“No, the professor’s taking his time with it, but I have this short story I’m working on, for the end-of-summer magazine.” He pauses, and then there’s a cough. “So . . . there was actually something I want to talk about.”
“Yes?” I take a breath, leaning forward in anticipation.
It couldn’t be, could it?
Garrett gives a nervous-sounding laugh, completely unlike him. “This is so weird, not being able to see your face,” he says. “I mean, there’s Skype, but it’s not the same, either.”
It is! This is it, the moment I’ve been waiting for. Maybe those guys with The Secret are onto something after all. The hours — no, days — I spent imagining this moment weren’t in vain. Just the opposite! Picturing this moment sent something into the universe and made it happen. I manifested my romantic destiny!
“Uh-huh,” I say, the evening chill and overcast street fading into nothing around me. Nothing exists except the sound of Garrett’s voice and my own quickly beating heart.
“We’ve been friends forever, and I know I can talk to you about anything —”
“Anything!” I interrupt quickly, then catch myself. What am I doing? Cutting him off before he has a chance to even say it! “Sorry, you go ahead.”
“Uh, well . . . The thing is . . .”
Garrett pauses again, and I can almost hear the drums rolling, the trumpets sounding. My life is about to change forever as I sit here on this nondescript bench across from the Laundromat. Everything is about to change!
And finally, Garrett takes a breath and says them, the precious words I’ve been waiting so long to hear.
“The thing is, I . . . I’m in love.”
Adrenaline floods through my body, a sweet rush of joy. “I love you, too,” I breathe, dizzy, but Garrett doesn’t hear me. He’s still talking.
“Her name’s Rhiannon,” he says. “Rhiannon,” he repeats reverently. “We met the first night, and I knew right away she was the one, but I thought she had a boyfriend, so I didn’t even hope. But —”
“Wait,” I stop him. “Rhiannon?” I gasp for air. “I . . . You never said . . .”
“She’s only the most incredible girl I’ve ever met,” he breathes. “And I know I’ve said this before, with Julie, and Beth, but she’s the one. They were just silly crushes. This is the real thing. I love her,” he says again, so sincerely that I know he really believes it.
Garrett is in love. With somebody else.
My heart breaks.
“She’s here on a special scholarship,” Garrett babbles on, while I stay frozen in shock and horror. The adrenaline in my veins has turned to lead. “She’s already written her first novel, and she just signed with a literary agent. Isn’t that amazing?”
I have no words.
“You’d love her, too. You guys are so much alike. It’s why I noticed her to begin with,” Garrett continues, twisting the knife that’s embedded deep in my heart. “She’s got your crazy hair, and our same exact taste in music and movies. She even has that shirt of yours, the one with the maple tree on it? Only hers is in blue. It’s her favorite color.”
I stifle a whimper.
“I can’t even describe it, Sadie, what it’s like to connect with someone like this. And for us to wind up here, at camp together . . . It’s fate. It has to be. She’s my soul mate.”
Garrett, who always laughed at the idea, so I made sure never to breathe a word of my own faith in the Gods of Destiny, is telling me about fate? About soul mates?
Tears sting the back of my throat. “I’m sorry — I have to go,” I say abruptly, trying to keep the anguish from my voice.
“Oh, OK,” Garrett says, clearly thrown. “But you’ll call me back later, right? I want to tell you everything!”
“Uh-huh.” I manage a strangled response before snapping my phone shut.
Rhiannon.
I slump on the bench in disbelief. I can’t even form a coherent thought. I just stare at my battered sneakers in a daze. Some part of me registers that it’s raining now, a cold drizzle falling on my thin sweater, but I don’t move. I can’t. Everything I have is focused on the news he just delivered with such obvious joy.
Another girl. Garrett is in love with another girl. It doesn’t make sense. It can’t.
I feel a sob rise in my chest, tears now hot on my cheeks. How could I have been so stupid? All this time, I’ve been certain he feels the same way about me. I was so sure that my feelings were requited that I’d convinced myself he was just getting up the courage to confess. But I was wrong. Garrett’s feelings for me are nothing but friendship — plain, simple, and overwhelmingly platonic. I built his love out of thin air, I realize in horror — crafted it from e-mails and late-night conversations as if my sheer will would make it so.
It was all in my head. Again!
But why? Why does this keep happening? What’s wrong with me? I don’t understand why Garrett doesn’t see what’s right in front of him, and this time, it’s even worse. I could always take comfort in the fact that maybe I just wasn’t his type — not one of those high-strung redheads, drama queens, or tiny blondes — but this? Rhiannon? He said it himself: she’s just like me.
But she’s not. Because she actually gets to be with him, and I get to hear about how madly in love he is. Again.
The rain keeps falling. A cold drizzle drips slowly from my hair and settles on my face. I want it to pour, to storm and rage and distract me from what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, but instead, I just get this damp inconvenience, a halfhearted summer shower, as if even the weather is underestimating my feelings.
The bus finally arrives, rolling to a stop with a screech. I haul myself on board and slink to a free seat, water squelching in my sneakers with every step. But the discomfort is nothing compared with the sharp ache in my chest, the fierce pain of rejection and sorrow. I slump in my seat, broken. Because he doesn’t love me. Not like that, not how I desperately want. He never has.
I’d thought maybe if I just kept waiting . . . that this was our fate. Maybe the Gods of True Love were testing me or this was just the path our story had to take. Wanting him for so long, well, that would just make it sweeter when we could finally be together.
The old excuses tumble through my mind as the bus jerks slowly through town: month after month of trying to rationalize and explain away the simple fact that . . . he doesn’t love me.