We ordered another round of sodas; we talked about what we were watching on TV. It was easy to be with them, to fall back into our old familiar rhythms: gossiping about people we’d gone to high school with, do you remember the time . . . ? I even told them a little bit about Alex. I hadn’t been able to talk about him to anyone since we started dating, and it felt good to say his name out loud to people who knew me—some kind of validation that he really existed, that what we had between us was real.
Still, as the night wore on I couldn’t shake the constant awareness that I might be staring directly into my future. This was exactly what it would be like if Guy chose Olivia instead of me. Liv had a failsafe—worst-case scenario, she’d go off to college in September just like she’d always planned. But I’d be right back here at Burger Delight every Friday, Tim trying to slip his arm around my shoulders and the smell of fry grease sticking in my hair.
I love those guys, Olivia had said when we first got to Orlando, but none of them are ever going to get out of Jessell.
The truth was, I could see myself falling into the familiarity of it; I knew exactly how easy it would be to seamlessly settle back into this life, as if I’d never left at all. A month ago, I might have given myself over to it—accepted it as inevitable, surrendered without a fight. But now there was a part of me that thrashed against the idea that the world didn’t hold anything for me but a thousand more nights like this one, as if I was having my head held underwater.
Sarah Jane offered to drive me home that night—it was late enough that the buses had stopped running, and she lived right around the corner from my mom’s. Still, normally I’d have gotten a ride from Olivia, and SJ must have been thinking the same thing: “So where is Liv tonight, exactly?” she asked as she unlocked the door of her hatchback, fixing me with a long stare over the roof of the car.
“Oh,” I said vaguely, cringing a bit. I thought I’d successfully dodged that line of inquiry. I should have known better than to let my guard down where SJ was concerned. “She had family stuff to do, I think.”
“I knew it,” Sarah Jane said, sliding into the driver’s seat. “I knew when we were down there that there was something weird going on with you guys.”
“There’s not,” I insisted. It occurred to me that even now, when things were worse between us than they’d ever been before, my allegiance was to Olivia first and always. We’d never talked about each other to our other friends, not ever; just because Olivia had broken that promise with Kristin and Ashley didn’t mean I was about to. “She’s just busy with her mom.”
“Uh-huh,” Sarah Jane said, in a voice like she didn’t believe me but knew she wasn’t going to get anywhere by pushing it. “Whatever you say.” Then she hesitated, glancing at me as we pulled out of the parking lot. “Can I ask you something, though?” she continued carefully. “Can she, like, handle it down there?”
I thought about the night after Guy’s pool party. I thought of how she’d wanted this her entire life. I shrugged a little, turning and staring out the window. “I don’t know,” I said finally, and this time I was telling the truth.
Sarah Jane nodded at that. “Fair enough.”
We drove home in companionable silence, past the high school and Waffle House, the landscape that had made up the entirety of my life until this summer. SJ hugged me again before I got out of the car. “Stay in touch, yeah?” she told me. “And, Dana—take care of yourself.”
The house was dark when I got inside that night—my mom was still out, though I hadn’t a clue where. Elvis was whining for a pee at the back door, urgent; I was just shooing him back inside when the phone rang. “It’s you,” Alex said when I picked up the receiver in the hallway, and just like that I burst into tears.
“Oh my God, I’m sorry,” I said once I could talk again. “That’s embarrassing.” I sniffled. “Hi. Sorry. I’m tired, is all.”
“It’s okay. What’s up, huh?” Alex asked me. “What’s going on?”
I hesitated, twisting the phone cord tightly around my finger, looking through the window at the dark, weedy yard outside. Part of me wanted to tell him everything—my mom and the socks in the living room, Mrs. Maxwell in the supermarket and how badly the idea of coming back here for good scared me—but truthfully, I was embarrassed. “Just weird being back, I guess.”
“I know what you mean,” Alex said. “The first time I came back after I started with Hurricane State, all kinds of dumb stuff set me off. My mom had moved everything around in the kitchen cabinets and I totally lost my mind.” He paused then, like he was catching himself. “But I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that this is a different kind of thing.”
I smiled at that. “Yeah,” I said.
“You want to tell me about it?”
I banged my head lightly against the wall. God, me being back in Jessell just underlined everything I’d been worried about the past couple of weeks. How would we possibly stay together if I came back here? How would we ever make it work if he was on tour with Tulsa in places like Jakarta and Manchester and I was back in Jessell, slinging burgers for two-dollar tips?
We wouldn’t, was the answer. Whatever we had would have to end.
“Dana?” Alex asked, his voice low and familiar in my ear. “You still there?”
“I’m here,” I managed, trying to keep my voice steady. I shook my head, forced myself to pull it together. “Just talk to me, will you?” I asked him finally, dragging the phone back to my room and climbing into bed with the receiver. “Tell me what it’s like there.”
“Sure,” Alex promised, seeming to understand that this was what I needed more than anything else—reassurance that I had a life to come back to in Orlando, that I was a part of something there. “Of course I will.”
Alex talked to me for a long time, patient, filling me in on the broad strokes and small moments alike: that Mikey had overflowed the toilet at the studio, how Guy had them learning a Jackson 5 song for their encore on tour. “I can’t wait till you come back here,” he told me softly. His voice was the last thing I heard before I fell asleep.
TWENTY-EIGHT