Until Then Read online

We reach Rosie’s Diner, and I open the door for Summer, hearing the familiar bell jingle. I point to a booth toward the back and follow Summer to it. When she slides into the bench with her back to the wall, I ask her to switch spots. “I like sitting with my back to the wall,” I tell her after she furrows her eyebrows in confusion.

  She gets up and switches with me. When she slides in, she notices it. She presses her hand flat to the table and leans closer to clarify what she’s reading.

  “Did you write this?” she asks me, laughing a little.

  “Yep.”

  “Other side, Crew,” she says, reading the carving on the table. “I guess that’s why you’re sitting over there…on the other side.”

  “Yep.”

  Summer is silent for a moment, and I’m fully aware that she’s a girl who chooses her words carefully. She doesn’t want to deal with idle chit chat and nonsense. If she is speaking, there’s a reason. Even if she’s not speaking, there’s a reason.

  Right now, she’s silent. So it’s my turn to speak.

  “I used to come here a lot when I was a kid, and I always wanted to sit on the side with my back to the wall. But I never remembered to do it until I was halfway through my waffles. Everyone would get annoyed that I wanted to switch. So I wrote it down to remember to switch right away.” I shrug my shoulders. It’s a light story, but I’m ok with sharing light stories with her. It’s the heavy stories that I can’t seem to speak.

  Summer tilts her head and squints her eyes, and I suddenly feel like I’ve said way too much. “Why did you always want to sit with your back to the wall?” she asks.

  So that I could see you. “So that I could see the world,” I reply with my half truth. I restrain myself from glancing across the street. To the strip mall. To the music tutor. Where I first saw her. Many moons ago.

  She was hard to miss, with her bright bouncy curls and a bubbly skip in her step. I saw her every afternoon as a kid while I ate my waffles and she went to practice. I only saw her for about a year, assuming she stopped taking lessons.

  Boy was I wrong.

  Summer laughs once to herself. “So what’s good here?” she asks.

  “Banana waffles, hands down,” I answer immediately.

  “Really,” she says, with a glint in her eye.

  I lean in as if I’m telling her a secret, “I’ve done years of research on this topic. Trust me.” Then I wink at her and watch her cheeks turn bright red again.

  Christ. She’s so easy to embarrass. I have to tread carefully here. I don’t want Summer doing something stupid, like developing a crush on me. Or me doing something worse, like falling in love with her.

  “What’ll it be, Crew?” Aunt Rosie asks loudly, whipping out her waiter’s pad.

  “Banana waffles,” I order, without taking my eyes off Summer. “Blueberry syrup, too, please. Thanks, Aunt Rosie.” She winks and shoots her finger at me, confirming my order.

  “And how about you, darlin’?” she asks Summer.

  Summer smiles to my Aunt, “I’ll have the same please. May I also have maple syrup, too? I’ve never had blueberry before.”

  “‘Course, honey. But make no mistake. Crew knows what he’s doing.” She shoots her finger at Summer and whistles loudly as she walks away, making me and Summer laugh under our breaths.

  “So tell me about Lily,” I say, catching Summer by surprise.

  She almost looks annoyed, but playfully annoyed. “Hey, I walked away when I heard you talking, but I could read your lips when you said Lily’s name over and over again.”

  “How can you read my lips?” she asks.

  I point to my Aunt Rosie. “Because she’s pretty deaf. She taught me how to do it.”

  Summer sits up straighter. “Oh, yeah?” She licks her lips and formulates her plan. “Prove it,” she challenges. “Cover your ears.”

  I laugh and do as I’m told. She has no idea. Then I watch her lips move. My heart thunders in my ears, making me aware of it speeding up as I see Summer say the words, “Elephant shoes.” It’s an old joke among lip readers, only because it’s supposed to look the same as saying, “I love you.” Which means she’s either toying with me, or she’s confessing.

  Either way, I love it.

  “Elephants don’t wear shoes,” I say. She laughs, throwing a napkin at me.

  “So…Lily?” I repeat.

