Текст книги "We'll Always Have Summer"

Автор книги: Jenny Han

Соавторы: Jenny Han
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Chapter Five

When we broke up in April, it really did come out of nowhere. Yes, we’d had little fights here and there, but you could hardly even call them fights.

Like, there was this time Shay was having a party at her godmother’s country house. She invited a ton of people, and she said I could bring Jeremiah, too. We were gonna get dressed up and dance outside all night long. We’d all just crash there for the weekend, Shay said—it would be a blast. I was just happy to be included. I told Jeremiah about it, and he said he had an intramural soccer game but I should go anyway. I said, “Can’t you just miss it? It’s not like it’s a real game.” It was a bitchy thing to say, but I said it, and I meant it.

That was our first fight. Not a real fight, not like yelling or anything, but he was mad and so was I.

We always hung out with his friends. In a way it made sense. He already had them, and I was still forming mine.

It took time to get close to people, and with me at his frat house all the time, the girls on my hall were bonding without me.

And there were other things, too, that annoyed me.

Things I’d never known about Jeremiah, things I couldn’t have known from only seeing him in the summer at the beach house. Like how obnoxious he was when he smoked weed with his suitemates and they ate pineapple-and-ham pizza and listened to “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio and they would laugh for, like, an hour.

Also his seasonal allergies. I’d never seen him in the springtime, so I didn’t know he had them.

He called me, sneezing like crazy, all stuffed up and pitiful. “Can you come over and hang out with me?”

he asked, blowing his nose. “And can you bring more Kleenex? And orange juice?”

I bit my lip to keep from saying, You have allergies, not swine flu.

I’d gone over to his frat house the day before. He and his roommate played video games while I did my homework. Then we watched a Kung Fu movie and ordered Indian food, even though I didn’t really like to eat Indian food because it gave me an upset stomach after. Jeremiah said that when his allergies got really bad, Indian food was the only thing that would make him feel better. I ate naan and rice and felt pissed while Jeremiah scarfed down chicken tikka masala and watched his movie. He could be really oblivious sometimes, and I had to wonder if it was on purpose.

“I really want to come over, but I have a paper that’s due tomorrow,” I said, trying to sound conflicted about it. “So I probably shouldn’t. Sorry.”

“Well, I guess I could go there,” he said. “I’ll take a ton of Benedryl and sleep while you write. Then maybe we can order Indian food again.”

“Yeah,” I said, sourly. “We could do that.” At least I wouldn’t have to take the bus. But I would have to go to the hall bathroom and get a roll of toilet paper, because Jillian would be pissed if Jeremiah used all her Kleenex again.

I didn’t know then that all of that was setting the stage for our first real fight. We had one of those screaming and crying kind of fights, the kind I promised myself I would never have. I’d heard Jillian have them over the phone, girls on my hall, Taylor. I never thought it would be me.

I thought Jeremiah and I understood each other too well, had known each other too long, for that kind of fight.

A fight is like a fire. You think you have it under control, you think you can stop it whenever you want, but before you know it, it’s a living, breathing thing and there’s no controlling it and you were a fool to think you could.

At the last minute, Jeremiah and his fraternity brothers decided to go to Cabo over spring break. They’d found some insane deal on the Internet.

I was already planning on going home over the break. My mom and I were planning to go into the city and watch a ballet, and Steven was going to be at home too. So I wanted to be at home, I really did. But as I watched Jeremiah book his trip, I felt more and more annoyed. He was supposed to be going home too. Now that Conrad was in California, Mr. Fisher was pretty much alone. Jeremiah had said he wanted to go and spend some time with him, maybe visit Susannah’s grave together. We’d also talked about going to Cousins for a couple of days. The summer before, we hadn’t gone, because I’d been working, trying to save up money for school, and he’d had an internship at his dad’s company. Jeremiah knew how much I wanted to go to Cousins. He knew how much it meant to me.

I’d done more growing up in that house than I had in my own. And with Susannah gone, it felt even more important that we kept going back.

Now he was going to Cabo. Without me.

“Do you really think you should be going to Cabo?”

I asked him. He was sitting at his desk, hunched over the computer and typing away. I was sitting on his bed.

He looked up, surprised. “It’s too good of a deal to pass up. Besides, all my brothers are going. I can’t miss out.”

“Yeah, but I thought you were gonna go home and hang out with your dad.”

“I can do that over summer break.”

“Summer’s still months away.” I crossed my arms then uncrossed them. Jeremiah frowned. “What’s this about?

