The Last Time We Say Goodbye

Author:Cynthia Hand [Hand, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-02-10T05:00:00+00:00

5 March

I don’t know why, maybe because I love torturing myself, but I keep going back to the first day Steven and I were officially together. Not to the bookstore, or the date, or the kiss after, although I think about those things often enough, my own personal memory playlist that’s on a continuous loop, but to a conversation I had later about Steven. With Ty.

After Steven dropped me off, I floated inside on cloud 9, bursting with all that had happened in the past few hours. Mom was working, so I couldn’t girl-talk with her about it. I found my brother in the basement, bowling on the Wii.

“Where have you been all day?” he asked when he saw me coming down the stairs, his arm swinging back as he delivered the virtual ball to the gutter. He groaned.

“Around. I saw a movie at SouthPointe.” I replied. “Wow, you’re not even good at virtual bowling.”

“Shut up,” Ty said good-naturedly, and reset the Wii so that we could both play. “Loser buys the winner McDonald’s.”

Then he proceeded to kick my bowling butt.

“How was the movie?” he said after a while.

“Okay. Heavy on visuals, light on plot,” I replied. I was going to leave it at that, but I wanted to tell him. I wanted to share part of this monumental day in my life. So I said, “I went with Steven.”

Ty’s eyes didn’t leave the TV screen. “The guy from your math club or whatever?”

“Steven Blake. Yes.”

“What did you used to call him? Like his geek nickname?”

“Oh,” I said, laughing that he remembered. In middle school we all used to have nicknames: Mine was Luthor, after Superman’s Lex Luthor—the world’s greatest criminal mastermind. Eleanor’s was Roosevelt, which she loathed and rallied to change to Rigby, after the Beatles song, but never pulled off. Beaker’s was the only one that actually stuck past 8th grade. And Steven’s was—

“Hawking,” I told Ty.

“After the star guy.”

“After the world-famous astrophysicist and cosmologist, which means he studies the origins and structure of the universe.” Sheesh. Star guy.

“Yes!” Ty rolled a perfect strike. I was beginning to suspect that he was hustling me for McDonald’s. “So you went on a date. How was that?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be a date, but it ended up that way. It was good. Really good, actually.” I picked up my controller and immediately bowled a gutter ball. “Crap.”

“I approve of this Hawking dude,” Ty said as I lamely managed to knock down a few pins on my next roll. “Of course, if he breaks your heart, I’m going to have to beat him up. Brotherly duty, you know.”

“Thanks.” I smiled and nodded and didn’t say anything else Steven-related that night. We bowled, and I lost. We must have gone to McDonald’s, but I guess I blocked that part out.

That was the last time I agreed to play Wii with my brother.

It was also the last time we had anything resembling a “real” conversation about our personal lives. When he said he approved of Steven.

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