  She takes a big breath, like she’s got a story to tell. “Lily’s a girl at school, a violinist. So incredibly talented. We have a lot of classes together and have become really good friends.” She is so animated when she talks, and she draws me in with her exaggerated hand gestures and boundless energy. “She’s quirky and funny. I like her a lot.” She stops to take a long sip of water. And something shifts in her composure. I can see her weighing the next thing she wants to say.

  “But…?” I ask, letting her know I see it — her doubt, her curiosity.

  “But nothing. She’s become a good friend. I didn’t always have ‘good’ friends growing up. So, I like it,” she shrugs.

  There’s definitely more to that story, which I will absolutely revisit later.

  “That’s great, Summer. Now tell me what you were really just thinking,” I challenge.

  Summer looks down to the table and traces the etched in words with her finger, a redness washing over her face. “I wasn’t thinking anything. I was wondering something, if you must know.” She’s playfully defensive, and my intrigue is swelling.

  This could go in one of two ways. “Ask me.”

  Her face shoots up to mine, as if she has never met such a challenge. Someone to demand that she confess the things she doesn’t want to say probably doesn’t often happen to Summer. I’m sure as hell glad it is me.

  “What do you mean?” she feigns obtusely.

  “Ask me.”

  She’s silent.

  “Ask me the thing you don’t want to ask me,” I take a sip of water to let it fester.

  Summer shifts in her seat. “Crew, I don’t know how to do this,” she confesses almost inaudibly.

  “Do what?” I ask.

  Just then Rosie shows up with our waffles. “Saw you kids coming and got these ready on the quick,” Aunt Rosie says. “Blueberry for Crew. Maple for his little bird. Blueberry on the side. You two kids enjoy now.” She whistles loudly as she walks back to the kitchen.

  Summer glances at the floor where Rosie was just standing, obviously hearing her say “his little bird” and deciding how to react to it.

  “Do what, Summer?” The interruption gave Summer a minute to decide — be brave or be weak. But I already see the resolution in her eyes.

  “Talk to people. Have relationships with people. Be a social person. In case you haven’t noticed,” she huffs, “I’m not very sociable. I don’t have a lot of friends because I don’t know how to have a lot of friends.”

  “That’s not what you were just thinking about, and I know it.” I lean in closer. “You were going to say something you don’t want to say.” I reach over and place my hand on hers. “I’m the last person who’s going to judge you, Summer. Just. Ask. Me.” I feel her trembling blood. I can see her shallow breaths. Be brave, Summer. Ask me, I plead with my eyes.

  Summer peels her eyes from my hand and turns her gaze up to mine. She squints her beautiful brown eyes and says, “The girl in the pictures…is she your girlfriend, Crew? Because right now I kind of want to smack the crap out of her.”

  6.

  Crew

  “You are jealous, aren’t you?” I ask, amused that she’d reduce herself to violence over a picture.

  “I’m not jealous at all,” Summer says with feigned composure, pulling her hand away from mine. It’s kind of cute.

  “Then why do you want to smack Adriana?” I ask, noticing the bitter taste suddenly flooding her mouth at the mention of Adriana’s name. She grabs her fork and cuts into her waffles with more haste than necessary. I do the same, waiting for her to finally be honest with me.

/>   After she picks up her knife and slices into the waffles as if she’s slicing into tough buffalo meat, she says, “I just can’t believe she would let you leave Europe and fly here just to sit and have waffles with someone you don’t even know.”

  “But I do know —”

  “You. Don’t,” she says with a sharp tone and a narrow eye. Dropping her silverware loudly to her plate, she lets out a huff, “Why are you even here, Crew?”

  What the—? Her words burn like a swarm of wasps that sting over and over with each breath.

  “What?” I ask, the pain swelling inside my chest.

  “Why are you here?” she enunciates each word as if speaking to a child. Why is she so mad?

  “Because I told you I would be here. And I keep my promises,” I bite out. “Why are you here?”

  She looks at me as if to say, You know why I’m here, you idiot. “I mean why are you here sitting and eating waffles with me? And why can’t you just ask me what you want to ask me?” I grit out, my offense morphing into anger.

