Page 24 of Going the Distance
Chapter 7
I was willing it to be the Thanksgiving holidays already. The days seemed to be dragging by. It wasn’t just that I was desperate to see Noah, but I felt like I already needed a break from school and my homeroom teacher asking me every other day if I’d worked on my college application essay yet (did I have a first draft I wanted him to give me a second opinion on? Not exactly…) and the mountains of homework that never seemed to get any smaller.
Lee had been spending a lot of time at football practice or hanging out with the guys from the team. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was usually with Rachel. And if Rachel wasn’t with Lee, she was pouring herself into studying—she wanted to make sure she got into Brown—and rehearsing for the drama club. (She got the part of Fantine in the end.)
So I found myself hanging out with Levi a lot. After talking about his past and his dad, and my mom, I could tell there was a shift between us. We’d bonded over something the others wouldn’t really understand.
And honestly, he was maybe the only person who made me feel at least a bit less stressed about college. He worked hard at school, but he was pretty blasé when it came to college. He had no desire to go. It wasn’t for him, he said. It was as simple as that. But he did try to help with my application essay.
The less Lee was around, the more I found myself missing Noah. One study hall, Levi and Dixon jokingly threw Skittles at me each time I mentioned Noah’s name. They ran out of candy after ten minutes.
“So sue me,” I’d snapped at them. “I miss my boyfriend.”
Sometimes it just made me feel cold and empty, like he should’ve been there with me, arms wrapped around me. Sometimes it was an ache so strong it hurt. All the phone calls in the world didn’t make up for it. And the Uber Eats of my favorite takeout he had sent to me one evening he knew I was trying to work on my college application essay had totally made me cry.
We had some school council meetings about the Sadie Hawkins dance, too, which kind of helped distract me and kind of didn’t.
It didn’t help because I couldn’t work up the courage to ask Noah—not sure I could handle the rejection when I was already missing him so much—and it did help because, duh, it was a school dance, and planning was a welcome distraction. Even if it was being held in the gym. (That just made the challenge of decorating on a low budget all the more fun.)
Lee was getting just as antsy about everything as I was. Rachel had her college application for Brown all ready to go, and it seemed like most of our friends were on their way to completing applications or at least their essays, and Lee and I were trailing behind.
Not that we talked about it much.
Actually, we didn’t really talk about much of anything anymore.
It felt like Lee was avoiding seeing me as much as Noah was avoiding talking to me about college—the more time that passed, the less he seemed to talk about classes and his friends. I kept telling myself it was no big deal and that, obviously, there was nothing to tell, but…I couldn’t help but wonder, sometimes, if there was something he was hiding from me.
Luckily, there was a brief respite from everything with Jon Fletcher’s party, the first weekend of October. It was the first party of the year, aside from a few we knew the juniors had thrown, but none of us had bothered to go to those.
Maybe, I realized, when we’d thrown parties last year and all the seniors hadn’t come, it wasn’t necessarily because they thought they were too cool; it was because they didn’t have the time.
Levi offered to give me a ride.
“You don’t wanna drink?” I asked as we sat down on a patch of grass in the shade off the side of the football field at lunch on Friday. We’d got out of our last class a little early, so still had to wait for the others to turn up.
He shrugged, focusing on taking his lunch out of his backpack. “It’s not really my thing. When we all started going to parties and drinking beer last year, all this stuff started happening with my dad, and I wasn’t really in the mood to party. It wasn’t really Julie’s scene either.”
“So, what, you’ve never really been to a party?”
“I went to one at New Year’s, and one at the end of the summer, but I didn’t stick around too long. Showed up late and left early.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure you’re gonna love this one. You can let your hair down now, right?”
Levi tugged at the ends of his hair. He’d had it cut a couple days ago, and you could hardly see his curls anymore. “Yeah, you know, this pigtail I’ve had in for the past ten months hasreallybeen bugging me.”
I rolled my eyes and tore the crust off my sandwich. “How is your dad?”
“He’s good. Finally found a therapist he likes.”
“That’s good.”
Then Cam and Lisa showed up hand in hand, and Dixon wasn’t far behind, engrossed in his phone, so we dropped the conversation and all started talking about the party instead.
• • •
Now, standing in front of my closet with clothes on the floor all around me, I huffed for the millionth time. I hadnothingto wear.
“For Christ’s sake, Shelly.” Lee sighed. “Just pick something. Levi’s going to be here soon.”
