Hard Facts by Penny Clarke

33

Summer

In the end, I do go back to ABB. With my curls perfectly styled. My makeup on point. A pair of heels so tall and striking, I have no choice but to hold my head up high. I apologize to my sisters. Ask them for forgiveness, Liz at my side, helping explain the situation and all I’d kept secret. Rather than being turned away, left in the dust, I’m smothered with acceptance and sisterly affection and sympathetic coos for my breakup, which everyone knew, in some way, was more real of a relationship than any I’d had in the past.

Then, I resign from my philanthropy chair.

Grayson was right. I never needed it. I can help others, on my own terms. Give back the way I want to give back. So I do quit. Even suggest Iris take over, since she’s so keen on the position. Let her have it.

Besides, I’m due for a little senioritis.

Not that I fill my suddenly wide open schedule by slacking off. I begin hours of research. Making plans. For my own spring fundraiser. I know, from my experience and all the work I put into my sorority, just how to do it. The hoops I need to jump through. All the businesses and volunteers and people I need to visit to make it happen. Slowly, but surely, it starts coming together. And little by little, I feel that iron inside me, strong and sturdy, despite all the rust that had gathered on it.

There are still moments, though. Of weakness. I pull up the one photo of us, from the football game, and I cry as my shaking fingers delete it. I almost toss out all the flowers he ever gave me, but instead, I deliver them around town. To the public library. The rescue kennel. The elementary school. The nursing home. To brighten all the places I hold dear. One night, I spot the drawing of Grayson that I’d placed against that vase of violets on my nightstand. And I rip it to pieces. Then I cry again, because Rylie had given it to me, and Rylie had only ever been sweet to me.

I spend one weekend gathering all of his things. Throwing textbooks and pages of chemistry notes, a spare glasses case, all of the shirts he’d left, into a cardboard box, which I make Liz return to Main Desire in exchange for my apartment key. And I only keep one. A t-shirt claiming Geology rocks!, which I neatly fold and place at the back of my closet, with a pressed cluster of violets and a stack of tiny cards, each detailing a single fact about flowers.

Days pass in rapid succession, and before I know it, I take my finals. Feeling confident that I passed all of them. Every single one. Even statistics. I make it so Nolan has no complaint about my grades. No reason to interfere in my life again.

So the book closes on this semester, with me, all alone, in my too-white, too-quiet apartment.

I can’t stand it. Which is why, on the last day of finals, I take a walk around campus. Taking in the brick buildings and the melting snow on the sidewalks. Reliving memories and feeling nostalgic already for next semester’s graduation. Strolling off-campus, to see all those student rentals, places I’d spent partying and hooking up, each one with their own unique house name. Avoiding one in particular, on Main Street.

But Main Street comes to me, when I’m back touring north quad.

Natalie spots me at the same time I spot her. She slows to a jog, breath puffing in tiny clouds, and comes to a full stop several feet in front of me. Shaking out her legs, I glance over her running outfit. Her sweaty, lopsided ponytail. The sweater covering her arms. I look away again, just in time to catch her glaring at me.

Jeez. Still?

I roll my eyes and keep walking. Around her. Past her. Natalie Mason can take her interrogations and her bracelets and her stupid secret about seeing her best friend’s penis, and she run into a volcano for all I care.

But as I’m walking away, she calls out, “You really messed him up, you know.”

That has me whirling back to face her. “What is your problem with me, Natalie?”

“My problem,” she says. “Is that I know girls like you.”

Confused, I shrug my hands in the air. “What, sorority girls? Rich girls? Blondes?”

“No.” And she places her hands on her hips. Looks down as she shakes out each leg. “Runners.”

Thatonly confuses me more. I look down at my own heeled boots, so starkly different from her sneakers. The only marathon I’d ever run was in bed. With Gray. If there was a gold medal for sexual Olympics, it’d be hanging right above my headboard with both our names on it.

“You’re the kind of girl who, the moment things get real, when they get hard, she runs far, far away,” Natalie explains. “And Gray doesn’t need that. His whole life, he’s had people run. People who never stayed. Who left him. He doesn’t need one more. Especially not one who got as close as you did. Who. Messed. Him. Up.”

I think there’s a glint of tears in the corner of her eye, but she hides it by staring into the clear afternoon sky. Just like I hide a sniffle by wiping the back of my glove across my nose.

Again, though, I want to distract myself from thinking about Gray, so I deflect to her. To that knowing look in her eye. To her long sleeves. “Who ran from you, Natalie?”

Blinking rapidly, Natalie lowers her gaze. Briefly, too briefly, her eyes meet mine, then look away again. She stretches her leg, saying, “No one.”

Then she’s running. Back on her original path, in the opposite direction. Away from me. Before I realize I should have rearranged the question.

To ask who she ran from.

Unsettled by that meeting, I head home. Thinking too much. About Natalie. Grayson. Everything.

How long had it taken Natalie to realize it? To notice I was never as strong as I seemed? One look? Or through exhaustive deduction, with all those questions she’d asked of me?

Because, fuck, I had run, hadn’t I? When I found out the secret Gray kept from me, my first reaction hadn’t been to reassure him that I still love him. Because I do. I can’t stop loving him, no matter how hard I try, how many distractions I come up with. Instead of showing him that love, however, my instinct had been to protect myself. To safeguard what parts of my heart still timidly thumped. To demolish his car. His safety net.

Thoughts and memories and regrets all swirl together in my mind, all the way to my apartment. So much so that I don’t notice the item at first, sitting on the hall floor in front of my door. Not until I kick it over.

Water splashes on my boot. I bend down. Pick up the vase. Sweet scent fills my nose. Red blooms steal my focus.

Carnations.

And that brings a whole new wave of tears, even more so when I run my palms over that lovely gift, and my fingers pull out one tiny, simple note.