“Everything is so fucked up,” she says. “I knew what the future was going to be like. I had it all planned out. And we were supposed to stay together and visit each other twice a month through college and once we were in our forties and all settled we'd adopt a kid and we'd spend our whole lives saving up for a Tudor-style mansion or some bullshit like that, I had it all planned, and now my whole life is this, this like smoke of a future, and I don't know how to be me in that. I always have everything planned out. I can't just be in a relationship when I don't know what's going to happen.”
“That's so stupid,” I say, and she finally looks at me.
“What?”
“You don't know what's going to happen. So what? You never knew what was going to happen. You two could break up in two years, or you could get pregnant again, or you could try to adopt and never get a kid and I don't think any of us ever had any idea if I was in that future or not because even right then you didn't say, or maybe you could never afford that Tudor thing or maybe everything would go the way you planned and you wouldn't be happy. Nobody knows. I thought you were practical but you're just this naive, inflexible little girl who's giving up because the tiny box she put herself in is falling apart. And that's not when you leave the people who love you. You're being so stupid.”
“I feel stupid,” she says. “I feel like I don't know how to not be stupid, and I need to figure it out. I need to figure out how not to be naive and inflexible and I'm not going to drag you two along after me.”
You two.
It's not comforting. It stabs.
“What if we want to be dragged along?” Theo says.
“I can't,” she says. “I can't look at you and see you wanting things and wanting me. I can't be dependable right now, I'm a fucking wreck. I need to put myself together before I can...be my best.”
“I don't care if you're your fucking best!” he shouts.
“I do,” she shouts back.
There isn't really much to say after that.
We're swinging again. I don't know which of us started it.
“I can't believe I'm going to let my pregnant girlfriend be alone,” Theo says eventually.
“I'll be fine.”
He squeezes her shoulder until she looks at him. “If you need anything.”
“I know.”
And we're quiet again. I hear the movie inside for the first time. Maybe Alexis turned it up. Maybe she heard us fighting.
Maybe it was always that loud and I'm just coming back to real life.
“Give me your keys,” I say to Theo.
He's so dazed. “What?”
“I'll drive her home.”
“I can...”
“You shouldn't be driving right now. Can you stay here and keep an eye on Alexis? I'll be back in like twenty minutes.” It's not as if I'm going to linger in her driveway, or go inside her house.
“Of course, yeah. Of course. Okay,” he says.
He gives me his keys, and I give them to Josey so she can go get in the car. Once her back is to us, I scoot over next to him on the swing and kiss him. I have a lot of motivations for this. Because he is sad. Because I love him. Because I need to see if he still wants to kiss me.
He does.
After fifteen seconds or so he breaks away enough to rest his forehead on my shoulder. He's crying now, wet against my collarbone, and it's almost enough to make me start crying too. It almost is.
“I love you,” he says. “I love you I love you I love you.”
“I know, baby.”
And then we say, “Don't leave me,” pathetic and desperate, right at the same time.
We hold each other and I should be getting in the car, should feel bad that we're doing this right now right where she can see us, but I don't. I hope she's watching us and regretting her whole goddamn life.
I get into the driver's seat and start the car. I can't look at her.
I've never driven to her house before, and very rarely gone from my house to hers. Usually Theo drives me there from school, and it isn't as if I'm paying much attention to to the route. I'm busy changing the music whenever he's not looking, and writing him over-the-top love notes for him to find later in his glove box, and laughing.
But I do know the way. I couldn't tell you the names of all the streets, or what comes after the next light, but when I get to the turns, I know the way.
I don't have to ask her.
I'm not sure at what point she started crying, but I can hear, just barely, that she is, just by the rhythm of her breathing. She isn't crying like she did the afternoon she got her rejection letter. It's soft and small like she doesn't even know she's doing it.
I park in her driveway and we just sit there for a while.
“What does this mean for us?” I say, when I can't not say it any longer.
“I don't know.”
“Before, with the other girls,” I say. “When you guys broke up...”
“That was them breaking up with Theo,” she says. “It wasn't...it wasn't like this. It wasn't like you and me are.”
“Were,” I say,