Are you worried about me going on spring break without you?”

I could feel my cheeks redden. “No! You can go wherever you want, I don’t care. I just think that it would be nice if you spent some time with your dad. And your mom’s headstone is up. I thought you wanted to go see it.”

“Yeah, I do, but I can do all that after school’s out. You can come with me.” He peered at me. “Are you jealous?”

“No!”

He was grinning now. “Worried about all the wet T-shirt contests?”

“No!” I hated that he was making this into a joke. It was infuriating, being the only one who was mad.

“If you’re so worried, then just come with us. It’ll be fun.”

He did not say, If you are worried, you shouldn’t be.

He said, If you are worried, you should come with us. I knew he didn’t mean it that way, but it still bothered me.

“You know I can’t afford it. Besides, I don’t want to go to Cabo with you and your ‘bros.’ I’m not going to go and be the only girlfriend and drag down your party.”

“You wouldn’t be. Josh’s girlfriend, Alison, is going to be there,” Jeremiah said.

So Alison had been invited and not me? I sat up straight. “Alison’s going with you guys?”

“It’s not like that. Alison’s going with her sorority.

They’re getting a bunch of rooms at the same resort as us. But it’s not like we’ll be hanging out with them all the time. We’re gonna do guy stuff, like off-road racing in the desert. Rent some ATVs, go rappelling, stuff like that.”

I stared at him. “So while you race around with your buddies in the desert, you want me to hang out with a bunch of girls I don’t know?”

He rolled his eyes. “You know Alison. You guys were beer-pong partners in our house tournament.”

“Whatever. I’m not going to Cabo. I’m going home.

My mom misses me.” What I didn’t say was, your dad misses you too.

When Jeremiah just shrugged, like, Have it your way, I thought, oh, what the hell, I’ll say it. “Your dad misses you too.”

“Oh my God. Belly, just admit that this isn’t about my dad. You’re paranoid about me going on spring break without you.”

“Why don’t you admit that you didn’t want me to go in the first place, then?”

He hesitated. I saw him hesitate. “Fine. Yeah, I wouldn’t mind if this was just a guys’ trip.”

Standing up, I said, “Well, it sounds like there will be plenty of girls there. Have fun with the Zetas.”

Now his neck started to turn a dull red. “If you don’t trust me by now, I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve never done anything to make you question me. And Belly, I really don’t need you guilt tripping me about my dad.”

I started putting my shoes on, and I was so mad, my hands shook as I tried to lace up my sneakers. “I can’t even believe how selfish you are.”

“Me? I’m the selfish one now?” He shook his head, his lips tight. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but then he closed it.

“Yes, you are definitely the selfish one in this relationship. It’s always about you, your friends, your stupid fraternity. Have I told you I think your fraternity is stupid?

Because I do.”

In a low voice, he said, “What’s so stupid about it?”

“It’s just a bunch of entitled rich guys spending their parents’ money, cheating on tests with your test bank, going to class wasted.”

Looking hurt, he said, “We’re not all like that.”

“I didn’t mean you.”

“Yeah, you did. What, just because I’m not premed, that makes me this lazy frat guy?”

“Don’t put your inferiority complex on me,” I said. I said it without thinking. It was something I had thought before but never voiced. Conrad was the one who was 28 · jenny han

premed. Conrad was the one at Stanford, working a part-time job at a lab. Jeremiah was the one who told people he majored in beerology.

He stared. “What the hell does that mean, ‘inferiority complex’?”

“Forget it,” I said. Too late, I could see things had gone farther than I had intended. I wanted to take it all back.

“If you think I’m so stupid and selfish and wasteful, why are you even with me?”

Before I could answer, before I could say, You’re not stupid or selfish or wasteful, before I could end the fight, Jeremiah said, “Fuck it. I won’t waste your time anymore.

Let’s end it now.”

And I said, “Fine.”

I grabbed my book bag, but I didn’t leave right away. I was waiting for him to stop me. But he didn’t.

I cried the whole way home. I couldn’t believe that we had broken up. It didn’t feel real. I expected him to call me that night. It was a Friday. He left for Cabo on Sunday morning, and he didn’t call then, either.

My spring break consisted of me moping around the house, eating chips, and crying. Steven said, “Chill out. The only reason he hasn’t called you is that it’s too expensive to make a call from Mexico. You guys will be back together by next week, guaranteed.”

