Tap & Gown (32 page)

I bit my lip and my eyes began to burn. It was true. Every word.

He sighed. “I hate saying that.”

And I hated admitting he was right.

“But this isn’t like Lydia and Josh,” I said, failing to keep the sob from my voice. “They would still try to make it work, long distance.”

“They also have nine months behind them. We have one.”

I stared down at the risotto, now swimming in a sea of tablecloth and candlelight. My eyes were watering and I was relieved we weren’t at a usual Eli hangout—a corner Thai or pizza place where everyone I knew could see me sobbing into my food. Jamie had at least granted me that.

“Amy?” His hand came across the table to cover mine.“If I’d known—if I’d honestly thought I’d had a chance with this job, I would not have let things with us—”

“But you didn’t think you had a chance with me, either,” I said, and took a deep, shuddering breath.

I’d known this was coming, and sooner, rather than later. Jamie and I had no real future. Not with me leaving New Haven. But there was a huge difference between the expectation of me leaving in a month and him leaving in—when? A week? A few days? And disappearing, like a ghost?

I’d been right last night. Maturity sucked. But it was the only rational choice. If I loved him as I claimed, who was I to get in the way of his dream? Who was I, even if we’d been together for months? To have a shape to your ambition, to hold it in the palm of your hand—wasn’t that what I longed for? And here was Jamie’s, bright and beautiful, and the only sacrifice required was the one we’d both been planning on anyway.

So there. That was it. Simpler, even, than tapping Topher, when you really sat down and thought about it. And it wouldn’t even hurt. Not really. Not like it would if we’d let it drag out to graduation and beyond, let it turn ugly, as long-distance relationships—no matter what I’d led Lydia to believe—inevitably did. If we parted now, respectfully, maturely, like adults who realized that the world was bigger than our bedroom, it could be easy.

Easier, at least. We could still be friends. Society brothers. We could remember each other fondly, at any rate.

So why this deep, sucking wound in my chest?

“No matter which one of us ended up leaving first,” I said bitterly, “this relationship was always term-limited. So why did we bother at all?”

His eyes looked silvery and shining, but for all I knew, it was a trick of the candlelight. “I know why I did.”

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I knew, too. But I also knew my capacity for mistakes.

1*The confessor reports that she has had her memory jogged. She was, in fact, very, very whiny.

2*Darling? Sweetheart?
Luvah
? Okay, okay, the confessor will stop. Eventually.

I’d love to say that Jamie and I made the most of the time we had left, but that isn’t the case. We didn’t even spend the night together after our dinner. After all, I had a thesis to complete, homework to do, an initiation to plan. Jamie had to prepare for his finals. I wasn’t sure why he even intended to bother, since his leave of absence from Eli would be indefinite—but Jamie was the kind of guy who liked to finish what he started. Usually.

So imagine my surprise when I went by his place the following day, in response to a message he’d left on my phone about a study break, and found … nothing.

Okay, not nothing. The door was propped open, the couch remained, and Reepicheep’s tank still sat in the corner with the following note taped to the glass:
Amy
,

I thought you’d want Reepicheep. I gave Voldemort to a friend of mine in the Forestry School,
Ray Velasquez, who says he’s more than happy to take Reepicheep if you don’t want to. He
promises not to feed her to Voldie
.

I love you
.

Pajamie

P.S. The waffle maker’s for you, too
.

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When Jenny came by with her car, she found me curled up on the porch with both tank and waffle iron at my feet, holding the note in my hand and crying profusely.

“I’m glad you called,” she said, standing over me with her hands on her hips. “You need more than a ride.” She plopped down next to me and pulled out a bag of candy. “Gummy Life Savers?”

This only made me cry harder.

“Come on, Amy,” she said. “You can’t let this get to you. Remember how you coached me through Micah last fall?”

“Jamie,” I hissed through the tears, “is not Micah Price.”

“Oh, no?” asked Jenny. “Well, I loved Micah, and he was a jerk, and everyone else already knew it.”

“Not the same.”

“Explain why not.”

Oh, God, where to start? Micah was the guy who spit in my face, and Jamie was the guy who punched him out for it? “Because Micah didn’t love you back. Because Jamie is not a jerk. Because Micah changed you, and if anything, Jamie changed
for
me. I know at times he could seem cruel or harsh or—”

“Manipulative?” Jenny suggested. “Deceptive?”

