“Ready, babe?” Blake saunters out. He’s wearing low-slung jeans and a faded gray athletic shirt, his hair gelled into a mussed peak, the way all the jocks seem to be doing this year.
“Sure.” Kayla beams and slips her hand into his. “OK if we drop off Sadie, too?”
“No probs.” Blake gives me a nod. “What’s up?”
“Nothing much,” I reply, following them to where Blake’s shiny blue pickup truck is parked askew, crushing half a bed of flowers. “You?”
“Same old.” Blake shrugs.
“Cool.”
I gaze absently out of the back window for all of the short ride home, pressing my forehead against the cool glass while Blake and Kayla murmur their babes and honeys up front. They seem so easy together, as in sync as Garrett and I have always been — except for all the making out, of course.
And all that could have changed, tonight, if only —
“Here you go.” Blake drums his fingers on the steering wheel, snapping me back to reality. We’re home.
“Thanks for the ride,” I tell him, and quickly climb out. Kayla kisses him for a long moment before hopping down. She waves happily as he drives away, and then we’re left alone on the dark street.
“So . . .” I say. “Any fun summer plans?”
Kayla makes a face. “Find a job, I guess. I don’t know where yet.”
“I spent last summer working at the Dough Hole,” I tell her.
“That donut place on Third?”
“Yup. Never again.” I shudder at the memory. “My hair smelled like fryer grease way into October.”
“Ouch.” She laughs. “I’ll stay away from there — thanks. What about you? Any summer plans?”
“I have no idea.” I sigh. “I was planning on going to this literary camp thing. But that fell through.”
“Shame. Well, I better get back.” She sighs. “Curfew. You remember what my mom’s like.”
“Right. Me too.”
Kayla gives me a little wave and heads back across the street to her house, a rambling brick place with ivy and wisteria crawling up the front. We used to play for hours in her attic, me bringing my My Little Ponies to trade for the contraband Barbies her mom had no qualms about buying her (mine banned them on the grounds that they’d damage my body image and crush my unique spirit). We never knew it at the time, how easy those days were — before love came crashing into our lives and everything else ceased to have meaning or purpose.
I let myself in. Mom is curled up in the living room with another of her motivational videos — some deep-voiced man talking about “the spark of change.”
“Did you have fun, honey?” She pauses the DVD, beaming over at me expectantly. What can I tell her? No, my evening was ruined by a jealous ex-girlfriend, a future frat boy with a seemingly limitless amount of vomit, and a midnight pizza run?
“Sure,” I tell her, mustering a smile. “But I’m tired now. I’m just going to head to bed.”
“OK, sweetie, see you in the morning.”
I close my bedroom door tight behind me and settle at my computer. Sure, I’m tired, but there’s one thing I have to do first, the only thing that will lift my spirits in these desperate times. With a few quick clicks, I access the database and pick my search parameters.
Search: long-distance love.
I hit ENTER, and just like that, the results start scrolling. John and Abigail Adams, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West . . . A reassuring litany of couples who bridged the great geographical divide.
See? All is not lost.
I look at the list and feel my disappointment ease. It always does. The database is my own personal testament to Great Love, a secret catalog of romantic success. It was after I met Garrett that I realized that those Top Ten lists I’d made were wholly inadequate; Great Love couldn’t be contained to a mere ten couples. It shouldn’t! If my soul mate could stroll into the coffeehouse one unremarkable August afternoon, then there were hundreds, thousands, of other such matches out there to be recorded. No, I needed a better system for tracking my romantic heroes and heroines, one that spanned the breadth and depth of devotion.
And thus the website was born. Love affairs from history, literature, theater; every culture, any gender; cross-referenced by genre, type, lasting historical impact . . . What started as a small tribute has swelled to a mammoth database, and now I spend more time uploading everyone else’s suggestions than posting new ideas of my own. I click through to my e-mail and skim the new messages. Three more quotes to add to the Elizabeth and Darcy page, a plea to allow noncanonical fan-fiction couplings. I have a user in the Philippines obsessed with chronicling every couple on Days of Our Lives, and a women’s studies professor at Oxford intent on expanding the nonheterosexual listings with pages for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.
Garrett doesn’t know about the website; nobody I know does. It’s my own private corner of the world, filled with hope and promise for my own glorious future. And on a night like this, with Garrett so close but already so far away, I’ll take all the hope I can get.
5
After the party, Garrett’s parents sweep him into a whirl of camp prep–related activities, so he doesn’t have more than five minutes to spare before leaving — barely long enough to hug me good-bye, let alone pledge his eternal and undying devotion. And just like that, he’s gone.
He might have had second thoughts about confessing his feelings, I decide, or wanted to wait until we could actually be together — not just kiss and run. Either way, I’m still left in limbo. The hours pass without so much as a call or text, and I sink into a listless haze of longing with nothing to do except watch An Affair to Remember and Casablanca and every other tearjerker black-and-white movie that features doomed love. In other words, all of them. At least I’m in good company for my spiral of dejection; all I need is some perfect matte red lipstick and a gray fitted suit, and I, too, could be the tragic heroine on that steam-billowed train platform, watching the center of my universe be carried off to war and certain death. . . .
OK, so Garrett took the Greyhound up to a summer camp in the woods, but still — I’m left here alone. Even his promise for frequent text and phone updates has thus far failed to materialize: I haven’t heard a single word since he left. Two whole days ago! Is it any wonder I don’t want to get out of bed? But despite my perfectly reasonable grounds for despair, Mom bursts into my room first thing Monday morning and yanks my curtains back.