“No, I checked into that. I have to take it at the school I’m getting my diploma from.” Okay, so I didn’t actually check, but it makes pretty good sense.
She’s not giving up, though. “Well, that just means I’ll stay down here with you and help you study. We can go to St. Louis at the end of the summer. That way we’ll have more time to plan and get ready.”
“No, that’s no good. Your sister’s all set to come down this weekend to help you move, and she already has that job lined up for you and everything. The only thing that makes sense is for you to go ahead, and I’ll stay here and go to summer school and work on the loading dock for Geech and save up some money.”
She grabs my hand. “I don’t want to go without you. I’d be lost.”
I stare into her eyes, shooting confidence beams into her. “You won’t be lost. Are you kidding me? You’ll be great. You’re going to do what you always wanted to do.”
Of course, I’m also thinking that she’ll find the perfect guy, too, a splendiferous equestrian scientist who’ll see her as a fantastic new planet, full of miraculous wonders. But I know she can’t accept that right now.
She’s like, “I want to do all that with you,” and I go, “I know you do, but look at it this way—how great of an organizer am I? Not too great, right? If you go up there first, you can get everything squared away, make all the plans. I’d appreciate it to no end if you’d do that for me.”
Once she gets her mind around that notion, it begins to restoke her enthusiasm. Now she has a mission, something she can do for somebody else. She has no shortage of ideas either. She’ll learn where everything is in St. Louis and how to get around and where the men’s clothing stores are so that I can get a job in one when I come up. And she’s like, “As soon as I get some money saved, I’ll go ahead and rent our apartment and start buying things for it. And I’ll do the artwork for the walls and everything.”
“That all sounds great,” I say. “But maybe you should hold off on renting the apartment. I mean, I need you to do the planning, but I have to do something too. I’d look at it as a big favor if you’d wait till I send you some money before you go renting an apartment and buying stuff for it. You have to let me feel like I’m making my contribution, okay?”
She smiles and squeezes my hand. “Okay. I guess I can do you that favor.”
If I’m a rat for doing things this way, then, all right, I’m a rat. But sometimes you have to choose between honesty and kindness, and I’ve always been a sucker for the kind side. Besides, I figure she has to get out of town before I can tell her the whole truth or she’ll never go. I’ll wait till she’s been in St. Louis for a month and has her job and her new life. Then I’ll drop her a long e-mail. I don’t know exactly what it’s going to say yet, except for the part about how I won’t be coming.
See, I do have a future to give her after all, just not one that includes me.
When I take her home, I have a hard time letting her go. Sure, it’s awkward trying to hug her with that huge cast in the way, but I really can’t kiss her enough. We’ve never had sex in the car sober before—or with her arm in a cast—but I’m ready to now, not just because I’m horny, but because I want to be as close to her as I can one last time.
She slows me down, though. She kisses my nose and my forehead and tells me we have plenty of time to make love later. “My mom might walk out on us,” she says. “And just think when we’re in St. Louis, we’ll make love in every room of our new apartment.”
I kiss her one more long one. And then we say goodbye.
Chapter 65
What was that one thing that Cassidy wanted me to do for her? To think about someone else’s feelings instead of my own for once? I wonder what she’d think about that if she could’ve seen me with Aimee tonight. I always had the idea she thought I didn’t know how to love someone. Well, she’d have to admit I sure do now.
And then there was that other thing she said, something about how I never believe anyone loves me. “You never believed I did,” she said. That still bugs me. Of course, I’d believe someone loved me—if they did. It just seems like that’s pretty impossible to know for sure.
Right there, cruising down Twelfth Street, I decide to call her on my brand-new, soon-to-be-lost-again cell phone and see exactly what she meant. She’ll also probably be interested in what happened with Aimee, not to mention my new only-on-the-weekend drinking policy.
It takes a while before she picks up. Seems she’s on the highway with Marcus. They’re in New Mexico, heading to Albuquerque, where Marcus is going to play basketball and major in public administration or something weird like that.
“Oh, Sutter,” she gushes. “It’s so beautiful out here. Twilight is coming on, and there’s, like, these mesas and these gorgeous colors I’ve never seen before. I mean, as soon as we got into New Mexico, I was like, ‘Wow, I can see why they call it the Land of Enchantment.’ The landscape is, like, so spiritual.”
“Well, I guess it’ll be a good place for you to visit every once in a while.”
She’s like, “I’m going to do more than that. I’ve made up my mind. I’m moving out here to go to school. Marcus wants me to, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to till now. We’re going to look over the campus tomorrow, but I’ve already seen pictures of it, and, you know, I’ve just fallen in love with the whole place.”