“Only with good cause!” Everyone had their faults. Besides, for the Diggers, qualities like those were viewed as virtues. “Look, I know you don’t like him. But please cease with the suggestions that our relationship was a bad one.”

“Fine,” said Jenny. “And I guess I can admit that he was okay. I mean, he liked small animals. And he taught you to swim.”

“And he read the Bible.”

“He’s Episcopalian,” Jenny scoffed.

“What? They’re like Catholics; except no pope.”

Jenny just rolled her eyes.

I sighed. “Well, I love him, and he’s gone. And though I sat there and made the most mature, rational, grown-up decision I could about it, it still hurts like hell.”

“Now I’m on familiar ground,” Jenny said, and folded her hands in her lap.

I sniffled. “How so?”

She took a deep breath. “Harun.”

“Yeah,” I said, careful to keep any tone of
I knew it
from my voice.

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“We’re not together, Amy, no matter what you all think. We can’t ever be together. There are too many issues. Religion, for one. I mean, apparently, a Christian woman is okay or something, according to the Qu’ran, but that doesn’t mean the opposite works for me. And his mom would apparently flip if she saw me, which isn’t anything compared to what my dad would do if I brought Harun home.”

She’d certainly thought about this a lot.

“And then there’s Rose & Grave. We have this bond that exists outside of anything else, and that doesn’t go away when we graduate. We’re in this society for life. So it’s not worth it unless we plan to go the distance. And maybe not even then, when you consider all the other hurdles.”

“Jenny, why didn’t you talk to us about this?”

She shrugged. “And put up with even more teasing? More rumblings about ‘society incest’? No thank you. I don’t know how you’ve dealt with it all this time.”

“Mostly,” I said, “I haven’t noticed it.”

“Really? Since you’ve been dating Jamie, it’s been brutal.”

I raised my eyebrows.
Brutal?
I really
hadn’t
noticed it, then.

“Harun and I talked about the situation. We came to a decision. That was all we needed.”

“What was your decision?”

“That love exists in many forms, and that it’s limiting and unimaginative and … immature to assume that the only way a man and a woman can love each other is in a romantic sense.”

There was that word again.
Mature
. Was this what maturity was? Giving up on the things we wanted because we knew we’d never get them?

“I want the best for him in his life, and if I can help him achieve it, I will. I love him, but without expectation, without possession.”

The tears began to well up again. “That’s it,” I said. “That’s exactly it.”

Jenny put her arm around me and hugged me. “There’s even a word for this kind: ‘agape.’ It’s a sacred love, a tender love, and it’s separate from desire.”

“But what if you want all the kinds of love?” I sobbed.

“It’s easier said than done,” Jenny went on. “I want to be with him all the time. When something bad happens, he’s the person I want to run to. When something good happens, he’s the person I want to tell first. For instance, after I’m through convincing you to come work for me, I’m going to call him up and tell him about my killer hiring skills.”

I gave her a weak laugh and pulled away. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your offer, Jenny—”

“Oh, so I’m good enough to be your taxi service, but not your boss?”

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I smiled. “Yes, and that’s precisely how I was going to put it, too.” I folded up Jamie’s note and stuck it in my bag. “Shall we get out of here?”

“Sure. I have to drop off a few of these amendments on the way home.” As a result of Michelle’s dead-flower experience, we were sending out altered instructions to counteract any possible Dragon’s Head sabotage.

I picked up Reepicheep’s tank. “Can you get the waffle maker?”

“You’re actually going to take that thing?” Jenny asked.

“Yes,” I said. “What else do I have to remember him by?”

Lydia, it must be said, was not overly fond of our new rodent suitemate.

“You know people pay to have these things
removed
from their dwellings, right, Amy?” she asked, peering fearfully at the little white mouse, who now held a place of honor on our bookshelf. (I hadn’t figured out where we would put the microwave, but since we’d be moving out of the suite in a month, I suppose it didn’t matter too much.)

“They also feed them to snakes,” I replied.

“Great idea! Where do I get another live creature to put in my dorm room?” She clapped her hands together. “What’s next in the menagerie? A ferret? A goat?”

I spun the hamster wheel and fitted the top back on the tank. Reepicheep seemed to have survived the move, though she was currently huddled in a nest of cedar chips, trembling all over. I knew how the poor thing felt.

“No more,” I promised Lydia, “but brace yourself: I need you to take care of her for a day or two.”

“What?”

“You know that thing keeping Josh so busy right now?”

“His term paper?”

I snorted. “Right. The same term paper I have.” Meaningfully.