I was pretty sure he was right. Jeremiah just needed some space. Okay, that was fine. When he got back, I we’ll always have summer · 29

would go to him and tell him how sorry I was, and I would fix things, and it would be like it never happened.

Steven was right. We did get back together a week later. I did go to him and apologize, and he apologized too. I never asked him if anything happened in Cabo. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me to wonder. This was a boy who had loved me my whole life, and I was a girl who believed in that love. In that boy.

Jere brought me back a shell bracelet. Little white puka shells. It had made me so happy. Because I knew that he had been thinking of me, that he had missed me as much as I had missed him. He knew like I knew that it wasn’t over between us, that it would never be over. He spent that whole week after spring break in my room, hanging out with me and not his fraternity brothers. It drove my roommate Jillian crazy, but I didn’t care. I felt closer to him than ever. I missed him even when he was in class.

But now I knew the truth. He bought me that stupid cheap bracelet because he felt guilty. And I was so desperate to make up, I hadn’t seen it.

Chapter Six

When I closed my eyes, I saw the two of them, together, kissing in a hot tub. On the beach. In some club. Lacie Barone probably knew tricks and moves I’d never even heard of. But of course she did.

I was still a virgin.

I’d never had sex before, not with Jeremiah, not with anybody. When I was younger, I used to picture my first time with Conrad. It wasn’t that I was still waiting for him. It wasn’t that at all. I was just waiting for the perfect moment. I wanted it to feel special, to feel right.

I’d pictured us finally doing it at the beach house, with the lights off and candles everywhere so I wouldn’t feel shy. I’d pictured how gentle Jeremiah would be, how sweet. Lately I had been feeling more and more ready. I had thought this summer, the two of us back at Cousins—I thought that would be it.

It was humiliating thinking about it now, how naive I’d been. I’d thought he would wait as long as it took for me to be ready. I really believed that.

But how could we be together now? When I thought of him with her, Lacie, who was older and sexier and more worldly than I’d ever be, at least in my mind—it hurt so bad it was hard to breathe. The fact that she knew him in a way I didn’t yet, had experienced something with him that I hadn’t, that felt like the biggest betrayal.

A month ago, around the anniversary of his mom’s death, we were lying in Jeremiah’s twin bed. He rolled over and looked at me, and his eyes were so like Susannah’s, I reached out my hand and covered them.

“Sometimes it hurts to look at you,” I said. I loved that I could say that and he knew exactly what I meant.

“Close your eyes,” he told me.

I did, and he came up close so we were face-to-face and I could feel his Crest breath warm on my cheek. We wrapped our legs around each other. I was overcome with this sudden need to keep him close to me always.

“Do you think it will always be like this?” I asked him.

“How else would it be?” he asked.

We fell asleep that way. Like kids. Totally innocent.

We could never go back to that. How could we? It was all tainted now. Everything from March to now, it was tainted.

Chapter Seven

When I woke up the next morning, my eyes were so puffy, they were practically swollen shut. I splashed cold water on my face, but it didn’t really help. I brushed my teeth. And then I went back to bed. I’d wake up and hear people moving out of the dorms, and then I’d just fall back to sleep. I should have been packing, but all I wanted to do was sleep. I slept all day. I woke up again when it was dark out, and I didn’t turn on the lights. I just lay in bed until I fell asleep again.

It was late afternoon the next day when I finally got up.

When I say “got up,” I mean “sat up.” I finally sat up in my bed. I was thirsty. I felt rung dry from all the crying.

This propelled me to actually get out of bed and walk the five feet over to the mini fridge and take one of the bottled waters Jillian had left behind.

Looking across the room at her empty bed and empty walls made me feel even more depressed. Last night I wanted to be alone. Today I thought I would go out of my mind if I didn’t talk to another person.

I went down the hall to Anika’s room. The first thing she said when she saw me was, “What’s wrong?”

I sat on her bed and hugged her pillow to my chest.

I had come to her wanting to talk, wanting to get it out, but now it was hard to say the words. I felt ashamed. Of him and for him. All my friends loved Jeremiah. They thought he was practically perfect. I knew that as soon as I told Anika, all of that would be gone. This would be real.

For some reason, I still wanted to protect him.

“Iz, what happened?”

I’d really thought I was done crying, but a few tears leaked out anyway. I went ahead and said it. “Jeremiah cheated on me.”

Anika sank onto the bed. “Shut the door,” she breathed.

“When? With who?”

“With Lacey Barone, that girl in his sister sorority.

During spring break. When we were broken up.”

