Page 53 of Given Our History

“You abandoned me!” he cries, throwing his arms wide. He turns like he’s about to walk off, then rounds back, chopping his palm to emphasize each point. “My dad had just had a stroke. All of my goals, everything I worked for, I had to put it on hold. I needed you. And you weren’t there for me.”

An incredulous laugh escapes me. “Oh, I was there for you. I answered all your calls, all your texts, I probably blew a thousand dollars on my cell phone bill alone—”

He tries to talk over me, but I don’t even hear what he’s saying, because now I’m on a roll.

“—but none of that matters, apparently. It only counts if I was there for you on your terms.” My laugh morphs into a sort of dry sob, my voice quivering. “I would’ve still been there, Teddy. Through everything. I wanted to be. You’re the one who shut me out.”

A muscle feathers in his jaw, but he doesn’t argue, doesn’t even try to contradict me. He rips his gaze from mine, staring off again like he can’t bear to look me in the eye.

I swipe a stray hair from my cheek. I already regret bringing this up. I don’t know what I expected. “Right.” I sniffle. “It’s late. We can talk about this tomorrow.”

I walk around my car and shove the key in the door, my eyes burning.

“I’m not sure you should be driving right—”

“I’ve been making my own decisions for nine years without your supervision!” I cry before ducking into the car. “No need to start worrying about me now.” I shut the door with a snap, my punctuation mark on this whole conversation.

He just stands there as I back out of the parking spot, flip the car around, and pull out onto the street. Tears blur my vision, the streetlights spreading into starbursts. I wipe my eyes on the back of my hand. It takes every ounce of my willpower not to look back.

CHAPTER19

THIRTEEN YEARS AGO

It started with texting.

I still didn’t see Teddy right away after our New Year’s exchange; he left the second week of January to move into his dorm at Cornell. I probably wouldn’t get to see him until spring break at the earliest, and I texted him to complain about it—a conversation that was quickly derailed by his innocent-not-so-innocent inquiries as to why I wanted to see him, and what I planned to do with him when I did.

Long-Distance History Club quickly fell by the wayside. Mostly because he was swamped with schoolwork, because there was a whole new breadth of subject matter to explore together, and—for a brief, fleeting window—because I found something that eclipsed my interest in history. I wanted to know everything. How to kiss, where to touch. I wanted to learn what he thought about in the shower, whether he ever used his hand and pretended it was me, and when he told me that he did, I realized how badly I wanted it to be my hands on him. My mouth. Me.

A part of me must have known that this was a bad idea, that we were blurring the lines between friendship and a relationship, but I never brought it up. And neither did he, after the phone call on New Year’s. Maybe this was how it was always meant to be between us, or maybe we were just so caught up in the discovery of it all, we didn’t let ourselves consider the consequences. It felt good, talking to him like this. And that was all it was. Talking. It soon progressed to phone calls, hushed conversations while lying in the dark. But we didn’t send any more pictures because we agreed that we’d rather see each other in person.

But spring break didn’t go as planned. Teddy drove down to Pennsylvania to stay with his parents, but a couple days into his stay, he got into a pretty heated argument with his dad—the elder Theodore Harrison didn’t understand why his son was buying into college and all that stuffed-shirt nonsense when he could be learning the auto body trade, the family business that would eventually land in his lap. Teddy called me that evening to let me know that his dad had kicked him out, ignoring his mom’s tearful protest.

“It looks like I’ll just have to head back to school early,” he said. “I’m sorry, Clara. I know we had plans.”

But I wasn’t willing to accept defeat so easily. I tried and failed to arrange for him to come stay at my house for the remainder of the week.

My mom was still dressed in the long-sleeved black shirt and jeans she wore beneath her Bath & Body Works apron. Warm Vanilla Sugar wafted off of her as she set her purse on the arm of the couch and toed off her Skechers. “You’re not bringing a boyfriend into this house, not without us meeting him first.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I argued, following her into the kitchen. “And anyway, you can meet him first and then decide. We could invite him over for lunch tomorrow.”

“And then what?” she asked. “He sleeps on the couch, sneaks into your room every night when he thinks we’re not looking?” She shook her head and opened the fridge.

“It’s not like that.” Never mind that I’d already considered the possibility.

“No. No,” she said again, like the first “no” wasn’t enough. “I’m not having you fool around under my roof. You’re a teenager.”

“I’m eighteen,” I shot back.

“When you have your own place, you can invite over whoever you want.” She cracked open a can of Coke with a sharp hiss. “But until then, eighteen or otherwise, you’ll just have to follow the house rules.”

A couple weeks later, I caught wind that My Chemical Romance would be playing in D.C. in May. I was determined to secure tickets and have Teddy go to the concert with me. It seemed overdue, seeing our favorite band together, but yet again, life got in the way.

“But that’s right before finals week,” he said. “I want to be there, really, I do, but—”

“It’s no pressure,” I insisted. As much as it felt like he should be the person to accompany me, it was a nearly six-hour drive from Ithaca to D.C. I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t get to see him, but I understood. This was why we couldn’t have a real relationship. We didn’t have the time for it—not right now, anyway. So I dragged Izzy to the concert instead.

Calling the end of high school a graduation would be generous—I didn’t actually walk, and I only had a picture because my mom ordered the cap and gown off eBay, but I did receive a diploma in the mail, so I was a high school graduate regardless. Meanwhile, Teddy tentatively repaired his relationship with his father by agreeing to help out in the body shop over the summer. I drove up to visit him a couple times, and we kissed and touched each other in the back seat of the car, but we didn’t have anywhere else to go, and we didn’t push it further than that. At least not until the week before I was due to start college.