Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between

“Good luck at college,” she says, giving him a friendly pat on the shoulder.

“I’m gonna go get a drink. You want one?”

“Yeah, and if you see Stella…”

“Yeah?”

Clare hesitates, then shakes her head. “Never mind.”

As he walks away, the top of his reddish hair visible above the crowd, Clare is struck by a completely illogical fear of losing sight of him. She watches as he pauses in the doorway between the foyer and the kitchen, bending a little as some girl, a junior on the girls’ lacrosse team, leans close to say something to him. Clare’s surprised by the stab of jealousy she feels at the sight, and she realizes this is how it will be from now on: next week and next month and next year.

Out in California, Aidan will soon be offering to get someone else a drink. Most likely someone tall and blond and impossibly beautiful, the kind of girl who gets asked whether she’s a model even when she’s doing something decidedly un-model-like, like eating chili fries or blowing her nose. Not long from now, it’ll be someone else’s hand he takes as they walk through a crowd, someone else he’ll be cracking jokes with, telling stories to, huddling with in a corner at a thousand different parties.

Because he’s no longer Clare’s. And she’s no longer his.

The thought wrenches at something inside her, makes her knees go a little wobbly as she leans back against the blue wallpaper in the foyer.

She tries to force her mind in a different direction, far from California, all the way over to New Hampshire, where in spite of everything she’s feeling at the moment, and in spite of how difficult it is to imagine from where she’s standing right now, it’s possible that there could be someone else waiting for her, too.

It might even be someone better—at least in theory—someone more suited to her than Aidan: the kind of guy who keeps a list of all the books he can’t wait to read, who likes to watch something other than sports, who thinks a color-coded calendar system is kind of brilliant.

After all, it’s not like she and Aidan have ever been perfect. They’ve never even been all that logical, in some ways. There are almost certainly better matches for both of them out there somewhere. So maybe this is just the way their story is supposed to go. Maybe, like her parents, this was all just a mistake they needed to make on their way to finding the one.

Maybe.

But that doesn’t make it any easier.

A new song comes on over the speakers, and Clare pushes off from the wall, rising onto her tiptoes and looking toward the kitchen. She’s debating whether to go find Aidan—who has yet to return with her drink, whether because he’s still talking to that girl or because he forgot about it entirely; she isn’t sure she wants to know—when someone puts a hand on her elbow. She turns to find one of their classmates, Anjali, smiling up at her.

“Hey,” she says, holding up her cup for a toast, but she lowers it again when she realizes Clare doesn’t have one. “When do you take off?”

“Tomorrow,” Clare tells her. “You?”

“Not till next weekend, actually. Yale starts on the later side. I think I might be the last man standing.”

Reflexively, Clare glances toward the doorway where Aidan disappeared. “You excited?” she asks, forcing herself to turn back to Anjali.

“Totally,” she says. “And you know how I swore I’d never take math again after a whole year with Mr. Mitchell? Well, I actually got into this special economics program, so it looks like it’s more statistics for me. What about you? Have you figured out your major yet?”

“Uh, we don’t have to declare until sophomore year,” Clare says distractedly as someone pushes past her. She presses her back up against the wall. “Lucky for me.”

“Same with Yale, but I feel like most people already sort of know what they want.”