Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between

“We can do this,” he says. “We’ve done it before.”


“That was a million years ago,” she points out. Soon after they started dating, they’d wandered down here and picked up the paddles, half-jokingly. But after a few practice swings, they realized they were both pretty good, and they managed to keep it going for 188 consecutive volleys, whooping and cheering after the ball finally sailed away. Right now, though, that feels like a very long time ago. “We’re nowhere close. We might set the record for number of attempts at the record, but that’s about it.”

Aidan only shakes his head. “Let’s go,” he says, so they try again.

After a while, in the middle of a rally, Clare feels a wave of exhaustion wash over her, and without thinking about it, she simply snatches the ball out of the air when it comes spinning in her direction.

“I can’t,” she says, when she sees Aidan’s crestfallen expression. “I’m too tired.”

“But we were so close,” he says, though they both know that’s not true. “We can do it. We have to.”

Clare leans forward on the table and fixes him with an even look. “I’m going to tell you the same thing you told me earlier,” she says. “This is not a metaphor.”

His face doesn’t change, so she tries again.

“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a stupid challenge.”

“Yeah, but”—he tosses his paddle onto the table in frustration—“if we beat the record…”

“What?” she asks impatiently.

He lowers his eyes. “Then the whole night won’t just be about us breaking up.”

“Aidan,” she says, softening a bit. “It won’t be. Look how much we’ve done tonight. If anything, it’ll be the night we picked Scotty up from jail. Or the night he gave himself about a thousand tattoos.”

Aidan smiles, but there’s something somber about it. “The rest of it doesn’t matter,” he says. “Trust me. When we look back on tonight, all we’re gonna remember is that we broke up.”

“And you think Ping-Pong will help?”

“Maybe,” he says, and he looks so earnest right now, so sincere, that it’s all she can do to stay on her side of the table. “It could have been the night we set the Ping-Pong record instead.”

She laughs. “You’re crazy if you think that would outrank our breakup. You think I’d look back one day and remember this”—she holds up the ball—“instead of losing you?”

He moves around the table, taking a few slow steps in her direction. “It was worth a try,” he says, closing the space between them. When they’re only a few inches apart, she tips her head back to look at him. “And you’re not losing me. I’m losing you.”

“Either way,” she manages to say around the knot that’s formed in her throat.

He reaches out and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then lets his hand linger on her neck, and the feel of his skin on hers sends a shot of electricity through her. She can see the couch out of the corner of her eye, and her face prickles with a sudden warmth.

This is the thing about Aidan. This has always been the thing about him. He makes her forget all her reasons and rules and plans.

He makes her forget about everything but him.

“It’d have to be something a lot bigger,” she says, and he widens his eyes in exaggerated astonishment.

“Bigger than hitting a Ping-Pong ball a hundred and eighty-nine times in a row?”

She nods.

“What could be bigger than that?” he says, but even as he does, Clare sees it happen: his gaze falling on the only painting to brighten the concrete walls, a sweeping watercolor of Lake Michigan in the winter, icy and hardened and dusted with snow. When his eyes flick back to her, she’s already shaking her head.

“No.”

He grins. “Yes.”