The Last Time I Crossed Oceans for You

Just to be here in France beside him, I'd worked myself half to death learning French, drilling my pronunciation, applying for the exchange program.

And now every word landed clearly, every word cut to the bone.

For a moment the air over the dinner table froze solid.

"And another thing. You two just said I'm too possessive. So tell me, what do you call a college classmate who shows up on every single holiday, right in the middle of my dates with my boyfriend?"

Fiona's smile stiffened, then smoothed back into something easy.

"Oh, come on, me and Dick are just buddies. We like all the same stuff, watching games, playing a few rounds online. It's not easy making friends so far from home."

I laughed. "So I should be thanking you? Thanking you for showing up uninvited every time, for taking my seat, for drinking out of his cup?"

Dick set his chopsticks down on the table with a clack. "Georgie. She came all this way for one dinner. Do you really have to poison the whole mood like this?"

I looked into his eyes and found it almost funny.

"I fly seven hours every two weeks to cook for you. That isn't 'all this way.'"

"She lives in the dorms, a twenty-minute walk away, and that's what breaks your heart?"

Fiona pursed her lips. "Fine, fine, I'll go, is that better? Don't go fighting over me, you two lovebirds."

"Hard-won alone time, and I'm the one who can't read the room. My bad."

She made a show of getting up, and Dick clamped a hand around her arm. "Sit down."

Then he turned to me, his voice flaring hot. "Georgette, can you not pull this attitude every single time you come? Could you act a little more mature?"

I stared at that hand of his, pressed against Fiona's arm, and something in my chest clenched like a fist had closed around it.

I stood up. "Fine. I'm immature, I'm flighty! I make scenes over nothing, happy now?"

"In that case, I won't bother coming anymore."

I went back to the bedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed, and opened my phone.

There was an email on the screen.

【Congratulations, your exchange application has been approved. The University of Paris I welcomes you.】

I'd prepared a whole year for that spot.

Grinding my GPA, sitting for French exams, drafting application after application.

All because he was studying in France, and I wanted to be a little closer to him.

All because we'd been childhood sweethearts for twenty years, and I'd never gotten used to being apart from him.

I stared at the email for a long time.

Then I skipped right past "Accept" and tapped "Decline."

I'd barely set the phone down when Dick pushed the door open and came in.

He crouched down in front of me, his voice gone soft. "Still mad?"

I said nothing.

He sighed and reached out to take my hand, then noticed the tissue wrapped around my finger, dried stiff and yellow now, and stopped short. "What happened to your hand? Did you cut it chopping vegetables?"

He leaned in and blew gently on the wound, his voice worried and tender.

"Why didn't you call me? Does it hurt?"

The first time he ever blew on a cut for me, I'd sliced my finger cutting an apple in the kitchen.

He'd panicked, sweat beading on his forehead, tearing through every drawer for a Band-Aid, blowing over and over on that tiny little cut, and he'd said,

"Georgie's got such pretty hands. Can't have you scarring."

Back then there was no Fiona. Back then I was the only one in his eyes.

And now the motion was exactly the same, but that breath felt cold to me, never reaching deep enough to touch my heart.

"Georgie, there's really nothing going on with me and Fiona. She's just a careless, easygoing kind of person. Don't read too much into it."

"You went way too far back there. She's a girl, and after the way you talked to her, she didn't even feel like she could stay. It's snowing hard out there, and she still insisted on going back to the dorms."

My heart contracted violently.

"And so?"

I lifted my head. "Every time I fly seven hours to France, I land either late at night or before dawn. I drag my suitcase onto the subway, all alone, all the way to your apartment. You've never once come to meet me."