Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [10]
“Well, I don’t think I like this version of me,” I said. “The one in which I’m your old girlfriend, old in both meanings of the word.”
“You’re not old.”
“To these eighteen-year-olds I am! I’m like a campus cougar….” I curled my hands into claws and grrrrrrrowled. “Prowling Princeton for some hot young tiger tail.”
Your abdominal muscles squeezed and released in low-belly laughter.
“And you won’t want to visit me because you hate the city.”
You opened your mouth to protest, but I wouldn’t let you.
“You know it’s true! It is true. You hate the noise. The dirt. The pace. You were miserable whenever you visited me in the city….”
“I had other reasons to be miserable.”
“I know,” I lied.
six
The truth is, I don’t know much about your misery at all.
You knew all about your dad’s illness when you miraculously reappeared on my parents’ doorstep last Christmas Eve—the proverbial lost shepherd in a wool peacoat and ski hat—almost two years to the day since I’d last seen or spoken to you. You knew all about it when we made love less than twenty-four hours after that reunion. You knew about it four days later when Hope and I departed for our monthlong road trip.
In retrospect, there was something tentative about the way you handed over my going-away gift. I was struck then by your shyness, something in the way your eyes skimmed the sidewalk, the sad, downward slope of your shoulders as you presented the red raw silk box containing this blank notebook and eleven others, the Death Valley diaries, filled with your observations of life in the desert without me. I had assumed you were grieving a little bit about me, over saying good-bye again so soon after our sweet reunion. But I was wrong. Your morose mood had nothing to do with me, but with the secret of your father’s sickness, which you only reluctantly revealed upon my return. I can’t understand why you waited, or why you have rarely spoken of it since.
So I was lying when I said I knew why you were so miserable. I have no idea what it’s been like for you for the past eight months, living at home in Pineville, helping your parents cope with the diagnosis and its aftermath. I don’t know because you wouldn’t tell me.
seven
You hadn’t made a move. Sun sliced through spaces in the blinds, and the light slashed in diagonals across your naked torso.
“You keep encouraging me to tread the middle path, but I know from our past that you, Marcus Flutie, are an all-or-nothing proposition for me.” I cleared my throat. “I’m tired of only seeing you a few weekends a month. I don’t want that kind of relationship anymore.”
You gave yourself a few moments of deep breathing before finally responding.
“You don’t want to visit on the weekends.”
“No.”
“Then move here and be with me every day.” You clasped your hands behind your head. Problem solved.
“Move?” I snorted. “Here?”
“We can live off campus—”
I cut him off. “I’m not giving up my life in New York just to be your girlfriend. I’ve finished college, Marcus. And if I wanted to relive the experience, I would have applied to grad school.”
(I am a liar. And a bad one at that. I would love to relive the experience. I am desperately envious of everyone who is currently living or reliving the experience.)
There was a pause. Then a puckish smile played on your lips. “You say you can’t be the girlfriend of a college freshman.”
“Right.”
“There’s another choice.”
“I know,” I said sadly. “Which is why I made this difficult decision….”
“Another choice.”
And that’s when you slipped out of bed, got down on one knee, and took my left hand in yours.
“Don’t move here just to be my girlfriend,” you said.
You pulled the leather necklace over your head and slid the silver ring onto my fourth finger. Then you said two words I never I imagined I’d hear from anyone, let alone Marcus Flutie.
“Marry me,” you said.
These are the most absurd words I have ever heard.
eight
I have never been the type of girl who dreams about this moment. I have never been the type of girl who envisioned the love of my