Page 39

The emotional upheaval of this day is exhausting.

Just as I’m getting my shoes on, Henry sweeps into the cabin, Genevieve close behind. He looks like he’s aged about ten years in the last hour.

“Can I talk to you outside?” he asks, catching my arm as I put in my earbuds.

I’m both desperate to talk and absolutely not ready to speak to him right now. The fact that Genevieve is still here, in our family’s cabin, only solidifies to me how fucked the situation is. It makes his plea for trust even harder to buy.

“Oh, there you are,” Mom says to Henry, emerging in her ski gear. “I just had the girls move their things out here to the pullout sofa. You two can take the second bedroom. For some privacy.”

Mere hours ago, Henry and I were starting to learn each other’s bodies, but it’s a reminder of what he’s already had with Genevieve. The fact that she has this knowledge, this intimacy with him that now I don’t know if I’ll ever fully get, aches in a whole new way.

For once, my mother’s chattiness comes in handy, and before I have to hear anything more about sleeping arrangements, I slip out the door. I don’t warm up like I know I should. I just go.

My dad loved to run. I inherited this habit from him. At this point, though, it feels more like a vice. A way to avoid, to disengage, to hide.

My dad’s passion was pure. He ran track all the way through college. He was supposed to participate in the U.S. Olympic trials when he was twenty-two, but then my grandfather had a heart attack and he had to go home to help my grandmother. My grandfather was in a coma for a few weeks, but ultimately had lost too much oxygen. My dad was the same age as his father when he dropped dead at the Jewel-Osco deli counter while trying to order some slices of Muenster cheese. He was in great shape, healthy. There were no signs of heart disease. They don’t know why it happened.

I look down at my hands as I move through the dirt trails, covered in crunchy snow. My thumbs rest loosely on my middle fingers, hands as relaxed as possible. Just like he showed me when I joined cross-country my freshman year of high school. I know Dad’s morning jogs didn’t save him. I don’t think they’ll save me either. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll make it to fifty, a milestone lost on the last two generations of my family. My pulse rams against my eardrums, the most quieting I can seem to do for my brain right now.

I’m so frustrated. With Henry for what he’s putting me through, for tearing me open all over again. With myself for letting my guard down, for giving him the power to do this to me. How could I let his pheromones drug me into stupidity and uncertainty?

This is why I don’t do intimacy. This is why I don’t get vulnerable with men. I don’t know what made me think it would be different this time.

I guess Henry was always a big what if in my head, and I let the curiosity get the best of me.

Now I can answer that question at least.

What if? Seems like I’d be just as lost and confused as I was at seventeen.

I run as long as my lungs can take it, but it doesn’t alleviate anything I’m feeling. As I walk to cool down, I try to call Frankie, desperate for the comfort of my best friend, the person who knows all of my baggage with Henry. Whose mind would be completely blown by the last thirty-six hours. The person who would understand what it meant that I let those walls down, only for Henry Cole to torpedo them once again.

Frankie’s phone goes straight to voicemail, and I don’t have the energy to leave that message, so I fire off a few broad-stroke texts instead. They don’t immediately register as delivered, so I guess she’s not in service. Frustrated, I delay my return by taking an extra winding path, praying that the cabin will be empty. Of course, in keeping with the theme of the day, no such luck.

I don’t see Henry, but Hannah and Genevieve sit on the couch together, silently scrolling on their phones. Genevieve’s hair is wet, darker like this, twisted into a long braid over her shoulder.

I duck into the bathroom, hoping to splash some water on my face and compose myself before I have to engage with Genevieve while grabbing my shower items from the living room. I take a deep breath and am immediately hit by the floral smell of a shampoo that must be hers. I feel like I’m going to be sick. I inhale slowly, trying to let my nose adjust to the sweet, rosy notes, and when that doesn’t work, when it just makes things hurt more, I rummage around and find a pack of matches with the Great Blue Lodge logo. I strike the matchstick against the box, and let it burn a few seconds too long, then shake the flame out. Genevieve’s smell is replaced by the memory of birthday cake and too-sugary frosting.

I can’t escape thoughts of Henry even when I’m desperate to.

Instead, I’m transported to the time we found a tub of vanilla frosting when we were eight, and devoured the whole thing in one sitting, until we felt the sugar pulsing through our veins, until we both got stupidly sick.

I wash my face and brace myself to see the other inhabitants of this cabin. As I open the bathroom door, I’m almost immediately swiveled back inside, a firm hand on my back like we’re in a tango.

“Hey,” Henry says, looking down at me with so much affection that I feel even more nauseated than I did from the floral shampoo.

“Don’t touch me,” I reply, wriggling out of his grasp. “We can’t be in here together.”

“Let me explain.”

He looks sincere, yet his girlfriend (ex-girlfriend? Grand-gesture-maker?) is still sitting out on that couch in the cabin where my mom is planning to propose, with her perfect hair and her ability to smell like a goddamn botanic garden despite a day of travel.

“You said there was no one important,” I start, letting out the words that have been whirring through my brain. “That girl flew halfway across the country during a snowstorm to fight for you. Sounds pretty serious to me.”

“If you knew I’d just called something off,” he says quietly, his voice a reminder that we shouldn’t get caught like this under any circumstance, “you would’ve run. Tell me I’m wrong.”

I can’t. He’s right. But none of this adds up.

“When?” I ask. “Exactly when did you break up?”