He rubs his hand across his forehead. “You know I love you, right? That I want to do this because I love you, and I want to make sure we’re doing the right thing for us.”
The weird thing is that I do know he loves me. I don’t doubt it, even now, as he is breaking up with me.
“I think that if you do find yourself wanting to go out with someone else, you should.” He swallows. “That’s hard for me to say. But that’s the point of being apart. I want to know that we’re sure about this before we factor each other into college decisions. Right now, I just don’t know that I’m very confident about it.”
“How long have you been thinking about this?” I mean, honestly, does everyone in my life just keep awful things from me, all the time?
When Lukas blushes, it’s not a full-face pink. It’s two pink splotches right on his cheeks. “Um, well. Obviously, I’ve been concerned since your outburst, leaving church. But that concern rose further after the incident following our date to the aquarium.”
I can feel the blush creeping up my forehead, down my neck. The incident? You have got to be kidding me, dude. So we made out sans shirts. We’ve been going out for two years! “Seriously?”
“Well, it was excruciating to sit in church the next day, wasn’t it?” he asks. Actually, I didn’t feel like we’d done anything that wrong. I felt guilty for not feeling guilty, maybe. “And I started to think about what a temptation it would be if we were at the same college. Since we’re both committed to not having premarital sex . . . I don’t know.”
That’s all it takes—the flame-burn of feeling judged—for a fire to be stoked inside me. So, I fooled around with my boyfriend of two years once. So, I’m hurt and confused by a God that has never hurt or confused me before. And because I’m human, Lukas needs to reconsider if I’ll be his college girlfriend and future wife? What decade is this?
In the past two years, I’ve all but searched Lukas for a gift tag—To: Lucy?, From: God. He showed up as the new kid right when I transferred to public school freshman year, right when I needed him. He opens the car door for me; he chats about marathon training with my dad. He sits at swim meets next to my mom. So why does he feel so much like Shruggy Jesus to me right now? Why am I tempted to place my hands on his shoulders and push?
“What would you do, Lukas? If your mom got cancer? Twice?” His mother wears a lot of candy-pink sundresses with paisley or even starfish prints. She has a Southern accent and a sleek, blond bob. I hope he’s imagining clumps of it falling out. Because that will be my reality.
When Lukas opens his mouth to reply, I cut him off. “Because I know what I’d do for you if that happened. I’d pray and fast and cry with you. But I’d also be angry with you. I would crawl to wherever you were, emotionally, so that you wouldn’t feel alone.”
He already looks ashamed, staring down at the table between us, but I’m not done. “I would not climb up on my high horse and gallop around the Piedmont Square Starbucks, judging you for how you felt about a situation I could not possibly understand.”
At this point, I’m loud enough that other coffee drinkers give us wary glances.
“This has not gone as well as I’d hoped, I admit,” Lukas says miserably.
Lord. He wanted this—pausing our relationship—to go well. It would be absurd if it wasn’t so earnest. He talked to his parents and a pastor to ensure this was the right decision. He doesn’t want either of us to make a wrong choice about college or our futures. In a backward way, this dedication is part of why I admire him.
So.
I take one last sip of now-tepid tea. “Well, I better go.”
“Lucy . . .” He reaches for my hand. “I don’t want us to leave angry.”
“I’m not angry,” I lie.
He studies my face for a moment, then nods. Because this is what Lukas does: believes without question. The way I used to. I nearly resent him for it.
When he leans down to kiss my cheek, I almost jerk away. This kiss is a stamp pressed to a letter—the final touch before you send it off. But his cologne wraps around me, oaky and familiar and traitorously pleasant.
“I’ll be praying for you, Luce,” he says quietly.
“I’ll be praying for you too.” That your chicken pox vaccine didn’t work and you spend the whole summer with itchy spots spreading down your back and private parts, into crevices you can’t even scratch.
I may actually be the devil.
On the drive home, I do not cry. I do not hear the radio. I do not feel the AC blasting on my skin. I drive straight ahead, jaw set, intent on my path.
At home, I plunk the car keys on the kitchen table instead of in their designated bowl. It gets my parents’ attention, and I lift my chin. “I wanted to let you both know that I’ll be going to Daybreak this summer.”
My parents’ faces are the theater-symbol masks, comedy and tragedy. My mom beams while my dad’s jaw drops in horror.
“So . . . ,” he manages, “Lukas was supportive.”
I dodge this. I don’t want to talk about Lukas. The last thing my mom needs is confirmation of my turmoil. “I need to do something for myself. And I feel like I’m being called to this camp.”
“Well, okay, then!” My mom clasps her hands together. “I’ll call Rhea! She’ll be delighted, just delighted! Oh, honey. Thank you.”
That settles it: even if my entire summer is a nightmare, the joy on her face was worth it.
So I march upstairs to visit the Daybreak website again and reassess my packing needs. I pack the tin hidden in my desk drawer—the one with all my top-shelf makeup in it. If I’m not going to see my parents every day this summer, maybe I can wear some of it. It doesn’t make sense at camp, necessarily, but you never know.
When I’m done, I sit at the piano downstairs and let my hands fly. I’ve remembered, these past weeks, why this was such a big part of my life. In fact, I don’t even realize my dad’s in the room until I’ve finished a fifteen-minute-long Mozart piece. “Oh. Hey.”
“Hey. Sounded good.” He’s sitting in the Queen Anne chair, looking relaxed. “Bitten by the piano bug again?”
“I guess.”
“About this camp thing. You sure about this, kiddo?”
“I’m sure. It’s what Mom wants.”
“Well, I know. But . . .” As he considers, his dark brows lower in consternation. My dad has a full head of hair, and it’s white—has been since I was little. But it actually makes his face look younger by contrast. Skin smoother, blue eyes sharper. “She would understand, Bird.”
“I know.” But too much has changed now. “I can do it, though.”
“Well, that I don’t doubt. You’ll be a wonderful counselor. We’ve always said how great you are with kids—even when you were a kid.” He gets up, kissing the top of my head. “I’ll just miss seeing you at Holyoke every day, that’s all.”