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“Figured I’d come to dinner with you and your freshmen. You know…keep you company.”
Let me clarify. Samantha isn’t some pathetic hanger on. She’s a gifted writer, smarter than most people our age, she looks like a model and she’s basically good natured. But she set her sights on me the moment I walked into Professor Westfield’s home for dinner last October, and she doesn’t take no for an answer. Her father is my mentor, which makes this all the more awkward.
Last fall, when my head was in such a bad place over losing both Timmy and Charlotte, I was crystal clear with Samantha about my lack of interest in dating. She swore that she understood and was just looking to be friends. To prove her point, Samantha dated a few guys, discussed her love life with me, and even made sure to bring them around. Please. She couldn’t have been more obvious if she tried. If she were any other girl I would have resorted to being rude just to get her to back off, but I couldn’t play that card.
At her core, I believe she’s a good person, but this subtle campaign she’s been waging to win my heart is fucking tiresome. And I don’t do well with feeling manipulated. It’s common knowledge that her father is the one who makes my scholarship possible, but Samantha also understands how I’ve come to rely on his guidance as well. I’m the first Wade to ever step foot on a college campus, and the learning curve for stuff other than academics has been steep. It’s thanks to Professor Westfield that I know how to carry myself in a room full of well-educated undergraduates, law school students and successful attorneys. I know which fork to use when the salad course is served at a formal dinner, and I know to maintain eye contact and give a solid handshake when I meet someone new. He talks about my bright future in law as if it’s a foregone conclusion. He says he admiresme, and praises my determination and work ethic. His brand of positive reinforcement is the reason I finally feel like I kind of have my shit together.
So Samantha will tag along tonight, and she’ll wedge her way into the same study groups this fall, and she’ll make sure she’s at the few parties I show up to this year. But she won’t ever get what she truly wants. I’ll never lie awake at night thinking about her. I’ll never miss her or rub my chest trying to ease some phantom ache because of her. I’ll never reach for her in the middle of the night because she’s invaded my dreams.
She will never be Charlotte.
Chapter Nineteen
Simon
I shake my head and smile every time I pass by one of the campus tour groups jamming up the pathway in front of Deering Library, holding back when I really want to call out to these idiots:It is called the Windy City for a reason. It’s November, and while the parents are bundled up in wool coats with scarves and gloves to ward off the icy nip in the air, their offspring are shivering. They fall into two categories. You have the eager beavers who insist on wearing the Northwestern sweatshirt they purchased at the campus bookstore just this morning, and then you have the rebels without a cause. They typically sport nothing warmer than an unbuttoned denim jacket, convinced it makes them look cool and unaffected.
It’s cold where I’m from, but it’s a different kind of cold here. The air that whips off Lake Michigan is wet and hostile, chills you right to the bone. The admissions brochure is filled with pictures of tulip-lined green spaces and coeds sprawled out reading on the sandy lake shore. And it is beautiful here—don’t get me wrong—but that beach is comfortable for the first two or three weeks into September. That’s it. It’ll be snowing here before you know it, and you may not see the ground again until a few weeks before final exams this spring.
The badass who captures my attention today is a white girl with dreadlocks wearing a black leather moto jacket. It’s unzipped over the Baby Gap-sized tee that’s exposing her midriff. She mistakes my smile for interest and proceeds to do her best Britney Spears circa 1998 impression, wetting her finger and dragging it across her bottom lip. I shake my head, feeling embarrassed on her behalf. I want to pull her aside and tell her that’s the wrong way, but I don’t know her or any of the other high school juniors and seniors packed around the bored looking tour guide.
Shoving my hands into my pockets as I pick up the pace, I can’t get that girl out of my head. But it’s not her I’m thinking about, I know that. Just as I know there’s a reason that I scan the face of every person in every tour group that I come across. I look for her. She’s nearly eighteen now. She’s a senior in some high school in some city in some state.
I don’t know where she is.
Mr. Vargas sort of came through for me last year. He did what he promised and no more. He called me back, assured me that he’d personally spoken to Charlotte’s new guidance counselor. Told me she’s living with extended family and she’s adjusting well to her new school. Vargas wouldn’t tell me if she was still in Pennsylvania, wouldn’t tell me if she was in the north, south, east or west. I knew he wouldn’t, but I tried and failed to get more info out of him anyway.
Faced with knowing next to nothing, I broke down and called Garth. He wasn’t even aware that she’d left town, so he was no help. But a month later he called me back. At first I thought he’d just called to tell me the craptastic news that he’d proposed to Sierra and—wait for it—she said yes! And,Oh yeah bro, you better be coming back for the wedding. As I was hedging my way around the invitation, he changed the subject and told me about the sweet new truck he’d just bought. He took my old job at the hardware store, so I knew how much he was raking in and it wasn’t much. I felt sad in that moment thinking of Garth, with his high hopes and low expectations. Satisfied with a dead-end minimum wage job, and at nineteen, already making bad decisions that will leave him sinking in debt for years to come. But he’s so damn optimistic, wants so little out of life.
“Yeah, her dad sold me the truck, and Sierra’s there with me so she starts asking questions.”
“What?”
“Mr. Mason. He sold me the truck.”
“You asked about Charlotte?”
“Sierra did, but we didn’t exactly crack the case for you. Just said she’s doing great, going to some school for academically, uh, really smart kids. Sierra asked where exactly she was, but you could tell he didn’t want to tell us, which is weird if you ask me. So he just says she’s living with her aunt in a way that was kind of, uh, end of story like. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah, he’s a dick.”
“And at that point, I didn’t want him tacking any more points onto the interest I was paying, so I gave Sierra a look and we let it go. Sorry man.”
“No, really, thanks for trying.” I was replaying everything he’d just told me, but it got me nowhere. She never spoke of family, never mentioned an aunt. “Hey, did you see her brother there?”
“Yeah, I saw him.” Garth let out a chuckle. “Heard he got his ass kicked a few weeks ago. Got caught messing around with a married lady.”
“Good…I hope it hurt.”
So aside from doing weekly searches that led me nowhere except back to the damn website for the family car dealership, I had nothing to go on. I toyed with creating a page for myself, in the hopes that maybe she was trying to find me, but I didn’t because I knew she wasn’t looking. She knew exactly where I was, could look me up in the school’s directory, could contact me through my brother Mike—she could find me.
I tried to erase her from my memory, but I knew I’d never be able to do that. Knew I didn’t want to. Some of the best nights of my life were spent with her down by the river, lying side by side on our backs, fingers laced together, shooting the shit about nothing and everything. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I was with her for just four months. It doesn’t seem possible.
It’s been well over a year since I ran off. Maybe it’s the shitty way I left—maybe that’s why I can’t let this go. Some sick need to set things right, to make sure she knows it wasn’t easy to do what I did. That I’m not some callous prick who got what he wanted and then discarded her. I want Charlotte to know that in leaving her behind, I might have hurt her, but I destroyed a part of myself that I don’t know or even care if I can ever reclaim.
Mostly I think about the times we were together. I try to remember what touching her felt like. I think about that day she got so mad at me, the day she wanted me to and I denied her. I want to be back there again, lying on that blanket with her. I want to run my hands over her soft skin and kiss her. I want to be tender with her and show her how a man should love her. Those memories turn into daydreams that always end with me moving inside of her. And it hurts, because fuck, I’d give anything to see her again.
When I let myself go back to the very last time I saw her, pained and devastated, I’m overcome with guilt. And the only way I can make myself feel better is to imagine what her life is like now.
