“Move?” I repeated. “Move where?”
“Back to Connecticut, of course.” That must’ve been when he noticed my dumbfounded expression, because he tilted his head and looked at me in confusion. “We’d only planned to stay here for a year. David didn’t tell you?”
Cold spread through my insides even though I hadn’t touched my milk yet. “He didn’t say a word.” As usual.
Mr. Kerrigan nodded as if it made perfect sense. “He cared a lot about you, honey. He still does. In fact, I think you were a big part of the reason he agreed to come here so easily.”
I already knew that. Because David had told me.
“But why go back to Connecticut? I thought you inherited this house? Now you have to find another one?”
He shook his head. “We never sold the house in Connecticut. When my father died, this house was in my name, but I never intended to keep it. There’s no mortgage, but the taxes are high, and it’s too much house for David and me. I gave him a choice; we could rent out the house in Connecticut and live here while we got this house ready for the market, sort of a last hurrah before we said good-bye. Or, we could stay in Connecticut. Drive up here on the weekends and do what we needed to do in our free time. With my health being what it was, it didn’t make sense to do all that traveling. But I didn’t want to pull David out of school, so I told him the decision was his.” He smiled again. “You’d be surprised how little convincing it took.”
Suddenly I wanted to be back in my sheet cocoon in the worst possible way. In September I’d hoped David’s arrival in Rhode Island was a figment of my imagination—a huge misunderstanding. Now I hoped the same thing about this conversation.
“So you’re leaving again?”
“Not until after graduation. But definitely before the end of the summer, whether we have a buyer by then or not.”
“But I thought—”
The sound of the kitchen door opening interrupted my question. David came into the room, swatting at raindrops that shone like glitter against his black hair. “Hey, Kelse,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re leaving.” I’d meant to phrase it as a question, but it came out sounding like an accusation. Neither of us broke eye contact, but neither of us knew what to say.
Mr. Kerrigan pushed himself away from the table and stood up. “Look at these cookies Kelsey made for us!” He grabbed one of the containers and pushed it into David’s abdomen. “Why don’t you take these upstairs and show her your fish tank?”
David looked at his father as if he’d spoken complete gibberish.
Mr. Kerrigan patted his shoulder. “I think she’d like to see your fish.”
“Yeah,” David said, finally getting the hint. “Come on up, Kelse.”
It had been ages since I’d been in David’s room at this house. It felt foreign and familiar all at once, with the same wooden bunk beds against the right wall and the window at the far end with blue sailboat curtains. The biggest difference was that it no longer looked like a temporary, unlived-in bedroom. His baseball memorabilia dotted the dressers and walls. His hooded sweatshirt hung on his desk chair, the same desk that had always been mostly bare. Now it held his computer and his schoolbooks and, of course, the fish tank. And a framed picture of him and Violet.
It looked like the bedroom of a normal teenage boy, not a room where he stayed for a week or so each summer. It looked lived in, though apparently he wouldn’t be living in it much longer.
“Is there something else you forgot to open your mouth about?” I asked as the door shut behind me.
“Why would I tell you?” He tossed the container of cookies on the desk and dropped into the chair. “We weren’t even friends for most of the year. It’s like I said; I didn’t want pity. I just wanted to know what would happen if you and I were in the same place at the same time again.”
“Does Violet know you’re moving?”
“She does now. It’s part of the reason she was so pleasant at prom.”
“This doesn’t make any sense. That day when we talked about choosing colleges, you told me you planned to stay close to home.”
“I do plan to stay close to home. I’m going to UConn.”
“UConn? Then why did Violet tell me you were going to Massachusetts like she is?”
David grimaced. “Wishful thinking on her part. UConn and UMass both offered me scholarships. She thought if she kept on me, I’d pick the one closer to her. UMass is less than two hours from here, but it’s more than three from Connecticut.” He shrugged. “She’s not too happy with me, but I had to go where I’d be close to my dad.”
“So now you’re leaving,” I said again.
David sighed and stood up. “Why does it matter, Kelse? You love it here. With or without me.”
“I do love it here. But I want you here with me.”
“Why?”
I crossed the room and stood in front of him. Tentatively I traced the shadowed pattern of raindrops on his T-shirt with my finger. “It’s raining. What do you think about when it rains?”
“What do you mean?”
