20. Andrea

CHAPTER 20

Andrea

B y the time I sit back down at the table, I'm shaking so much I can barely get my guitar case zipped up while we wait for Naomi to replace me on stage. I couldn't look at her after I'd finished my song, not when every chord I played and every word I sang was steeped with the one thing I haven't been able to bring myself to say to her yet: goodbye.

My year is up, and maybe my mom is cutting it a couple weeks short with the flight, but it's not like it matters at this point. If I was going to have some grand revelation about what I'm actually good for in life, it would have happened by now. I would have come up with more than ‘fun at parties' and ‘can get anyone to sing along to the guitar.' I'd have something worthwhile enough to justify turning my back on everything my mom has built for me.

I'd have something a girl like Naomi could be proud of, not just entertained by for a summer.

The spotlights catch on the pale strands of Naomi's hair as she adjusts the microphone. She's wearing a flowy blue shirt that reminds me of the dress she wore on our date—the dress that's etched into my memory like a tattoo. She pulls a folded sheet of paper out of her pocket and lifts it to her face with one hand while her other hand tucks her hair behind her ear.

That sight of that now familiar gesture makes me feel like someone just smashed a glass over our table and shoved one of the shards into my side. I curl my arms around my stomach and lean forward, watching as Naomi stands in front of the crowd and faces her fears.

She once told me I'm unstoppable, but really, it's her that can't be stopped.

When I met her, she could barely get a sentence out around me. She held a joint for the first time like she was scared it was going to bite her hand off. She almost fainted while waiting to get a piercing.

She still went through with all those things.

As I run through every item of the summer list we've ticked off, it hits me that it was never about the things themselves.

I'd already tried almost everything on that list before I showed up at my dad's house, and they didn't turn me into the kind of girl I now see standing on the stage.

What mattered is that Naomi didn't think she could, but she did it anyway, the same way Priya didn't think she could find her independence and Shal didn't think she could show the truest parts of herself to the world.

They still did it all. They still managed to find the parts of themselves that refused to be strangled by what anyone else might have to say.

I've spent a whole year searching, and I haven't found that. I haven't found the part of me worth fighting for. I've just found distractions to keep me from admitting maybe that part doesn't exist at all.

"I'm going to read a poem tonight. It's by one of my favourite poets, William Butler Yeats."

Priya groans and mutters, "Of course," but I can still hear the excitement in her voice.

Naomi stares at her paper for a few seconds before she looks into the crowd. If I didn't know from being up there myself that the spotlights make it too bright to see anyone, I'd swear she was staring straight at me.

"First, I want to say something, though."

The breath whooshes out of my lungs.

"I don't know why the poem itself is one of my favourites," she continues, glancing down at her paper every now and then, like she's reading from some notes. "To be honest, it's always been a tough one for me to read. It…it kind of hurts to read it sometimes. It's about this guy telling this woman to take down a book of his poetry when she's old and grey so she can read this poem about how much he loved her, the real her, not just the shiny, idealized version of her a million other guys fell in love with too."

I can tell everyone else at our table is looking back and forth from me to Naomi, but I can't stop staring at her like she might disappear if I even blink.

"Only it must not have worked out for some reason, because she's old and alone and reading this book by her fireplace without him. I've always thought it didn't work out because he was too scared to tell her how he felt. He was so scared he could only do it in a poem that he'd only let her read when it was too late, and I…well, I've missed out on a lot of things because I was too scared until it was too late, but…but then I met this girl who's sort of helped me get out of the habit."

Priya squeals, but all I feel is hollow, like the hole in my side has drained all my emotions onto the floor.

Naomi must not know more than that shiny, idealized version of me. If she did, she'd know I'd only ever be able to disappoint her.

"So," she says, "this one is for her. It's called ‘When You Are Old.'"

The crowd gets extra quiet as she reads, the room so still you can almost hear the thump of her heartbeat in the microphone. She starts off a little too fast, but once she's past the first couple lines, she seems to sink into the poem like it's a well-worn chair she's curled up in a thousand times. Her voice lilts from quiet to loud, strong to soft, tracing its way through the flickers of aching nostalgia, bitter regret, and solemn acceptance in the words.

By the time she's done and her murmured, "Thank you," gets swallowed up by applause, I'm convinced she's got it wrong.

The man in the poem wasn't too late.

