Page 57 of Mine Forever


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“To talk about what?” I asked. “I never said there was anything I didn’t want to talk about.”

“Sure, I know, but I think I know you well enough to know when you aren’t ready to have a conversation about something. Which you weren’t earlier. Which is why I’m wondering if you’re feeling up to it now.”

I stopped my sweeping, sweeping both me and Courtney were both technically supposed to do in order to get the diner cleaned up. In reality, I did it all by my lonesome. Courtney sat up on the countertop, her favorite place to be, with one of the diner’s beers popped open.

This was pretty much her nightly ritual, and one I almost always pretended to disapprove of. On this particular night, I just wasn’t feeling up to it. Honestly, this had felt like one of the longest days of my life. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d been so relieved to flip the open sign to closed.

I didn’t think there was anything that could have made me feel any more pitiful and low, but part of me had spent the whole day after my strange meeting with Neil expecting to see him again. Every time I’d heard a car engine, my eyes had flown to the big plate glass windows lining the front of the diner. I was sure that it would be his old beat up red truck once again.

There had been exactly five sets of customers that afternoon, and every time the bell rang, I was sure it would be Neil. My stomach would drop at the same time as my heart leaped up into my throat. My mind raced with all of the things I would say when I saw that it was him. Except that it had never been him, not any of the times when the bell had rung.

Of course, it hadn’t been him, I would admonish myself after each disappointment. Why the hell would he come back in here after the first time? It wasn’t like he had looked happy to see me. The more I’d thought about it after he’d gone, the more sure I had become of what his true reaction had actually been. Mortification.

He’d taken one look at me and been absolutely mortified. He hadn’t been able to get away from me fast enough. Courtney was right, although I didn’t want her to be. I hadn’t been ready to talk about anything, and I wasn’t sure that I would ever be ready, either. That face to face with Neil had made me feel like complete shit. I was pretty sure it was something that would take a little while to recover from.

“Um, Fay? You still alive there?”

“What? Sorry, yes. I was just thinking.”

“Clearly. The question of the hour is whether or not you want to talk about it. Because I know I would.”

“It was just so weird!” I practically shouted, answering her before I was even sure that talking about Neil was something I was up for. “I mean it was weird, right? Or was that just me?”

“Oh no, not just you. It was like being in an episode of the Twilight Zone. My question is, though, whether or not you thought something like that was going to happen?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, his dad died and all. Did you think he might be coming back because of that? Not forever or anything like that. That would be idiotic. But for a little while?”

“I don’t know,” I answered quickly, lying through my teeth and hoping against hope that Courtney couldn’t tell. “All I know is that it totally threw me off.”

“I bet,” she answered sympathetically. She finished her beer and opened another one, as if she were at home and not at the place where she supposedly worked. “I mean, you guys were like, totally in love, right?”

“I don’t know. I thought so. But that was before he bailed. So what do I know?”

“Asshole. I mean really, what kind of a prick does that?”

“I think a lot of people, actually,” I said.

“He’s still a prick, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t care how hot he is.”

“He is pretty sexy, right? I mean, it isn’t just me being nostalgic?”

Courtney shook her head. “No, he’s definitely hot. But still. Prick.”

“Do you know that I used to stare at his house out of my bedroom window?”

“Um, you might not want to tell people that, babe,” Courtney said with a laugh and a little wink. “It makes you sound a little bit like a creepy stalker type.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. It was nothing like that. I mean, even before I was old enough to think about Neil at all. I would stare up at his house, stare up at all of those lights, and I would try to imagine what it would be like to be that rich. My mom was always on my case for leaving even one light on; sometimes even if it was in the room I was in.”

“Sure, didn’t everyone’s parents do that?” she asked.

“Nope, not Neil’s dad. I would look up at that house, and sometimes it would look like every light in the house was on at the same time, just because they could be. It looked like stars to me, Courtney. It looked like a little crop of stars caught in a net and brought down to earth, just for me. That’s what I would think about when I was little and looking at the Driscoll house. I would think about stars.”

We both lapsed into silence then, Courtney from her perch on the countertop and me sitting in one of our empty booths. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking about, but I was busy thinking about a life that didn’t even come close to existing anymore. I was thinking about back when Neil’s house looked like it was full of stars, and my dreams of what might lay in store for him and me still felt real enough to touch.

“Okay, sister, enough is enough,” Courtney said.

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