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I nodded. “Yep, just a few weeks left, and then freedom!” I whooped. “At least for the summer. I still have to tell the school if I’m staying on one more year as Hall Director or not.”
“What are you thinking?” Gabbi perked up and asked. I could tell Matthew was following our conversation, but we hadn’t talked about it yet. I had told him I wasn’t ready to, after all.
The future was big and scary, and if we broached the topic… it felt like it would change everything.
“Well…” I bit my lip. “I love the job, but I want to have my own place. Sometimes I still feel like a freshman, slinking back into my dorm.” Especially after I would spend the night at Matthew’s. But I didn’t want to let on that that was one of the factors in my decision. “I started looking for student advisor jobs in the area.”
“You did?” Matthew asked. “You didn’t tell me that.” I could see the slight frown on his face, the doubt in his eyes.
“I was going to,” I whispered, placing a hand on his arm. “I promise.” He nodded, but there was still a frown between his eyebrows, and I hated that I put it there. Hated that he was worried about me… What? Leaving him?
Or maybe he was thinking about leaving me, finding someone more suitable to be a wife and mother than I was. I could barely feed myself; how would I keep children alive?
Don’t think about it, I instructed myself. Don’t think about your children, and what they might look like. A blond-haired boy with brown eyes. A little redheaded girl with blue eyes and freckles.
I shook my head, getting rid of those thoughts. Did I even want that? To be a mother? I didn’t know. I didn’t have the best relationship with mine, and watching her raise me alone… I didn’t want that for me. Couldn’t risk being in a situation where I’d end up alone like that.
“What are you guys doing for Easter?” Charlotte finally asked. “My little sister is supposed to be coming up here, so my parents want to make a whole thing out of it this year.” She rolled her eyes, but I knew she loved that her mom still did Easter Baskets and insisted on painting eggs.
“I don’t know yet.” I looked at Matthew and the look in his eye… I nudged him, trying to distract him.
He met my eyes. “What?”
“Easter?”
“Oh. Uh. I think I’m going out of town, actually.”
I raised an eyebrow, but I wasn’t going to push on this in front of my friends. If he didn’t want to spend Easter with me… that was okay. I would just stay in the dorms and do things with my residents. I was sure the RAs would enjoy having me around. Not to mention Hazel, who I had barely seen lately.
But still… “Okay,” I finally said, turning my attention to Gabbi, who was just pushing around the pasta on her plate. “What are you doing, Gabs?”
“Oh, I was thinking about going back to Boston and seeing my brothers, but I haven’t booked my flight yet. It’s been forever since I’ve been home…” She sighed.
I felt like all of us had grown apart from our families in the last few years. I knew Gabbi loved her parents more than anything, and her brothers were great, but she had come to Portland for a reason—to be her own person. And sometimes I wondered if going back there… If she ever felt lost in her big family’s dynamic. Her older brother was married with two kids, and her younger brother was in a serious relationship. Was she the one that was forgotten?
I sighed.
Matthew nudged me. “Everything okay?” he whispered.
“Yeah. I’ve just got some stuff on my mind is all.”
He went back to his chicken parmesan, but I didn’t miss the way he didn’t share more with me. And it hurt. Because I’d been falling for him, and it felt like I was standing at the edge of a cliff. And what would happen when I fell?
Angelina eyed me curiously, and I just rolled my shoulders at her. How did I share all of my fears without sounding crazy?
When we left, after ice cream and splitting the bill, I held onto Matthew’s arm. I stared up at him, studying the face that I had grown so familiar with. The one I knew almost as well as my own at this point. He pulled me in tighter, and I leaned into his arms as we stood outside of the restaurant, saying goodbye to my friends.
Daniel and Matthew shook hands, promising to get together for beers soon. The girls told Matthew that he was allowed to crash exactly one book club meeting a month. Even as they all laughed and joked and everyone seemed to be so happy to get to know my boyfriend, I felt like something was off between us.
I tried to enjoy the moment with him, but deep down, I couldn’t ignore the sinking feeling. It was like something in my gut reminded me those good things don’t last. That this would end, badly, and I wouldn’t be able to come back from this if it did. When it did. It was like I kept looking for the cracks in the ground, the signs that signaled the end. And what I worried about most was what would happen if I found them.
Like if I kept picking at the cracks, digging deeper, somehow staring at them long enough would cause the ground to fissure and swallow me whole. And Matthew and I would be just another casualty to this thing I had feared my whole life. To lose everyone I loved and cared about. I didn’t know what the catalyst would be, or what would happen if we continued down this path, but I also didn’t want to find out. All I knew was, I just wanted to live in this moment, with him, and ignore the irrational fear that everything would go wrong.
That I might lose the only man who ever meant something to me. The only person who was worth keeping, the only man I thought I might be able to love if I let myself. What would I do if I gave him my whole heart, all of my being, every piece of me, only for him to decide that I wasn’t good enough? That I wasn’t enough for him? That my goals weren’t big enough, that I hadn’t dreamed wide enough, and he would want more from me than I could give him.
I was terrified of those little cracks in my heart.
