Brooklyn showed up about the time the food did. The Chinese restaurant we ordered from is his favorite too and he ate a lot, his appetite obviously not hindered in any way. I pick at the sweet and spicy chicken, rice, and lettuce wraps that I put on my plate. I push the food around a little to make it look like I ate more than I did. What little appetite I had got ruined on the beach.
“You need to eat,” he says.
I pick up a couple grains of rice and put them in my mouth. “I am eating.”
Brooklyn grabs our plates and takes off toward my bedroom. “Come on.”
I follow him for lack of a better plan.
He sets our plates on my bed and motions for me to sit. We sit cross-legged on my bed like we’ve done so many times before. Brooklyn smiles at me, stabs a piece of chicken with his fork, and holds it up to my mouth, so I take a bite. Then he loads up the fork with rice and holds it up to my mouth. I try to eat it, but I bump the fork and the rice goes scattering back down on our plates.
We both start laughing.
“I should probably feed myself. So are you all packed and ready to go? Are you nervous?”
“Yeah, a little. At least we went there this summer, and I feel like I know my way around a little. That should help.” He stops talking and touches my face. “I had an amazing summer, Keats. I know things are really messed up with us, but I meant everything I said. I love you. I probably always will.”
“I meant it too.”
“I got excited when I learned I had sponsors. I thought you’d support me. That you’d be here, I’d be off competing, but that we’d still see each other, still be together. I really hadn’t thought it through. Like the logistics of it. I was thinking all about me and my dreams.”
“I know. It’s okay. With everything that’s happened, it’s probably best for you to be gone anyway.”
“I don’t want us to lose touch. You’re my best friend, Keats, and that part of our relationship means a lot to me. I’ve been trying to make sense of all this. What you said the other day about me liking part of you. You’re kind of right about that, and it’s not fair to you. You need a guy that appreciates everything about you. Not just the surfer girl that I love.”
“You know what’s funny? Mr. Moran suggested this school when I was trying to talk Mom and Tommy into letting me go to high school.”
“Really? Maybe fate intervened.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe there’s someone there that you’re supposed to meet. Maybe you chose the wrong path back then, and fate is fixing it now.”
“Brooklyn, fate is when you miss your flight and end up on the next one sitting next to the guy you’re destined to be with. Fate is when your alarm doesn’t go off, and you avoid a pile up on the highway. Fate does not almost get you kidnapped.”
“Maybe it does. You didn’t get kidnapped, and now you’re going where you were supposed to go in the first place. Maybe the guy of your dreams is waiting there for you.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I’m pretty sure neither one of us knows what we want, Keats. That’s the problem.”
“As in, you don’t know what we are. You haven’t known all summer, have you?”
“I’m sorry. I really do care about you, and I do love you. I guess I’m just not ready for a relationship.”
He gives me a kiss. It’s a goodbye kiss, not a we’ll-be-together-again-someday kiss. Even though I broke up with him, the kiss makes me sad, so I change the subject. “So, there’s a table full of actors sitting around out there trying to write a script for my fake life.”
He laughs. “They come up with anything good?”
“Let’s get high, then I’ll tell you all about my fake lives.”
“Let’s not.” He moves our plates onto my desk, pulls me into his arms, and falls onto the bed with me. “Just tell me.”
“They wanted to make me poor, an orphan, or a scholarship student. Seriously? At a private school like that? They might as well have made me a leper. Then—let’s see—I just got out of rehab; I got kicked out of another boarding school; oh, I got pregnant, had a baby, and gave it up for adoption. Then Mr. Moran suggested my dad just died, and I got pissed off and walked out. I sounded like a little bitchy starlet throwing my script down and marching off the set going, I demand a rewrite. If it weren’t so horrifying, it would be almost comical.”
“So you still need a story?”
“Actually, no. James helped me figure it out. He said I should keep it as close to the truth as possible.”
“So, who are you, Keats Monroe?”
I hug him tightly. “I’m going to miss you terribly.”