Page 124 of Kissing is the Easy Part
“But you ruined my suit and I’m sending you the dry-cleaning bill.” His lips curl up and he looks cuter than ever.
This boy will forever be the death of me. As I watch his retreating back, the moonlight washing over his shoulders, it hits me. Sean never promised to stay friends or said whether I could contact him again. The strangest, most conflicting emotions crash against me, both equally strong.
One part of me believes I’ll never get over him. That I’ll wait until he’s ready, and take whatever he can offer me—as an acquaintance, a friend, or something more. But at the same time, I imagine him as a beautiful deer in the forest, one that makes this world a better place simply by existing. I don’t need to mount it on my living room wall.
I don’t need to own him.
He doesn’t need to be mine.
Sharing a part of myself with him, however brief, has been enough. Wherever he ends up in the world, I’ll think of him with nothing but fondness, knowing I haven’t wasted a single ounce of my love on him.
I start my car. My dress sticks to my body and I’m eager to get home to a hot shower. At the intersection, the road is empty. Not a single car in sight.
The light shifted from yellow to red only a millisecond ago. I can run it. I almost do, then step on the brakes hard. The car screeches to a halt.
I flick on the blinker.
As thetap, tap, tapof it echoes in the darkness, I scan the empty road in front of me and say to the night, “Thank you, dear Sean.”
Chapter Forty-two
Sean
Flora and I don’t talk again after graduation. It seems we’ve exhausted all that can be said.
I spend the summer without her. At first, it’s brutal. Thinking of her is like a broken rib that hurts with each inhalation. Gradually, I get used to it. It’s a tolerable kind of sadness, the way fragrances lose their scent after a while.
At least I have the freedom to think of her all I want.
When summer is close to an end, a plane takes me and my unresolved feelings across the ocean. Germany is everything I hoped it would be. I write a postcard to Flora every day, even though the plan is to never send them. These postcards serve as an archive of my trip.
I write about how Jake smiles at everyone and insists on chatting up the people at the next table, how Dylan has to repeatedly explain the White House isn’t in Washington State—he’s never been so passionate about geography—how I order in grammatically correct German and always get replied to in English. How Jake’s uncle is somehow even cooler than him—if that’s even possible—and pulls off thechill American in Europevibe so well.
How we braved Bavarian clubbing, jogged along the Rhine, plunged into the freezing hellscape that is Eibsee, and played public chess. How Jake and Dylan forced me onto a karaoke stage, where I butchered a song so badly that even the polite Germans struggled to clap, only for Dylan to go next and absolutely obliterate. How I jaywalkedonceand they refused to let my descent into lawlessness slide, insisting “our sweet, innocent boy is gone,” and debating whether I should be banned from reentering the US. I swear, these two bond over tormenting me.
See, Flora?Iamwilling to try new things when it doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg.
I tell her about the two Korean students who stayed up all night playing bridge with Dylan and me, while Jake was out doing whatever it is that Jake does. About the middle-aged Frenchwoman we met at a bar who’s a small celebrity after one of her YouTube videos went viral. About the Jamaican obstetrician we met in the hotel lobby who decided to take a year off from delivering babies. And about the old lady who roped us into moving a couch into her apartment, and then made us the best grilled trout of our lives to thank us.
Writing is my therapy, to get over Flora, but also to hang on to her.
One evening, Dylan leaves the room to call his mom and Sydney, in that order. I’m sprawled on the bed, writing.
Jake asks, “Are you writing to Flora again? Anything dirty in there?”
“Yeah, you and Dylan. You can read it if you want.”
He skims it, and smiles. “I like your writing. We’re really having such a good time in Germany.”
“Yeah. So where are we going next? Summer after freshman year of college?”
He doesn’t even hesitate, like he’s already been planning it. “Somewhere Spanish-speaking so Dyl can do all the talking and we can nod along and be useless.”
Then, just to be annoying, he double taps my face in that obnoxious big-brother way. “I love you, but your German sucks.”
* * *
After my first grueling semester at MIT, I come home for winter break. When I finish packing again, getting ready to leave the next day, Lindsey refuses to get out of my room.
