Page 126 of Let It Be Me

I’ve been tellingmyself the more I come back to Lakeside without Lorenzo, the sooner I’ll learn how to be here without longing for him. In some ways, it’s true. But not today.

The Labor Day block party was always bittersweet to begin with, the end of summer in a town that lived for the season. This year the reasons have changed. For once, I’m ready to move on from this season and start fresh. The smells of charcoal and beer and ripe fruit, usually so enticing, make my stomach churn.

I’m nervous as I weave my way through neighbors and their friends along the closed-off street. I step over a red, white, and blue Popsicle melting on the concrete and sweep my hair off the back of my damp neck. Any minute I’m going to see him and I’m supposed to know what to do about that. The silence has gone on long enough—it can’t be like this forever. But what can it be? I can’t imagine any incarnation of me and Lorenzo that would make sense after what’s happened.

Except the Ruby and Lorenzo who are in love. That still feels so right.

“Is Lorenzo coming?”I ask Gina when dusk gathers and I still haven’t spotted him. I’m striving to sound casual, but it’s the question itself that’s the red flag, not the tone.

She looks at me a little too long. “I was going to ask you the same thing. Last I talked to him he thought probably not.”

I expect relief but instead feel a sweeping sadness. “Oh.”

Gina rearranges a plastic vase filled with hydrangeas at the end of the folding table. Her eyes keep drifting between her work and my face. “You two must have had a spat.”

How bizarre that I had this beautiful, all-encompassing relationship with Lorenzo, and his mother has no idea; no one does. It came and went, and as far as the world knows, we’re the same as we’ve always been. When in reality nothing will ever be the same again. “I guess we did.”

“How long has it been since you ...” The way she studies me makes me uneasy. But she brightens quickly. “No matter, I’m sure you two will patch things up.”

I wonder whether she does have some idea after all.

From there, I head down to my parents’ dock. It’s empty and quiet except for the crickets, which have begun their nightly chorus, and I sit on one side, dipping my feet into the water, finally warm after a long, hot summer. For reasons I can’t explain, uncertainty has replaced the nerves of earlier. Now that it’s possible I won’t see him tonight and the silence between us could go on so long it becomes normal, I don’t know what to think. Something else has to happen between us. What if it doesn’t?

I close my eyes against the thought. The sounds and the smells are the same as every block party I’ve lived through: thescents of citronella candles and charred meat, the popping and crackling of sparklers in the hands of shrieking kids. But none of that familiarity brings any comfort. It’s scary how much can change in a year. I thought I was a realist all those times I told myself life will be different after college, that I can’t get too attached to the idea of me and Lorenzo, but I didn’t imagine it would all turn upside down so quickly. How different will we be by next summer?

“Ruby.”

His voice is like a star in darkness. My eyes pop open and there he is, the shape of his body instantly recognizable even as he stands in the shadows.

Lorenzo.

Everything inside me softens and collapses at the sight of him. One look and I know I’m not ready to move on from him. I never will be.

He walks down the little hill toward me, fireflies dotting the dark trees around him. When he steps into the light of the dock, I see how much he’s changed. He’s as handsome as ever, but his eyes look bigger and rounder, like he’s lost. I stand up, not sure what to do. And when he doesn’t hug me, I’m disappointed. Part of me thinks if we just touched, we could fix everything.

He stops a couple of feet from me. “Your mom told me you were down here.”

“I thought you weren’t coming.”

“I wasn’t, but—” He looks out over the water and then back at me. “That would be weird. After all these years.”

I nod. This is weird too. Not knowing how to talk to him or even what I have a right to say. It used to be the only thing I couldn’t say to him was I love you. Now I’ve dragged us back and forth through every incarnation of a relationship we could have, and we’re left, it seems, with nothing. “So what’s new?” Truly the most useless thing that could come out of my mouth.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

This perks me up. “Really? Good news or bad?”

His mouth twists. “Undetermined.”

“Don’t leave me hanging.”

He glances behind him up the hill, where I can just make out his cousin and Mr. Rossi chatting. “It’s a story for another time. I just wanted to see you for a minute.” See me? How I wish I knew what he saw looking at me now. His everything? Or his every regret? He puts his hands in his pockets and takes a few steps backward.

“Wait,” I say, moving for him. The reality of what we are now—capable of only this brittle interaction—washes over me with the crushing weight of guilt.

He waits.

“I didn’t do a good job with this. With us. You know me—a thought or feeling pops into my head and I just act on it.”

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