Letting Go (18 page)

“I can’t forget him, Chloe. I dream about him, I think about him while having lunch with Dad, I see him everywhere, I play out conversations with him in my head ...”

“That bad, huh
? Or should I say, he was that good?” Chloe grinned.

Isabelle
leaned her forehead on the cold table in front of her. “That good and better,” she whined.

“Mmm, I envy you. But also not.”

“What would you do in my place?”

“I’d buy sexy lingerie, a new dress, get pimped up and g
o to his place. I’d tell him I want more of what he’s got to offer if he’s up for it. He wouldn’t be able to say no to that.” She made a sip while Isabelle stared at her. “Oh, did I mention—the dress would have Cleavage with a capital C.”

“You’re serious?”

“Isabelle, men can be complex, smart, gentle, fun, good, what have you. But all that can be reduced to one common denominator—lust. It works. Every. Single. Time.”

“It’s so ... shallow.”

“Love fact number one: first it has to be shallow for it to become deep. First, you go to the kiddy pool. When you learn to swim, you can dive into the deep end.”

Isabelle
thought about it, turning Chloe’s words around in her mind. “God, you
are
the smart one, you know that?”

Chloe
beamed her a sweet smile. “You better say that, I’m your best friend. Besides, that’s my excuse for staying in the shallow part. For now, anyway. I’m still improving the strokes.”

After a moment,
Chloe said excited, “I can make you a dress to seduce Harper.”

“That
sounds so ... dirty,” Isabelle complained.

“In all the years I’ve known you, I never knew you were such a prude. Now, for
Jamie that might have worked, but with Harper ...” Chloe’s voice made it clear that Harper would require a different tactic. Isabelle wasn’t certain she was ready for all this.

“Have I told you M
om’s been seeing someone?” Chloe said all of a sudden, changing the topic before Isabelle could say anything.

“No, you haven’t. Is it serious?”

“They’ve been on a few dates. She wants it to be serious, I think.”

“You sound … worried? Don’t you like him?”

“Oh, he’s okay, from what I could tell. I only saw him twice for about ten minutes. But Mom’s obsessed with the thought of making it work this time.”

Isabelle was surprised to see
Chloe so anxious. Her mother had dated two or three men over the years, but they were all short-lasting romances.

“What do you mean, obsessed?”

“Eric—the guy she’s seeing, he is in finances. He’d this organized, tidy dude with a minute to minute schedule on his smart phone. And you know Mom … She will get all pimped up and ready for a meeting with her publisher and then realize it was scheduled a week ago.” Chloe rolled her eyes.

Isabelle knew what she was talking about. They’d been discussing such incidents ever since they’d first met in
first grade. They shared stories of how Isabelle marked dates in Dad’s agenda so he would pay bills on time and go to parent-teacher interviews at school, and Chloe taped large posters to Mom’s study room door to remind her of meetings with the publishers or convention dates. They laughed over these stories, poking fun at each other and their scatterbrained parents, but they never took their responsibilities lightly. It was one of the things they bonded over, the reason why they became such good friends. They could relate to each other, they had a lot in common.

Growing up,
Chloe compensated for having to be so organized and responsible by partying, casual relationships and yoga. For Isabelle, it was just who she became. She was a master planner, organizer, someone who didn’t leave a single detail to chance. She had never considered this as a drawback in her character. Until everyone started pointing it out lately.

“So she’s trying to be more organized,”
Chloe continued, interrupting Isabelle’s thoughts. “She’s really putting in an effort. It’s painful to watch her.”

“She must really like him
, then.”

“Yeah, I think she does. He does seem like a nice guy and like someone who could help her get her life back in order,”
Chloe agreed.

“Funny, I never considered her disorderly,” Isabelle said. “Must be because you
covered for her.”

“Oh, she’s unbelievable when she decides to make a mess,”
Chloe laughed. “I think her creativity is helping her with it. She didn’t used to be this bad when I was little, though.” Chloe sounded wistful. Isabelle took hold of her hand, squeezing it warmly.

“Years back she was still capable of taking me to the zoo during actual opening hours and to kindergarten on time. I think it might be my fault that she became so disorganized because I took too good care of her, managed her schedules, helped her with the bills, cooked lunch at an appropriate time instead of nine in the morning
as she would’ve.” Chloe shrugged, her expression wavered between being amused and sad. “You know what it’s like.”

Isabelle nodded. “I’m sure she’d be a bigger mess without you, C.”

“Maybe. But maybe she gave up at being tidier and organized because she could rely on me. So she thought she didn’t have to do any of the stuff that I did for her. It suited her, for sure. She could spend all her days in her room, creating, illustrating, being her chaotic self.”

They sat for a few moments, sipping coffee, each pondering the things
Chloe just said, thinking about how their lives could have been different. Isabelle often wondered about that. What if Mom had never fallen ill? What would her family be like then? She might even have a brother or sister. She knew things would have been different but she was unable to envision how. Her father was the only family that felt normal to her.

Chloe
, however, never knew her father. Her mother had wanted a child, so she had one. Or so she told Chloe when she asked her. When she was twelve, Chloe went through all of Mom’s old photos from college, looking for a guy that shared her features. Mom found her amidst the scattered photos, but when Chloe asked her, she told her he wasn’t one of the students. Chloe claimed that by the way she’d said it, it must’ve been one of the professors. But she never asked her again or tried to find out. She accepted that it was just her and Mom. Besides, Isabelle was like a sister, part of the family, too. That was all she needed, Chloe claimed.

