The dog lunged toward me, and I heard the guy say, “Bert!” as he pulled him back, and then the soft sound of disappointed dog whimpering. But I was only half paying attention to this. My eyes were scanning the front of Dr. Rizzoli’s house, my hopes starting to nose-dive. All the curtains were drawn. There were no lights on that I could see, no cars in the driveway, and most telling of all, there was a layer of green summer leaves covering the front steps. Either Dr. Rizzoli was out of town, or he hadn’t left the house in a while. Why had I just assumed that he would be here, waiting for me, willing to correct the mistake and let me go to my program after all?
I stared at the house, telling myself that I could still do this, that this wasn’t over yet. I could get his number and call him and get him to change his mind . . . but even as I was forming this plan, I knew it wasn’t going to work. All the adrenaline and righteous anger that had gotten me here was fading, and I was left with the reality of the situation: Dr. Rizzoli had e-mailed Johns Hopkins and gotten me pulled from the program. He’d meant to do that, and he wasn’t about to undo it because I asked him nicely.
Feeling like I was about to cry—something I very rarely did, usually only at movies—I turned around and started walking across the street, back to my car, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Uh—so, see you around?” the guy called after me, and I could hear the nervous, hopeful note in his voice. Under other circumstances, I probably would have responded to this. He was really cute, after all, even if he had no idea how to walk a dog. But not today. Not with everything that had been my life currently in pieces at my feet.
“Probably not,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead as I pulled open my car door. “I don’t live around here.” I got in and shut the door but didn’t start the car yet—mostly because I had no idea what I was going to do now, or where I was going to go.
The guy turned and started walking back the way he’d come, and I looked for maybe a moment longer than I should have, watching as Bertie took off at a run, the guy stumbling a few steps behind, trying to catch up.
I made myself turn away, then picked up my phone. I unlocked it, then stopped. If I let myself think about the bigger picture—like what this actually meant for my future—I knew I would start to spiral out. I needed to think about my next immediate steps. Small pieces that I could manage. I looked down at my phone and saw the text from Palmer was still open—and Bri had responded, saying she’d be at the diner if she could haul Toby out of bed.
I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I wasn’t going to figure it out without coffee.
ME
I’ll be there too. See you in 15.
Then I let out a long breath and started the car. I glanced back once, to see if the guy and his dog were still there, but there was only an empty road behind me.
? ? ?
We had always called it “the diner,” though according to the menus, it actually had a name—Glory Days’ Diner. I had never heard anyone call it that, though it did explain the high percentage of Bruce Springsteen songs on the mini jukeboxes that sat on the tables in the booths. We’d been going there since eighth grade, and we’d especially spent a lot of time there before we were invited to any parties, when we all wanted to be out of the house on weekend nights but didn’t actually have anywhere to go. Now we had the booth we always sat in and knew the waitresses who tolerated us and the waitresses who flat-out hated us and who the nice managers and busboys were.
It was the place we always defaulted to and where we sometimes went to the parking lot to have either screaming fights or giggle fests. I’d made out with guys in the darkness of the parking lot, guys who tasted like milk shakes and French fries. And it was where we’d all gathered the morning after Palmer slept with Tom for the first time, getting every detail over shared plates of pancakes and waffles.
It was early enough that I was able to get parking out front. I climbed the seven steps and pulled open the metal-handled door, walking past the candy machines and the arcade games, one of which, Honour Quest, Bri had become obsessed with two years ago. The PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF sign was facing out, so I pushed my sunglasses on top of my head and scanned the restaurant. Our normal booth was taken by a family—screaming kids and parents ignoring them as they read the paper. I looked around for our second-favorite booth and saw Palmer sitting in it alone.
I made a beeline over to her. I was still feeling jangly and on the verge of panicking, but somehow knowing I would be able to talk about it with her was making things seem a little bit better. “Hey,” I said, sliding into the booth across from her. There was what looked like a half-eaten plate of waffles and what I was assuming was a vanilla Coke—Palmer’s usual—sat in front of her.