Practically Ever After Read online

  I tried to speak, but I couldn’t pull in enough air to make a sound, lead filling my lungs.

  Leia looked away from me before adding, “Not forever, but I think we both need a few weeks to get back to being unstressed. Alone.”

  “I—” my voice wouldn’t go any louder than a whisper and I tried again, pushing against the cold that pulsed through my body—a definite symptom of shock, the semi-functional part of my brain unhelpfully pointed out. “I don’t know what to do to fix this.”

  Leia shook her head and “Maybe you need to stop thinking of us as a thing or an equation or a machine that you can schedule and calculate into perfection,” she said, her words biting hard. She took a deep breath, ran her hand across her eyes and said, “I’m sorry, that was unfair.” She stood and paused mid-step without turning back to face me, her voice shaky and teary as she said, “I just need time. Bye, Grace.”

  Before I could even form the words, “I’m sorry,” she was already out of sight.

  A damp chill filled the air as the sun started to set and I tried to ignore it as it soaked into my clothes and hair, instead curling my arms around my legs and dropping my chin to my knees as I stared out over the lake. I hadn’t moved from my spot since Leia left and wasn’t ready to head inside and back to being perfect, unflustered Grace who always said the right thing and always knew how to deal with everything. I didn’t know how to deal with this. There wasn’t a handbook or a perfect equation to help me figure out how to fix something this big, how to take back control of the situation. Last time, I’d run to Aunt Drina because she knew everything, but I wasn’t that little girl whose entire world revolved around a dance school and her favorite aunt anymore.

  I didn’t even know how to keep from feeling like I was just on the edge of choking on my own feelings, suffocating until I became a shell, a wili from the ballet Giselle, ghosts of girls who died from heartbreak, wandering around this yard among the fireflies and mist for the rest of my existence. And through it all, a thread of common sense rose up, making me annoyed at my own dramatics. I wiped my runny nose on my sleeve and hugged my legs tighter to myself. I just needed a few more minutes to pull myself together, just a few minutes, and then I’d be able to sit down and figure this out with a clear brain.

  My phone ringing broke me out of my see-saw of competing thoughts and I quickly pulled it out of my pocket, the tiny ember of hope in my chest extinguishing when I saw Em’s name on the screen. I intellectually knew it wasn’t Leia—the ringtone hadn’t been right—but that hadn’t stopped my stupid, illogical heart from thinking otherwise. I inhaled, steadying and smoothing my shaking breaths before finally sucking up the courage to pick up.

  “Hey, what’s up?” I said, trying my best to sound upbeat.

  “Hi, Alec and I were talking about the donations for the Noelle’s Song raffle we’re going to do at the farmers market and I was wondering if you heard—” Em stopped abruptly, her words hanging in the air, before saying in a concerned tone, “Grace, what’s wrong?” Before I could respond, she added, “and don’t say nothing, because I can hear it in your voice. Something’s up.”

  I tried to force my voice to sound just a bit lighter. “It’s not important.” I really didn’t need Em, of all people, trying to sweep in and dissect my relationship problems.

  “Bull,” she said in a rare, forceful tone. “You can’t play that ‘I’m an emotionless robot’ act with me. I have a sixth sense for these things, you know. Grace—” her voice then grew softer, “—what happened?”

  “Leia and I just had a fight and I think…” I took a deep breath to stop my voice from shaking and pushed through, “I think Leia asked for a pause.” The inexactness in that sentence bugged me and I corrected myself. “Not think, I know she asked for a pause.”

  “No.” She coughed as if trying to cover up the shock in her voice and, in a smoother tone, asked, “Pause as in pause or pause as in a breakup without having to say ‘breakup?’”

  I stared at the screen in horror. “I didn’t know that was a thing.” Great, an all-new worry to add to my list of problems.

  Em was quick to clear her throat and say, “It’s not. I mean, I’m sure it’s not a thing for you and Leia. In fact, I’m positive. People go on breaks all the time and get back together again stronger than before.” Rather than continue stumbling over herself in a spiral of bad platitudes, she went silent for a beat, then said, “Oh, Grace, I’m sorry. How are you feeling?”

