Page 67 of The Getaway List
“I hate that,” I tell him, so bluntly I can see the ghost of a smile on his lips. “I really, really hate it.”
He’s still smiling, soft and fond and heartbreaking. “But you love New York.”
“I love you,” I say. “And I’m not telling you that so you’ll change your mind. I’m telling you that so you never doubt it no matter how far you go. I’m telling you that because you are someone so easy to love that it kills me to think you’ve ever been made to think you’re not. And I’m telling you that because I’m too selfish to keep it to myself.”
Tom’s on the verge of crying again, but there’s a smile on his face just the same. A quiet one that he only ever seems to smile for me.
“You know, Riley,” he says, his voice low. “I’ve thought the same thing about you since the first time I saw you.”
“I was an asshole the first time I saw you,” I remind him.
Tom shakes his head and says, “The first time you saw me. I saw you before that. You were getting out of the car with your mom and telling her some story about your cousin. You had the biggest smile I’d ever seen and the loudest voice I’d ever heard, and I just—I thought I’d wait forever if it meant making you laugh like that even once.”
It’s strange to be this belatedly embarrassed for something I can’t fully remember, but I remember well enough. How even when I was little I was aware that I was a bit too much. Too loud, too sharp-tongued, too curious. How even by that age I was trying anything I could not to be, because I was trying not to call attention to myself. Trying not to be different.
I haven’t thought about that in a while. Not since I grew into our group of friends and all our little edges and quirks all grew to fit into each other’s. And certainly not since I moved here, where I’ve felt free enough to be louder and sharper-tongued and more curious than I’ve ever been.
Tom tucks a stray hair behind my ear. “But you were so quiet around most people. I couldn’t understand it. I think I do now, but back then it broke my heart, too. Because I loved you even then, I think. Before I knew what it meant, I knew what it was going to be.” He pulls in a breath so steady that it feels like I’m breathing it with him, then says, “If we’re going to lay it all out tonight, you should know, Riley. I’ve been in love with you for a long time. Since before I left for New York.”
The words have a soul-deep warmth to them, the kind that settles over me like a blanket after coming in from the cold. There’s that same flutter just under my ribs that I’ve been feeling all summer, the one I tried so desperately to ignore, and for the first time I let myself feel it. Let it spread through my body, a quiet, rippling, certain thing.
I’ve never felt anything like it before. It’s so simultaneously grounding and terrifying that I almost don’t know what to do with it, except to choke out the words, “I didn’t know.”
He squeezes the hand he still has on my waist, a quick and reassuring pulse. There’s a gentleness in his voice that almost borders on teasing. “Because I didn’t tell you.” Then he adds quietly, “I didn’t know if you felt the same. I didn’t want to put it on you.”
That’s fair. I don’t know what I would have thought of it either—if I’d have been ready for this kind of feeling back then the way I am now. The way I clearly wasn’t with Jesse, when I thought getting together and breaking up with someone was as easy as sliding on and off a pair of shoes.
“And since it’s all out there—you’re the reason I came up with the app,” says Tom. “I told you I had imaginary conversations with you. Well, really, it was more like—I’d write letters I didn’t send. Dear Riley. Love, Tom. Like a journal, except I just wrote everything to you. Things I wanted to say to you so badly. Not just what was happening in New York, but how I felt about you. And I just thought—” He takes another breath to steel himself. “Maybe I’m lonely, but I’m not alone in this. In feeling like there are things you want to say to the people you love, but aren’t ready to say to them, or don’t fully know how. It made me think about that game we always loved to play on our friends. How we’d sneak things into their lockers without a word, so they wouldn’t feel that way anymore. So I had the idea for the app. And Mariella—I saw what happened to her. I saw someone as lonely as me. I figured we’d make a good team, and well—the rest was history.”
The story finally makes sense, now that I understand the roots of it. I was right. He didn’t do this for the money to leave. He didn’t even do it to escape. He did it so he could do the same thing he’s always done, even if he couldn’t do it here the same way—to help bring people together. To make people feel loved.
“I still would rather you had told me,” I tell him. “Then I could have been that person for you.”
“I know. I even said that to you in some of the letters. ‘You’d be so mad at me if you knew about these,’” he says, with a faint laugh. “But it’s like I said before. If I never sent them to you I could still be the Tom I was when I was with you.”
“You’re always that Tom, you dope. You always have me.”
I say that even though I know I’ve done a version of the same thing to him. I came to New York for a lot of reasons—to start over. To make my own choices. To figure out what kind of person I wanted to be. But every one of those reasons was buoyed by the idea of coming here to find my old self before I could be someone new. A self I could only find in Tom, who knew me as I was then, who still held that version of me in his heart like she never left.
We were never going to preserve those old selves for each other. We’re both very different people now, for better and for worse. I wish so badly I could change parts of the past that made us this way—that I could rewrite Tom’s loneliness, that I could give myself the control I didn’t realize I’d lost until it was too late—but then maybe we wouldn’t have this clarity we have now. This understanding that we don’t have to be our old selves to fit, because this love will always change shape with us.
“I know that now,” Tom says. “I hope you know it, too. That you always have me.”
I see it in his eyes then. Something wavering. Something I could press right now and bend to my will if I wanted to, and all it would take is one word: Stay.
I press the word back into me, sealing it like an envelope, like my own “Dear, Love” letter unsent. I don’t think there’s a way for me to say that word without making it the most selfish one in the whole world.
“I’m worried,” I admit instead. “With you leaving like this. Without even saying goodbye to our friends. It all seems really fast.”
Tom’s eyes flit to the floor. It happens quickly but not before I see the flicker of disappointment, almost like he was hoping I’d say something else.
“And not to sound like my own mom right now,” I say, trying to keep my tone light, “but do you even know anyone there aside from your aunt?”
When Tom looks up again that waver in his eyes is gone, his expression soft but resolute. “I know it seems sudden, but I’ve been thinking about this a long time. And saying goodbye to everyone—I don’t want this to feel like a big beginning and end. It’s just a change, is all. I’ll be back to visit. No big deal.”
He caps this off with a slight smile, one that I know is meant to reassure me. But I’m not Tom’s mom or our cluster of old friends or any number of people who were close enough to get that smile from Tom and fall for it.
But I nod, because he needs me to be reassured. I nod even though he sees through me just as easily as I see through him. I nod because I love him and maybe this is his chance to be happy the way he deserves; I nod because I love him and I’ll be here for him if it isn’t, the same as he’ll always be there for me.