She nodded, taking this in.

“I’m so mad at him,” I said. “For hooking up with another girl and then not telling me all this time. Not telling is the same as lying. I feel so stupid.”

Anika handed me the box of tissues on her desk. “Girl, you let yourself feel whatever you need to feel,” she said.

I blew my nose. “I feel … like maybe I don’t know him like I thought I did. I feel like I can’t trust him ever again.”

“Keeping a secret like that from the person you love is probably the worst part,” Anika said.

“You don’t think the actual cheating is the worst part?”

“No. I mean, yeah, that is horrible. But he should have just told you. It was turning it into a secret that gave it power.”

I was silent. I had a secret too. I hadn’t told anyone, not even Anika or Taylor. I had told myself that it was because it wasn’t important, and then I had put it out of my mind.

The past couple of years, I sometimes pulled out a memory I had of Conrad and looked at it, admired it, sort of in the same way I looked at my old shell collection.

There was pleasure in just touching each shell, the ridges, the cool smoothness. Even after Jeremiah and I started dating, every once in a while, sitting in class or waiting for the bus or trying to fall asleep, I would pull out an old memory. The first time I ever beat him in a swimming race. The time he taught me how to dance. The way he used to wet down his hair in the mornings.

But the was one memory in particular, one I didn’t let myself touch. It wasn’t allowed.

Chapter Eight

It was the day after Christmas. My mother had gone on a weeklong trip to Turkey, a trip she’d had to postpone twice—once when Susannah’s cancer came out of remission and then again after Susannah died. My father was with his girlfriend Linda’s family in Washington, DC. Steven was on a ski trip with some friends from school. Jeremiah and Mr. Fisher were visiting relatives in New York.

And me? I was at home, watching A Christmas Story on TV for the third time. I had on my Christmas pajamas, the ones Susannah had sent me a couple of years back—they were red flannel pjs with a jaunty mistletoe print, and they were way too long in the leg. Part of the fun of wearing them was rolling up the sleeves and ankles. I had just finished my dinner—a frozen pepperoni pizza and the rest of the sugar cookies a student had baked for my mother.

I was starting to feel like Kevin in Home Alone. Eight o’clock on a Saturday night, and I was dancing around the living room to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,”

feeling sorry for myself. My fall-semester grades had been eh. My whole family was gone. I was eating frozen pizza alone. And when Steven saw me that first day back home, the first thing out of his mouth was, “Wow, freshman fifteen, huh?” I had punched him in the arm, and he said he was kidding, but he wasn’t kidding. I had gained ten pounds in four months. I guessed eating hot wings and ramen and Dominos pizza at four in the morning with the boys will do that to a girl. But so what? The freshman fifteen was a rite of passage.

I went to the downstairs bathroom and slapped my cheeks like Kevin does in the movie. “So what!” I yelled.

I wasn’t going to let it get me down. Suddenly I had an idea. I ran upstairs and started throwing things into my backpack—the novel my mom had bought me for Christmas, leggings, thick socks. Why should I be at home alone when I could be at my favorite place in the world?

Fifteen minutes later, after I rinsed off my dinner dishes and turned off all the lights, I was in Steven’s car.

His car was nicer than mine, and what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Besides, that was what he got for bringing up the freshman fifteen.

I was heading to Cousins, rocking out to “Please Come Home for Christmas” (the Bon Jovi version, of course) and snacking on chocolate-covered pretzels with red and green sprinkles (another gift for my mother). I knew I had made the right decision. I would be at the Cousins house in no time. I would light a fire, I would make some hot chocolate to go with my pretzels, I would wake up in the morning to a winter beach. Of course I loved the beach during the summer more, but the winter beach held its own special kind of charm for me. I decided I wouldn’t tell anyone I’d gone. When everyone came back from their trips, it would be my little secret.

I did make it to Cousins in no time. The highway had been pretty much deserted, and I practically flew there.

As I pulled into the driveway, I let out a big whoop. It was good to be back. This was my first time at the house in over a year.

I found the spare set of keys right where they always were—under the loose floorboard on the deck. I felt giddy as I stepped inside and turned on the lights.

The house was freezing cold, and it was a lot harder to get a fire going than I thought it would be. I gave up pretty quickly, and I made myself hot chocolate while I waited for the heat to get working. Then I brought down a bunch of blankets from the linen closet and got all cozy on the couch underneath them, with my 38 · jenny han

chocolate-covered pretzels and my mug of hot chocolate.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas was on, and I fell asleep to the sound of the Whos in Whoville singing “Welcome Christmas.”

