Graduates in Wonderland (27 page)

Suddenly at that moment, I wanted to have never met Callum. I wanted to undo what damage had been done. I didn't care if I ever saw Callum again. All I wanted was for Sam to be as loving and trusting as he was when we fell asleep earlier that night.

We both lay there in the darkness, not sleeping or touching. This morning at breakfast, I tried to be chipper and talk about a million other things, but Sam was quiet.

Finally, he looked at me and said, “Please tell me everything. Tell me everything that's ever happened with Callum. I'm asking you to be honest with me.” I felt sick looking at him, scared of the truth, scared of what boundaries I'd broken.

I lied. I said that Callum was just a friend and nothing else. I said I did not think that Callum liked me at all. I said I definitely did not have any feelings for him. I said I had no idea why he was calling me at 3 
A.M.

Sam asked me again, “Please tell me if you ever spend time alone with him. Please tell me what he says to you. Please tell me if you have ever thought about him romantically.” And I lied again.

I couldn't bring myself to tell him the truth about my feelings and doubts. All I could think about was how I might lose Sam and that I would do anything or say anything to keep him.

I finally saw how everything really was. Callum meant nothing to me and Sam meant everything, but it was too late.

I loved Sam, but I could not tell him the truth about what had happened. If I told him everything, there may be no way back to where we were. I finally managed to end the conversation by saying I was going to shower.

When I stepped out of the shower, Sam and his bags were gone. My computer was open. Rachel, on the screen was my last e-mail to you. He'd read it.

It's over. I'm so shocked that I don't know how to react. I don't feel angry. I don't feel betrayed. He knew I was lying. And I had my computer open and my e-mail inbox open. I would have done the same thing.

I could barely bring myself to reread my words.

“I want to know what it would be like to kiss him just once. I want to sleep with him just once.”

Oh God, can this ever be undone?

I really fucked up. He's been gone for a few hours now, and I'm going crazy. I didn't know what to do except write you.

I don't know what to do next. Call me.

J

OCTOBER 24

Jess to Rachel

I can barely keep my eyes open, but before I crawl into bed and sleep for the next ten years, I'll let you know what happened after we spoke. I'm still trying to process the last few hours.

Sam wasn't answering his phone, and I had no idea where he had gone. I had nowhere to go. I didn't know what to do. I just lay on my bed staring at the ceiling for hours, intermittently numb with shock interrupted by stretches of misery when I realized that I may never be in the same bed with Sam ever again. I remembered how I had also lain in my bed in Beijing the morning he left, staring listlessly into space, and I didn't know how I had ended up right back where I had started, even though I had traveled halfway across the world.

There's nothing to do when you feel like this. Nothing that can be done but staring into space or frantically hatching plans to win the person back or wiping back angry tears. Fucking fucking Callum. Fucking me. Stupid fucking me.

There was also the crushing guilt. During the entire flirtation with Callum, I never really thought about what Sam would think or feel when he found out. I thought about me and what was better for me and whom I should be with, and now all I can think about is the look on Sam's face this morning.

We were slowly building something, and he is so good to me. He's the only guy I've ever been with whom I trust so much and whom I never get tired of being with. I can't believe I hurt him. I lay in bed for a long time.

And then hours later, there was a knock on my front window. Sam. I opened the front door and we both stood there, not daring to say anything. It was dark outside and I did not invite him in and he did not try to come inside. I knew that I could not reach out and touch him anymore.

On the porch, I told him everything, although he already knew it all from reading my own words. But I don't think he knew how much I loved him, because
I
didn't even know how much I loved him until last night. I think it was the most honest moment of my life, standing in front of Sam, groveling, desperate, and distressed, telling him how I needed him and how careless I was but how much I loved him. Finally, I stopped talking. He had been rapt the entire time I was talking, moving slowly closer, with an unreadable expression on his face. And then he reached out his arms and I stepped into them.

I think we stood together like that for twenty minutes. And then he turned my face toward his and kissed me. “No one has more love for you than I do,” he said. “No one.”

He came inside and we talked for a few hours and then he left to fly back to Sydney. He knows I didn't cheat on him and he knows I love him. I didn't lose him, but I know that Sam doubts me now. At the beginning of a relationship, everyone acts like the best version of themselves and is very cautious, but inevitably, someone is going to make a mistake. But I just happened to make a really huge mistake.

It's almost as if that ever-­present lurking part of my existence that wants to stay up all night and smoke cigarettes and run away to different countries also wants someone like Callum to come along and ruin everything. Even when I am unsure of Sam, I still feel like he is too good for me in some ways. As in, he's actually good, something so rare. Everything Sam does is thoughtful and careful—­the one thing he's ever done that seems brash is date me.

I don't know exactly what drove me to stray, but I think there's a certain sadness to finally getting what you want. I've wanted to meet someone like Sam my entire life, and then when I did, I felt too settled. There's a simplicity and sense of adventure to being alone, and I sometimes envy you for still having it, as you explore Paris. Even when you're getting your heart broken, you can still wake up and not know what's going to happen next. When I was single, I could hitch a ride on a whim or spend the night with an exciting stranger. I love Sam so much, but sometimes I wish I could have it both ways.

But after today, I know, I really know, that I can't.

But I pick Sam. Almost losing him made me know that he is worth more to me than exciting strangers. And I'm finding that again and again, I choose him.

We discussed that if this is going to really work, we can't be apart anymore and he's going to try to find a way to move to Melbourne. The magazine he was working for is about to fold, so it's a good time for him to leave Sydney. We'll finally be in the same city for the first time in our entire relationship.