  For a self-proclaimed relationship expert, that was a ridiculous question. “Awful? How else do you want me to feel?”

  “I don’t know. Some people feel relieved, others get mad or sad…” she drifted off, leaving an opening for me to fill in the blanks.

  I wasn’t the bare-my-feelings-to-the-world type, and Em should have known that. Still, something about her tone made me want to say something. I dug my toes into the soil, the cold sand grating against my skin. “How about this? My stupid heart keeps telling me to fix this with Leia while my brain says maybe I should let it happen because it makes sense.”

  “What?” I hadn’t heard Em sound that shocked in a while.

  I shut my eyes, regret burning me for what had just come out of my mouth. “Look, what’s been going on with me and Leia is hard to explain.”

  Em made a disbelieving sound. “Aren’t you the one always telling the rest of us how Einstein said, ‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it enough?’”

  This was a mistake. I pulled myself to standing, shoving aside the fog that had been threatening to choke me, and tried to center my brain around something a bit more concrete than talking about feelings and things I couldn’t fix. “Okay, Einstein, enough about me. You were calling about the raffle baskets for Noelle’s Song? Sorry, I have my list of stores I think will donate things back at my desk, if you give me a minute to—”

  She didn’t let it go. I shouldn’t have expected anything less of Em. “Grace,” she said, firmly, “we were talking about you and Leia. You’re really good at dishing out relationship advice to the rest of us, but you can’t take talking about your own problems?”

  I felt my throat tighten again and I fought it back, throwing as much calm into my tone as I could. “The raffle is important and I know you need to get it done, so I’ll worry about Leia later.”

  That earned me a disbelieving “pfft” from Em. “You do realize you’re trying to stick things in neat little boxes and life’s not like that.”

  “And you have to realize that I need to compartmentalize, otherwise, everything just falls apart.”

  Another “pfft” followed by a muttered curse. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” I said into the phone, feeling my hand start to shake as the words tumbled out of me. “Leia and I might be breaking up, my parents are fighting all the time, my final project is getting way bigger than I planned, I’m trying to get to graduation in one piece, I can’t even eat one stupid thing without getting sick, and I need to help with things like the raffle and dance. How would you handle it? Just mush it all together and pretend everything is okay?” I realized I was on the verge of yelling and tried to steady and calm my voice. “I can’t let one part of my life screw up the others.”

  “The eff you can.” Em said. “Nobody can just randomly turn off different parts of their lives. You’re not superhuman.”

  “No, but I can focus on the things I need to get through without being distracted by other things. Be as perfect as possible in the things I can control.” I felt my spine straighten up at those words, like I could pull myself up just by repeating that sentence.

  “Perfect is for Photogram posts. No one has a perfect life, they just pretend like the rest of us.”

  I stared at the phone for a second, feeling like I’d just stepped into some sort of inspirational self-help talk. “I really don’t know why I dumped this on you.”

  “Because I’m the love expert? Look, I can help you fix this, you know.” />
  Now I understood why Leia always asked me to just listen and try not to fix things. “Please, no, we need to work it out on our own. She asked for time.” Plus, I added without saying out loud, I knew what Em’s fixes usually entailed and I already had enough chaos in my life at the moment.

  “Are you sure? I could call her and—”

  Before she could start weaving one of her elaborate plans and tangling me and Leia into it, I cut her off and said, “Positive, Em. Leave it alone.”

  “Okay,” she said, sounding a little skeptical, but at least appearing to finally listen to my wishes. “Fine, but I’m here if you need me. I’ll even get Alec to drive me over if you realize you need a hug.”

  I tried my hardest to ignore the part of me that really wanted to take her up on that offer and instead, said, “Thanks. Now, about the raffle?”

  “Oh, yeah. It was about the cheese shop in Millbrook where you said your mom knew the owner? Any chance she was able to talk to them yet?”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, glad I could go back to something I could control. “Yup. He sent a list of what he can give us. Just give me a minute and I’ll pull it up.” I turned towards the house, towards my planner and notes and problems that were easy to calculate and solve.