I woke up to the sound of someone breaking into the house. I heard banging on the door and then someone messing with the doorknob. At first I just lay there under my blankets, scared out of my mind and trying not to breathe too loud. I kept thinking, oh my God, oh my God, it’s just like in Home Alone. What would Kevin do?

What would Kevin do? Kevin would probably booby-trap the front hall, but there was no time for any of that.

And then the burglar called out, “Steven? Are you in there?”

I thought, oh my God, the other robber is already in the house and his name is Steven!

I hid under the blanket, and then I thought, Kevin would not hide under a blanket. He would protect his house.

I took the brass poker from the fireplace and my cell phone, and I crept over to the foyer. I was too scared to look out the window, and I didn’t want him to see me, so I just pressed my body up against the door and listened hard, my finger on the number nine.

“Steve, open up. It’s me.”

My heart nearly stopped beating. I knew that voice. It was not the voice of a burglar. It was Conrad.

I flung the door open. It really was him. I gazed at him, and he gazed back. I didn’t know it would feel that way to see him again. Heart in my throat, hard to breathe. For those couple of seconds, I forgot everything and there was just him.

He was wearing a winter coat I had never seen before, camel colored, and he was sucking on a mini candy cane.

It fell out of his mouth. “What in the world?” he said, his mouth still open.

When I hugged him, he smelled like peppermint and Christmas.

His cheek was cold against mine. “Why are you holding a poker?”

I stepped back. “I thought you were a burglar.”

“Of course you did.”

He followed me back to the living room and sat in the chair opposite the couch. He still had that shocked look on his face. “What are you doing here?”

I shrugged and set the poker on the coffee table. My adrenaline rush was fading fast, and I was starting to feel pretty silly. “I was all alone at the house, and I just felt like coming. What are you doing here? I didn’t even know you were coming back.”

Conrad was in California now. I hadn’t seen him since he’d transferred the year before. He had some scruff on his face, like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days.

It looked soft, though, not prickly. He looked tan, too, 40 · jenny han

which I thought was weird, seeing how it was winter, and then I remembered that he went to school in California, where it was always sunny.

“My dad sent me a ticket at the last minute. It took us forever to land, because of the snow, so I got here late.

Since Jere and my dad are still in New York, I figured I’d just come here.” He squinted at me.

“What?” I asked, feeling self-conscious all of a sudden.

I tried to smooth down the back of my hair—it was all fuzzy from being slept on. Discreetly, I touched the corners of my mouth. Had I been drooling?

“You have chocolate all over your face.”

I wiped at my mouth with the back of my hand. “No, I don’t,” I lied. “It’s probably just dirt.”

Amused, he raised his eyebrows at the near-empty can of chocolate-covered pretzels. “What, did you just put your whole head in it to save time?”

“Shut it,” I said, but I couldn’t help smiling.

The only light in the room was from the flickering TV. It was so surreal, being with him like this. A truly random twist of what felt like fate. I shivered and drew my blankets closer to me.

Taking off his coat, he said, “Want me to start a fire?”

Right away, I said, “Yes! I couldn’t get it going for some reason.”

“It takes a special touch,” he said in his arrogant way. I knew by now it was only posturing.

It was all so familiar. We had been here before, just like this, only two Christmases ago. So much had happened since then. He had a whole new life now, and so did I.

Still, in some ways, it was like no time or distance had passed between us. In some ways, it felt the same.

Maybe he was thinking the same thing, because he said, “It might be too late for a fire. I think I’m just gonna go crash.” Abruptly, he stood up and headed for the staircase. Then he turned back and asked, “Are you sleeping down here?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said quickly. “Snug as a bug in a rug.”

When he reached the staircase, Conrad stopped and then said, “Merry Christmas, Belly. It’s really good to see you.”

“You too.”

The next morning, right when I woke up, I had this funny feeling that he had already left. I don’t know why. I ran over to the stairs to check, and just as I was coming around the banister, I tripped over my pajama pants and fell flat on my back, banging my head along the way.

I lay there with tears in my eyes, staring up at the ceiling. The pain was unreal. Then Conrad’s head popped up above me. “Are you okay?” he asked, his mouth full of food, cereal probably. He tried to help me sit up, but I waved him off.

“Leave me alone,” I mumbled, hoping that if I just blinked fast enough, my tears would dry up.

“Are you hurt? Can you move?”

