Page 48 of Ten Years and Then…
He hadn’t properly spoken to Nora in almost two weeks. He’d been so busy trying to honor his promise to Professor Maddox, and to catch up on all the other classwork he’d neglected, he hadn’t even had time to miss her
Except at night, when he lay there alone, remembering how it felt to fall asleep with her in his arms, her laughter at some silly joke the last thing he heard before drifting off.
What if he forgot what that felt like?
What if she did? What if she wanted to forget it? He’d been busy, but if she’d knocked on his door, or just called to talk for an hour or three, he would have made time.
He had a key to Ellis Hall, and the code for the alarm system. If making time for her meant he had to get up at four in the morning and walk over there in the dark to get his work done, he would have done it. But she didn’t knock, or call or anything else.
She’d been sick, that was true. But he’d tried to bring her cold medicine. And hot soup. And even a chocolate Frosty, which cost him $40 counting the taxi fare to the nearest Wendy’s and back. But he hadn’t even been able to give any of it to her in person; it was always her roommate answering the door.
Nora hadn’t thanked him; hell, she hadn’t even acknowledged him at all. It was like she’d become a completely different person overnight.
Maybe his father had been right, and he’d just been pretending he was ready for love when he obviously wasn’t. If he couldn’t even help her through a cold and feeling overwhelmed by classes, how could he ever take care of her if something serious happened? Maybe he didn’t even know what love meant at all.
At least he could control his schoolwork. He could finish the semester strong, earn back Professor Maddox’s trust, and get ready to do a good job in Pittsburgh over the summer. He could make his father proud, and help pay next year’s tuition, and start to build the future everybody wanted him to have.
Until—unless—Nora knocked, or called, or did anything reach out, that would have to be good enough.
Nora, April 18
Last night, she finally got the call she’d been expecting for two weeks. The only thing that surprised her was that it had come from Rachel, not her father.
He’d broken up with Joelle, and he hadn’t even had the nerve to tell her about it directly; he left it to his sister to break the news to Nora.
She had known it was coming. They’d been dating almost six months, and his relationships never lasted longer than that.
“He said they started drifting apart, just stopped talking, and he didn’t want to hurt her any worse than she was already feeling,” Rachel had told her. That’s how it always seemed to go with her father.
But on the phone with her aunt, Nora had lost her temper. She didn’t even remember everything she’d said, except that it had been ugly and horrible and she hated herself afterwards for it.
That, and after she hung up on Rachel, she’d screamed loud enough that it hurt her throat, and long enough that it brought Karen Quinn all the way from the other side of the floor to see what was wrong.
If only Daniel were here, if only she could talk to him. He’d make everything better.
Except he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Because she’d been dating him for six months, too. And apparently that was the expiration date for love in her family.
She’d already been pushing him away the whole month, just like her father had done to poor Joelle. A very sweet woman who’d done nothing to deserve what happened to her, any more than Daniel deserved her ignoring him and brushing off every kind thing he tried to do.
She had to at least be stronger than her father and be honest with Daniel about what a disaster of a girlfriend—a human being—she was. But she had an insane amount of schoolwork to get through, and final exams to prepare for, before she could tell him what a mess she’d become, and how much better off he’d be without her.
She could tell her father to his face that she was just as good at hurting people she claimed to love as he was, but she couldn’t face telling him she’d flunked out of school, too. If she couldn’t be a good girlfriend, or even a good person, at least she could be a good student. That had to count for something, didn’t it?
Daniel, April 23
Another week, and he still hadn’t seen his girlfriend.
Was she even his girlfriend anymore?
He’d thought about going over to Morris Hall and banging on her door until she answered. But that only worked in movies. In real life, it would just get him escorted out of the building by campus security, if not something worse.
Then he’d thought about lurking around Addison Hall and catching her by surprise after she got out of class. But that felt creepy, bordering on stalkerish. Whatever had gone so wrong between them wouldn’t get better if she thought he was spying on her.
His last idea was to call her aunt. He remembered the phone number for her apartment from Christmas—he never forgot phone numbers. She might not be home, and she might not speak to him if she was, but he felt like there was at least a nonzero chance that something good might come of it.
It still took him half an hour to work up the nerve to dial the phone.
She answered right away. “Hello?”
