Page 66 of The Getaway List
Tom didn’t try to do that thing adults did when they were trying to make you feel better, like tell you it won’t be for long, or to think of the bright side. Instead he just said quietly, and so easily that I was embarrassed for thinking even for a second that he might have felt otherwise, “I don’t want to either. I’m going to miss you a lot.”
The relief might have bowled me over if we weren’t already sitting down. I was still crying, but it almost felt good to cry after that. Knowing that I wasn’t alone in the feeling.
“What if we’re totally different when you come back?” I asked just the same. This seemed entirely possible. Tom made friends wherever he went and he didn’t seem too picky about them. I held myself as perhaps the highest example of this. After two years I was still confused about what made him care enough to wait me out so long in the first place.
Tom was thoughtful in that way he mostly was around me. He didn’t take his time with our other friends, almost like he was worried about letting silences go on too long. It seemed like a shame because Tom always had something smart to say on the other end of it.
“We’ll do what Claire did in Tides of Time. Make our own handshake,” says Tom. “We’ll do it before I leave and when I come back. And then we’ll know nothing’s really changed.”
We spent the rest of that night coming up with our goofy, ridiculous, nonsense handshake, one that I practiced by myself every single night after Tom left. When he came back he was a little tanner, a little taller, but bursting with a grin so wide that even before we did the handshake—publicly and flawlessly and very, very loudly, much to the amusement of our moms and several bystanders—I knew everything was going to be okay.
As it turned out, we needed that handshake more than we knew. That trip to Los Angeles was the first of many. Tom would be gone for spring breaks, for chunks of summer vacation, sometimes a few days in the middle of the school year. Then one day, finally, the inevitable happened—Tom was gone for good.
It should be a familiar feeling by now, watching Tom leave me behind, but it isn’t. This is the first time Tom’s ever left by choice.
This is the first time it feels like he’s taking a piece of me with him.
I come back to the apartment after a long walk in the park to find that same backpack I saw on my first day. Only this time it’s already sitting on the chair by the door, with a duffel just underneath it, and Tom is standing sheepishly a few feet away.
I don’t say anything and neither does he. He steps forward first, wrapping me in his arms. I press my face into the crook of his neck, breathing him in, teetering on this strange edge of what we are and what we might have been.
“What time does your bus leave tomorrow?” I ask.
Tom settles a hand on the back of my neck and I feel the quiet apology in it. “I’m leaving tonight.”
The surprise forces my eyes open, pushes air into my chest. “Tonight?”
Neither of us pulls away, like we can absorb each other now—my shock, his apology, our mutual hurt.
“Tom, what did your mom say?” I ask into his shirt.
Tom shakes his head and says, “She didn’t. It was her assistant who called. I asked if she could put my mom on and she said she couldn’t find her, and—well. It’s been hours now. I’m guessing she’s not calling back, and honestly, I’m just—I’m done.”
I’m holding him tighter, but his voice is surprisingly steady. I know better than to think he’s come to peace with any of this, but it sounds like he thinks he has. That leaving like this is just enough of a balm on the situation that he can pretend.
“You’re not even curious about all the things she’s sent you on the dispatch?” I ask.
Tom only shakes his head again. “I bet it was her assistant, at this rate. And even if it wasn’t—it’s even more upsetting in a way. To know she’d be willing to do that but not actually talk to me. And I’ve tried. I’ve been trying.”
“I know,” I say.
I pull back just enough to see his face. His hands are still wrapped around my waist, my hands still pressed to his shoulders. It’s the first time we’ve ever stood like this, but that’s maybe the only bizarre thing about it—that it hasn’t happened before now. That we can fit this well together and have spent our whole lives not knowing it.
“I’ll take the bus with you,” I offer.
Something still doesn’t sit right with me, letting him go on his own like this. I know he doesn’t want to hear it, but it seems now more than ever that he’s not leaving for any reason other than to be so far from Vanessa that she can’t disappoint him anymore.
But judging from the look on his face, he already knows that, too. He still wants out.
“This is your home now, Riley. Anyone can see that. And you’ve got plans for tomorrow and the next day and the next that are finally all your own.” He says it with such pride that I find my face warming despite the overwhelming worry, despite the tangle of everything else. “I don’t want to take you from here, not even for the day.”
I’ve got one other card to play. I lean in, briefly pressing my forehead to the bridge of his nose.
“The last thing on the Getaway List,” I remind him. “Our road trip. We’ll make it this.”
When I pull back Tom is smiling with a heaviness that could crack a heart.
“Let’s make another list,” he says. “Instead of that being the last one, it can be the first. We’ll start new.”
