The Moon and More(36)
Author: Sarah Dessen

Now, I pulled my coffee towards me and took a sip. I was just putting it back on the table when the bells over the front door jangled and Luke came in.

He glanced around, his expression businesslike. Then he saw me, and something softened in his features, triggering the same reaction in my own. Oh my God, I thought. Please, no. No. But then he was sliding in across from me, and it was already happening.

“I’m sorry,” he said, immediately. The words came out rushed, like he’d been holding them in with his breath. “I’m so sorry, Emaline.”

I swallowed, hard, as the waitress returned with the coffeepot. Luke turned over his cup, she filled it, and then, thankfully, moved on. “I don’t even know what you’re apologizing for yet.”

He ran a hand over his hair, then looked outside at the boardwalk, the ocean beyond it. It was a cloudy day, the sky gray and flat bordering the horizon. I waited for him to speak again. He didn’t.

“Okay,” I said finally. “You were pissed about me not returning your text because I was with Theo. So you called her. I get it. I’m not happy, and clearly it’s a sign of a bigger issue. But—”

“It was before that.”

I took me a minute to actually hear this. Like the letters or sounds were scrambled and had to rearrange themselves. “What?”

He shifted his gaze slowly away from the window, then found my face. “I called her before I saw you with him.”

“You—” I stopped, realizing I was sputtering. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“That’s not an acceptable answer,” I told him, like this was a game show and he’d phrased it incorrectly. “Try again.”

I watched him exhale, his chest falling. “You know we haven’t been hanging out so much lately. Things have been . . . weird. Kind of off, you know. And then she left that note . . .”

“And you decided to cheat on me,” I finished for him.

“It wasn’t like that.” He reached up, pinching at the skin between his closed eyes. “Look, I’m not sure why I called. I just did. And she said she was going out that night with her friends, and I should meet them. I wasn’t going to do it. At least, I don’t think I was.”

I held my breath, scared that even the smallest sound might cause him to say what I so did not want to hear.

“But then,” he went on, dropping his hand, “I did see you, after you’d blown off my text. I was pissed off. So I went.”

“You met her,” I said, clarifying. He nodded, not looking at me. “Did you sleep with her?”

“No!” he said, sounding surprised. “God, Emaline. Do you really think I’d do that?”

“I don’t know what to think about you anymore!” A woman at another booth turned, slightly, to glance at us. I lowered my voice. “Seriously. How could you do this?”

“I’m not the only one who’s been acting questionably here. You were hanging out with another guy, remember?”

“That was work related.”

“Oh, right,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Because you’re always driving around after dark with some dude on official company business.”

“I didn’t do anything with Theo but drive him around,” I shot back. “We weren’t at some club together. Where did you go, anyway? Tallyho?”

I’d been joking, not that any of this was funny. When he stared back at me, though, flushing slightly, all I wanted to do was cry.

“Oh my God,” I said. “Luke. Really?”

And it was then, of course, that the waitress appeared at the end of the table, her pad in hand. “Okay. Ready to order?”

Food was the last thing I wanted. But somehow, I asked for my usual scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. Luke got a bacon and egg biscuit, like always. Even when nothing was normal, breakfast apparently did not change.

Once the waitress was gone, neither of us said anything for a while, instead just sitting there as the sounds of the restaurant—forks clinking against plates, other conversations from the tables and counter customers, the door chime sounding again—filled the air around us. Finally, I said, “So what now? We break up?”

“I don’t know.” He picked at his napkin, fraying the edge. “Maybe we just spend a little time apart, to think.”

“God, that is such a cliché.” I shook my head, looking out at the water again. “Next you’ll be saying that it’s not me, it’s you.”

He sighed, letting this pass without comment. “Look. We’ve been together since ninth grade, Emaline. We go to college in a few weeks. I just wonder if, you know, this is happening for a reason. Like maybe we both were missing out on something.”

“Like a date with some tourist at Tallyho?” I asked. “Oh, no, wait. You did that already.”

He shot me a look. “Fine. You don’t have to agree with me. But I bet, if you think about it, you might actually get what I’m talking about.”

“Don’t hold your breath.” I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, glancing outside again. Just another Friday, or so it would seem from the outside. But down deeper, something I’d seen as solid—not perfect, but solid—was suddenly crumbling. I felt like I was falling to pieces right along with it. “I don’t need to get anything, Luke. You did this.”

He didn’t say anything. But I could feel him watching me, that heaviness of someone’s scrutiny, as I focused solely on a sea tern outside, floating above the boardwalk. Its wings were outstretched as it rode the breeze, up and down, up and down.

“I’m sorry,” I heard him say again. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sudden blur of movement as he slid out of his seat, left some bills for the breakfast he wouldn’t eat, and walked away. And as he did, I thought again of those mornings in the hallway at school, way back in ninth grade. Everything had started in such sharp detail, each aspect pronounced and clear. Obviously, endings were different. Harder to see, full of shapes that could be one thing or another, with all the things that you were once so sure of suddenly not familiar, if they were even recognizable at all.

9

I SHOWED UP at work a half hour later with a small plastic take-out box, Luke’s uneaten biscuit wrapped up inside. I’d tried to just leave it, but the waitress, for whatever reason, was determined that I bring it with me.