I started to cry again. The only thing I could make of this agony was the truth: Camden had given me what he could, but it was not enough. What I needed, I could only give myself. He had gifted me the ability to do that. By falling in love with Camden, I’d been able to fall in love with Ari, and for that reason, I wasn’t lying to Kendall about having just one regret.
So which Camden was with me now? The first Camden, or the one who’d let me down so terribly? Maybe it was neither. Maybe it was a parallel-universe Camden, a new Camden created by the things that could have happened but didn’t.
Although, just because they could have happened didn’t mean they should have.
I had to let that Camden next to me go.
I had to let them all go.
23
“Help me!” Danielle squealed from the top of the wooden tower.
I didn’t budge. She was laughing now, as I knew she would be, and my spot on the playground bench was so comfy in the shade.
Labor Day.
It always felt melancholy, even with the weather perfect like this. I usually spent every possible hour of the holiday at the lake before it closed for the season at sundown. But this year, I couldn’t bear to say an official farewell.
“You said half-and-half, right?” asked Mom as she plunked down a to-go tray from the café across the street.
“Thanks,” I said, picking up my iced coffee. She sat down next to me, took hers out of the tray, and tore open a pack of artificial sweetener.
“Mom!”
“What?”
“You said that stuff is evil.”
She shrugged. “I let myself have one a day at work. Sorry, it’s my guilty pleasure.”
“If that’s your guilty pleasure, you have nothing to apologize for.”
She laughed, and Dani raced past us, shrieking again. Then Richard came tearing after her. Roaring like a lion or a monster or some other terror she’d requested today.
“I remember Richard doing that with you, when I first met him,” said Mom.
“Yup. It was love at first chase.”
Mom smiled. “For me, too.”
I watched her as she took a long sip of her iced coffee. “What time are you guys going out later?”
“The movie’s at eight, but I’d like to leave at six so we have time for dinner at Lemongrass. Is that okay?”
“Of course.” She’d never asked that before. She’d never needed to, or so we both thought. Maybe we were both wrong.
I thought of the World Wildlife Fund calendar hanging in the kitchen, now turned to the September page with the tiger cubs, already filled in with the details of our four different schedules. On the square of that coming Friday, there was only one thing scribbled in: that long-planned appointment with my therapist, Cynthia. Under my name, Mom had recently written Richard’s and Dani’s and her own.
Yes, we were all going to go, together. It would be something new and strange and probably cringeworthy. We might never do it again. But we were going at least once, and that counted.
Mom summoned Richard by holding up his coffee, jiggling it so the ice rattled loudly. He scooped up Dani and carried her over to us.
“Here, sweetie,” said Mom to Dani after she handed Richard his drink. “I know you said you’d have a smoothie but I figured, it’s the last day of summer. What the heck. I got you a chocolate milk shake.”
Dani silently took her drink and sipped hard, closing her eyes. She seemed to be having a moment. Then her eyes popped open and she stared at Mom.
“Will you push me on the swings?” she asked, her voice shaky.
My mother sighed. I was prepared to step in with an excuse for her, but then Mom laughed and said, “Sure.”
She got up and took Dani’s hand.
“I want to go so high, my foot touches that tree branch. I just saw a kid do it. Can you push me that high?”
“I don’t know,” said Mom as they walked away from us. “But I’ll try.”
Richard followed them, ready to take pictures with his phone. I sank back on the bench and felt the warm-but-definitely-not-summer-anymore breeze on my neck.
Sometimes, all you can ask for is the try.
An hour at the playground, a chocolate milk shake. A movie and Thai food. Being able to sit and talk and listen and see what comes next.
Sometimes, it’s all more than enough.
School. Senior year. Why wouldn’t I be ready?
Kendall was gone, but there were new people, new possibilities, everywhere. The summer had taught me that much.
My first morning went fast. Precalculus, English, physics. It was going to be an interesting year, academically. These were classes I could lose myself in.
Step after step down a hallway, letter by letter scrawled as class notes on paper. That was how you did it.
You’ve never been stronger and more positive, I told myself, and believed.
But I’d forgotten about lunch.
Lunch, and its universal suckiness when you don’t have a best friend or a to-hell-with-it attitude or even a plan.
When you have to stand there with a brown paper lunch bag and scan the room for a seat, but not so long that everyone sees how you’re quietly dying inside.