“Any time doll,” he replied. “Now get back to work. You’ve been promising to do my card for weeks. It’d better be making its debut in your show.”
“Working on it,” I lied. Because I wasn’t entirely certain how I was going to do the Knight of Cups, though I knew it was his card. Emotional depth, steadfastness, poetic nature . . . Ethan to a T. Especially since, reversed, it indicated a severe narcissistic douchebag. A side of Ethan I’d seen only on occasion.
He went back to reading and I went back to looking at photos of Egyptian tombs, trying to find the perfect statue for the interior of The Hierophant’s chamber. But I couldn’t stop looking up at Ethan, wondering just how many times we’d be here, how many more weeks or days or hours we actually had together. I’d felt the clock ticking ever since January, when we stood in the mailroom and sent out our applications and portfolios. We’d started some celestial clockwork that morning. It was a tick I seriously wished I could slow.
Like I said, winter always made me think of beginnings and endings. This year, especially with Brad’s image once more haunting my dreams, it felt like less of a beginning and more of an end.
? ? ?
We left the teahouse around eight. The Hierophant was closer to completion and Ethan, to quote, “might vomit if [he] read any more Dickens.” Plus the tea had gone cold and we’d eaten all of our baklava.
The roads were slick and the sky a blur of flecked white, and I think Ethan drove all of fifteen miles an hour the entire way back, which just meant we made it through an entire album, rather than half, like usual. We didn’t talk. Didn’t need to. I leaned against the window and watched the town and the trees flutter by like ravens in the snow, while he hummed along to the music and tapped out rhythms on the steering wheel. It was monotonous and familiar and lovely, and every single mile reminded me that soon, this too would be a last.
It wasn’t like me to get nostalgic. I’d had more than enough lasts in my life to get me over a fascination with the past. Which was probably why the night felt so unearthly, like I was watching Ethan and myself through a lens. And why I kept noticing the little inconsistencies in the white-and-black landscape: a broken tree, a flickering porch light, two crows on a mailbox. I needed something to cement this moment, to make it mine. To make it worth remembering.
Campus was sleepy by the time we arrived. A few vis art students wandered back to their dorms from the studio; musicians carried their heavy cases back to warmth. Every window was golden and electric, the common rooms in every dorm crowded with kids trying to cram in a few more minutes of socializing before sign-in and lights-out and an early morning of classes. Thank the gods I got to sleep in—no early morning art class spent staring at wrinkled bits.
Ethan and I parted ways in front of his dorm—Rembrandt—and I made my way down the quiet lane toward Graham. A few flecks of snow still fell from the sky, drifting down to fade out on my coat. There was a quietness here I didn’t think I could live without. There were reasons I’d applied only to tiny art colleges in the backwoods of New England. I needed the snow and the silence. They helped me think. And somehow, the expanse of it all helped calm the other thoughts, froze them into stillness. Something about the darkness always made me feel at peace.
I heard the door of the academics concourse open, and paused when someone called out my name. When I turned, Jane was already halfway toward me, a huge grin on her face and one hand waving. I was surprised she didn’t slip as she jogged; I’d nearly faceplanted twice already.
“Kaira, wait up!” she called. I stopped and waited with my hands deep in the pockets of my coat, watching her dance in and out of puddles of light. When she reached me, she did slide, but I caught her last minute and helped her steady.
“Heya,” I said when she was stable.
“Sorry, didn’t want to miss you. You’ll never guess who I was just talking with.”
“Um . . .”
“Chris!” she exclaimed, and she actually did a little bounce. I kept ahold of her arm, just in case.
“Oh yeah?” I asked. I grinned. “Does someone have a crush?”
“I’d say so,” she said. “He couldn’t stop talking about you.”
“Wait, what?”
I was honestly asking about her. Chris couldn’t have a crush on me. I mean, we had two classes together and we barely ever spoke. It was ludicrous. My stomach twisted as Brad’s face drifted to mind.
“Yeah,” she said. “We went back to the studio to finish up the still life, and he kept asking me questions about you.”
“What sort of questions?” I asked slowly.
“Like, I dunno, general sorts of stuff. How I knew you. How long you’d been here. If you had a boyfriend or girlfriend.”