It was unspoken, but definitely understood, that I can't hang out with or correspond with Callum again. Which might be hard as we have class together four days a week next semester, but as for actually cutting all ties with Callum, I don't care about him anymore. Any hint of feeling that I had for him is dead. I know that I am to blame for all of this, but to me, Callum represents the walking demise of my relationship with Sam. He could never seem attractive to me again.

I don't know how I'm going to handle next semester in class, but at least I still have Sam. For now.

Time for bed. Finals are next week. I can't believe we're almost twenty-­five. Life moves fast. Don't be stupid like me.

Love,

Jess

Four Months Later

FEBRUARY 20

Rachel to Jess

Do you remember that summer after freshman year when we felt so grown-­up because we had summer jobs and snuck out to bars? And now here I am six years later, wearing a business suit, sitting on the Eurostar headed to Paris after a week in London, and writing thank-­you notes to the professors I talked to about PhD programs. We were such babies that summer, and now I'm suddenly one of those adults who seemed so old to us back then.

All in all, I had two interviews with professors in London. And although I was nervous, I didn't know how formal they would be or how much I would have to prepare. Therefore, I prepared nothing.

For the first one, I visited a professor at King's College, which is right by the river. The professor was Scottish (so I could barely understand him yet was inexplicably charmed by him). We had an informal conversation in his office about my project, but I'm not totally convinced that our interests align. I want to study movie stars and their interaction with history, and he wants to add the element of city space, which doesn't really thrill me.

Afterward, I went back to my hotel in South Kensington and drank tea and ate scones to feel like a native. I also found the best magazine in the world,
Tatler
,
which has approximately five pictures of Prince Harry per page. For my birthday, please get me a subscription.

For my second interview the following morning, a professor at University College London, Robert, arrived with a historian who he thought would make a good second reader for me. They both specialize in American film history. They played a little “good cop, bad cop” with me, but with posh English accents. (“Why women? Why Hollywood? Why the 1930s?” I resisted saying, “Because if you take those elements away, I have no thesis?”)

I liked them a lot. Robert was so encouraging about my project, but there are a limited number of students he can take on, so it might not go anywhere. I'm supposed to hear back from both universities within six to eight weeks.

It was strange to speak English to locals and have everyone understand me. I felt inconspicuous for the first time in over a year. London is so much bigger compared to Paris and it's easy to feel invisible. In Paris, it always feels like everyone is examining you, and I'm not sure which one is more unsettling. But compared to Paris, London is gray and elegant and gritty.

In less than two hours, I'll be back in Paris, maybe for the last time in a while.

Tonight, it's back to apathetic teenagers—­it is prime SAT season and apparently every person ever, even in France, wants to go to Harvard. The teenagers actually get my jokes, probably because they can all speak English (most have slutty American mothers with a weakness for Frenchmen). They also check their cell phones and flirt with each other incessantly.

I like the students who actually work hard, but some of them talk over me, refuse to take notes, and laugh at sly French jokes I usually don't get. When I called one of them out on it today after class, she looked at me and said, “My parents make me come here. I just want to go to art school and then open up my own gallery in New York, so this doesn't matter.” After my third day with girls like this, I want to hiss, “Well, it does matter
a little
. Just wait until everyone asks you about your SAT score at orientation and you have to say five.”

There's something unnerving about being so close to the life I was living as a seventeen-­year-­old. Have I changed at all? I remember my own dreamy beliefs about the incredible unknown, but I know the realities of going out into the world by yourself. They're shiny (literally) and wide-­eyed, but I don't envy the seventeen-­year-­olds who have yet to discover the truth about what happens when you find yourself in a new place without any of your friends or when the perfect boy closes the door on you forever. And that's when I really see that they are seventeen and I'm twenty-­five. And that there is more than just the eight years between us.

Despite my best efforts, though, I actually do regress into my teens sometimes. At American Prep, Josh and I go out behind the building at lunch to smoke cigarettes, which are still forbidden to us (him by his girlfriend, me by my promise to myself that I have quit).

I see Josh nearly every day and he's started to talk about the future, and has mentioned New York so many times I want to slap him with a fish (French style). I don't want my favorite part of my work life to leave! I want to say: “Don't you love it here? Couldn't you wrap a white scarf around your neck and walk gallantly through the Paris wind for the rest of your life? Spend your days finding tea shops and tracking down antique maps to see the city as it was in the eighteenth century?”

Even though I don't know how much longer I'll be in Paris, I can't believe he would leave, but when I try to tell him, it comes out: “New York, Josh? Like, really?”

See? Teenage talk. I'm back to saying “like” a hundred times a day.

Another sign of regression is that I can't help but look to astrology. I know. I know. I KNOW, JESS.

Not like you care, but Josh is a Pisces, which means he is very kind and sensitive, but also goofy. He has picked up all kinds of French mannerisms, which he exaggerates to make me laugh—­like blowing out his cheeks when he doesn't know the answer to something, or saying, “ehhhhh” instead of “ummmm.”

But he's taken.

I know for sure now that I am not a teenager anymore because I realize that this great guy belongs to someone else, and I'm hoping that mine is still out there. Maybe in London.

Love,

Rach

MARCH 1

Jess to Rachel

Teenage girl, I can forgive. Astrology queen? No. But my birth date dictates that I would say that, doesn't it? The last time we argued about the validity of astrology, you told me that the defining trait of Aries is that we are assholes.

Your potential move to London is very exciting. I told Sam that you were visiting his mother country and he told me to tell you to make sure you eat a bacon sandwich for him. Obviously, I am telling you this too late, but who cares. Who makes bacon the main ingredient in a sandwich?

Do you think we're going to be seventy-­five and still going on interviews? Still putting on stupid blazers and checking our teeth in hand mirrors before we walk into offices and justify our life's work and choices in twenty minutes? And if so, when is it our turn to have the kind of interviews on
Ellen
where we can eat cupcakes and dance?