What Happens to Goodbye (48 page)

Read What Happens to Goodbye Online

Authors: Sarah Dessen

I smiled. “It’s a Gert. My mom and I used to get them every time we were down there.”
“A Gert. I like that.” We turned the corner, to Luna Blu. “Anyway, so I drove back. And my parents were waiting for me. You know the rest of the story.”
I swallowed, feeling my throat get tight. As we walked down the hallway, I could hear the noise and laughter getting louder, the air warm as Dave pushed the door open and we went inside the restaurant proper.
“There he is!” Ellis called out. “How’d you get sprung?”
“Good behavior,” Dave told him. “What’d I miss?”
“Only the end of everything,” Tracey said, from the other side of the bar. I was surprised to see her, cynical as she was, dabbing at her red eyes with a bar towel, while Leo, true to form, chewed a mouthful of pickles beside her.
“It’s not just an end,” Opal told her. “It’s a beginning, too.”
“I hate beginnings,” Tracey replied, sniffling. “They’re too new.”
I looked at Dave, sitting beside Ellis at the end of the bar. Riley was next to him, then Heather and Deb, their chairs forming a triangle, heads together as they talked over the noise, while Opal hugged Tracey on the opposite side of the taps. I looked at all of them, then down at my dad, who was at the very end of the bar, taking it all in as well. When he saw me, he smiled, and I thought of all the places we’d been, how he was my only constant, my guiding star. I didn’t want to leave him, or here. But I had no other options.
I stepped away from the bar, quickly turning the corner and heading back upstairs to the model. I walked over and stood there, looking down at it, trying to center myself. After a moment, I heard footsteps behind me, and even before I turned I knew it was Dave. He was standing at the top of the stairs, looking at me, as the noise from the party downstairs drifted up behind him.
“This is amazing,” I said to him. “I can’t believe you did it.”
“We all did it,” he said.
“Not the model.” I swallowed. “The people.”
He smiled. “Well, model trains really teach you aot of good skills.”
I shook my head. “I know you’re joking ... but this, it’s like the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me. Seriously.”
Dave walked closer, sliding his hands in his pockets. In the bright light, he looked clean, clear. Real. “You did all of these things,” he said after a moment. “All I did was document it.”
I felt tears prick my eyes as I looked down at the model again, looking at that girl and boy on the curb. Forever in that place, together.
“You should get back downstairs,” he said. “Your dad sent me up here for you. They’re about to do a toast or something.”
I nodded, then turned to follow him. “So I guess this is what you meant, huh?”
“About what?”
“Looking more closely,” I replied as he started down the stairs.
“Pretty much,” he said. “Hey, hit the lights on your way out, okay?”
I stopped, taking one last look at the model, stretched out and complete, before I reached for the switch, turning it off. At first, in the darkness, I could see only a bit of streetlight coming in the far window, illuminating the floor. Then, though, I spotted something else. Something small and glowing, in the exact spot I’d been studying before. I walked over, my eyes scanning Luna Blu, my house, and Dave’s. But it was the building behind them, that empty hotel, that had the tiniest light, provided by one word, written in fluorescent paint. Maybe it wasn’t what was once there, in real life. But in this one, it said it all: STAY.
I turned, looking at the stairway, the light at the bottom. I had no idea if Dave was already downstairs with everyone else, as I ran across the room, grabbing the banister to go after him. But after only one step, suddenly we were face-to-face. He’d been there all along.
“Is that really what it said, on the roof of the building?” I asked.
I could feel his breath, the warmth of his skin. We were that close. “No idea,” he replied. “But anything’s possible.”
I smiled. Downstairs, they were laughing, cheering, seeing out this last night in this sacred place. Soon, I knew we’d join them, and shut it down together. But for now, I leaned closer to Dave, putting my lips on his. He slid his arms up around me, and as he kissed me back, I felt something inside me open, like a new life beginning. I didn’t know yet what girl she’d be, or where this life would take her. But I’d keep my eyes open, and when the time came, I would know.
Eighteen
“Oh, crap,” Opal said, dropping a bunch of empty plates with a clang. “AHBL!”
“Already?” I asked. “We’ve only been open fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, but we only have one wait, and that wait is Tracey,” she said, stabbing two orders onto the spindle in the window between us. “We’re already in the weeds.”
She bustled off, cursing under her breath, while I pulled the tickets off, glanng at them. “Orders,” I told Jason, who was sitting on the prep table behind me, reading the
Wall Street Journal
.
“Call ’em,” he said, hopping down.
“You sure? We’re behind already.”
“If you’re going to be in the hole, you have to learn to call out orders,” he said, walking over to the grill station behind me. “Go ahead.”
I looked down at the top ticket. “Mediterranean chicken sandwich,” I said. “Order fries. Side salad.”
“Good,” he said. “Now hit that salad. I’ll do filet and drop those fries.”
I nodded, turning to the back table and grabbing a small plate from the shelf above. For all my time growing up in restaurants, working in one still felt brand-new. But there was nowhere else I’d rather be.
At graduation a week earlier, I’d sat with the rest of my class, fanning my face with a damp program as the speakers droned on and assembled family and friends shifted in their seats. When we all stood up, grabbing our caps to throw them in the air, a breeze suddenly blew over, lifting the air and all those black squares and tassels up overhead to take flight like birds. Then I’d turned, searching for the faces of my friends. I saw Heather first, and she smiled.
