His Final Wish Said He Settled for Me, So Reborn, I Left novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Reply Due Friday

Leah mails her acceptance to the Cincinnati vet tech program, quits, and shuts Calvin's flowers out in public.

Norma Reeve held my hands one second too long.

Then she patted them and let go.

"I'll let you work, dear," she said. "Calvin never stops talking about this place."

She went out smiling, and the bell jingled behind her.

I stood there with my palms still warm from her skin.

"Okay," Bridget said at my shoulder. "I'm going to need the whole story."

"Tonight," I said. "I promise."

I kept the promise at eleven o'clock, on our secondhand couch, with a bag of chips between us.

Bridget listened with her feet tucked under her.

I didn't tell her about the other life, because nobody on earth would have believed it.

I told her what I could say out loud.

"I'm not going to see him again," I said. "And I'm leaving Dayton."

"Because a cute guy asked you out?"

"Because of how it ends."

Bridget put down her chip.

"You've known him one afternoon."

"I know," I said.

"That's not a reason, Leah."

"It's the only one I have."

She studied me for a long moment.

Bridget could be loud, but she was never stupid.

"Is this about the shoebox?" she asked.

I looked up.

She meant the green shoebox under my bed.

Inside it was a creased envelope with a Cincinnati postmark, which I had never answered.

"You know about that?"

"You cried over it in April," she said. "I'm a bad sleeper, not a deaf one."

I pulled the shoebox out and opened the lid.

Tri-State Community College, Veterinary Technician Program.

Dear Ms. Ellinghaus, we are pleased to offer you a place in the fall cohort.

Please confirm your acceptance by Friday.

I remembered that Friday, because it was the week I had said yes to Calvin instead.

I had told myself the school was a someday thing.

I had waited on someday for fourteen years, and then I had died of it, a little at a time.

"I want to be a vet tech," I said. "I always wanted to. I was scared."

"Of what?"

"Of being alone, I guess."

Bridget stared at me, then burst out laughing.

"You're twenty-three, with a bad apartment and a roommate who loves you. You're the least alone person I know."

My eyes stung.

"Then you'll help me write the reply," I said.

She was already looking for a pen.

We wrote it at the kitchen table in blue ink.

I signed my name so hard it dented the paper.

At six a.m. I walked it to the mailbox on Fifth Street myself.

I listened to the metal flap clang, and my whole body felt lighter.

Then I went to work and handed the owner a notice, two weeks, dated and signed.

"Cincinnati," I told him. "Vet school. I'll finish my shifts."

He read it twice and nodded.

"About time," he said gruffly. "You've been too good for this counter since you were nineteen."

Nobody had ever said that to me before.

I almost cried into the coffee machine.

The lunch rush came and went.

Calvin was not in it.

That should have been a relief, but it only made me nervous.

At nine at night, the diner was almost empty, and I was flipping the sign to CLOSED.

The door opened before I reached it.

Calvin stood on the step holding a bunch of pink roses wrapped in cellophane.

His mother's sedan idled across the street.

"Hi," he said, half rueful, half charming. "I wanted to try again."

"Calvin."

"I was rude yesterday. I pushed. I'm sorry."

He held out the flowers.

"Have dinner with me, Friday. Just one dinner. If you hate it, I'll never ask again."

He sounded sincere.

That was the thing about Calvin.

He was always sincere, and it was never enough to stop him.

Two late customers at the counter turned their heads.

Bridget stood by the dish station, pretending to count forks.

I took a breath.

"Calvin, thank you for the flowers. But I won't be having dinner with you, Friday or any other day."

"Can I ask why?"

"You can."

"Why?"

I held his gaze.

"Because I'd say yes," I said. "And I know where that goes."

He gave a short, baffled laugh.

"You can't know where that goes. We haven't gone anywhere."

"That's right. And we won't."

His smile fell off his face.

The two customers looked down at their plates.

"Did somebody say something about me?" he asked. "Did I do something to you?"

"No," I said. "You haven't done a single thing. That's what I'm telling you."

"Then I don't understand."

"You don't have to."

I took the roses from his hand, because it seemed cruel to leave him holding them.

I set them gently on the nearest table.

"Please go home, Calvin."

He did not move.

His face had gone pale in the yellow light of the door.

His hand rose to his chest, and he pressed two fingers flat against his breastbone, just below the collar.

He did it without thinking.

I had seen that gesture a thousand times at bedsides, in cars, and on the stairs of our home.

It always came before the worst nights.

I had thought of it as his nerves.

Now I knew it for what it was, a body asking for help.

And he was twenty-seven years old.

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