I stared at my coffee, stirring it slowly.
“Amy, I don’t want you to think I’m here to pack you up and take you home like you’re some runaway teenager.”
I looked up at him. “Then why did you buy me a plane ticket home?”
He shrugged. “To make it easier for you. Amy, you made this decision too fast. You just got up and took off.”
“I got a job at a summer camp, Dad. What’s the difference if I got one a few towns over or on the East Coast? I’d still be coming back at the same time, give or take a few days.”
“Will you? Will you be coming back?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I started picking at my corn muffin. If I were honest with myself, I wasn’t so sure I was.
“Because when you were applying for colleges two years ago, you asked me what I thought about NYU and my reaction…well, I wasn’t exactly supportive and didn’t leave much room for argument.”
I stared into my coffee, revisiting the memory. My dad and Marci had just been friends and meeting for lunch occasionally. Seeing that he’d seemed to find a companion, I started to open myself up to more options for college. My dad was open to it, until I mentioned one across the country, and he broke down in a scenario of leaving him alone in this world and not caring about his well-being. Then he brought up Mom. It got ugly.
“I guess this is your way of testing the waters.” He rolled his eyes. “Literally and figuratively speaking.” He added with a smirk. I had told him about my forty-foot dive.
“I haven’t even thought about NYU since I’ve been here,” I admitted. “A friend of mine, my roommate actually, said she’d left Ohio to go to school in upstate New York. She got a swimming scholarship.” I don’t know why I felt the need to mention Rachel. Probably for him to see that this is what people do, and family should be supportive.
“I shouldn’t have gotten so emotional when you started talking to me about your dreams. I shouldn’t have interfered.”
I shook my head. “No, Dad. I don’t think I was ready then.”
He nodded and took a sip of his coffee. “Do you think you are now?”
“I know I don’t want to go back to Denver. I’m ready to move on. I just don’t know the where or what yet.”
“Well, then, come back with me and we’ll figure it out,” he pressed.
“I have to finish out the summer here, Dad. I love my kids and the camp.” I couldn’t believe I had to even explain this part to him. I had committed to a job here, but it was beyond that. I wanted to stay. I felt a part of something.
“Right. Of course you’re right.” He held his hand up.
“Well, maybe you can swap out my ticket for one later in the summer. Then you can come back and help me pack. I’m sure wherever I end up, I’ll need help packing regardless.
He nodded agreeably to the idea and cut into his muffin. “Do they at least pay you well here?”
“Not really. This one’s on you, right?”
The next few days, Dad and I spent a good amount of time together. In between my camp hours, I’d meet him for lunch or at the beach. I helped him pick out some things for Marci and Marci’s grandson, Trevor, a three-year-old kid who’d been monstrous when he came to visit last summer. Had I known my dad was coming, I’d have preordered a T-shirt that said, “Grandma’s stepdaughter took off to Connecticut, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.” I laughed to myself at the image of Trevor wearing it.
Took off. Yeah, I suppose that could summarize what I did.
But it didn’t feel like that at the moment. I felt like a reporter who just got a new lead on a story she’d been working on. Except this story wasn’t going to make the front page. This story was more like trying to figure out what you want the middle of your book to be about. And I didn’t want it to be anything like the first half. Not that my life in Denver had been deprived in any way, growing up, but it was certainly starting to feel mundane, and it was only going to get worse. The last few months before the end of the semester, the urge to do something more had been getting stronger, until I finally gave in.
Even after calling and apologizing to Emily, I still felt like we were growing apart. Emily and I were super close in high school. We always had each other’s back. She was my gallon of ice cream after a breakup and the number I’d always dial when anything remotely interesting happened, and vice versa. But it couldn’t be that way forever. She had to suspect that too, on some level. Mostly because she was still a big part of the life I was trying to leave behind.
That was probably the first time I’d admitted to myself that I was trying to leave it. I had been stubbornly convincing myself that this was just a long trip. Even when I packed, I’d left my art books behind as proof of my planned return at the end of the summer.
Friday morning, I took my dad to the airport and we had a heartfelt “See you later” at the gate. He made me promise to keep him up to speed on any plans or ideas and to call him if I needed advice. He said now that he’d had time to “grow up,” he could let me do the same.
I didn’t need to run to make my first class that morning, since I asked Sarah if Molly could cover it. Molly happily agreed, saying she’d been wondering what the fuss was about my nature art classes. I had been hoping to run into Rick, but his classes had almost conveniently been on the opposite side of town as mine the past week. I didn’t try calling him to let him know that I wasn’t leaving, partly because I was ashamed to admit that I had considered it when my dad’s words started to make sense. The other part was the stubborn need I had for him to call me—to find me at the airport still under the impression that I was leaving, to knock on my door and drag me to some other nature adventure. None of which happened, so I refrained from calling and hoped every moment that went by on camp grounds that I would see him. Which shouldn’t have been impossible, given that my first few days here, I couldn’t go anywhere without running into him.
Oddly enough, it was.
CHAPTER 23
