Getting Over Garrett Delaney(2)
Author: Abby McDonald

I watch him for a moment, shadows falling across those perfect cheekbones. I should be happy, I know — with my gifts, and Garrett’s daydreams of our awesome plans — but there’s one thing wrong with this picture. With every picture.

He’s not mine.

I don’t understand it, either. We’re supposed to be together. I knew the day we met that it was fate! But I guess even fate finds a way of destroying your hopes and dreams, leaving your heart dashed on the cruel rocks of life — just ask the poor souls in all those Greek myths. See, it turns out I wasn’t entirely right about me and Garrett back then. Not the friends part, because despite my fears that he’d show up on the first day of school, get sucked into the vortex, and never speak to a lowly freshman girl again, that’s exactly what we turned out to be: buddies, pals, BFFs. Everything except the only thing I ever really wanted us to be.

In love.

And it kills me. Mom says I exaggerate, but I’m not even kidding about this. You can die of a broken heart — it’s scientific fact — and my heart has been breaking since that very first day we met. I can feel it now, aching deep behind my rib cage the way it does every time we’re together, beating a desperate rhythm: Love me. Love me. Love me.

I sneak another look at Garrett, lying out on the grass beside me. He yawns, stretching a little as he does; his shirt rides up, revealing a whole inch of pale-golden stomach.

Be still, O heart of mine!

I stifle a familiar sigh of longing. It would be one thing if he was completely unobtainable — gay, for example, or madly in love with some other girl — but I have no such comforting reason why we can’t make it work. No matter which girl he’s dated — and there have been plenty — he’s stayed just as close to me. Closer, even, since I’m the one who gets to listen to all his deepest, darkest fears and secrets, the one who brings over pizza and root beers after the (inevitable) breakup.

For two long years, we’ve been inseparable. And for two long years, I’ve been desperately waiting for more.

Garrett can never stay still for long, and sure enough, after a couple of minutes, he sits up, restless. “So, you ready for the next part of your birthday? We’ve got a whole night o’ fun ahead of us.”

“As long as it includes sugar and caffeine,” I reply lightly, as if I haven’t just been meditating on his delicious abs.

“Done and done.”

I stuff my goodies into my own beat-up leather satchel and head back toward the parking lot, my frayed jeans dragging on the grass.

“Did you pick your classes yet?” he asks as I curl my fingers into my palm to make up for the fact they’re not wrapped around his.

“Not yet,” I admit. “The short-story class sounds kind of fun. . . .”

“It will be — you’ll love it,” Garrett insists, enthusiastic. “And your short fiction is getting really great; you’ve improved so much this year.”

“Thanks.” Praise from Garrett is praise indeed. “Then short stories it is!”

I think again of the fabulous summer ahead of us. Six weeks together at an intensive writing camp in the woods of New Hampshire — who could ask for a more romantic retreat? Sure, there are eight-hour days of classes scheduled, but those will fly by. It’s the nights I’m looking forward to the most. Snuggling together around the campfire, walking in the moonlight down by the lake . . . It’s the chance I’ve been waiting for — I just know it. We’re still waiting on our acceptance letters, but Garrett knows one of the instructors through his parents and swears we’re a lock.

We reach his old Vespa, parked in the middle of the concrete. “Hey, Vera,” I coo, stroking the metal. “How are you feeling?”

“Temperamental as ever.” Garrett hands me the cherry-red passenger helmet.

“Aww, she’s just messing with you.” I knock three times on the metal for luck as I climb on board. It’s stupid, I know, but tradition. The only time I didn’t knock, Vera threw a mechanical temper tantrum and gave out on us somewhere past the last gas station but before the creepy abandoned development on the outskirts of town. We froze on the side of the street in the rain until my mom came to pick us up — armed with “I told you so” and a lecture on road safety and organ donation.

“You think she’ll make it through another year?” I ask, tucking my hair into the helmet.

Garrett feigns outrage. “You’ll have to pry Vera from my cold, dead hands!”

I laugh. “You might want to rethink that metaphor, with all those road-safety stats my mom keeps leaving out for you.”

“Hush, child,” he scolds me, climbing on in front. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“I’m plenty adventurous!” I protest, wrapping my arms around him. Never mind adventure. This is the part I love the most: the excuse to hold him tight for as long as our journey takes. “Just remember who you drag along to all those foreign movie nights in the city.”

“You love them.” Garrett starts the bike, and slowly, we start to ride away. “Don’t even try to deny it!” he calls over the noise from the engine.

So I don’t. Because I do love them.

And him.

Totally Wired is busy when we arrive, the evening cappuccino crew jostling for position with the summer college crowd buried behind their textbooks. We head for our regular table in back, the one under the wall of old rock-show posters, peeled and fading. “The usual?” Garrett asks.

“Yup!” I hurl myself down on the cracked leather bench. “Here, I think I’ve got . . .”

Garrett waves away my crumpled dollar bills. “Are you kidding? It’s the day of your birth. Your money’s no good to me.”

He heads for the counter while I settle back and check out the scene. This place is the closest Sherman, Massachusetts, comes to having a hangout of any kind: the lone beacon of coolness in a line of generic drugstores, take-out places, and bland clothing outlets. I live in the cultural wastelands, I swear. After years of praying to the Gods of Cultural Experience, I’ve had to accept that this town is a lost cause; when they opened a strip mall outside of town with, gasp, a Chipotle, it was all kids in school could talk about for a week. No, if we want culture, we have to drive for it: forty miles to the nearest college town or a couple of hours east to Boston, where Garrett and I gorge on Indian food, art-house movies, and the sweet, sweet mildewy scent of used bookstores.