That’s the Spencer I want. The one who cares for me and holds me in his arms, whether I’m sick or passed out or my knees don’t work or just because he likes holding me. Without him around lately, I’ve had more than enough time and space to myself. I’m done with it. I want to see him again. To talk to him. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t love me. I at least want to figure out where we went wrong. Even if I don’t think Spencer and me, together, sounds wrong at all.
If I could only talk to him, then maybe… maybe if I can’t get over him, I can at least move on. Move on and fondly remember our brief time together, the love I felt for him. Because we do share friends. We’ll still see each other on campus next year. Maybe have another class together. And I don’t want him to think he can’t see his friends if I’m around. Or that I hate him. Because I don’t. I never could.
But I’ll never get that closure if he isn’t actually freaking here.
And too soon, I won’t have another chance until the fall. When the time for words will have long since passed, and all we’ll be left with is awkward tension for letting our issues go unresolved.
With an annoyed huff, I turn off my phone and put it away. A cool breeze wafts over my skin, making me realize how heated my face had become from inside the party. Sweeping my hair into a ponytail, I mutter into the silent night, “Stupid Spencer.”
“That’s probably deserved.”
I jump, falling back into the swing’s sway, as a bulky figure steps onto The Six-Pack’s porch. “Spencer!”
“Natalie said everyone was here,” he says, saluting me with… a paper cup. One I am very familiar with.
“Did you bring coffee to a kegger?”
He looks down at the cup and shrugs. “Peace offering.”
Then he holds it out to me.
When I stare at it like he’s grown a third hand, Spencer grunts. “Take it and drink it. Or save it until I’m done saying what I have to say, and if you still hate me after, throw it over my head. I just… I want to talk to you.”
I take it. Let the smell make my mouth water.
He points to the swing in question, and I nod for him to sit. When he does, the chain holding it up creaks. Spencer scowls at it. How dare it balk under his weight. I hide a smile by taking one small sip of coffee.
Quiet settles over us, neither willing to be the first to speak. Or, at least, I’m not just yet. Spencer breathes, his chest expanding with each calming inhale. Is he counting? Because he’s still upset? Or is he nervous?
I am. As much as I wanted to talk to him, now my stomach rolls unevenly, waiting for him to use his words. Am I ready for this conversation? To dive into why, even if he cares for me, he doesn’t want to be with me?
Deciding I can’t take it anymore, I give in to the urge and ask the question that’s been on my mind all night. “Where were you?”
Spencer smiles. “Rowe said you’ve been asking.”
“Yeah, and he’s the worst informant ever. You do realize you missed two weeks of classes, right? Finals start Monday. Do you have any idea—”
He drops his phone in my lap. It’s unlocked, open to his photo log. The very first one that jumps out at me is a selfie of Spencer. With a pre-teen boy, mouth full of braces. They have the same dark hair.
“Ethan. Oldest brother on my mom’s side. He’s twelve, just finishing his first year of middle school.” Spencer leans forward, swing moving as he braces his arms on his knees and stares forward. Reciting these facts without making eye contact with me. “He plays soccer.”
I switch to the next photo. Of Spencer and another of his half-brothers. Connor, he explains, who is a year younger than Ethan and acing all his classes except history, because it is, in Connor’s words, very, very boring.
After he tells me all about the third from his mother’s side—Jordan, six, is obsessed with lizards—it’s on to his dad’s children. Sam, who, at seventeen, is almost as tall as Spencer, and plays offensive lineman on his high school’s football team. They’d gotten along almost instantly. Then, thirteen-year-old Ava, dressed head-to-toe in pink.
“She’s going to be trouble,” Spencer says when he glances at the photo from the corner of his eye.
He grunts in a chastising way, but I smile again. Because in the photo, he and his only sister are wearing matching princess tiaras.
I whisper his name when I get to the end of the album.
“I spent one week at my mom’s. The next at my dad’s,” he explains. “Gray forged some emails to send to my professors. As far as anyone knows, I was absent on ‘official football business’.”
He runs a hand through his hair, and stares at the thin band around his wrist. One of my hair ties, which he traces a finger over. “Kennedy, I saw you with your family at the wedding. I don’t have that. I’ve never had that. And that shit fucked me up.”
“Your parents…” I have to ask. Because it hasn’t escaped my notice that he has no photos of them.
Spencer shakes his head. “I arranged my visits with both of them. They were fine while I was there. Pleasant, even. But me and them, we’re strangers. I’ll never have the relationship with them that you do with your mom and dad.” He points to his phone in my hands. “But those kids. My siblings? I don’t have to be a stranger to them. I don’t have to keep ignoring them because my parents never taught me how to healthy relationships.”
I
