Page 79 of Going the Distance
Chapter 19
“Maybe I should get a new boyfriend,” I commented to Lee as we walked to class the following week. “Not anything serious, necessarily, but just, you know, to invite over on Thanksgiving to make a point to Noah.”
“I don’t think that’s the right reason to get a boyfriend,” Lee said with a warning tone in his voice.
“I’m just saying.”
“Yeah, well, so am I. What next, Elle—revenge sex?”
I laughed. “With who? His roommate, Steve, on the other side of the country?” Lee rolled his eyes and I gave him a pointed look. “I’m not talking about that. Just…” I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, tugging on the ends of it in frustration. “I just can’t stop thinking about it. About them.”
I also couldn’t stop thinking about how close I’d come to kissing Levi.
“I get that you’re feeling betrayed, Shelly, but I really think you need to try to get over it. You’re too hung up on this.”
“I am trying to get over it! I was! Until he decided to bring her home for the holidays.” I ground my teeth. I’d been doing that a lot the past few days, whenever I pictured Noah and Amanda sitting together at the table in his parents’ dining room, their hands linked together on top of the table, them giving each other soppy, love-struck looks all the time.
The part I hated most about that picture was how perfectly they seemed to go together.
“What, like it would’ve been any easier to see Noah on his own if he’s in a relationship with Amanda?”
I sighed. “Well, yeah. It’s just…bringing her home for the holidays is pretty serious. Right? And it’s just making me wonder if maybe they did have something going on while we were still together.”
“One thing I know for sure is that my brother would never cheat on you.”
“I’m not saying hecheated,necessarily, but maybe they were flirting a little, and…and maybe there was chemistry. And maybe coming home to visit me was just a last-ditch effort to see if we still had chemistry, like they do.”
“Shelly, seriously. You’re overthinking this.”
I waved him off, trying not to let the comment get to me. I knew I was overthinking it. I knew I was getting worked up over something that was probably nothing. I knew I was stressing out way too much about this whole thing. I knew that I shouldn’t be letting myself think about Noah this much.
But a big part of me was still in love with him. And that part was hurting too much to let this go.
Levi tried to reassure me a few days later: “It won’t be so bad on the day. You’ll see. He’ll walk in with this girl Amanda and you’ll realize you’re not as hurt as you think you are. Seeing them together might help you get over him.”
“But she’s perfect,” I whined to Levi. I’d convinced Rachel to take a little snoop on Noah’s Facebook and Instagram profiles with me the other night. I’d resisted so far, but now I wanted to look. His relationship status still said “single,” but that didn’t mean he didn’t have anything going on with Amanda. That just meant he hadn’t changed his Facebook status. There were a few updates from him, about a “great night with the guys” or something similar, and photos that he’d been tagged in.
Amanda was in a lot of those photos with him. They weren’t kissing in any of them, but they had their arms around each other and they looked couple-y.
And she looked so much better than I did. She looked so…grown up.
Like, she could’ve been a catalog model. Her skin was flawless, her hair looked good inevery single photoon Noah’s profile, and, even in the photos taken at parties where she had a drink in her hand, there wasn’t an unattractive shot of her. Not even with her eyes half closed, or her mouth hanging open, or anything.
It was so unfair.
I told Levi so, and he just shrugged. “Maybe she’s got a really bad personality. Maybe she’s really, really boring.”
I could only hope.
I doubted it, though.
• • •
As November slipped away and Thanksgiving drew closer, I did my best to stop focusing on the whole thing with my ex and his (probably) new girlfriend coming home, and I attacked my college applications with a furious passion.
I even filled in an application for Brown. Partly because I wanted to be with Lee, I did admit to my dad. I also applied to San Diego and a couple of others close by. Once I got one application done, I felt like I could handle more. I still didn’t know what I really wanted to do after college, but my dad reassured me I’d figure it out.
I convinced Rachel to come out one afternoon, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, to get mani-pedis with me. We hadn’t hung out, just the two of us, outside school and not involving college applications, in a long time—and I needed a girly afternoon before facing Noah and Amanda, I figured.
