But now her boyfriend was stranded overseas, and her mother had just died, and everything was a mess.
And mostly, he was there, and Luke wasn’t.
Neither said a word as they walked toward each other, but Greta remembers, in the fog of grief and exhaustion and shock, thinking how inevitable it felt right then. There was a moment to tell him about Luke—a moment to consider Luke, period—and then that moment passed, and Jason’s arms were around her, and there was nothing more to be done about it.
Afterward, they lay in her old twin bed and stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars. Jason let his head fall to the side, peering at her childhood bookshelf. He reached over to pull out a fraying paperback, and she put a hand on his arm.
“What?” he said, turning back to her with a lazy smile. “You worried I’m gonna find your diary? I bet it says ‘Greta Foster’ all over it.”
She rolled her eyes. “You wish.”
“Oh, come on,” he teased. He had a new haircut, faded on the sides, that made him look younger, and something about seeing him here in her childhood bed—with that self-assured grin and those dimples that used to make her go wobbly—made her feel like time was elastic, like all her teenage fantasies were suddenly coming true. He tickled her hip, and she shivered. There was laughter in his voice when he whispered in her ear: “You wanted to marry me from the day the moving truck rolled up. Admit it.”
Greta shook her head. “No way.”
“Admit it.”
“Fine,” she said with a smile, relenting. “Maybe a little. But then I grew up.”
He dropped his head back onto the pillow, looking up at the stars with a thoughtful expression. “Do you ever wonder where we’d be if…”
“What?”
“If we’d gotten together for real.”
Greta looked over at him, too surprised to answer.
“Like, would we have ended up back here, do you think?”
“In Columbus?” she said. “No way.”
He smiled. “I don’t know. Sometimes I can see it. A little house in the neighborhood. Kids playing tag until dark, the way we always did. Family dinners. Barbecues out back. The whole deal.”
She knew he was just musing, that on this of all weekends, the air was thick with nostalgia. But it was still jarring to hear. Jason was the only person Greta knew who had been equally anxious to get away from this place, this kind of life. In high school, he’d thrown himself into his work with a single-minded determination that had eventually carried him to Columbia, where instead of taking a breath, he’d redoubled his efforts, graduating at the top of his class. Later, he became the first Black CFO at his hedge fund, a position he’d worked twice as hard as his colleagues to get, all those smug white guys whose dads were clients or who played golf with people who were. But it wasn’t just a job to him. And New York wasn’t just a place to live. They were dreams he’d dreamed on the front stoop of the small yellow house next door to where they were lying in bed right now. And he’d gone and made them real.
“You would never leave the city,” Greta said, still trying to get her head around the idea of it. “Would you?”
His brown eyes were intent on hers. “Maybe under the right circumstances,” he said. “What about you?”
“I don’t know,” she told him, unsure whether they were talking about geography or something more. Her mind was a muddle, with the reception carrying on below and the plastic stars glowing above. She felt like kissing him and she felt like running away. She felt like crying and she felt like escaping. She didn’t know what she felt. She hardly ever did.
“We should probably get back,” she said eventually, and he looked disappointed but rose up onto his elbows anyway.
“You’re probably right,” he said with a nod.
They made their way downstairs one at a time, after smoothing shirts and straightening hair and unmussing everything that had been mussed. Greta was only a few steps into the kitchen when her dad waved her over. He was already talking to Jason, who gave her a knowing smile.
“Did you see who’s here?” Conrad asked, clapping Jason on the shoulder. In only a few days without her mom, he already looked different—pale and grizzled—but she could tell he was trying to make an effort, to fill the role that Helen usually did when they had people over. “So nice of you to come in for this, son. I know it would’ve meant a lot to her.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it,” Jason said with a solemn nod. “She was one of my favorite people.”