And the second is that Autumn is waiting for me. I cannot fail her. Until I have ended this relationship, we can’t really begin ours. I want to hold Autumn without guilt.
I have to do this, and I have to go home.
By the time the song ends, I’m driving again. I’m nearly to Sylvie’s modest two-bedroom ranch where we studied and made out and tried to make love a few times. She must have been waiting for me by the door because she’s dashing through the rain toward my car before I’ve parked in the driveway.
I unlock the passenger door, and before I know it, she’s in the car, closing her umbrella with a shake and shutting the door.
Sylvie.
She brushes her blond hair from her face and looks at me.
“You fucking asshole,” she says.
seventeen
Part of me had hoped that Sylvie also felt we were drifting apart and suspected something so that I didn’t completely blindside her, but I didn’t expect this.
We stare at each other with only the sound of the rain between us.
“What do you know?” I ask after a moment.
“Everything,” she says, which can’t be true. I didn’t even know everything until last night. And Jack wouldn’t have called her before I arrived.
“Like what?” I hadn’t known I could feel more guilty, but apparently there’s no end to that well.
“Are you kidding me?” Sylvie is as surprised as she is furious. “Every time you and Autumn went to Blockbuster this summer, I got at least two emails about it from people who saw you. You didn’t even try to hide it.”
“Until recently, we were only friends,” I begin to explain, but she’s right. It’s no defense.
“Shut up and drive somewhere,” Sylvie says. “I haven’t told my parents that you’re breaking up with me tonight. They think you have some romantic gesture planned. I needed to yell at you before I figure out how to disappoint them again.”
“They won’t be disappointed in you because of what I did, Sylvie,” I say.
Her seat belt clicks into place. “I’m not looking forward to explaining this to them, okay? But I have Dr. Giles for talking about my fear of disappointing authority figures. You don’t get to give me pep talks anymore. Not after the lies you’ve told me.”
“I–I—” I cannot say I never lied to her. I lied to her years ago when I told her that I wasn’t in love with Autumn anymore, and I lied by omission all summer.
I suggest we go somewhere that we can sit and talk, but she says she won’t be able to yell at me if we go to a coffee shop.
“Why don’t you focus on driving and listening, okay, Smith? Because I have a list of questions I need you to answer.”
Then Sylvie Whitehouse pulls a handwritten list out of her purse and smooths it on her lap. It would make me laugh with love for her if it didn’t also make me want to cry for the same reason. I wish she and Autumn could be friends.
“First of all,” Sylvie says, and I swallow my emotions and pay attention. “When was the first time you cheated on me?”
“Last night,” I reply, but that question takes the longest to answer, because she does not believe me.
It takes so long to convince her that nothing physical happened with Autumn until last night that I drive us over the river and into the rural plains outside East St. Louis. The rain comes down harder, and lightning strikes flash across the sky, stealing our words from us. It feels jarringly intimate.
“So you did…whatever it was that you did with her last night, Finn.”
I don’t need to look away from the road to know she’s rolling her eyes.
“But that doesn’t mean that you were faithful this summer,” she continues.
I drive, and we argue about the definition of cheating.
Our argument would have lasted longer had Sylvie not been on the speech and debate team, but we would have ended in the same place. Because she’s right.
This didn’t start last night.
From the phone call all those weeks ago when I told Sylvie, “I’m about to eat breakfast,” and didn’t disclose that it was with Autumn, I was betraying Sylvie.
I told myself that I wasn’t talking about Autumn during our phone calls for Sylvie’s sake, but that wasn’t true. I didn’t tell Sylvie that Autumn and I were friends again because I didn’t want to explain we were platonic friends. When Sylvie called from Europe and asked what I’d been up to, I’d say, “Watched a movie,” and leave out “with Autumn,” let alone “with Autumn in my bed, and when she fell asleep before it ended, I muted it and lay beside her.”