Page 19 of The Getaway List
His eyebrows lift. “I could ask you the same thing.” But off my look, he says, “I dunno. Probably just still thrown off from finals week.”
I ease myself onto the couch, burrowing into him in a way I’ve done a thousand times before. Distantly I understand that this time is not quite like the other thousand, but my bones are so heavy that I don’t have the wherewithal to examine why.
“That’s all?” I ask.
Tom leans into me, resting his chin on top of my head. “Nah. I’m also going to miss you.”
I’m glad he can’t see my face, because my throat goes tight so fast that I can’t even account for the rest of myself. “But I can come back, right?”
“Always,” he says, but there’s something in his tone that splinters in my heart: the understanding that he means it, even if he doesn’t believe it’s in the cards. Like even in this moment we’re as close as we can be, he has to hold the idea of us at arm’s length to protect himself.
I can’t even blame him. I’ve done the same thing for years. I’m lucky not to have been hurt much in this life, but being apart from Tom has been the biggest one I’ve ever known.
We’re quiet for a long time then, breathing in and out against each other until even our breaths seem to find a similar rhythm, until even the city seems to quiet in sync with us all those floors beneath us. My eyes are shut but I know Tom is still awake, too.
“I mean it,” says Tom. “If you want to be here at all this summer.”
I press my forehead into his side. “Tom,” I say quietly. “How long is your mom gone for?”
The room is so still I can hear his slight swallow before he says, “Through August. Maybe longer. I don’t know.”
The words are light, but I can hear the hurt just underneath them. I want to press to know where it came from, but I’m realizing I already do. It’s the same hurt I heard this morning, but couldn’t quite place: She’s in her own world for most of it. Sort of like she forgets anyone else is there.
“You’ll just be here all by yourself?” I ask.
Tom shifts under me quickly then, and says, “Not really. I mean—I’ve got the ‘Dear, Love’ Dispatch. And Mariella, and Jesse and Eddie and Dai now, too.”
My eyes well up and I’m glad Tom can’t see my face all over again, because he might mistake the almost tears for something else when they actually boil down to a few miserable truths: the idea that Tom might be so lonely here that it seems like he’s only got one new friend to his name. The way I’ve quietly resented all the fantastical adventures he’s gotten to take with his mom these past few years, when, in fact, they might have stopped him from making this place a home. The idea that I’ll be leaving in a few hours without any way to know how to help any of it get resolved.
“And you’ve always got me,” I say, the words so thick on my tongue that I don’t even realize how close I am to sleep until I say them.
“We’ve always got each other,” says Tom easily, pulling me in close.
The next thing I know I’m waking up on the couch to the daylight streaming in through the absurdly large park-facing windows. Tom is behind me in the kitchen, the bag I packed the night before propped on the counter, some not-so-invisible Pop-Tarts popping out of the toaster.
Tom offers to walk me down to the bus stop, but I tell him I’m going to call my mom on the way to catch her up. It’s the truth, but the larger truth is I absolutely hate goodbyes, and the entire twenty-block walk would just feel like an endless one. So instead we give each other another one of our trademark bone-crushing hugs, followed up seamlessly by our nonsensical handshake. He’s smiling at me fondly when I go to close the door, and some voice in the back of my head is kicking up an unhelpful fuss—telling me not to leave, telling me to pick up the Getaway List and keep going, telling me to go beyond it to all the staggering, infinite things this city has to offer, chief among them time with my best friend again.
But this weekend was a borrowed one, and now I have to give it back.
I take a deep breath that feels swollen in my lungs until I hit the sidewalk, seamlessly entering the stream of people coming and going. It’s comforting to let them swallow me up as I hit the call button on my phone and press it to my ear.
“Hey,” says my mom.
Her tone is curt and wary, but then, so is mine.
“Oh good,” I say. “I was starting to think you’d dropped your phone into the bottom of a well.”
My mom cuts straight to the chase. “Are you coming home?”
“Are you really so mad at me you couldn’t text back all weekend?” I ask right back.
There’s a silence on her end that feels heavy enough to have its own gravity. “I didn’t know what to say,” she admits. “I feel like I’ve been holding my breath this entire weekend, just hoping something doesn’t go wrong.”
I come to a stop at the intersection closest to Tom’s building. “Mom, you saw what we were doing.”
“And I know full well what you could get into.”
“What, matching Juicy sweat suits and Jell-O shots?” I try to joke, perhaps revealing more of the stories my aunts have told me about her time in New York than they’d have cared for me to share.
