up onto his elbows. He considers the question for a second. “I’m feeling like something in the arts,” he says.
I sit upright, pulling the sheet over my chest. “The arts?” Matt’s passionate about a lot of things. I’ve just never seen him pick up a paintbrush or play an instrument or write a haiku. When we play Pictionary, his entries are worse than cave paintings.
“Yeah,” he says evenly. “I was thinking . . . the art of seduction.”
I wrinkle my nose as Matt smirks, obviously delighted with himself. “I can’t believe you just said that.” While he props himself up, hands behind his head, I get out of bed and open my suitcase. I rummage for my pajamas and pull them out, my striped bottoms and the UMass Amherst shirt from when I did a college prep day program there my sophomore summer. “For real, Matt,” I say, tugging them on. I sit on the edge of the bed and begin to brush my hair. “When you picture yourself in four years, it’s leaving college to go do what?”
“Whoa, leaving college?” Matt asks. “We haven’t even gotten there yet.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s just exciting. Our futures are out there.” I find myself staring from the bed out the open window, onto the lights of the city, unblinking and incessant, each of them a life in motion. I swear I can see every light stretching all the way to Virginia.
Matt’s fingers interlacing with mine pull my concentration from the view. On his face when I turn back to him is a rare vulnerability. It’s the expression he gets when he’s really thought something over—the one I recognize from the day he told his dad he’d decided he wouldn’t play college baseball, and the morning he asked if he could meet my family. “My future and my past are the same, Juni, and I’m looking at her.”
I feel myself soften at his words. Okay, maybe he could major in the art of seduction. It’s one of the wonderful contradictions of Matt. Baseball jock though he is, he’s melt-your-heart-into-a-little-puddle romantic when he wants to be. In this moment, the city lights become a little less inviting, like they’re watching us now, not the other way around.
“The next four years are about you and about enjoying college,” Matt continues. “We’re going to make memories there. Memories we’re going to hold on to the rest of our lives. That won’t change depending on a job, or a degree.”
I get up and walk to the window. “I’m going to study architecture.” I say, scanning my mind for anytime Matt mentioned liking a class or finding an assignment interesting. “What about history?” I suggest. “You were really good at it. Remember?” I face the bed, where Matt’s stuffing his legs into his sweatpants. “In April, you got a ninety-five on five US tests in a row.”
Climbing under the covers, Matt yawns. “No, I don’t remember, Juniper. That class was pretty boring.”
I quell a small wave of irritation. I’ve had to learn not to be surprised when people don’t remember things the way I do. Because to me, they’re vexingly obvious. Forgetting something like that feels to me like forgetting my class schedule or who my English teacher is. When I was younger, I used to get in fights with my family over what they could and couldn’t remember. The times they promised us extra hours of TV or ice cream for dinner, then claimed they hadn’t. Disputed recollections of who said what or whose idea was whose. It took years to learn to let those things go.
Matt flips off the light near the bed. He nods toward the window, where the sleepless city still lights our room.
I draw the curtains.
Folding open my half of the covers, I crawl underneath, the hotel linens stiff and unfamiliar. They’re comfortable, but not comforting. Within minutes, I hear Matt drift into sleep.
I want to close my eyes and have tonight become tomorrow. But I don’t want to ignore my family. Reluctantly, I grab my phone from the bedside table.
Marisa’s message is first. I grudgingly agree to be her chauffeur on New Year’s Eve. Then Callie, who I tell to look for her