The Rush (Kindle Single) by Laura Leigh Abby

Author:Laura Leigh Abby [Abby, Laura Leigh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-01-18T06:00:00+00:00

January 24, 2005

I’m just sitting in this forgotten room. More alone than I have ever been. What have I done?

I sat for an hour before forcing myself back to our room. Immediately, Kate and Lauren hugged away my tears and forgave me.

Kate asked, “Are you in love?” As I nodded I realized how much I’d underestimated my friends. Whatever they really felt about the situation, they offered their full support.

The castle was equipped not only with a moat but with wireless Internet, which turned off promptly at eleven o’clock every night. I’d sit up in my bunk bed, the room lit by the glow of my computer screen, and instant-message Sam to talk about nothing while the Sex and the City theme song blared from Lauren’s bunk. This was my ritual when I wasn’t traveling. Sam told me what was going on with the new pledges or about her film-editing classes, and I filled her in on plans for my next getaway. She told me that she and Rina were becoming good friends. Sometimes we argued about Sarah, the sorority, and the distance. I looked forward to our conversations, and each night as eleven o’clock approached, I reminded Sam that I loved her. I counted down the days until Madrid.

One night before our trip, Sarah came running up to our room, her eyes dry, her cheeks red, and nose running. “I feel like you guys are persecuting me,” she cried out, telling us that the night in Boston when she and Sam had left the bar together meant nothing to her, that she’d been drunk and having fun. Liar, I thought, I know about the night in New York. But I said nothing. She cried as I sat, stoic, then I spoke.

“Sam’s coming to Madrid.”

“Wow, that’s really great.” Her words were ejected, like a sip of water she’d choked on. Whatever was between Sarah and Sam, I believe she understood the choice Sam was making by meeting me in Madrid. Sarah and I traveled everywhere together, but Sam was coming to the one place she would not be.

In the coming years, my friendship with Sarah would become a casualty of Sam’s presence in our lives. Sarah and I never talked about those winter days in New York City. She never asked about Sam’s trip to Madrid. We stopped talking about Sam altogether. At the time, I blamed Sarah. I thought she was being selfish and failing me as a friend. It was only later I could admit that we were both selfish, and that we failed each other.

I felt my friends’ eyes on us in Madrid as intensely as I felt Sam’s mouth on mine. “You’re different,” Lauren told me. “You’re needy with her.” I took Sam to see Guernica, where we held hands and stood motionless. We sat in the sun and drank sangria. I took a long, hot bath alone in Sam’s hotel room, such luxury in contrast to the hostels I stayed in.

I was nervous to let her touch me.

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