If He Had Been with Me

A day passes. And then another. I write a little; I read a lot. Finny doesn’t eat dinner with us; he’s out with Jack, his mother says.

On the third day, I watch him as he pulls the red car into the driveway. He hesitates before closing the door; he looks down at the keys in his hand for a long time. He doesn’t move until Aunt Angelina comes out onto the porch and says his name. Then he slams the car door and looks up at her and smiles.

On the fourth day, my mother asks me if Finny and I have had a fight again.

“What do you mean ‘again’?” I say.

“Well, I just mean that you were spending all this time together and suddenly—”

“What do you mean by ‘again’? Who ever said we had a fight the first time? Maybe sometimes people stop spending time together and it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Okay, Autumn,” she says. She lets me go up to my room.

***

Sasha calls me. I don’t answer.

I wake up early in the morning, and I cannot sleep. I stare at his window until the sun is up and then sleep again.

***

On the sixth day, I call him. He doesn’t answer. I lay my phone down on my nightstand and curl up into a ball. He must have seen it in my eyes.

I’ve managed to ruin everything again.

My cell phone rings. I pick it up. I look at it. It rings again.

“Finny?” I say, instead of coolly saying “Hello?” like I had planned.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.” We’re quiet for a little while. I can hear him breathing. He clears his throat.

“I’m going to break up with Sylvie when she comes home.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Yeah. It’s—it’s gonna be hard.”

I draw my knees up to my chin. He would think I was crazy if I started to cry right now.

“You want to come over and watch a movie?” he says.

“Okay,” I say.

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“Right now?”

“Sure.”

After the movie, we go out for pizza. And we don’t talk about Sylvie.