He just fell in love with a woman who wasn't good enough to love him back.

All of a sudden, it's like every last drop of air has been sucked out of the bar. The room is too hot, too loud, too full of people.

"Andrea?" Priya says, turning from where she's been waving Naomi back over to our table. "Are you okay?"

Somehow, I manage to choke out the word, "Bathroom."

I shove my chair away from the table and stagger towards the back of the bar. The room doesn't feel as stifling once I'm tucked into the narrow hallway lined with a few single stall washrooms, but there's still not enough air back here. All the washrooms are occupied, so I lean against the wall and tap my foot against the floorboards, my rhythm getting more and more frantic the longer I wait.

My breaths are so shallow I'm getting dizzy. I try to suck in more air, but my lungs won't let me.

I have to get out of here.

The thought repeats a few more times in my head, and when none of the washrooms show any sign of opening, I push off the wall with a grunt and speed-walk down to the other end of the hall, the one blocked off by a chain with a ‘staff only' sign hanging in the middle.

I ignore the words and duck underneath the chain. I hear some clanging over to my right, where I'm pretty sure the kitchen is, but all my focus is pinned on the door I spot with an exit sign above the frame.

I heave myself against the push bar and stumble out into a dark and narrow parking lot with a giant dumpster sitting up against the wall of the building. The door shuts with a click behind me, and I gulp down a huge breath of cool night air as soon as I'm cut off from the din of the bar. The only noise I hear now is the hum of some distant traffic and the echoing bark of a dog.

I lean against the hard brick wall behind me and focus on slowing my breath. I've just managed to get my heartbeat back to a somewhat normal pace when the door swings open and sends my pulse skyrocketing again.

"Andrea!" Naomi steps over to me with her eyes flared wide. "Priya said she thought you were sick. Are you okay?"

She tilts her head to the side and looks me over. The concern in her face makes my chest ache harder than it has all night.

"I, um…" My voice sounds wheezy, and I stop to cough. "I just got kind of warm."

She nods, the tension in her posture easing. "Oh, for sure. It's packed in there. It's actually really nice to be out here, even though it's a little cold tonight."

She claims a spot against the wall beside me, close enough that our arms are almost touching, and I squeeze my eyes shut for a second as I fight the urge to turn and kiss her so hard this all goes away, if only for a moment.

That's the problem. It would only ever be for a moment—one perfect, shining moment before the rest of our lives rush in to push us apart.

"You did, um, hear the poem, right?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her staring down at her shoes as she nudges a few stray pebbles on the pavement. The question is tinged with a mix of hope and nerves that makes me go weak.

"Of course I did. I wouldn't miss it. You were incredible."

At least I can tell her that.

"Thanks. You were too. I can't believe you learned that song. To be honest, I wasn't sure I was going to have the guts to say what I did tonight, but then you played that song and—"

"I'm leaving."

I clench my hands into fists as the words leave my mouth, my jaw locked so tight I almost can't force them out.

She goes silent, her body tensing up beside me.

"My mom, she…she said I can't wait any longer if I want the internship, so she's flying me home next week."

"Oh."

Her answer is so flat I have no idea what she's feeling, and I know if I look at her face to check, I'm going to lose it, so I keep staring across the dark parking lot.

"And you…you do want the internship?" she murmurs.

"I…"

I don't know what I want.

That's the only answer I have, and she deserves so much more.

"I thought maybe there was something else out there for me," I say instead, "something I could be good at, something that would light me up instead of just being a dumb way to pass the time, but…I don't have that ambition or passion or whatever it is everyone else seems to have found. If I had that, maybe…maybe it'd be worth telling my mom I'm not sure I want this internship anymore, but this might be my very last chance to not disappoint her, and I can't throw that away for doing nothing here just like I did a whole year of nothing in Montreal."

"Nothing?" she repeats, with a chill in her voice that raises goose bumps on my arms. She pushes off the wall and squares off in front of me. "You really think you've found nothing here? That this whole summer was about a dumb way to pass the time?"

I shake my head fast enough to give me whiplash.

"No, Naomi, that's not what I meant. It's not about you. You're…you're the farthest thing from nothing."

Her eyes soften a little, but she stays planted in front of me with her hands on her hips.

