“Everyone always talks about college being the best years of your life,” Paige says. “Look at these kids. Can that really be true?”
I abandon any pretense of class and talk through the food in my mouth. “It wasn’t true for me. But I imagine it’s different for you.”
“Why?”
I wipe my face with a too-thin napkin. “Because you met Ollie here.”
She lowers her sandwich, waits until she’s finished chewing. “Yes, but I still wouldn’t want to come back to this. My friends talk about it like they’d return in a second, but they forget that we were poor, we had nothing, we knew nothing. I’ve done that already. I’m ready to be a grown-up.”
She chomps down, gazes across the avenue at the students in the quad. Clearly there’s a disconnect between what I see when I look at Paige and what she sees in the mirror. Even back in college, she seemed far more mature than the rest of us. Always focused and responsible, acing all her classes, somehow still able to make good decisions even while impaired and slurring her speech. And now she’s a married homeowner with a kid and a steady career. If that’s not a grown-up, what is?
And it’s an especially odd comment for her to make while she’s sitting on a curb, a girlish barrette in her hair, stuffing her mouth with a five-dollar sandwich packed with chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, and French fries while the rest of society is stuck at work. In other words, while she’s behaving like a child.
Then again, considering the satisfaction on her face, maybe that’s her point. Being a grown-up isn’t a matter of age or responsibility. For Paige, it’s finally having the power to do whatever the hell she wants.
“Save some room,” she says. “We’re going to Thomas Sweet next.”
“What makes their chocolate chip cookie-dough ice cream so special,” Paige says, “is that instead of just throwing a few chunks of cookie dough into vanilla ice cream, the ice cream itself is cookie dough.”
We’re at Thomas Sweet sharing a double scoop of what Paige claims is unequivocally the best ice cream in the world. What I assume has to be hyperbolic nostalgia becomes more plausible once I get my first taste. It’s damn good.
The fact that I have zero appetite left doesn’t stop me from sliding more ice cream onto my plastic spoon. It’s been a carefree day of gluttony so far, but no matter how much I stuff in my belly, I can’t fill the pit inside. “You were right.”
“About what?” Paige wonders.
“Sydney was looking at properties in New York. But not in January; in February. I met with his broker. She mentioned that he was with a photographer. Some woman.”
I hear a faint hmm. Not sure if it’s in response to me or the ice cream.
“That’s all I have so far,” I say, putting down my spoon. “I still don’t know if he actually came back in April. Or why he told me he was working when he wasn’t. Or why he lied about taking you out for your birthday.”
She nods, swallowing. “So what do you think it all means?”
“Obviously, I hate to think that there could’ve been someone else.”
She places her spoon on the napkin with mine.
“Listen,” she says, checking the corners of her mouth for cookie-dough remnants. “You came all this way, back home, finally, and I’ve already seen such a change in you from when you first got here. I’d hate for this to take you backward. Trust me, what you and Sydney had was real and pure and special. You never once had reason to be suspicious the entire time you were together, right? Don’t start doubting him now.”
It sounds fair and logical and caring. It’s probably even true. But I can’t change how I feel. People don’t lie because everything is fine and dandy. They lie because telling the truth is too hard. And though our relationship appeared to be solid, it seems even the best and most dedicated couples experience occasional periods of doubt. A one-night tryst I might be able to look past, but the thought of an ongoing relationship with repeated trips back and forth is a scenario that’s just too painful to fathom.
“Can I ask you something?” Paige says.
Something in the way she says it, I know playtime is over.
“What took you so long to come back? I mean, we were all so close in college. You were a groomsman at our wedding. Then you just vanished, zipped off to California, changed your name. How come you never wanted to visit?”
I wasn’t expecting to have to deal with this now, but I knew it was coming eventually. “It’s not that. I wanted to.”
I can tell from her face that it’s going to take more than that. There’s a stubbornness in her stare that reminds me of Joan. I’m suddenly very thirsty, but there’s no water at the ready.
“Look, I had a really tough time in Los Angeles at first, leaving my sister and mother, being out there alone. I had to learn to push certain thoughts out of my head. I had to give myself permission to move on and not look back. I’m not saying it’s right. It’s just what I needed to do.”
She’s gearing up for a response, but I’m not finished.
“Then I came home for Veronica’s graduation. She was just a little girl when I left and now she was this woman. My mother looked so much older, and all the guilt I felt about leaving came back, but this time it was even worse than before. It was hard on them, too, having me in their life again for this one brief moment. I remember flying back to California, telling myself I probably shouldn’t go home again. It was just easier that way.”
She winces at my words. “Thanks.”
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t about you guys. You know that.”
“But your family still visited you in California. You handled that okay, didn’t you?”
“For some reason, it didn’t affect me the same way. Something about being home.”
New Jersey had become synonymous with my father’s death and all that followed. I can sense the same thing happening now with Sydney and California. Yet another forbidden zone on my trauma map.
“I meant to come back eventually,” I say. “It’s just, the longer I waited, the harder it got.”
“You’re back now. Is it so bad?”
“I don’t know. No. But—”
“Listen to me. This stuff, whatever it is you have to push out of your head, you can’t just ignore all that, because it doesn’t go away. You have to deal with it eventually. There’s no other way.”
This sounds eerily familiar. “Did you and Sydney talk about this?”
“Of course,” Paige says. “I wanted to know where you’d been all these years.” Her face softens. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re here, even if it took a while. We just can’t have you setting any more fires, that’s all.” She smacks my arm playfully.
I meet her eyes, which are unyielding but not unkind. “I don’t care what you say. You’ve been a grown-up since the day I met you.”
I mean it as a joke, but she responds in a solemn manner. “I know,” she says, “just not in the way I want to be.”