Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between

“That’s not—”

He shakes his head. “I know you’ve been great about UCLA. You have. But if Harvard had been an option—a real on-the-table option—I honestly don’t know whether you would’ve been on my side.”

Clare stares at him, stung by this. “Of course I would have,” she says, even as a part of her wonders if that’s true. The fact that he didn’t even try to get in—not to mention that he didn’t tell her—feels like a kind of rejection.

But what if he had been accepted? If there was a chance for them to be closer next year—if he could have chosen Harvard, chosen the East Coast, chosen her, but didn’t—isn’t it possible she would’ve felt differently?

Last fall, when Aidan was constantly complaining about Harvard, Clare had made him a deal. “If you stop moaning and groaning about being forced to apply to the best academic institution in the country,” she said, “I’ll put in an application for somewhere I don’t want to go, either.”

It had turned into a game, the two of them poring over heavy books filled with rankings and seemingly endless online lists. Aidan’s first suggestions were all jokes, places that were much too close (the community college that Scotty’s now attending), or much too far (universities in Moscow and Tokyo and Beijing), much too technical (MIT), or not technical enough (a college of “living wisdom” where you could actually major in yoga).

But once Clare had nixed all of those, Aidan got serious.

“All your others are on the East Coast,” he pointed out. “So maybe we should find you something out west to balance things out.”

“I like that,” she’d said. “That way, we’ll sort of be mirroring each other, since you’re all West Coast except for Harvard.”

After that, it was easy. Finding the closest thing to Harvard on the West Coast meant one thing: Stanford. And so she’d applied.

When her rejection arrived, Clare didn’t mind. She’d never expected to get in, nor had she ever seriously considered going there, but she was surprised to see a flicker of disappointment in Aidan’s eyes when she told him.

“Well, there goes our safety school.”

Clare had frowned. “Stanford wasn’t my safety. Not by a long shot.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling, “but it was mine.”

“You applied?” she asked, staring at him, and he shook his head.

“There was just something kind of cool about knowing we might be on the same coast,” he told her. “Kind of like a safety net… you know, for us.”

“Well, there’s always Harvard,” she said, expecting that to cheer him up a bit, but instead, she saw something shut down behind his eyes, and he only shrugged.

“We’ll see.”

Clare doesn’t mind that he didn’t end up applying. Not really. She knows that Aidan’s best and worst quality is this: that he wants everyone to be happy. He’s always bending over backward, doing cartwheels and flips and somersaults in an effort to make sure he doesn’t offend anyone. So she can understand his logic. If he’d applied and gotten into Harvard, there’s no way he could have chosen another school without causing a huge rift with his father. But if he fixed the odds himself, making sure it wasn’t even a possibility, there was a chance he could get out of the trap that had been set for him his entire life with barely a scratch.

Only it hadn’t worked.

And worse, he’d left her completely in the dark.

That’s what she minds: that he hadn’t told her, that he hadn’t trusted her enough to believe she’d be supportive. After nearly two years together—two whole years of being the most important person in each other’s lives—this feels like a kick in the teeth.

“Aidan,” she says now, her eyes trained on his shadowy profile in the dim light of the car. “I’m always on your side. But you can’t put me in the same category as your parents. You can’t lie to me just because you’re afraid of how I might react.”