even as Jesse’s father turned the headlights back on and three-point-turned out of the parking lot.
When I spun back to what I was doing, I ached somehow. As if Jesse Lerner was meant to be mine and I was being forced to stare right into the heart of the injustice of it all.
My hand hit the stack of bookmarks, sending them into disarray. I gathered them and fixed them myself.
“So I was wondering,” Sam said.
“Yeah?”
“If maybe you’d want to, like, go see a movie together sometime.”
I turned and looked at him, surprised.
There was too much overwhelming me in that moment. Jesse with Carolyn, the headlights in my eyes, and the fact that someone was actually, possibly, asking me out on a date.
I should have said, “Sure.” Or “Totally.” But instead I said, “Oh. Uh . . .”
And then nothing else.
“No worries,” Sam said, clearly desperate for this awkwardness to end. “I get it.”
And just like that, I sent Sam Kemper straight into the friend zone.
Two and a half years later, Sam was graduating.
I had spent a good portion of my sophomore year trying to get Sam to ask me out again. I had made jokes about not having anything to do on a Saturday night and I had vaguely implied that we should hang out outside of the store, but he wasn’t getting it and I was too much of a chicken to ask him outright. So I let it go.
And since then, Sam and I had become close friends.
So I went with my mom and dad to support him as he sat outside in the sweltering heat in a cap and gown.
Marie was not yet home for the summer from the University of New Hampshire. She was majoring in English, spending her extracurricular time submitting short stories to literary magazines. She had yet to place one but everyone was sure she’d get published somewhere soon. Graham had gone to UNH with her but she broke up with him two months in. Now she was dating someone named Mike whose parents owned a string of sporting goods stores. Marie would often joke that if they got married, they would merge the businesses. “Get it? And sell books and sports equipment at the same store,” she’d explain.
As I told Olive, there was no end to the things Marie could say to make me purge my lunch. But no one else seemed to want to vomit around her, and thus, my parents were promoting her to assistant manager for the summer.
Margaret had just recently quit and Marie had lobbied for the job. I was surprised when my mom was reticent to let her do it. “She should be off enjoying herself in college,” she said. “Before she comes back here and takes on all of this responsibility.”
But my father was so excited about it that even I had softened to the idea. He made her an assistant manager name badge even though none of us wore name badges. And he told my mom that he couldn’t be happier than to spend his summer with both of his daughters at the store.
The smile on his face and the gleam in his eye led me to promise myself to be nicer to Marie. But she hadn’t even come home yet and I was already unsure it would take.
I was not looking forward to summer at the store. Sam had given his notice the month before and had worked his last day. Instead of staying in town, he was leaving in a few weeks to take an internship at a music therapy office in Boston. And then he was starting at Berklee College of Music in the fall.
It was his first choice and when he got in, I’d congratulated him with a hug. Then I quickly moved on to teasing him for staying so close to home. But I wasn’t entirely joking. I truly couldn’t understand why his first choice was to live in a part of the country he’d lived in all his life. I had set my sights on the University of Los Angeles. I got a pamphlet in the mail and I liked the idea of going to school in permanent sunshine.
As Sam’s name was called out on the converted football field that afternoon, my parents were disagreeing about whether to restain our back patio. I had to nudge my father in the ribs with my elbow to get his attention.