There was a code.
I wondered if he’d even known he was doing it. But there was my name in the song titles, over and over again. I felt myself smile as I looked down at the tiny, glowing screen, wondering when he’d done this. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it felt like he’d just given me a present.
Frank lowered his phone and turned around, and I hurriedly dropped the iPod back in the console where I’d found it. I smiled when I saw him coming toward me. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that things were strange between us at the moment; it was just my automatic reaction to seeing him. He smiled back at me, though this faded a moment later, like maybe he’d also forgotten for just a second.
“Where are we?” I asked, as he settled himself back behind the wheel.
“North Carolina,” he said. “We’re getting close.”
I nodded, expecting to feel nervous or anxious about seeing Sloane, but I didn’t. I just felt a kind of calm certainty, like we were heading in the right direction.
We got back onto the highway, and I’d only just managed to find a decent radio station before we were crossing into South Carolina. I looked at the state sign as we passed it, decorated with the palm tree and crescent moon that I now knew well. Even though it looked like we wouldn’t get to the exit for River Port for an hour, I found myself sitting up straight, not just letting the scenery and exit signs pass me by, but paying attention to them, to each mile that was bringing me closer to Sloane.
We’d been driving for about an hour after the rest stop when Frank turned the radio off and looked over at me, like he was going to say something. Then he reached over and turned it back on again, but only for a moment before he snapped it off, the silence filling the car.
“So,” he said.
I waited for more, but when nothing came after a few moments, just Frank looking straight ahead, at the highway, I prompted, “So?”
“The thing I was going to tell you,” he said slowly, like he was finding the words as he was speaking them. “You said you wanted to know what it was.”
“Yes,” I made myself say, even though I was now more scared of the answer than I had been when I was pushing Frank to tell me outside the travel mart.
He looked over at me, long enough that my heart started to beat harder. “Lissa and I broke up,” he said, then turned the radio back on again.
I stared him. We were still on the highway. I was holding the directions and looking for 14A, the exit that would take us to River Port. But nothing else was the same. It was like the very air in the truck had changed.
Frank was looking straight ahead, like he had no idea he’d just made it harder for me to breathe. “When,” I started, finally, realizing that I had to say something, and that I wasn’t up to asking him what I really wanted to know. “When did this happen?”
“A few days after the gala,” he said. “I drove down to Princeton to talk to her.”
I’d known that he’d gone to her, but I that thought it was to bewith her—not to break up with her. A new, terrible fear crept in—was I responsible for this? Had Frank broken up with his long-term girlfriend because I’d kissed him?
He let out a long breath, then went on, “Things hadn’t been right with us for months,” he said. “I was really trying, this summer. I didn’t think that it would matter, being apart. But it wasn’t just the distance. It was more than that. It had been going on for a while.”
I just nodded. I had dozens of questions, but none that I felt I could ask him. Maybe Frank sensed this, because he went on, “We didn’t really have all that much in common anymore. It was more like . . . we were just used to each other.”
“So . . . ,” I started, hoping this wasn’t the exact wrong question to ask. “It wasn’t because of me?”
“No,” Frank said, shaking his head. “I mean, when we first started hanging out this summer, I wasn’t thinking that way,” he said. “At all. I was committed to Lissa. And you and I were friends. But then . . .” Frank glanced over at me for just a second, but that was all that it took. It suddenly felt like the truck was a good ten degrees warmer than it had been just seconds ago. He cleared his throat before speaking. “I don’t know. Maybe it was the night of my birthday. But at some point, I started . . . thinking about you,” he said, a little haltingly, “more than I knew I should. Much more.” Without even leaning over to look in my side mirror, I could tell that I was blushing. “But I wasn’t sure . . . I didn’t know how you might be feeling until you drove me home.”
“Right,” I murmured, thinking about the way I had kissed him, not the other way around, making my feelings pretty clear.
“And it wasn’t fair to her,” Frank said, glancing quickly into the rearview mirror and changing lanes. “Or you. So I drove down to see her.”
“What happened?” I asked, wishing I could seem impartial, detached, and not like someone who was desperate to know how things had turned out.
Frank took a breath and let it out. “She was feeling the same way,” he said. “It was why she didn’t come in July. She knew if she saw me, she’d have to break up with me, and she didn’t want to do that to me on my birthday. And as soon as I started to tell her what I was feeling, she was pretty quick to end it.”
“I’m really sorry.”
Frank nodded, and paused for a long moment before he said, “I think we’re going to be fine. I don’t think we’ll ever be great friends, but it’s okay.”
“Good,” I said, trying to sound cheerful about this when my thoughts were spinning. I remembered when Frank came to my house, and how happy he had seemed. He’d wanted to tell me then that they’d broken up. And I hadn’t even let him finish, and had run away from him. I suddenly wished, more than anything, that I’d let Frank tell me when he’d wanted to. Because I was no longer sure what any of this meant.
“So, um,” Frank said, sounding more nervous than I’d ever heard him, “what do you—”
“Oh my god,” I said, loudly, pointing out of my side of the car as 14A approached with worrying swiftness. “There’s our exit.” Frank glanced at the mirror, then cut across the two lanes that were thankfully free of cars, to take the exit for River Port. “Sorry,” I said, when we were off the interstate and winding around the ramp. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.” In fact, I really, reallyhadn’t wanted to interrupt him then, because it had seemed like he was about to ask me something important.
“It’s okay,” he said, stopping at a red and glancing over at me. “I was just . . .” The car behind us honked and Frank looked around. “Do I take a right here?”
I fumbled for the directions, and realized that this might be the worst possible moment to have an important conversation. “Right,” I confirmed, and Frank made the turn. I looked down at the directions, which got much more complicated than they previously had been, then over at Frank.
“We don’t have to talk about this now,” he said. He nodded to the directions in my hand. “Let’s just get there first.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding a few too many times. I was actually grateful to have a moment to try and process everything I’d just learned in the past few minutes. And following the instructions to get to 4 Brookside Lane, with their clear steps to a known outcome, seemed preferable to trying to sort through my tangle of thoughts.
I rolled down my window, and Frank did the same, and the warm, early evening air blew through the truck, ruffling the directions in my hand. We drove through a one-street downtown, drug stores and clothing shops, but also a lot of empty storefronts, for-sale signs in the windows. We turned down a side road that took us through a neighborhood that looked grand but fading, with mansions on either side of the road, most separated by long stretches of land. We’d been driving for a few miles when I realized we were getting close.