“Well, if that happens, we can talk about it.”
For the rest of the session, I dredged up reasons to not go out to eat, and Mary countered with strategies to “handle” my concerns. As I was leaving, she said, “Elizabeth, you can do this. You are going to be fine.”
“Define fine,” I said from the doorway.
“Okay.” She set down her pen. “You’ll be fine because you are tough and strong and have learned a lot while you’ve been here. You’ll have support from all of us to help you with any negative thoughts. You’ll already know what you will eat ahead of time because you and Sally will pick it together. And no matter how hard it may be, it is only two hours. Two hours.”
Only two hours. Two hours could feel like a lifetime. Trust me, I knew.
*
Later that night, Simone found me in the common room. As she put on her wool coat, she said, “Tristan will be here any second. Will you come?”
I nodded and followed her to the foyer.
Tristan was already there, sitting on the bench with his legs crossed. He ran his hand through his hair like he always did. Simone turned to me, mouthed “Good luck,” and disappeared back down the hall.
“So,” he said, fiddling with a button on his navy peacoat, “I sent the packages.”
“You told me that in your note.”
“Right.” He exhaled and looked around. “Well, what did you think of them?” For once his voice didn’t sound defensive. It sounded hopeful.
“What? What was I supposed to think?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? You had to know how much the stuff you sent would mess with my head. How it would remind me of Charlie. Why would you do something like that? Was it funny to you?”
He scowled. “What? No! Like I wrote, I just wanted to cheer you up.”
“Cheer me up? You made me look like an idiot, Tristan. I called Charlie. Because of your presents. That’s screwed up.”
He sat straighter. “First off, that wasn’t supposed to happen. And I never signed his name. You created the Charlie theory all on your own.”
“Are you kidding me? You had to know I’d think that. I mean, look at what you sent.”
Tristan’s cheeks reddened. “That’s not true at all. I sent you that stuff because I noticed you liked it. The brass ring? You used to talk about Flying Horses all the time.”
Well, that was true, I guess. I had talked about Flying Horses a lot. Mainly because I was afraid Charlie would forget his promise to take me there. “The only reason I talked about that place was because Charlie said he’d win me a free ride someday, and I was excited.”
“Look, all I remembered was that you talked about Flying Horses. And that brass ring was my lucky charm. I won it when I was twelve.” He looked at the ring hanging from my neck. “I was trying to be nice.”
I’d forgotten I was wearing it. I stuffed the red ribbon inside my shirt. “Look, if you’d just signed your name, none of this would have happened.”
He threw his hands up in the air. “I know! I know, all right? Believe me. But Simone said it might be sort of cool to get a mystery gift, like from a secret admirer. She said it might cheer you up. And I was only going to send that one thing. But then I was at the pizza place, and I saw those plastic rings, and I knew you collected them, and I … I don’t know. I got one for you and mailed it.”
“I only collected those rings because Charlie gave them to me.”
“Oh.” He rubbed the back of his neck. The tips of his ears were pink.
“And what about the sand? You knew Charlie and I loved the beach.”
“Elizabeth, everybody loves the beach. Besides, I used to see you run there in the mornings.”
“You did?” I sat down next to him.
“Yeah.” He tapped his heel on the floor. It made the bench shake and I wondered what part of me would jiggle. Don’t think about it, I told myself. You need to focus on what is going on around you. Not on body parts.
He jumped up and started pacing, his movements tense. “Sometimes I’d come down in the morning with coffee and there you’d be.” Tristan’s house had a private path to the beach. “And right before you headed back to the road, you always took a moment and climbed up onto the lifeguard stand and stared out at the ocean like you were meditating or something. I thought it was cool that you did that.”
Back in the summer, before I got too weak to run, I ran the mile from my house to the beach every morning. I loved the briny smell and the sound of the waves, and when I sat high up on the wooden tower and focused on the horizon, my brain would quiet and I’d feel at peace.
Tristan sat down again, and his hand brushed mine.
I pulled it away.
“Tristan,” I said, suddenly annoyingly shy. “Why me? If you wanted to do a good deed for some girl in here, why didn’t you choose someone else?”
He stopped and stared at me then. He bit his lip for a second. “Don’t you get it? I liked you, okay? I liked you. I might even still like you.”
He couldn’t like me. I was a mess on a good day. “Look, I appreciate everything you’re saying, really. But I have to go. I just—I can’t take this right now.”
He stood up abruptly, his coat sliding to the floor. He picked it up and rammed his arms into the sleeves. “I’m sorry I made you so miserable. Don’t worry, I won’t send you anything else. I promise.” He flung the door open and walked out.
Simone came around the corner, her black jacket in her hands. “You okay?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, he didn’t handle that very well.” She sat down next to me.
“You listened?”
Simone shrugged and sighed. “If I tell you something, you have to promise not to tell anybody, okay?”
I nodded.
“Not even your friends. Or even your mom.”
I would never tell Mom about this. “Okay, I get it.”
She settled herself on the bench. “So remember when Charlie asked you out that day in Scoops?”
“Of course.”
“Well, Charlie wasn’t supposed to do that. He knew Tristan liked you. They were going into Scoops to check you out.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Charlie was supposed to be Tristan’s wingman. But then he asked you out instead. Tristan was super pissed, but he didn’t say anything.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Tristan was mad for a day or two, but then he let it go. He figured that Charlie would dump you or Heather would get to him like always. But then Charlie started to actually like you, and he was so different. He was nice. He actually apologized to Tristan, saying he was so sorry, but that he lov—” She stopped.
Charlie loved me?
“You were so into Charlie that Tristan figured he’d never had a chance anyway.”
“Charlie never said anything about this.”
“Well, why would he? You probably would have thought he was a jerk.”