I shoot her a warning glance before looking back to Dean. “And that is our cue to leave.”
“No, no, listen to me first.” Mom stands and her brief smile quickly disappears, a disapproving frown taking its place. I fear that when I come home this frown of hers will have become permanent. “Don’t go on the subway. Don’t speak to strangers. Don’t step foot in the Bronx. Also, please come home alive.”
My eyes roll to the back of my head. I received a similar lecture exactly two years ago when I was leaving for California to reconnect with Dad, only then the warnings were mostly about him. “I know,” I say. “Basically, just don’t do anything stupid.”
She looks at me hard. “Exactly.”
I let go of Dean’s arm and step toward her, wrapping my arms around her. Hugging her will shut her up. It always does. She squeezes me tightly and sighs against my neck. “I’ll miss you,” I murmur, but it’s muffled.
“And you sure as hell know I’m going to miss you too,” she says as she pulls away from me, her hands still on my shoulders. She glances at the clock on the kitchen wall before gently pushing me back toward Dean. “You better get going. You don’t want to miss your flight.”
“Yeah, we better head off,” Dean says. He swings open the front door and rolls my suitcase over the threshold, pausing. Perhaps it’s to see if my mom has any more unnecessary words of advice for me before I leave. Thankfully, she doesn’t.
I grab my backpack from the couch and follow Dean outside, but not without turning back around to offer Mom one final wave. “I guess I’ll see you in six weeks.”
“Stop reminding me,” she says, and with that, she promptly slams the front door. I roll my eyes and make my way across the lawn. She’ll come around. Eventually.
“Well,” Dean calls over his shoulder as I follow him to his car, “at least I’m not the only one who’s being left behind.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and run a hand through my hair, lingering by the passenger door as he throws my suitcase into the trunk. “Dean, please don’t start.”
“But it’s not fair,” he mutters. We slide into the vehicle at the exact same time, and the moment he gets his door shut, he lets out a groan. “Why the hell do you have to leave?”
“It’s really not that big of a deal,” I say, because I really don’t see what the problem is. Both he and Mom have disapproved of New York since the second I mentioned it to them. It’s as though they think I’ll never come home again. “It’s just a trip.”
“A trip?” Dean scoffs. Despite his foul mood, he manages to start up the engine and get me on my way, backing out onto the street and heading southbound. “You’re leaving for six weeks. You come home for a month and then you move to Chicago. All I’m getting is five weeks with you. It’s not enough.”
“Yeah, but we’ll make the best of those five weeks.” I know that anything I say won’t help the situation in the slightest, because this moment has been building up for several months now, and finally Dean is putting everything out in the open. I’ve been waiting for this to happen for a while.
“That’s not the point, Eden,” he snaps, and it momentarily silences me. Although I was expecting this, it’s still odd seeing Dean aggravated. We rarely argue, because we’ve never disagreed on anything until now.
“Then what is?”
“The fact that you chose to spend six weeks over there instead of being with me,” he says, but his voice has suddenly grown a lot quieter. “Is New York really that great? Who the hell needs six weeks in New York? Why not just one?”
“Because he invited me out for six,” I admit. Maybe six weeks is a long time, but back when I agreed to it, it seemed like the best idea in the world.
“Why couldn’t you compromise?” He’s getting more riled up each second and he moves his hands in sync with his words, which results in some rough steering. “Why couldn’t you just say, ‘Hey, sure, I’ll come, but only for two weeks,’ huh?”
I fold my arms across my chest and turn away from him, glaring out the window. “Okay, chill out. Rachael hasn’t complained once about me leaving. Why can’t you be the same?”
“That’s because she gets to meet up with you while you’re there,” he fires back, which, admittedly, is true.
Meghan gets home from Utah State University next week and she and Rachael have had a trip to New York planned for months now. I’d have been invited along too, but Tyler beat them to it. So either way, I would have inevitably ended up in New York this summer.
Dean sighs and remains quiet for a minute, neither of us saying anything until we come to a stop sign. “You’re making me start this whole long-distance-relationship thing early,” he says. “It sucks.”
“Fine, turn the car around,” I snap. I spin back around to look at him, throwing my hands up. “I won’t go. Will that make you happy?”