Page 54 of The Getaway List
“I remember the first time I looked up at the sky from here,” he says after a few moments. “Realizing it wasn’t my sky anymore. That everything was all—murky and unknown.” He gestures upward, where we can faintly make out a few loose stars winking back at us. “Everything about this city has felt like that ever since. Like there are so few things I recognize in this place or even myself. And I want to be settled like I used to be.”
“Tom,” I say quietly. “I don’t think anyone gets to be settled at our age. The whole point is everything being murky and unknown. I don’t know if leaving is going to change that.”
I feel Tom nod next to me. “Maybe it won’t,” he admits. “Maybe I’ll go out there and it’ll be even worse. But I won’t know unless I try.”
I’m thoughtful for a few moments, or as thoughtful as I can be with all of these conflicting thoughts tangling in me, each one trying to outmatch the others.
“I guess the reason it’s so hard to wrap my head around this is—you’ve always been the one with everything figured out. Do you not want to go to Columbia anymore? Or study psychology?” I ask. “You’ve talked about getting into an Ivy League and majoring in that for years. Like way before any adult was pestering us about it.”
“I do want those things still. But I also don’t. I just—” Tom lets out a sigh so deep it borders on a shudder. “That’s what I wanted, is the thing. But I haven’t felt like myself in so long that I don’t know if it’s still what I want. So maybe I leave and I want to come back. But maybe I leave and—I find out I want something else entirely.”
“Jesus,” I say with a laugh. “You sound like me deciding to come to New York.”
“So you get it,” says Tom quietly. “Why I have to go.”
I do and I don’t. There’s something about the way Tom’s talking about this that doesn’t sit right with me. In my mind it feels like New York was me running toward something, and North Carolina is Tom running away. But I feel like I can’t say so without sounding like a hypocrite.
Or worse, without wondering if maybe I’ve got it all wrong. If maybe I just have that sense because it’s convenient for me. Because it would be an easy way to justify convincing Tom to stay when I have too many reasons to want him to, every single one of them more selfish than the last.
“It just seems wild to me to walk away from a sure thing. I’ve never had that,” I admit. “Like my whole life I’ve had no idea what I’m doing, and you have, and now you’re just—choosing to be like me, when I’m just a big mess.”
Tom is quiet for a moment, then slowly rises to prop himself on his elbows, staring down at me so deliberately that it’s impossible not to look at him. I don’t rise to meet him, stunned by the depth of brown in his eyes now that they are this impossibly focused on mine.
“Riley fucking Larson,” he says, “if you’re a mess then everyone on earth should want to be one, too.”
My cheeks aren’t just flushing but searing. I feel like he just held a match directly to my heart.
“Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, moving my head to the side.
Tom doesn’t let me, gently pinching my chin between his thumb and his finger, redirecting my face so it’s right in his eyeline again. There’s something else brewing in his eyes now. An intensity that punctuates every word that comes out of his mouth, that makes them impossible to dismiss even when every instinct in my body wants to try.
“You know what the real issue is?” Tom tells me. “You have too much potential. You’re curious about everything and have a knack for a lot of it. It’s why you survived all those ridiculous clubs your mom put you in and why you’re confused about what comes next. But I’m not worried. No matter where you are, your energy is infectious. Not a single person can feel it and not want to be a part of it. The problem isn’t what you’re going to do in this life, because it’s going to be amazing. There’s just the challenge of you deciding what’s going to make you happiest, because you’ve got way too much to choose from.”
“Tom,” I say, trying to shake my head. I’m quivering at the impact of his words, at the faint pressure of his touch, so on the verge of being undone by them that I’m almost terrified by it. That if this goes on much longer Tom won’t just see me the way he always has, but see me. Down to the feelings I’m realizing I’ve spent more than this summer denying. Down to the core of me I’m still too scared to look at myself.
He tweaks my chin, still holding it there. “I mean it. Not that it matters what I think, because it’s just a fact either way. You don’t need stars, Riley. You are one. You have your own gravity and I cannot fucking wait to see what you do with it.”
My eyes well up then, unbidden. I want to tell Tom that’s not true. That all the years we were growing up, that was him—the person people wanted to orbit around, the warm light that grounded all of us. That if I’m a star in Tom’s made-up galaxy, it’s because he taught me how to be one first. It’s because he showed me how life could change when you let yourself shine.
Tom goes very still, lifting his hand to my cheek. “Riley,” he says quietly, the are you okay? implied.
I’m not. Just as much for his sake as for mine. Our lights have been dimming all these years we spent caught in other people’s forces. Maybe I am flickering back, but it does nothing to quell the worry that Tom won’t. That once he’s gone, he’ll slip through my fingers again.
“I’m staying in the city,” I say. My voice is steady, despite the crush of everything else. “I was planning on telling you last night.”
Tom’s eyes well up, too. “Good,” he says. “See? You’ll get wherever you need to be. I’m glad you found it here.”
I shake my head into his palm. “I’m worried about you being so far away.”
Tom hears what I’m not saying, and I’m more thankful for it than ever. This proof that we still know each other best, even when something rocks us to our cores.
“I promise I won’t let it get the way it was again,” he tells me. “We’ll talk on the phone every day. I’ll text like a regular human. We’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
I believe that he believes that. But I also know that wasn’t true a month ago. I also know that whatever has happened in the last few weeks of my being here isn’t near enough to fix whatever has been broken in him. I don’t want him to make promises like that for my sake; I want him to be able to make those promises because he’s feeling like himself again, someone who doesn’t feel so out of place that they can’t even reach out to people they love.
Maybe that’s what North Carolina will be for him. If it is, the last thing I want to do is stand in his way.
“When are you leaving?” I ask.