I was supposed to go back to Tyler, yes. But things change. And sometimes, people do as well, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. At least, that’s what I was hoping the Saturday after Luna Blu closed, when my mom showed up to help me pack my stuff. My dad was there, too, and Opal, all of us making trips from my room to Peter’s huge SUV, chatting as we did so. Opal and my mom hit it off immediately, which I had to admit surprised me. But as soon as she found out my mom had handled all the financial stuff at Mariposa, she started picking her brain about how best to do things at her new place. The next thing I knew, they were at the kitchen table, a notepad between them, while my dad and I finished the job.
“Does that make you nervous?” I asked him as we took out my pillow and my laptop, passing by them. My mom was saying something about payroll, while Opal jotted on the page, nodding.
“Nah,” he said. “Truth is, your mom kept that restaurant afloat for two years longer than it should have been. Without her, we would have closed a lot sooner.”
I looked at him over the hood of the SUV. “Really?”
“Yeah. Your mom knows her stuff.”
I was thinking about this later, when I was finally packed up and we were getting ready to leave. I’d said my goodbyes to Deb, Riley, Ellis, and Heather the night before, at a farewell dinner—fried chicken, naturally—that Riley’s mom cooked for me at her house. My goodbye with Dave had been more private, in the hour he was allotted after I got home. We’d sat together on the steps to the storm cellar, hands intertwined, and made plans. For the next weekend, for a beach trip if he could ever get away, for all the calls and texts and e-mails that we hoped would hold us together. Like my dad and Opal, we weren’t kidding ourselves. I knew what distance could do. But there was a part of me here now, and not just in the model. I planned to come back to it.
As I shut the car door, everything finally in, I looked over and saw Mrs. Dobson-Wade, standing in her kitche. Dave was at work, their other car gone, and she was alone, flipping through a cookbook. Watching her, I thought of my mom, and all the problems we’d had over the last two years. Trust and deceit, distance and control. It had seemed unique to us, but I knew it really wasn’t. I also knew that just because we’d found a peace didn’t mean everyone could. But Dave had done something for me. The least I could do was try to return the favor.
When I knocked on her door a few minutes later, my mom and dad behind me, she looked surprised. Then, as we came inside and I explained why I was there, a bit suspicious. Once we sat down at the table, though, and I told her the story of what had happened that night, how Dave had come for me, and told my dad where I was, I saw her face soften a bit. She made us no promises, only said she’d think about what we’d told her. But then, something did happen. To me.
It was when we were getting into the car to leave. Opal and my dad were in the driveway to see us off, the house mostly empty behind them. It was so weird, like the reverse of when I’d left Tyler with him all those years ago. With all my departures, he’d never been the one watching me go, and suddenly I wasn’t sure I could do it.
“It’s not goodbye,” he said as I hugged him tight, Opal sniffling beside him. “I’ll see you very, very soon.”
“I know.” I swallowed, then stepped back. “I just ... I hate to leave you.”
“I’ll be fine.” He smiled at me. “Go.”
I managed to hold it together until I got into the car and we drove away. As the house, and them beside it, receded in my side mirror, though, I just started bawling.
“Oh, God,” my mom said, her hands shaking as she hit her turn signal. “Don’t cry. You’re going to make me totally lose it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing my nose with the back of my hand. “I’m okay. I am.”
She nodded, turning onto the main road. But after driving about a block, she hit the signal again, turning into a bank parking lot. Then she cut the engine and looked at me. “I can’t do this to you.”
I wiped my eyes. “What?”
“Uproot you, make you leave, whatever.” She sighed, sniffling again, waving one hand as she added, “Not after I’ve railed against it for the last two years. It’s just too hypocritical. I can’t do it.”
“But,” I said as she dug a tissue out of her massive middle console, blowing her nose, “I don’t have any other option. Unless you want me to go to Hawaii. Right?”
“I’m not so sure about that,” she said, starting the engine again. “Let’s just see.”
In the end, we compromised. My mom let me stay, in exchange for a promise that I’d visit her regularly, either in Tyler or Colby. As for my dad, he had to be convinced that Opal, who’d offered me her spare room in exchange for doing some setup work for the new restaurant, was not getting in over her head. It was my job to keep in close touch with both of my parents, returning phone calls and e-mails, and being honest about what was going on with me. So far, it had been easy to hold up my end of the bargain.
I loved being able to finish out the year at Jackson. For once, I was really part of a class, able to partake in rituals like senior skip day and yearbook distribution, my time at a school ending when everyone else’s did. I studied for finals with Dave on his living room couch, him reading up on advanced physics, while I struggled with trigonometry. Then, while he worked, I pulled cram sessions at FrayBake with Heather, Riley, and Ellis, powered all around by Procrastinator’s Specials he made personally. Dropping my napkin on the floor one day, I bent down to get it, only to catch a glimpse of Riley’s foot, idly wound around Ellis’s. They were keeping it quiet, but it seemed maybe she was changing her dirtbag ways, as well.
Come fall, when I started at the U, I’d move out of Opal’s and into a dorm, taking my simple living skills with me. In the end, I’d gotten into Defriese, too, but there was never any question that I’d continue to follow that third option, and stay. As for Dave, he’d gotten in everywhere he applied, naturally, but had decided on MIT. I was trying not to think about the distance too much, but it was my hope that no matter what happened, at least we’d always be able to find each other. I had a feeling I’d continue to put my packing skills to good use after all.

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