The Distance from A to Z (20 page)

IT'S NOT EASY TO IGNORE
the person who is supposed to be your class partner. Or the person who everyone knows as your other half, the person who shares your desk, whose body is always touching yours.

The next day in class, I try for a different seat, try to seem like it's no big deal, totally casual. Except there are only enough seats for the people in the class, and for the first time ever, everyone is in class. Which means when I sit in Ingrid's place, she winds up in Julie's, who has to take over Isaac's, and so on and so forth until Zeke comes in last and he's stuck next to Drew. And just to make the whole thing more irritating, nobody goes with the flow about the whole thing. As every new person walks in the room, someone has to explain the domino line of decisions that resulted in their seat no longer being available. And here I thought that coming to class twenty minutes early would make the whole
thing less apparent.

And worse even, when Marianne walks in, she looks at the whole group of us as though we are middle school students playing a prank on the substitute teacher, switching our seats so she'd get the names incorrect. At first it seems as if she'll shrug it off, but then when she's getting reports from the various groups on their weekend in Montreal, she becomes exasperated that we're all in the wrong spots, partners far away from one another.

And then everybody—except Zeke, thankfully—turns to look at me when she asks us to move back to our places.

It's a miracle I don't cry when I give the report on the places where Zeke and I experienced French in Montreal. I don't look at Marianne, or at Zeke, but I read from my notebook the types of conversations we had, the new words we'd incorporated into our vocabulary.

I stay on script. I don't mention the time after the movie; I skip right over to the next day walking through Old Montreal, the trip to the game of soccer in the park. For someone who loved Montreal as much as I did, I give no indication of it based on my tone of voice. I'm flat, I'm uninspired, but I don't cry, I don't waver, and I don't run out of the room.

And then I carefully breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth as Zeke does his part of the talk, filling in the spaces I missed. The whole thing would have been
better if we'd coordinated as other groups had, but it's not a disaster. Thankfully the pounding of my heart blocks out the words that Zeke speaks, and I remain silent until the end of the class.

“Abby, est-ce que tu peux rester après pour me parler?”
Marianne says as she dismisses the class. I turn by instinct to Zeke, but that's a mistake. He's just as confused as to why Marianne wants to talk with me after class, but more than that, it's that split-second look that drowns me.

“Do you want me to stay?” he whispers, his voice almost lost under the scraping of chairs against the hardwood floors.

I want to say yes. I want him to be here in case it's bad news, in case she wants to tell me she isn't writing me a recommendation or that there's a problem with something else. Maybe I'm failing the class and she needs to warn me—

Except.

“I'm okay.”

“I'm sure it's nothing,” he continues, the tips of his fingers grazing my elbow, and that slightest touch is a shock to my system as though it has been weeks and months since the last time we touched.

“I'll see you later.” I pick up my books and shove them haphazardly into my bag, papers crumpling.

“Abby, I really want to talk with you.”

“I can't right now,” I mutter, eyes focused on Marianne. I'm not sure if he says anything more because I'm walking away, even though I hate every step.

She waits to speak until everyone has left, time enough to put away her magazines and computer, all of them going into their appropriate spot in her bag, nothing bent or ruined. Time enough to think through every disastrous possibility until I'm half-sure the world is ending.

Apparently I have an overactive imagination.

When the last person has left—Drew, of course, though Zeke was second to last—she turns to me with a smile on her face.

“Ne t'inquiète pas, c'est rien!”
She laughs, and I echo the sound, even though I wish she'd told me not to worry before I became a shaking mess. “I just wanted to speak with you about your plans for university.”

“For university?” Although the word is the same in French and in English, I still feel like I'm missing something.

Marianne nods slowly, the hint of a smile buried there. “I know that you'd like to attend the Paris School in the spring, which I think is a lovely program, but I'm more interested in what you are thinking about following that.”

I'm still reeling from the conversation when I make my way
down the stairs to the bright sunshine outside Lederer.

The bright sunshine that always makes me sneeze. Multiple times.
Sneeze
. . . I don't even know how to say it in French.

Sneeze.

Yawn
is
bailler
.
Sneeze
is . . .

“A tes souhaits,”
a voice comments from behind me. Between being dazed from the conversation with Marianne and sneezing and trying to remember how to say
sneezing
in French, I didn't notice Zeke standing outside waiting for me.

A tes souhaits
. To your wishes.

I sneeze again.

“A tes amours,”
he says and takes an additional step closer.

To your loves.

To sneeze.
Eternuer
. In French, each sneeze gets its own equivalent of
bless you
. One more sneeze and he'll say the last part.
Qu'elles durent toujours
. May they last forever.

A tes souhaits. A tes amours. Qu'elles durent toujours.

To your wishes, to your loves, may they last forever.

I don't sneeze a third time.

“Do you need a tissue?”

My eyes are watering from the sun and the sneezes and Zeke standing so close and Marianne's question about whether I'd consider coming to Huntington next fall, and it's so much.

Zeke passes me a tissue and I'm not sure whether to attack my nose or eyes first.

I'm a mess. And Zeke is still here.

“Come,” he says, and his hand is on my lower back, and I should be putting up walls but I don't have it in me. Because Marianne can't believe that I've made this much progress considering this is my first formal language course, and she thinks there may be amazing opportunities for me at Huntington. Or maybe at the University of Montreal, where her friend Louise teaches. And so I follow Zeke through the courtyard and toward a clearing with my favorite stone bench, the bench that is always cool even when it's warm outside. The one that makes me feel like I'm alone in this lovely place, like I'm in my very own secret garden.