My heart galloped like a racehorse, but I forced myself to look him in the eye. “I think about kissing you every time it rains.” I sucked in a shaky breath. “And every time it doesn’t.” Then I leaned up on my toes, and pressed my lips against his.
It ended too fast—fast enough that I wasn’t sure what happened. Then I realized he’d pushed me away. Not roughly, and not in a way that made me think he was angry. Just enough to let me know that it wasn’t going to happen. I looked at him with questioning eyes.
“Sorry, Kelse,” he said softly. “Not this time.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have a girlfriend, and because you broke up with Ryan two days ago. I’m not gonna be your rebound.”
His words hit me like a slap in the face. “You know you’re not a rebound. How can you say that? I’m finally trying to do what’s right here.”
“So am I. What am I supposed to tell Violet? ‘Thanks for being Kelsey’s stand-in, but your services are no longer needed’? That’s not fair.”
I took a step back and folded my arms over my chest. “If she’s only my stand-in, how is that fair?”
“That’s not what I meant. She’s already upset because she thinks you had something to do with me choosing UConn. I can’t stand here and kiss you again when I’ve told her a thousand times that there’s nothing going on.”
“You almost broke up with her last time. What were you going to tell her then?”
“I honestly don’t know. But it doesn’t matter, because you didn’t want to be with me. Again.”
I let out a frustrated breath. “What was I supposed to do? I made a whole new life for myself before you got here. I had my friends, I had my boyfriend. I thought everything was perfect. Then you show up out of nowhere and tell me how much I’ve changed and start kissing my friends and confusing the hell out of me and no matter how much I want to hate you, I can’t!”
David’s lips settled into a frown. “That’s the part I still don’t get. I never did anything to deserve you hating me. I told you I loved you, for Christ’s sake. Why would you hate me for that?”
I sat down hard on the lower bunk and buried my face in my hands.
“I didn’t hate you for saying you loved me. I hated you for making me want to stay. And then breaking my heart all over again when I tried to tell you.”
“Kelse, it wasn’t—”
I held up my hand. “I know. I was so stupid back then. I thought it had to be all or nothing; if you could be happy without me, with people I didn’t know how to relate to anymore, then you didn’t need me at all. I had this idealized image in my head of what life would be like when I got here—what I’d be like—and taking the next step with you didn’t fit in the picture.” I paused for a second, the photo of the Grand Canyon that used to hang by my bed flashing through my mind. I thought I’d crossed the valley to the perpetually coveted other side when I left my old life behind. And yet, here I was, staring longingly at where I’d already been. “And then what if it didn’t work? I would’ve lost my boyfriend and my best friend.”
“So you decided to throw me away instead?”
“I can’t stand what I did to you, but part of me hated you for being the person I could never be again, and making it look so easy.” My breath shook. My confession had surprised even me. “But, David, you wouldn’t be here, in this house, in this state, if you didn’t want to give it another chance.” I looked at him with pleading eyes. “Can’t we make it work?”
Some kind of exasperated sound tore from his throat and he pushed his hand through his hair. “We wouldn’t be together this time, either. Not physically. You’ll be in Rhode Island and I’ll be in Connecticut, just like before. We had all year to make this work.” He held my gaze, both sadness and resolve in his eyes. “It’s too late.”
A sound like the ocean rang in my ears, one that must have signaled all my blood rushing to my feet. The room spun and my legs wobbled when I stood up. David started toward me. “I still want us to be friends, Kelse.”
Friends. We’d started as friends, but it wasn’t what I wanted anymore. I’d wanted more for a long time, longer than I’d even realized. But I’d missed my window, and begging wouldn’t change anything.
I nodded woodenly. “And I want you to know that if I could go back and do things differently, I would.”
The briefest flicker of a smile crossed his lips and he stepped forward like he might hug me, but I turned toward the door. The thought of touching him was too much. I only wanted to get out of there and be alone with my humiliation, pronto.
“Guess I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” I said hurriedly. The knowledge made me want to vomit.
I didn’t know how I’d make it through the next couple of weeks until graduation. As I tore out of the house and back into the rain, I only knew that all my perfect illusions had burst like bubbles. Of course, if they’d ever really been perfect, then what happened in David’s bedroom wouldn’t have mattered. But it did matter, because I’d made the biggest mistake of my life when I let him slip through my fingers last year.
And now I’d made the same mistake all over again.