“I thought you were gone,” I said.

“Nope. Still here.” He knelt down beside me. “Just let me try and lift you up.”

I shook my head no.

Conrad got down on the floor next to me, and we both lay there on the wooden floor like we were about to start making snow angels. “How bad does it hurt, on a scale of one to ten? Does it feel like you pulled something?”

“On a scale of one to ten … it hurts an eleven.”

“You’re such a baby when it comes to pain,” he said, but he sounded worried.

“I am not.” I was about to prove him right. Even I could hear how teary I sounded.

“Hey, that fall you took was no joke. It was just like how animals slip and fall in cartoons, like with a banana peel.”

Suddenly I didn’t feel like crying anymore. “Are you calling me an animal?” I demanded, turning my head to look at him. He was trying to keep a straight face, but the corners of his mouth kept turning up. Then he turned his head to look at me, and we both started laughing. I laughed so hard my back hurt worse.

Mid-laugh, I stopped and said, “Ow.”

He sat up and said, “I’m gonna pick you up and bring you over to the couch.”

“No,” I protested weakly. “I’m too heavy for you. I’ll get up in a minute, just leave me here for now.”

Conrad frowned, and I could tell he was offended. “I know I can’t bench-press my body weight like Jere, but I can pick up a girl, Belly.”

I blinked. “It’s not that. I’m heavier than you think.

You know, freshman fifteen or whatever.” My face got hot, and I momentarily forgot about how badly my back hurt or how weird it was that he’d brought up Jere. I just felt embarrassed.

In a quiet voice, he said, “Well, you look the same to me.” Then, very gently, he scooped me off the floor and into his arms. I held on with one arm around his neck, and said, “It was more like ten. Freshman ten.”

He said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”

He carried me over to the couch and set me down.

“I’m gonna get you some Advil. That should help a little.”

Looking up at him, I had this sudden thought.

Oh my God. I still love you.

I’d thought my feelings for Conrad were safely tucked away, like my old Rollerblades and the little gold watch my dad bought me when I first learned how to tell time.

But just because you bury something, that doesn’t mean it stops existing. Those feelings, they’d been there all along. All that time. I had to just face it. He was a part of my DNA. I had brown hair and I had freckles and I would always have Conrad in my heart. He would 44 · jenny han

inhabit just that tiny piece of it, the little-girl part that still believed in musicals, but that was it. That was all he got. Jeremiah would have everything else—the present me and the future me. That was what was important. Not the past.

Maybe that was how it was with all first loves. They own a little piece of your heart, always. Conrad at twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, even seventeen years old. For the rest of my life, I would think of him fondly, the way you do your first pet, the first car you drove. Firsts were important. But I was pretty sure lasts were even more important. And Jeremiah, he was going to be my last and my every and my always.

Conrad and I spent the rest of that day together but not together. He started a fire, and then he read at the kitchen table while I watched It’s a Wonderful Life. For lunch, we had canned tomato soup and the rest of my chocolate-covered pretzels. Then he went for a run on the beach and I settled in for Casablanca. I was wiping tears from the corners of my eyes with my T-shirt sleeve when he came back. “This movie makes my heart hurt,” I croaked.

Taking off his fleece, Conrad said, “Why? It had a happy ending. She was better off with Laszlo.”

I looked at him in surprise. “You’ve seen Casablanca?”

“Of course. It’s a classic.”

“Well, obviously you weren’t paying that close of attention, because Rick and Ilsa are meant for each other.”

Conrad snorted. “Their little love story is nothing compared to the work Laszlo is doing for the Resistance.”

Blowing my nose with a napkin, I said, “For a young guy, you’re way too cynical.”

He rolled his eyes. “And for a supposedly grown girl, you’re way too emotional.” He headed for the stairs.

“Robot!” I yelled at his back. “Tin man!”

I heard him laughing as he closed the bathroom door.

The next morning, Conrad was gone. He left just like I thought he’d leave. No good-bye, no nothing. Just gone, like a ghost. Conrad, the Ghost of Christmas Past.

Jeremiah called me when I was on the way back home from Cousins. He asked what I was doing, and I told him I was driving home, but I didn’t tell him where I was driving from. It was a split-second decision. At the time I didn’t know why I lied. I just knew I didn’t want him to know.

I decided Conrad was right after all. Ilsa was meant to be with Laszlo. That was the way it was always supposed to end. Rick was nothing but a tiny piece of her past, a piece that she would always treasure, but that was all, because history is just that. History.