I turn to find Zeke staring at me, his long lashes blinking rapidly. The rest of his body is completely still, and I know with a certainty that aches in my bones that if I walked away now, he wouldn't follow me. He wouldn't dart out his hand and hold my arm, make me talk to him.

The ball is completely in my court.

“Hey.”

Zeke's eyes flare and I hear the telltale ping of his phone from his bag but he gives no reaction. No reaction except to take his backpack and throw it as far away as he can.

“I hope you're better at throwing a baseball than a
backpack.”

My joke hangs in the air, surprising me as much as him. But he doesn't smile.

I wish we could pretend none of this ever happened. I wish I could just stop everything and say,
I know we're in a fight and that right now everything is messed up. But can we just pretend that this is last week because I need to talk to you about what Marianne just said. Because there's no one who'd understand how cool this is for me and . . .

“I need you to understand why I didn't tell you.”

It's not last week.

“Why you lied,” I correct.

“Why I didn't tell you that I played baseball.”

“Played or play?” We may be sitting in the shade, but I'm heating up.

Zeke closes his eyes and drops his head, shaking it slightly from side to side.

Je suis méchante
. I am mean.

“I'm sorry.”

“That's why I lied to you. Because I know how much you hate baseball. Because here I am falling for this girl who makes me laugh and makes me so effing crazy, and she hates the one thing that brings me the most joy. And I didn't know what to do. If I told you I played ball, you would have done this the moment you heard. And I couldn't take that
chance.”

I hate that he's right. I hate that what he's saying makes perfect sense. But what I hate more than anything is how much I want to just throw my arms around him and tell him both of those things.

“You can't fall for someone you're lying to,” I whisper instead.

“Please don't say that.” His words are so quiet; I wish I could lean forward. “I never meant to lie to you. I was supposed to be playing ball this summer. I was supposed to be training and there were people interested, people who were showing up at my games, who were making promises. Crazy promises. And then the accident. And it was decided the best thing for me would be to be out of sight for a while, skip the summer. We used the excuse that my parents wanted to ensure I wasn't forgoing academics and so I was in summer school. But really, the idea was for me to do physical therapy at a place where nobody would be watching. Nobody would be evaluating how well I was progressing, what this meant for my prospects. And I wasn't hiding it from you. I wasn't allowed to tell a soul for fear someone would leak something, however innocent.”

I'm surprised by the anger in his voice, the edges that tinge the words, the flash in his eyes.

“But now my shoulder's healed, and I've been doing extra
pitching practices every afternoon—”

“Wait. I thought you were doing PT.”

Lies. Lies. Lies.

“I was doing the practices with my PT,” he says, the tension lifting his shoulders, curling them in. “It was all about evaluating my progress, my healing.”

“Well, I promise I won't expose your hidden identity.” My bitterness eggs on the anger, twisting it as it gains force, sucking everything along.

Zeke shakes his head like he's surprised at the words coming out of my mouth. “What are you talking about? I'm not a major league baseball player. I'm not undercover. I'm a high school student. These glasses? They're real. I wear them when my eyes hurt from my contacts. My hair is always like this. The only thing that's different is that I'm not wearing baseball shirts like I always do, but I did that for you.”

For me.

“You didn't have to do it.” I hate how petulant I sound.

“No,” he says, his voice even. “I did it because you hate baseball. And I didn't want you to hate me.”

What I hate is this moment. This moment that finds us in a shady clearing under the trees, just a couple of days after we woke up in each other's arms. I want it to be Sunday morning. I want to have never posted that damn picture on my profile, to have never answered my brother's call. I don't
want this to be how our story ends.

“Are you getting drafted?”

I don't look at his eyes. I look at his mouth, those lips I adore. I watch the way he bites the corner, worrying it between his teeth.

“I don't know.”

I let his answer rest in the silence, hover between us.

“I want us to be okay,” he says, and the words hurt. Okay is nothing. Okay is managing. Okay is like the faintest outline of what we used to be, the thin line on the tracing paper.

“We're okay,” I mumble. Because it's true. This? This is okay. Feeling like the stuff that's supposed to be cushioning my bones (stupid biology class, I can't remember a thing) is gone? That's what okay is.

“I miss you.” His words are so quiet, and I can't help it, I shut my eyes. Because I know that we're only okay and my body feels broken and his eyes are so damn sad and this will never be fixed because the program is ending and everything is ending, but even so. I can't help myself. I close my eyes and revel in those three words.

“Tu me manques,”
I whisper back, my eyes still closed. And I remember walking through town with Alice on that first day, the day I'd told Zeke to eff off, the day I'd defined his whole person as a jock without knowing anything else. I remember telling Alice how much I love that expression:
tu
me manques
, you are missing from me. I told her about how missing someone in French is about them being missing from you, not you missing them. And I thought I understood that stupid little thing; it's something I tell people about all the time.

But I didn't.

I didn't. Because
tu me manques
is more brilliant than I could have imagined. Because missing Zeke feels like a part of my body is missing, like there's an empty space where a vital organ used to live.

Before I know what's happening, he's bolted off the bench and his arms are around me and I smell the familiar scent of Zeke's skin warmed by the sun and I can't help it. I press my lips into that spot on his skin where his neck meets his shoulder. His neck.
Son cou
. His shoulders.
Ses épaules
.

And I cry.

Je pleure.

Gradually, Zeke directs us down to the bench and even more gradually, I stop crying. Once I'm calmer, my eyes still stinging, my body spent, Zeke smiles.

A little smile.

Un petit sourire.

He licks his lips, and then pulls the bottom one through his teeth. “I know,” he starts slowly, “that I'm supposed to be sad that you're crying, but given that I've been dying to
touch you for the past couple of days, I'm a little happy I had the opportunity.”