  Chewing her bites with vigor, she lets out a loud exhale through her nose. After she swallows a big bite, she speaks quietly, “I did ask you, but you didn’t answer.” She lifts another bite into her mouth without breaking eye contact with me.

  I sit back in my booth and think for a moment about what the hell is happening. She’s jealous of Adriana, when she has no place to be. She wants to know more, but she’s not willing to give. She seemed happy to see me, yet she’s angry with me.

  I wonder if Summer’s middle name is “Contradiction.” Ridiculous.

  I clear my throat, “Adriana is my friend’s sister. She wanted to take a bunch of photos of us and post them to make her ex-girlfriend jealous over all the fun we were having. It wasn’t just me. She took pictures of everybody. But you only saw the ones in which she tagged me.” I let the reality of what I’ve said sink in for Summer. It obviously does, as the tension around her eyes immediately melts away.

  Summer sits back in her booth, wrestling with something in her mind. I can see her struggle — back and forth, she can’t decide what to land on. Her fingers are toying with something under the table, and I realize that she’s playing an invisible piano on her lap. After a minute, she stops, lets her shoulders fall, and finds my eyes. “I’m here…I’m here because of you,” she chokes out. “Because I feel like I can talk to you. You —” she rolls her eyes, “you make me forget that I’m supposed to be somebody. When all my life, I’ve wanted to be a nobody, you treat me like I’m a nobody. You don’t tiptoe around me, sugar-coat your words, and fawn over me. With you, I’m simply blending in. Being the same as everyone else. Being normal. Now I have school, classes I love, a few close friends, a new boyfriend, and a chance to be something different than what I’ve always been. I’m sitting here with you to tell you that what you said last year was right. They’re all right choices. I just had to own them — make them mine.”

  I’m so damn proud of her. But of all the things she just told me, I can’t stop focusing on one: she has a boyfriend. I fucking hate that.

  Summer

  12:42am

  “Is that what you didn’t want to tell me — that you had a boyfriend?” he asks me, tilting his head to the side. Looking at me under hooded eyes, Crew makes me feel like I’m at a confessional, like having a boyfriend is suddenly wrong.

  “Yes,” I answer immediately, and it seems to pacify whatever trace of anger I just caught a glimpse of from his face. I’m trying to get better at having real relationships, and relationships start with honesty. Or at least I think they do.

  I didn’t want to tell Crew about Goodwin. Because I didn’t want our meeting to somehow be wrong. I didn’t want to talk myself out of meeting with Crew and justify it with Goodwin. I wanted to meet Crew. I wanted to talk and have waffles with him. I wanted tonight to happen.

  But I don’t want this to feel wrong. Because sitting with Crew feels a lot more right than a little wrong.

  “Tell me about him,” he leans forward and eats more of his waffles, surprising me. The nervous jitters are just now fading away. Maybe honesty is like magic. Maybe it makes all the bullshit disappear.

  “His name is Goodwin,” I continue between bites. “He’s nice. And funny. And he plays the saxophone.” I ignore Lily’s voice in my head that once advised me, Never trust a boy who plays brass. “I like him.” I shrug. What else is there to say?

  Crew smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He knows there’s more. “He knows who I am and what I do, but he doesn’t take me too seriously. He’s kind of a goofball.”

  “Is that why you’re with him, Summer? Because he makes you laugh?” he asks with a voice that gives me chills.

  “He makes me laugh. He understands my passion for piano. But —” I hesitate finishing my thought. But, honesty. “He’s not a very sympathetic person.”

  Crew furrows his brow, trying to understand my point. “Like, he said I was crazy to fly to Austin for one day.”

  “Did he know why you were flying here?” he asks me, furrowing his brow.

  I nod my head, loving the fact that Crew doesn’t like Goodwin. Jealousy looks good on him.

  “Did it bother you that he knew and gave you crap for it anyway?”

  “Yes, it did,” I reply. “But he’s not a bad person. He’s just —. He doesn’t understand.”

  I see Crew’s shoulders slump down, like he was holding his breath. “Anyone can make you laugh, Summer. It’s what they do when things are hard that counts.”

