You know, freshman fifteen or whatever.” My face got hot, and I momentarily forgot about how badly my back hurt or how weird it was that he’d brought up Jere. I just felt embarrassed.
In a quiet voice, he said, “Well, you look the same to me.” Then, very gently, he scooped me off the floor and into his arms. I held on with one arm around his neck, and said, “It was more like ten. Freshman ten.”
He said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
He carried me over to the couch and set me down.
“I’m gonna get you some Advil. That should help a little.”
Looking up at him, I had this sudden thought.
Oh my God. I still love you.
I’d thought my feelings for Conrad were safely tucked away, like my old Rollerblades and the little gold watch my dad bought me when I first learned how to tell time.
But just because you bury something, that doesn’t mean it stops existing. Those feelings, they’d been there all along. All that time. I had to just face it. He was a part of my DNA. I had brown hair and I had freckles and I would always have Conrad in my heart. He would 44 · jenny han
inhabit just that tiny piece of it, the little-girl part that still believed in musicals, but that was it. That was all he got. Jeremiah would have everything else—the present me and the future me. That was what was important. Not the past.
Maybe that was how it was with all first loves. They own a little piece of your heart, always. Conrad at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, even seventeen years old. For the rest of my life, I would think of him fondly, the way you do your first pet, the first car you drove. Firsts were important. But I was pretty sure lasts were even more important. And Jeremiah, he was going to be my last and my every and my always.
Conrad and I spent the rest of that day together but not together. He started a fire, and then he read at the kitchen table while I watched It’s a Wonderful Life. For lunch, we had canned tomato soup and the rest of my chocolate-covered pretzels. Then he went for a run on the beach and I settled in for Casablanca. I was wiping tears from the corners of my eyes with my T-shirt sleeve when he came back. “This movie makes my heart hurt,” I croaked.
Taking off his fleece, Conrad said, “Why? It had a happy ending. She was better off with Laszlo.”
I looked at him in surprise. “You’ve seen Casablanca?”
“Of course. It’s a classic.”
“Well, obviously you weren’t paying that close of attention, because Rick and Ilsa are meant for each other.”
Conrad snorted. “Their little love story is nothing compared to the work Laszlo is doing for the Resistance.”
Blowing my nose with a napkin, I said, “For a young guy, you’re way too cynical.”
He rolled his eyes. “And for a supposedly grown girl, you’re way too emotional.” He headed for the stairs.
“Robot!” I yelled at his back. “Tin man!”
I heard him laughing as he closed the bathroom door.
The next morning, Conrad was gone. He left just like I thought he’d leave. No good-bye, no nothing. Just gone, like a ghost. Conrad, the Ghost of Christmas Past.
Jeremiah called me when I was on the way back home from Cousins. He asked what I was doing, and I told him I was driving home, but I didn’t tell him where I was driving from. It was a split-second decision. At the time I didn’t know why I lied. I just knew I didn’t want him to know.
I decided Conrad was right after all. Ilsa was meant to be with Laszlo. That was the way it was always supposed to end. Rick was nothing but a tiny piece of her past, a piece that she would always treasure, but that was all, because history is just that. History.
Chapter Nine
After I left Anika’s room, I turned on my phone. There were texts and e-mails from Jeremiah, and they kept coming. I got under my covers and read them all, each and every one.
Then I reread them, and when I was done, I finally wrote him back and said, Give me some space. He wrote OK, and that was the last text I got from him that day. I still kept checking my phone to see if there was anything from him, and when there wasn’t, I was disappointed, even though I knew I didn’t have a right to be. I wanted him to leave me alone, and I wanted him to keep trying to fix things. But if I didn’t know what I wanted, how could he possibly?
I stayed in my room, packing up. I was hungry, and I still had meals left on my meal card, but I was afraid I might run into Lacie on campus. Or worse, Jeremiah.
Still, it was good to have something to do and, to be able to turn the music on loud without having to hear my roommate Jillian complain.
When I couldn’t take the hunger anymore, I called Taylor and told her everything. She screamed so loud, I had to hold the phone away from my ear. She came right over with a black bean-burrito and a strawberry-banana smoothie. She kept shaking her head and saying, “That Zeta Phi slut.”
“It wasn’t just her, it was him, too,” I said, between bites of my burrito.
“Oh, I know. Just you wait. I’m gonna drag my nails across his face when I see him. I’ll leave him so scarred, no girl will ever hook up with him again.” She inspected her manicured nails like they were artillery. “When I go to the salon tomorrow, I’m gonna tell Danielle to make them sharp.”
My heart swelled. There are some things only a friend who’s known you your whole life can say, and instantly, I felt a little better. “You don’t have to scar him.”
“But I want to.” She hooked her pinky finger with mine. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “Better, now that you’re here.”
When I was sucking down the last of my smoothie, Taylor asked me, “Do you think you’ll take him back?”
I was surprised and really relieved not to hear any judgment in her voice. “What would you do?” I asked her.
“It’s up to you.”
“I know, but … would you take him back?”
“Under ordinary circumstances, no. If some guy cheated on me while we were on a break, if he so much as looked at another girl, no. He’d be donzo.” She chewed on her straw. “But Jeremy’s not some guy. You have a history together.”
“What happened to all that talk about scarring him?”
“Don’t get it twisted, I hate him to death right now.
He effed up in a colossal way. But he’ll never be just some guy, not to you. That’s a fact.”
I didn’t say anything. But I knew she was right.