Page 105 of Guy's Girl
“How do I make it go away?”
Quietly, she says, “You don’t. You just learn to live with it.”
After that, they fall silent. They listen to each other’s breathing through the phone. Adrian has never cried to his mother before. Has never gone to her to have his hair stroked, to be held. He imagines that it must feel something like this. The silent comfort of knowing that someone else is there.
“Do you want to come home?” his mother asks.
Adrian considers it. Maybe going home is what he needs. Maybe he needs the sunlight slanting through their living room, the soft green hills, the golden fields of corn. There was something very healing about going home to Budapest; maybe it would be to go to Indiana, too.
That’s why Ginny is going home, after all. To heal.
Adrian sits up on the couch. He looks down at the box, at the bottom of which still sits a green envelope with his name on it.
“Mom?” He bends over and picks the envelope up. “Can I call you back?”
“Of course, honey. I love you.”
“I—me, too.” Adrian winces as he presses end on the call. Even to his mother, he struggles to say the words in their entirety.
He turns the envelope over. Like all his grandparents’ letters, it’s sealed with a blue mark bearing a tulip. The envelopes themselves are also licked and sealed the regular way; the mark ispurely decorative. He runs his fingers over the seal. Then he peels it away and slips his fingers under the flap of the envelope.
From inside slides a single piece of cardstock, on which are scribbled just a few lines in Hungarian:
Adrian,
These belong to you. Keep them safe; keep his memory safer.
All our love to Ginny.
P.S.—Have you told her that you love her, yet, too?
The bags are packed. Heather’s air mattress rolled up. The toiletries swept off the counter, the garbage sealed up and ready to be hauled away. Ginny is finally leaving Sullivan Street.
“Dude,” says Tristan across the living room. Ginny is tying her shoes and cannot see to whom he’s speaking. “Who are you texting? You’ve been staring at your phone for, like, ten minutes.”
“No one,” says Clay.
“Is no one a girl with whom you’re currently sleeping?”
“No,” says Clay. “It’s no one.”
Ginny stands up. She squints at her best friend. “You’re being sketchy.”
“No, I’m not.” He pockets his phone and turns to Heather. “We’ll miss you, Heath.”
“I know.” Heather pretends to pout. “Who am I supposed to bully now, with no Tristan in my life?”
“Well,” says Tristan, “there’s always text.”
Ginny is about to start laughing when she hears the sound of a key turning in the front door. She turns around just as the door creaks open. In steps Finch.
The room goes very still.
Finch walks forward, suitcase wheels bouncing on the cracks in the floorboards. He passes out of the shadow and into the light of the living room. The first thing she sees are his warm, familiar eyes, the curve of his lips. Her stomach drops to her feet.
“I thought you weren’t coming back until Monday,” she says.
“Hey to you, too.”
