Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between

It only took a moment for everything else to fall away: all the words she’d planned to say to him, all the things she’d been waiting to tell him.

One of them, most of all: that she was seeing someone new.

But before they even had a chance to say hello, before they’d even exchanged a word, Aidan was kissing her, right there in the driveway, and suddenly that didn’t seem so important anymore. In fact, it seemed like the least important thing in the world.

It wasn’t until after they broke apart and she saw the look in his eyes—a look that matched her own, stuck somewhere between longing and regret—that she realized he was seeing someone, too.

They hadn’t talked after that. She avoided him for the rest of the break, started a thousand e-mails to him once she returned to school, let her thumb hover over his name on her phone too many times to count. But it seemed better to leave it alone. They’d both moved on. They’d known it might happen. It was the way things were supposed to go.

Over Christmas, he stayed in California, which she only knew because Riley had mentioned it in an e-mail, how she and her parents were going out there to visit him. Clare couldn’t help wondering if he was trying to steer clear of her, though she knew it was much more likely he was staying out there to be with his new girlfriend. It would be weeks yet before she’d break up with her own boyfriend, but still, something about the thought of Aidan’s sunshine-filled holiday made her feel horribly lonely.

When she returned home over break, she let herself walk past his darkened house only once. She stood there for a long time, the snow falling all around her, remembering that night in the driveway, their last one together, and then she turned around and left.

Now she blinks up at the branches of a towering elm tree. The leaves no longer look like they did when she first arrived here, like they do in all the brochures: wild with color, an electric palette of reds and yellows and oranges. Instead, they’re green and new, and they smell like spring. Above them, the sun is a white dot in the cloudless sky, and the air is cool and brisk. Everything is so bright and dazzling it hardly seems real.

Clare looks down at the box again, then slides a fingernail under the tape at the corner. When she rips it off, it makes a sawing noise, and she pulls back the flaps to see what’s inside, what she’d known from the minute she’d picked it up would be inside: tucked in a nest of newspaper like an oversize egg, there’s a bright green bowling ball.

She laughs as she runs a hand over the smooth, marbled surface. In the sunlight, the color is brilliant, emerald green and as shiny as a precious gem. She can’t help wondering if he bought it or stole it, thinking back to their conversation all those months ago, when he reminded her that the hardest things are the ones most worth doing.

She has a feeling that it’s stolen, and she loves it all the more for that.

Just as she’s about to fold up the box again, she notices something else: a flash of white in the midst of all that green. In one of the three circular holes, there’s a rolled-up piece of paper, and she hesitates for a moment, marveling at the possibilities. Just seeing it there is enough to rattle her, to make her rubber-band heart snap back into place again, the twang of it jangling straight down through her toes.

She sits there for a long time, for what feels like forever, and then, when she’s finally ready, she removes the note gingerly, using both hands to flatten the page.

All it says is this: Is it later yet?

And here’s the amazing thing: Now it was.