  I’d worry about Leia later.

  Chapter 21

  I stared down at the list I’d made at 3 in the morning, when sleep was impossible because of the spiraling thoughts and nervous energy that buzzed through me like a storm. Thoughts of the future, of Leia meeting someone cuter, a liberal arts major with a matching passion for teaching little kids, haunted me. It was easy to imagine myself getting turkey dumped—the national statistics I’d found online were pretty damning for the survival of our relationship—then failing my first semester exams, spiraling into me getting kicked out of the engineering school and into a lower-earning major. All my plans falling apart like a game of Jenga when the person pulling the block didn’t understand basic structural requirements.

  It was so clear on paper. A geometric if-then logic exercise that always came to the same answer. Small fights led to big fights and big fights lead to breakups. And breakups when the two people were going to be long distance from each other had a statistical chance of nearly zero of unbreaking up. If I couldn’t fix this, there was only one logical next step to this word problem. And I didn’t know how.

  My list haunted me Monday morning as I showered and blew out my hair into the perfectly straight style I always wore. Over again as I tried to line my eyes with a shaking hand I blamed on not enough sleep before I switched to a pencil liner that would be a lot more forgiving than the gel pot and brush. Again as I picked out my outfit for the day, jeans and a bright pink tank that would just barely show through my thin black cashmere sweater. People thought girls who liked girls couldn’t be into fashion. I bit back a wild laugh at that thought and pulled on a pair of designer flats I’d gotten at a sample sale in New York. If that fashion thing was true, I wouldn’t feel like someone was slowly choking me to death.

  I met my eyes in the mirror, running a quick assessment of my whole look. Grace Correa, practically perfect in every way.

  Right.

  Chapter 22

  “Can you explain to me why you need water ice so badly?”

  “Osoba made us run through the graduation march, like, forty million times until we got it perfect.” Em said, pushing open both of double doors with each hand. “I swear, it’s going to start playing and I’m going to have flashbacks at my own graduation.”

  Phoebe caught one of the doors before it shut in her face and shook her head. “You’re exaggerating. It wasn’t that bad.”

  “You’re right. It was only thirty-nine million times,” Em said with an exaggerated eye roll. “I gave her an extra million for all the times she made the french horns re-tune.”

  The entire part about having to play the graduation march just didn’t compute. I looked from Em to Phoebe and back. “You don’t have to play at graduation, do you?”

  “Oh, hell, no.” Em gestured as if she were about to fling her flute case into the parking lot.

  “It’s for the class participation grade.” Phoebe took the flute case from Em, then bumped her with her shoulder. “And we’re supposed to be musical role models for all the people in the classes below us, Em.”

  “And that,” Em said directly to me, “is why I need water ice.”

  “Hey, I’ll take any excuse to go to Marranos.” Alec came out of nowhere and pushed between Em and me. “Just listening to Em whine about having flashbacks is going to give me flashbacks.”

  I ignored him and turned my carefully cultivated raised eyebrow look at Em. “So, you’re just being dramatic.”

  “And that surprises you?” Phoebe asked, before pointing towards the busses. “I’d love to come along, but I have to work this afternoon.” She waved over her shoulder as she walked away and added, “Text me later, okay?”

  “Have fun yarning, sell lots of wool,” Em said, before turning back to me with a perfect imitation of my expression. “I’m not being dramatic. But I am concerned for the state of my soul in the dictatorship that is orchestra.”

  “That starship sailed a long time ago,” Alec said with a cough to cover up his laugh.

  Em narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips at Alec. “Please. You’re one to talk.” She then turned her attention to me. “So, Marranos? You, me, Alec, and massive amounts of sugar?”