"That's the problem," I tell her. "You're this…this incredible person who does what she wants and is who she is no matter how scary that gets sometimes, and I…I have no clue who I am, despite spending an entire year trying to figure that out. I think maybe I'm just…I'm just a fundamentally disappointing person."

I don't know what kind of a reaction I expected, but it wasn't for her to bark a laugh. I blink with shock as she drops her hands from her hips.

"Andrea, do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? Look at you!" She waves her hand towards me. "You had that whole bar eating out of the palm of your hand, and when you sang, you…you're just magic , okay? You're just goddamn magic, and who cares if you don't know exactly what your passion or your dream is yet? Who cares if you need another year or five years or ten years to figure it out? I wouldn't think any less of you if that were the case, and I don't think anyone else should either, including your mom."

I shake my head as my vision clouds and my throat gets too clogged to speak.

"Look." She steps closer and lowers her voice. "Move back to Toronto if you have to. Take the internship if you have to. Just… just don't tell me this was nothing. Don't tell me it was just about a list. Don't tell me it's something you can leave behind when you get on that plane."

I feel the streak of salty heat as the first tear slides down my face.

"I'm not always very good at reading people," she says, almost whispering now, "and sometimes I feel like I'm getting everything wrong. It all makes so much more sense when it's just words on a page, but…but I know I got this right. I know I got us right, and I know that whatever you choose, I want to be part of it."

A sob lodges in my throat. It gets harder and harder to breathe as she stands there with her eyes boring into mine, but I can't look away.

"When you met me this summer, you didn't just see some shy and awkward girl with anxiety," she says, "and when I met you, I didn't just see some wild party girl with purple hair who's really good at making people follow through on a dare. We both saw way past all that. You helped me be more me this summer, Andrea, and maybe that's not the big revelation or sense of purpose you were looking for, but to me it's…everything."

Her bottom lip trembles, but she pauses long enough to draw in a shaky breath and then speaks more firmly than she has all night, maybe even more firmly than I've ever heard her speak before.

"I don't want to say goodbye. This isn't just a summer fling to me. I want it to be more, and I really think it can be, wherever you decide to go next. My brain is already trying to come up with a million reasons this won't work, but I'm done missing out on things just because I'm scared of them. So…so I'm just going to say it."

She stops to take another breath, and I know I should interrupt her. I know I should tell her the truth: that I'm not the magic girl she thinks I am. I'm a book with a cool cover that has way too many blank pages inside to keep someone like her entertained for longer than a summer.

"I think I might be falling in love with you, Andrea King."

I stop breathing. I think even my blood goes still in my veins.

"So yeah, that's…that," she says, "and I need you to know that because I really need you to say you'll see where this goes with me. This is the first time I've ever let myself have my own story, and I want it to be ours ."

For a second, I can see it. I can see all those blank pages inside me filled with words and pictures and cheesy stick figure drawings in the margins that are all about us. I can see myself in this city, taking her on dates every weekend, sitting in cafes with her while she pores over a pile of textbooks, and spending night after night huddled up under a blanket while we tell each other absolutely everything that's ever happened to us.

I can see myself breathing here, in a way I've never been able to do in Toronto. I can practically taste life filling up my lungs with the air I've been gasping for, but just when I think I'm finally going to get that inhale I need, something sucks the wind right out of me, and I'm left gasping as hard as ever.

"Andrea…"

She takes a step closer to me. I shake my head, and she freezes, hurt flashing across her face.

"I don't…I don't know how," I choke out. "I don't know how to be the person you need me to be."

I don't know how to do that for my parents. I don't know how to do that for anyone.

How the hell am I supposed to do it for her?

"You already are," she says as her hands ball into fists at her sides. "That's what I'm trying to tell you."

My lungs burn, but I force myself to keep speaking.

"And I'm trying to tell you I'm not. I'm just not , and if you knew me, you'd see that. I can't…I can't do this."

Her face crumples.

"Andrea. Please."

I sag against the wall and shake my head as more tears streak down my face.

"Do you really mean that?" she whispers.

I'm crying too hard to answer now. The tears are so thick I can't even see her properly. When she steps forward and reaches for my arm, I jerk away.

If I let her hold me, I won't be able to tell her to stop.

I hear her hiss of pain, and another piece of my heart cracks. She hovers in front of me for a couple seconds, and then she steps over to pull the door open. The second it swings shut behind her, my knees give out, and I slide down to crouch on the cold, hard pavement.