“Not so far.” He sucked down the rest of his beer in a few long pulls.
“Then what’s so complicated about it?”
He blinked as his gaze darted over to the side, uncertain which surprised him more—the fact that Jo was actually talking or the content of what she’d said. “Excuse me?”
She looked around, taking in the renewed attention being directed her way and visibly stiffening. Her shrug was all casual disaffectedness, but it wasn’t particularly convincing. “I don’t know, dude. Kinda sounds like she’s just not that into you.”
She grimaced, maybe at the gratuitous pop culture reference, or maybe at something else. He didn’t have a lot of space to concentrate on it, because his heart squeezed at the very idea. “It’s—” he started, but his automatic descriptor of “complicated” wasn’t going to help him here, now was it? Not when that was what had started the whole conversation. “We… she…” Swallowing, he looked at the empty bottle in his hands, and then at all the people staring at him expectantly. And back to Jo. “We’re… on a break. She said she needed some space.”
“Ouch,” Jared said.
Yeah, pretty much.
Jo’s mouth twisted down. “Not sure how that exactly contradicts my theory.”
How was he supposed to explain this? Everyone in the program had slowly been trading life stories and histories, but he’d shied away from this very subject time and time again, because it was complicated, as cliché as that might sound. “We’ve been together, sort of, since freshman year. I mean, it’s been on again, off again.”
There’d been the intense whirlwind his first week of classes, when they’d met in a seminar they’d both needed for their gen-eds, and she’d just sort of carved out this space for herself in his life. She’d been easy to talk to, and a beautiful blonde, and just different from anyone he’d ever met. Way different from anyone who’d ever given him the time of day before. Then again, that could’ve had something to do with the fact that he’d gotten contact lenses and started working out between high school graduation and the start of college.
She’d accepted his closet nerdiness with only a modicum of teasing and introduced him to the girls in the sorority she was pledging, and sure, they’d had different majors and hobbies and schedules. They’d conflicted on those here and there, and she’d thrown her hands up at him a couple of times when he’d insisted he had too much work to do to go along with whatever plans she’d made. But the breaks had been good for them both.
Three years of falling back into each others’ arms and beds and then slipping into the same patterns of her getting caught up in her things and him in his. He hadn’t even really been surprised this time when she’d said that maybe they should take advantage of the ocean between them for the summer.
He had been disappointed, though.
“But it’s really great when it’s great,” he said, half trying to convince them and half reminding himself. “She’s fun, and she makes me do things I never would.” He still didn’t really care for clubbing, but he’d met so many interesting people because of her, and thumping beats and close dancing usually led to some of their better nights once they made it to his place. “And she listens to me, even when it’s mostly boring science stuff. She’s faithful.” He looked away, out the window, into the distance. “And it’s been three years, you know? We both knew we were going to be busy this summer, and the distance is a killer, so she… so we…”
He stopped to listen to himself, and the squeezing in his chest got a whole lot tighter.
“Anyway, it’s fine. We’ve texted back and forth. And I’ll see her in a few weeks.”
“You will?” Jared asked.
“Yeah, there’s this conference in Baltimore I have to go to to present a poster. She’s driving down from Philly. We’ve got it all planned out.”
It was an overstatement, but it wasn’t too far from the truth. She’d said she’d make it work. He’d budgeted an extra couple of days between the conference and his flight, and everything that was wrong with them—these silences and this distance—they’d figure them out. When they were actually near each other, they always did. They’d manage it this time, too.
“It’ll be great,” he said. But it sounded weak.
“If you say so.” Jo gave another little expression of indifference, this one just as unconvincing as the last.
Only he didn’t understand the lines around her mouth this time. It couldn’t just be that she was talking in front of the group or garnering unwanted attention. Delicate, shy flower that she was.
“Just . . .” she started again, hesitating for a second. But then her gaze met his, and there was no less challenge there. “When someone doesn’t respond to you, it usually means something. Believe me.” She let out a harsh little laugh that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and his stomach sink. “I have a lifetime of waiting for somebody to pay attention to me under my belt, and it doesn’t matter what you do. If they don’t want to, they’re not going to.” Glancing away, she said, “Better to cut your losses before they really break your heart.”
And he… really didn’t know what she was talking about, but it got under his skin. “Not how I operate.”
“Clearly.” She rolled her eyes, and it just bothered him that she could be so flippant when this had secretly been eating at him for so long. “Just don’t expect sympathy when she disappoints you.”
That was it. Something inside him snapped, because for every moment he’d been telling himself it would all be fine, he’d also been thinking that very same thing. This was bound to end badly, and he would deserve whatever he got for leaving himself so open. For clinging to something that was obviously past its prime.
He didn’t need to hear it from anyone else.
He was on his feet before he’d fully decided to move, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Jo’s eyes widened, but other than that she didn’t flinch, and he wanted to do to her what she’d done to him—what she’d been doing since the very first second they’d met. Flipping him and flipping his conception of his relationships and himself. He wanted her to feel what it was like to land that hard on the ground.
Only, from the set of her mouth, he had a feeling she already did.
Still, he couldn’t stop himself, needed to get in some kind of last shot. It came out tepid at best, his throat going wobbly at the last second. “Christ, you’re just fucking heartless, aren’t you?”
That got a reaction out of her, even if she looked more angry than indignant. “Don’t you dare tell me a thing about my heart.”
“Then don’t you tell me anything about mine.”
A low whistle sounded out from somewhere in the room. Their surroundings seeped back into his awareness, and his ears rang, his face flashing suddenly hot. For a minute there, it had felt like it was just the two of them. They were still the whole width of the room apart, but it had felt like nothing at all. Like he could have reached out, could have taken hold of her and shaken her. Or slammed her up against a wall and kissed her.
Apparently registering the eyes on them, too, she set her empty plate aside and squared her jaw. He half expected her to go storming off the way she was so fond of doing, but then it occurred to him. This was her house. He was the interloper—for all that she seemed the one so intent on trying not to belong.
“Adam?” Carol asked, but he shook his head.
“Excuse me,” he said.
He let the door slam shut behind him, striding across the space between the two houses and staring up in frustration at the setting ball of the sun in the sky. He kicked the gravel and tugged at his hair, and none of it did any good. Nothing ever did any good.
From his pocket, his phone gave a little beep, and he pulled it out with a prayer. Please prove me wrong. Please prove them all wrong.
It was only his brother, though. Of course it was. He tilted the thing on its side to type a reply, only it slipped from his grip, his hands unsteady, and anyway, the keys were so fucking small. He was always smashing them together and making these unholy amalgamations of words, and why couldn’t anyone ever use the stupid thing to actually talk anymore?