Page 96 of Old Acquaintances

My face prickles.

“I have gotten over it.”

I murmur, “Stale white bread.”

“That was a fucked up thing to say,” he offers.

“Why are you crying?” I ask.

He shifts closer, and the top of my wooden chair creaks under the twist of his grip. Tucker offers earnestly, “Because I’m hurting you. I don’t want to hurt you. I’ve never wanted you to feel bad, ever, and that’s all I’ve done to you for years.”

I exhale. A tear falls down my cheeks, and I take a sip of water and my hand shakes. Into his piercing, expectant eyes, I say, “The old Elijah would have grabbed my face and wiped away my tears. He would have gotten as close as possible. He would have kissed me, somewhere.”

Tucker tenses. “I can’t be that guy anymore, Ella.”

“I see that.”

“Is that what you want me to do?” he whispers. “Because it meant different things to us and that’s why I had to change.”

I only discovered recently that I was in love with him. Maybe Tucker realized it for himself too early.

The voices in the background grow larger. Our friends start to return from the dock, and I excuse myself to go to the bathroom before they see me cry and Johnny rips into me for it. He’s getting exactly what he wanted: Tucker and I just barelyfriends. Nothing else getting in the way. It’s just like when we were kids, and I’d sit in Johnny’s basement and play with my American Girl doll while they played Nintendo. They will have each other. I will have Johnny. Tucker and I will have our mutual family, nothing more.

Alone in a bathroom stall, I cover my mouth to keep the sobs from being too loud.

I hate this.

I hate this feeling.

It’s stupid and consuming and painful and uncontrollable. I’m so in love with Tucker that I’m afraid I’ll turn to stone with one more passive look.

How could I have not seen it? All of those years, I could have done something about it, and he might have reciprocated. We could have tried.

If we’d been together in college or for years after, we might have fallen out of love mutually and landed in this place of ease and friendship, where he wants us to be. Johnny and Serena talk about their relationship in passing, but they’re great friends now and they have only platonic love left. That could have been me and Tucker. As is, it’s too late. I’ve caught the rope too late and now I’m swinging over this cliff alone while he’s safe on the other side of it, his arms too full to pull me to my feet.

I hate this.

I wish I hadn’t taken advantage of him for so long. There’s no easing the pain now. I’ve never wanted to love someone before, and I want tofeelloved in a way that Elijah Tucker always made me feel. Now that belongs to some other, future woman. It makes me want to scream.

I want to stand on his side of the mountain.

I want to beover it.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Ski Trip

In late January of junior year, we went to West Virginia for Johnny’s birthday. His parents come from a sickening amount of money, each, and they gave him a chunk of it to take his closest friends on a short trip. So, naturally, I wasn’t invited.

“It’s a couple’s trip,” he told me. He and Serena. Ritchie and Olivia. Tucker and whatever girl he dated at the time. I cried and yelled at Johnny, which didn’t make it any better. He didn’t relent. He booked three rooms at a ski lodge for two nights. To him, it made sense because, as he reminded me, “You don’t even ski.”

True, I had never been skiing before, but I couldn’t believe that my best friend of sixteen years would stop me from attending his 21stbirthday trip because I didn’t have a boyfriend. I told Tucker about it on Christmas Eve, to which he replied, “No, you’re coming.”

“He didn’t get me a room.”

“You can stay with me.”

“You have a girlfriend.”

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