  I thought about my schedule and lamented the lab time I’d be missing to work on the finite element analysis for my project. “You know I can’t eat half the stuff there right now because of the lactose and fructose and—”

  Em dug in her backpack, pulled out a little pill blister pack, and waved it at me. “I brought lactase tablets. No excuses now. You’ll be fine.” She reached out, grabbed both of our sleeves, and started pulling us in the direction of Alec’s car. “C’mon. You know the place fills up on Wednesdays. We’ll never get a table if you keep arguing, and I need some frozen custard and gummy bears.”

  “I thought it was water ice.”

  “Dealing with the two of you just got it upgraded to frozen custard if I want to restore my sanity.”

  Just like Em had predicted, Marranos was packed, even more so than usual. I squeezed past two guys in Haddontowne Academy uniforms on my way to the counter and threw a confused look over my shoulder at Em.

  She didn’t loosen her grip on my sleeve and the front of Alec’s shirt as she wiggled through the crowd. “They had senior cut day today.” She eyed one of the boys appreciatively. “These uniformed hotties are probably the senior delinquents.”

  “Or came to hang out with the delinquents after class,” Alec pointed out. “You know, ‘cause it’s after school. And the people who cut probably didn’t wear their uniforms?”

  “Don’t kill my fantasy, Kohen.” Em grabbed my shoulders and pointed me towards the row of four tables that made up the bulk of Marranos’ indoor seating. “Uniforms automatically equal hotness. I’m sure Grace agrees with me on that.”

  “Huh?” Suddenly, a familiar figure with short black hair with a blue streak came into focus. Even tiny, seated at one of the tables, dressed identically to most of the other girls, and looking down at her phone, Leia stood out in the crowd. My insides turned to ice and it was like the norovirus and a heart attack decided to hit me at the same time. My brain took an extra second to communicate to my legs, but when it did, I ground to a halt.

  Em tripped the second I stopped, crashing into my back. “Oh, look who’s here,” she said in a deceptively innocent tone, her words muffled as she talked into my shirt. She might have been a good actress, but I’d had years of perfecting my Em b.s.-meter.

  “Em,” I warned in a low voice.

  One look at my face and she dropped the act. “Fine, since you didn’t want to elaborate, Phoebe got the details from Leia and told me. It’s definitely fixable, so I invited Leia out for water ice. I thought y
ou two could talk,” she said. “Alec and I can give you some privacy if you want.”

  “Oh, hell no.” I turned on my heel and prayed Leia wouldn’t look up. This time, I was the one grabbing Alec by the shirt. “C’mon, Alec. Let’s go. Em, outside. Now.”

  “Grace, you really need to stay and hear me out.” Em followed me back out into the parking lot. “I thought if you guys just had a chance to actually listen to each other, you’d fix this.”

  “This isn’t how you fix things. Leia asked for some time and I’m not just going to waltz in and invade her space.” I didn’t even look back at her. At that moment, my hands were itching to reach out and strangle Em, even though I should have expected something like this from her. “And you have no right to try to trick me or to get in the middle of this. It’s none of your business.”

  “It is my business because I care about you and Leia.” Em came around me, blocking my way. “I know you can make it work if you just bothered to talk to each other.”

  “Just. Don’t.” I dodged around her with years of cheer and dance reflexes and headed straight for Alec’s car. For his part, Alec just followed and watched us with a neutral expression.

  “But—”

  I resisted the urge to turn around and do the whole clichéd finger to the chest thing. “I know you’re used to bossing everyone around and people listening to you, but I’m not one of those people. Stay the hell out of my relationships.”

  “You’re throwing away the best thing that ever happened to you. People would kill for a relationship like yours and Leia’s. You’re being stubborn.”

  Her statement made me stumble, but I covered it up with a sharp 180-degree pivot. If I were a cat, I knew I’d be hissing my next words. “And you’re being a meddling pain who doesn’t know when her advice isn’t wanted.”

  “Fine. If you don’t want my advice, don’t take it. Keep screwing up your life. I don’t care anymore.” One look at the hint of hurt that flashed across Em’s pinched and angry features, though, and I had to resist the urge to take back everything I’d said. Instead, I looked over at my shoulder to see if Alec was still following. “Can you give me a ride back to my car?”