What Happened to Goodbye(69)
Author: Sarah Dessen

I walked over to the bar, dropping my backpack onto a chair. “About what?”

“Colors for the new-and-improved upstairs alfresco dining area,” she said.

“You’re going to reopen the second floor?” I asked.

“Well, not right now. I mean, there’s the model, and we still have to get the restaurant on a better footing.” She laid out the two swatches. “But now that Chuckles has spared us, he might be open to some ideas for expanding and improvement. He’s supposed to come in tonight, passing through town, so I’d thought I’d just plant the idea in his head.”

“I do not like the idea of having to go up and down stairs to my tables,” Tracey said.

“And there’s the question of keeping food warm during the trip,” Jason added.

“Where is your sense of adventure? Of change? This could be really, really good for the restaurant. A return to its past glory days!” Opal said. They just looked at her, and She laghed, flipping her hand, then turned her attention to me. “Okay. Mclean. Pick one.”

I looked down at the colors. Two blues, different and yet so similar. I couldn’t see notes of white, or various shading, and didn’t know the language Tracey used to describe the most subtle of nuances. These days, though, I was sure of one thing: I knew what I liked.

“This one,” I said, putting my finger on the one on the right. “It’s perfect.”

It was now March, and my dad and I had been in Lakeview for almost two months. Anywhere else, those eight weeks would have followed a routine pattern. Get moved in, get settled, pick a name and a girl. Unpack our few, necessary things, arranging them in the same way as the last place, and the next place. Start school while my dad got a line on whether his restaurant had slimy lettuce or great guacamole, and plan my own moves in terms of joining clubs and making friends accordingly. Then, all that was left was following the signs so I’d know when to pull back, cut for good, and get ready to run.

Here, though, it was different. We’d come in the same way, but since then everything had changed, from me using my real name to my dad starting to date even with no next move in sight. Add in the fact that I was actually on decent terms with my mom, and this was officially an entirely new ball game.

Since I’d agreed to go to Colby for spring break, as well as committed to four other weekends between April and June, my mom and I had reached tentative peace. She’d called her lawyer and withdrawn her custody-review request, and I’d explained the plan to my dad, who was relieved, to say the least. Now, I had the third week in March circled on my calendar in Angel Baby or Calm Waters or just blue, and we had something to talk about that was not a loaded subject. Which was kind of nice, actually.

“Now, the ocean’s going to be freezing, obviously,” she’d said to me the night before, when she called after dinner. “But I’m hopeful that the hot tub will be working and the pool heat up and running, although it might not happen. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Your house has a hot tub and pool?” I’d asked her.

“Well, yes,” she said, sounding kind of embarrassed. “You know Peter. He doesn’t do anything halfway. But his place was a great deal, apparently, a foreclosure or something. Anyway, I can’t wait for you to see it. I spent hours agonizing over the redecorating. Picking colors was a nightmare.”

“Yeah, I bet,” I said. “I have a friend who’s doing that right now. She wanted me to help her, but all the blues looked the same.”

“They do!” she said. “But at the same time, they don’t. You have to look at them in the daylight, and afternoon light, and bright light. . . . Oh, it’s nuts. But I’m really happy with how it turned out. I think.”

It had been weird, I had to admit, to be having such a, well, pleasant conversation with my mom. Like once again, the beach had somehow become a safe place for us to be together, separate from the conflict of her house or this one. So we continued to talk and e-mail about plans for what to do on rainy days, what I wanted to have for breakfast, if I wanted an ocean or sound view. It was easier, so much easier, than what I was used to. Maybe even okay.

Meanwhile, as I was making up with my mom, my dad was busy doing something with Lindsay Baker. As far as I could tell, they’d been on several late lunches—with her giving him the tour of other local eateries—and a couple of dinners when he could get away from Luna Blu, which was rare. Normally, I could tell when my dad was laying groundwork for another escape by how committed he let himself get, as backward as that sounds. Phone calls and lunch dates meant I should proceed as I had been, that nothing was happening. But once I started finding hair elastics that weren’t mine in the bathroom, or someone else’s yogurt or Diet Coke in the fridge, it was time to stop buying staples like sugar and butter and use up what we had instead. So far, none of these things had materialized, at least that I knew of. I was kind of distracted myself, though, to be honest.

It had happened on the night we’d gone to Riley’s, after the game, when Ellis was driving us all back home. Deb had hopped into the front seat, armed with a plate of leftovers packed up by Mrs. Benson for her mom, who Deb had said was working through dinner for overtime, which left me and Dave alone in the back. As Ellis pulled out onto the dirt road, we were all quiet, worn out by all the food and talking, not to mention a great game the U had won with a jump shot in the final seconds. When he put on his blinker at the main road, the ticktock was all you could hear.

There’s something nice about the silence of a car ride in the dark, going home. It reminded me, actually, of those trips back from North Reddemane with my mom, sunburned, with sand in my shoes, my clothes damp from pulling them on over my suit, as I wanted to swim until the very last moment. When we were tired of the radio and conversation, it was okay to just be alone with our thoughts and the road ahead. If you’re that comfortable with someone, you don’t have to talk.

As we headed toward town, I leaned back, pulling one leg up underneath me. Beside me, Dave was looking out the window, and for a moment I studied his face, brightened now and then by the lights of oncoming cars. I thought of all the times we’d been together, how I kept coming closer, then retreating, while he stayed right where he was. A constant in a world where few, if any, really existed. And so as he sat there beside me, I moved a little closer, resting my head on his shoulder. He didn’t turn away from the window. He just lifted his hand, smoothing it over my hair, and held it there.