Page 45 of Past Present Future

Yet I did. And even if I told her I didn’t want her pity, I don’t know how to guarantee she won’t feel it this time, now that we’re dating. Probably because I can’t. For weeks afterward, I wondered if I’d told her too much. I didn’t regret it, exactly, but I also couldn’t take it back. Couldn’t go back to the Neil McNair I’d been before June 12, although for obvious reasons, I didn’t want to. She knew the basics, and she loved me. It could be as simple as that, couldn’t it? We didn’t need to analyze every ugly piece of history.

Maybe she thinks I’ve moved on—that single confession, and no mentions of it since then, only in passing. “My parents used to drive a Honda Accord too,” or “my dad built that shed in the back.”

And maybe it’s better for her to believe that. For both of us.

* * *

I’m still thinking about it later that night in my room, propped in bed with a textbook. Even though fall semester is over, NYU has something called January term sandwiched between the fall and spring semesters. Along with a couple other core requirements, I picked another psych class for spring—Adhira will be thrilled—and a linguistics seminar for January, and I want to get a head start on my reading for both. But my mind is drifting. Unfocused, although academics have always managed to hold my attention. Then my eyes start drooping, and—

A commotion at the front door jolts me awake. I spring out of bed, abandoning my textbook as I stumble down the hall, Natalie following behind me. My mom and Christopher have just come in from the cold, their hair windblown and cheeks stained red. They’re in matching puffy coats they got from Costco last year. They’re both grinning, glowing, and I think my mom might even be giggling. “Mom?” I ask, though it’s such a sweet and unexpected sound. “Is everything okay? I thought you were going to be out for a while.”

“We had to come back and tell you two.” Christopher’s arms are around my mom’s waist, holding on to her like he can’t bear a single second he isn’t touching her. In an instant, I understand what’s happened. “Joelle?”

My mom presents her left hand to a shrieking Natalie. “We’re engaged!”

My sister catapults herself into our mother’s arms as my mouth drops open. And then I can’t stop smiling. I’d wondered about this, of course—impossible not to when they’d been dating for a couple years. Sometimes I even hoped for it.

“Mazel tov! That’s incredible,” I say, hugging my mom and then Christopher.

“I feel like the luckiest guy alive. I was so nervous.” He swipes a hand across his bald head, as though reliving the anxiety. “I’d arranged with the restaurant for the ring to be carried out on one of these decadent slices of chocolate cake—”

“—but I said I was too full from dinner,” my mom finishes, laughing. “And he looked so worried.”

“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he says. “So I said that I’d have the cake myself, but then the waiter brought it to the wrong table!”

“He had to politely ask them if he could have their piece of cake. I was so embarrassed.”

“Until the cake finally found its way to the person it was meant for.” Christopher shakes his head. “Not exactly the romantic engagement I had in mind.”

“That only made it all the more charming,” my mom says, and the two of them embrace again.

It’s then that I make a decision with full conviction: I cannot tell Rowan about the letter. I don’t want her to associate us only with sorrow, and I never want her to look at me with pity.

It doesn’t have to be a secret. It can simply be nothing, the way I spent so many years acting like it was.

Besides, I’ll have this much better news to tell her instead.

Christopher rummages in the kitchen for sparkling cider and finds none, so we all toast with orange juice instead. I try my best to soak it all in, the four of us sipping juice from wineglasses while Natalie begs for a full play-by-play of the evening.

One perfect happy moment for a family that hasn’t had nearly enough of them.

13

ROWAN

THERE WAS A great uncoupling over the holidays, relationships that couldn’t withstand the distance or crumbled when it was time to face reality again. Plenty of the breakups were mutual, cordial, while some soured with rumors of cheating. I saw a few announcements on social media, including my first boyfriend, Luke Barrows, and his girlfriend, Anna Ocampo, and heard about others from Kirby and Mara.

My own goodbye with Neil, while obviously not permanent, was somehow both harder and easier than it was in August. Harder because I’d just gotten used to seeing him regularly again, and easier because we did this for four months and we know we can do it again.

Then there’s Kait, who informs me of her breakup during our first creative writing class back.

“We knew it wasn’t working,” she says, unzipping her jacket. “We just weren’t happy anymore.”

The heat hasn’t kicked on inside the classroom yet, and I’m still shivering in my coat and Neil’s scarf. Seattle’s year-round mild climate has truly made me incapable of weathering extremes.

I remember what Kait said about their Europe trip, how it brought them even closer, and the romantic in me is devastated for her.

But she doesn’t look heartbroken, even though I’m ready to offer up any evening this week for a movie marathon or junk food run or however she handles a breakup. “It’s for the best,” she continues. “I was flirting with this girl in my film class yesterday, and now I’m completely unattached.”

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