  In that moment, I decide not to tell Crew that I asked Goodwin to come with me to Austin, and he blew me off. He has no empathy. Plus, he treats his mother like crap.

  “So, why are you with him?” Crew asks me, stirring me from my train of thought.

  “Because…he’s funny?” I joke. Crew smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

  He takes a few bites, sitting quietly and contemplative, letting my excuse hang in the air between us. I take the moment to try the blueberry syrup. I pour it on the side of my waffles, cut into a piece, and dip it in the syrup. Crew watches me the whole time, smiling over his bites.

  Delicious.

  I smile over my bite, eager for more. He simply raises his brows to silently say, I told you so.

  While I’m chewing, Crew leans back. “I’ve been living in Italy for a year now, traveling to take photos for a book I’d like to create. It’s a bare-bones, no filter kind of realism. Real photos of real people and real places untouched by editing software.” He wipes his mouth with his napkin. “I’ve seen a lot. Homeless people, families in distress, hungry children, fathers happily playing soccer with their kids, couples being in love, mothers fighting with mothers. The whole spectrum. Is any of what I saw real? Are the beggars really poor? Are the mothers really angry? Are the fathers really happy? Who knows. But in the moments, it’s all real. Life is made up of those little moments. They define us. They shape us. Good or bad, they’re the real parts of real moments.” Crew leans forward, as if he’s telling me a secret. At one o’clock in the morning. In an empty restaurant. “We all end up in the same place when time runs out. We shouldn’t be our own afterthought. It’s up to us to choose how to live right now — whether we want to have fun and eat banana waffles or struggle to find meaning in a meaningless relationship. For me, there is no time for anything that isn’t worth my time. Time is precious.”

  Time is precious.

  We said that to each other last year.

  Time is precious. They’re all the right choices. We all end up dead.

  “That’s why I’m here, Summer. I’m here because I’m promised you I would be. You’re worth my time to be here.” He pauses a moment and suspends the air between us. “It’s worth my time to make you feel like a nobody.”

  Wow. He’s really good at making me feel like a nobody. Because when he was speaking right then and there, all I could think about was how I want to keep feeling like a nobody. With him. Those little moments a
re nobody’s and everybody’s moments.

  Not everyone has huge defining moments that started when they were minutes old. Not everyone has had to make enormous sacrifices at the age of 7 years old in order to accomplish something bigger. Not everyone has carried the weight of each and every single decision to make sure it’s propriety isn’t compromised. Those are the moments of a person destined to be a somebody.

  I’ve been a somebody. I need a break.

  I put down my fork and knife and wipe my mouth with my napkin. “I think if my father heard you say that he might punch you in the throat.”

  Crew chuckles. “He sounds like a wise man. I’d do exactly the same if I weren’t the one saying it. But in my defense, you said it first.” He winks and makes my heart stammer.

  “What would he say about your boyfriend?” he asks me. I wonder if he’s actually curious what my father would say, or is he wondering what I really think of Goodwin.

  Either way, I know the unequivocal answer. “He would call him a waste of my time.” I laugh under my breath. “But then again, according to him, everything that didn’t propel my career was a waste of my time.” I think of the time I wanted to learn to ride a bike. My father negotiated the terms by asking me to play him my favorite concerto. Him teaching me to pedal for the first time was worth the 28 minutes to finish the song. “My father was always a few steps ahead of me that way. It’s like he could see the future. He knew what was wasteful and what was worth paying extra attention to. He taught me to weigh situations individually and carefully. Did I really want to try out for the volleyball team, or did I want to avoid the risk of breaking my wrist and affecting my ability to play? Should I take AP Physics, or is that time better spent studying modern composers? Can I be friends with the class clown, or will that look bad for my image?”

  Crew nods his head, understanding more where I come from. “Did he really deter you from being friends with the class clown?”

  “Oh, we were best friends growing up. But Paul became difficult when his parents divorced, and he expressed his disapproval by acting out in class. He was expelled several times. It was better that we drifted apart.” I shrug.