“Anyway,”
Chloe said now, patting Isabelle’s hand, looking at her in a way that made Isabelle anticipate something she wouldn’t like. Chloe always had a special look in her eyes whenever she wanted Isabelle to do something against her will or told her something she knew she wouldn’t appreciate. Isabelle had learnt to interpret it and to prepare herself.

“We got way off topic there,”
Chloe chuckled. “What I meant to say was that you are the opposite of Mom.”

“What do you mean?”

“She needs to get her life in order for a guy, and you need to do the opposite.”

“Hm. You want me to make a m
ess of my life? Don’t you think I’ve been pretty successful at that?” Isabelle asked only half joking.

Chloe
laughed. “Yeah, you have. But I didn’t mean you should be messier. You could let go once in a while, though.”

“I let go for a minute and look where that got me,” Isabelle complained.

“A minute? The way you told it, that kissing session lasted a lot longer,” Chloe grinned and then went on without letting Isabelle speak. “Maybe this isn’t such a bad situation as you think,” Chloe said.

“How could it not be? Harper doesn’t give a
damn, and Jamie’s so pissed at me he ignores me whenever we pass each other in the hallways at school.”

“Give Jamie some time, Izzy. He’ll come around.”

“What if he won’t?”

“He will.”

Chloe stared at her with a quizzical look in her eyes. “I wonder, though …” she started.

“What?”

“You don’t seem too intent on getting him back as something more than a friend?” Chloe said.

Isabelle shrugged. “I don’t know, I think that’s over. We’ve grown apart. I mean, we didn’t even discuss what we’d do if I get accepted to Yale and he goes to California.”

“I see.”

“But I’d still want us to be friends. We’d be good together as friends.”

“Trust me, you will be friends again, Izzy. Harper on the other hand …”

“He thinks I’m a prude, too,”
Isabelle grimaced, remembering Chloe’s earlier comment.

“Who?
Harper?”

When
Isabelle nodded, Chloe laughed like all this was some kind of a joke.

“It’s not that funny.”

“No, you’re right, I’m sorry,” Chloe tried to keep her face straight. “I bet he’s itching to pull you to the wild side, though.”

“Right now, I’m not even sure I ever cross his mind at all.”

“I know you do, Isabelle. He wouldn’t have asked you not to tell Jamie, otherwise, would he? He was trying to keep you two together. Maybe he thought that you wanted Jamie more than him.”

“Or maybe he was afraid
Jamie would kick his ass when he found out.”

Chloe
leaned back in her chair, looking serious. Seeing her expression made Isabelle despair. What if she was right and Chloe was wrong?

****

While the situation with Harper seemed dismal, Isabelle’s chances of being friends with Jamie again improved the last week of school when she ran into him as she was passing his locker.

“Hey you,”
Jamie said.

She looked around, thinking he must’ve greeted someone behind her. But there was no one there.

“Hey,” she said.

“You coming to Dave’s end of the year party tomorrow?”

She didn’t even know Dave all that well, but everyone was invited. She considered going, until Dad announced that his sister would be in town and that he’d love if she could help him prepare dinner for the three of them because he was an even more hopeless cook than she was. Well, at first, he asked her to do it herself, but she insisted he cook it and that she’d help. After a bit of cajoling, he agreed. But that didn’t mean she could desert him for a party. She wasn’t sure she’d still have a house to return to afterwards as he might burn it down in the process of grilling steaks.

“Sorry, we’re having a family dinner.”

A
n intense longing filled her as she wished Harper would cook for her again. She’d forgotten about Mom’s dish until now. She would never taste it again, she reminded herself, and her eyes began to sting at the thought. Embarrassed, she blinked.

Jamie
smiled, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Too bad. We’ll catch up some other time, then.”

“Sure.”

He took his bag out of the locker and started down the hallway.

“Jamie?”

His
blue sneakers screeched on the linoleum when he turned. “Yeah?”

“Are we okay?” She gestured between them.

He looked at her thoughtfully, then nodded. “Sure. Friends?”

She thought she must’ve looked ridiculous with the wide
grin on her lips. “Friends.”

“See ya.”

She’d wanted to ask about Harper, but that would be pushing it. Besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

****

Isabelle couldn’t believe she graduated; it felt like she had started high school only last month. So much had happened in the past few years, but time flew by. She felt a faint regret that it was all over. She didn’t know yet which colleges all her friends had applied to, but regardless of their choices, they would go their separate ways. She would only see Chloe during vacations, if at all. That saddened her.

God
knew when she would next see Jamie or Harper if she hadn’t had a couple of Jamie’s books to return. She missed the brothers, missed having them around at all times, their bantering, their humor, Jamie’s kindness and Harper’s teasing. Her life felt emptier without them.

S
he used the books as an excuse to see them one last time. To confirm that she and Jamie were friends again, but mostly to see Harper. See his dark eyes, those lips that kissed her so longingly. She needed closure, a confirmation that it was just that one kiss and nothing more. She knew it would hurt, but at least then she could stop wondering.

It was
a hot late afternoon when she grabbed the books and got in her car. Her camisole stuck to her sweaty back and when she turned on the AC, she shivered in the coolness of the car fans. The ride to their bungalow was short; they lived in the eastern suburbs of the town. The white house stood at the end of their street, at the edge of the meadow spreading out from their backyard.

Her finger trembled as she pushed the bell
. She couldn’t stand still while she waited. Usually it was Jamie who opened the door, Harper never bothered if he wasn’t expecting someone.