Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between

Instead, she remains sitting there beside Aidan, staring out the dirty windshield at the low-slung building, which is wreathed in neon lights, the entrance bookended by two giant bowling pins with chipping paint, standing guard like weary soldiers.

Aidan hasn’t said a word since they left his house, and Clare thinks this might be the longest she’s ever heard him go quiet. He’s not like so many of the other guys in their class, sullen and moody and withdrawn; if there’s one thing Aidan Gallagher can do, it’s talk. He’s got a knack for keeping up a steady chatter, and he’s never met an awkward silence he couldn’t plow through with idle musings. When they’re together, it’s never mattered whether or not Clare keeps up her end of the conversation. A lot of the time, it doesn’t even matter if she’s listening. Aidan has a habit of answering his own questions, a sort of absentminded call-and-response that requires nobody else on the other end.

“Have you ever noticed that girls always seem to fold their socks while guys always roll them?” he’d said just yesterday while watching her pack. “It’s interesting, right? I wonder which one is actually more effective. Do you think anyone’s ever done a study of that sort of thing? Maybe we should do an experiment right now. Maybe we’ll win an award for our work in the field of hyper-efficient packing techniques.…”

“Aidan,” Clare had said, looking over at him distractedly, “can you please shut up?”

“Not a chance,” he’d replied good-naturedly; then he’d turned to start emptying the contents of her sock drawer. While she packed up the rest of her things, he dutifully rolled or folded each pair of socks with a look of great concentration, providing color commentary all the while.

That’s just Aidan: a natural talker, an unconscious prattler, a cheerful banterer. Though she teases him for it, it’s always been comforting, like being armed with a parachute for any kind of potentially uncomfortable social situation. There’s simply not room for long pauses when he’s around, and Clare—who falls on the quieter end of the spectrum—has always been grateful for that.

But now, after a completely silent fifteen-minute drive to the bowling alley, she’s starting to worry that this night—which was supposed to be all about conversation, all about discussion and dialogue and debate—might already be sunk.

In the quiet of the car, she plays with one of her rings, sliding it off her finger and then back on again, waiting for him to do something first: to speak or get out or drive away again. But as the minutes stretch between them with no end in sight, she finally looks over at him.

“Aidan,” she says, and he doesn’t react. His face is pale in the glow of a nearby streetlamp, and his forehead is creased. “You should’ve told me.…”

When he still doesn’t respond, she wonders if he could possibly be thinking they won’t talk about what happened, if his plan is just to roll the whole thing up like a pair of socks and tuck it away.

“I would’ve understood,” she says, pressing on, and he leans his head back against the seat, his eyes pinned to the shadowy ceiling of the car.

“Like you do now?” he asks in a flat tone that doesn’t even sound like him.

They’re not accustomed to fighting, and when they’ve done so, it’s always had a slightly playful edge to it, more sparring than actual combat. They’d once made a pact to differentiate between Petty High School Dramas and Big Life Issues, swearing that they’d only ever argue when it was something important, something that really mattered. But now that they’re here, now that the stage is bigger and the discussion has widened and they can’t seem to find their way through, Clare wonders if maybe they’re not equipped for the Big Life Issues after all. Maybe they never were.

“That’s not fair,” she says in a voice that sounds way too reasonable. “We haven’t even talked about it yet.”

“Yeah, but I know you, Clare Rafferty,” he says, still without looking at her. “I know you like things a certain way. You would’ve loved to be the girl at Dartmouth with the Harvard boyfriend.”