Chapter 18 B-side – Midnight Dahlia

It Gave Me Some Perspective

“Hey, sweetie,” my mom swept into the room where I’d been staring dully at my phone, waiting for Misha to text. “If you’re looking for something to do…I have those boxes of yours from high school you could go through.” My mother, Elaine Reeves, is definitely the parent who taught me the art of keeping busy. It was a great way to still the thoughts that intruded into one’s day.

A little, anyway.

I hadn’t done much of anything in the time I’d been home, so I agreed and slipped into what had once been my bedroom and was now half guest room, half box storage—my parents, now empty-nesters with me and my older brother gone, were preparing to downsize in a few years’ time.

I had to dig into three filing boxes before I found one that had anything of mine in it. I hefted it onto the bed and began sifting through. It was mostly school stuff, fifth grade essays, photos before my first school dance, a script from a high school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The box beneath it was even heavier, because it held a stack of yearbooks.

I paused when I saw they were the ones from my high school years.

I’d dabbled in a lot of extracurriculars, but yearbook had been my one steady gig. I’d worked my butt off learning software and laying out pages in that clubroom. I made most of my friends there: Annie, Yvette, Rob. I had both won and lost my first boyfriend there.

That was the room I’d learned about being too much and not enough, all at once.

Tomás Souza wasn’t one of the popular kids. Instead of the rough, suntanned good looks of one of the football guys, he looked more like one of the guys who was going to grow up and be in a rock band. You just couldn’t be sure whether it would be a good one or not.

I met him in the club as a freshman and we hit it off quickly, finding an easy rapport with our mutual interest in stories—he was a huge cinephile—and with our mutual friends in yearbook. We started dating that summer after a group outing at the county fair had turned into us sneaking off, followed by a cute confession, linked pinkies, and making out behind the midway.

We grew into young adulthood together, made plans together.

Or so I thought. Maybe I was the only one who had been planning for an us.

It was March, and I’d already been accepted early to several schools, including a flattering, generous scholarship offer from Crownbridge University in southeastern Connecticut. But I was going to enroll in UMass Boston, so I could stay close to Tommy, who would be at MassArt.

But things had gotten a little…weird. We were spending a lot of time hanging out with Annie, who had recently become the only single person in our little clique, and I had begun to feel pushed out. I’d show up on time to things and Annie had arrived a half hour early. Or she would jump in to reply to something Tommy said to me before I could. Or she would argue with me, but give in to whatever Tommy wanted, even if he had agreed with me.

I didn’t say anything because I felt bad about her breakup, and I trusted Tommy.

The day Tommy and I broke up, we were all in the clubroom trying to decide what to do about the new Kpop Club that had opened up halfway through the year. Most clubs got a one- or two-page spread, depending on how big and active they were. The late addition would mess up our page counts, and our print deadline was coming up.

“If we add four pages, we can give the Kpop Club a page and then give Anime Club, Key Club, and GSA two pages each instead of one,” I suggested.

Annie made a face. “That’s so much work, though,” she argued. “Are you gonna redo all those page layouts?”

“I could do some of it, sure,” I said. “It’s more fair.”

She shrugged. “They started up late in the year. That’s not our problem.”

Tommy was the editor-in-chief that year, so Annie, I, and the other eight or so students turned to him. He rubbed his temples.

“Emma, Annie’s got a point,” he said. “They missed the boat. And adding more pages makes the print cost go up.”

I bit my lip. “We didn’t give anyone a deadline. And the price goes up maybe a couple dimes, it’s still within budget,” I said. “I don’t think we should exclude them if we don’t have to, just because it’s inconvenient.”

“I’m not excluding them because it’s inconvenient,” Tommy said, pitching his voice lower. “I’m excluding them because it’s not fair to the yearbook committee to have to do more work.”

He wasn’t wrong, but neither was I. “It’s not that much more work. If there’s really no one else who wants to, I’ll do it all,” I volunteered. “So, let’s—”

I stopped when I heard Annie muttering under her breath. “Always gets what she wants.”

Tommy heard it, too, and his face flushed. “Emma, enough. Kpop Club can have a page next year. They can have two damn pages.” He set his palm down flat on the table, not slamming it exactly, but firmly. An authoritative gesture. I stared at his hand for a second and opened my mouth.

“Now you’re just digging in because you’re embarrassed,” I said, unable to keep my annoyance masked. “Even if I take care of the one and only problem, you think changing your mind looks bad. Stop letting that make your decisions for you.”

Looking back, I know I was as frustrated as he had been. And I should have known better than to call him out like that in front of a gaggle of classmates, even if I still think I was right.

But I was only eighteen and I was mad, so I didn’t think about that.

Annie scoffed. “Jeez, Em, you’re so harsh,” she said. I thought I heard a happy note, but my memory might have made more of a villain out of her than she deserved. “Imagine treating your own boyfriend like that.”

I gaped at her, and Tommy stood. “The conversation is over. And that’s the last item of business today,” he said flatly. “If you’ve got pages to work on, we have the room for another hour. Otherwise, go home.” Everyone shuffled fast but silent, grabbing backpacks or claiming one of the computers in the back. “Emma, let’s talk,” Tommy added, gesturing to the door with his chin.

Annie tried to give me a concerned look, and I ignored her as I hefted my backpack over my shoulder and followed Tommy into the hall.

“Why do you always have to undermine me?” He demanded, turning on his heel to hiss at me as soon as the clubroom door shut behind us.

“I’m not trying to undermine you,” I snapped. “I’m trying to put out the best yearbook I can. That’s why we’re here, Tommy.”

He scoffed. “Annie’s got another good point. You treat me worse than you’d treat a stranger.”

“Excuse me?” I adjusted my backpack and scowled. “I do not. I treat you like someone who’s actually got a brain.”

“Oh, so I’m dumb if I disagree with you?” That time he did slam his hand on the wall next to him, and I took a step back. “Don’t look at me like that, Em,” he rolled his eyes. “It’s normal to be pissed when your girlfriend is being a bitch.”

Maybe you were being a bitch, an anxious little voice said in the back of my head. You embarrassed him and didn’t even care.

Or maybe he just cares less about you than about his ego.

I shook the voices off. “I’m not being anything I haven’t always been,” I declared. “Like it or leave it.”

His eyes flared and we stared at each other for several long seconds.

And then he left. After being together through nearly all of high school, after I’d made my college plans around his, it was suddenly just…over.

A few days later, I saw him holding hands with Annie across campus. I went home that night and reached out to Crownbridge to see if they would reinstate my offer.

They agreed and knowing I would go far away helped me get through the rough summer. I didn’t want to let it get to me, but I started second-guessing my every move. I stopped dating because I didn’t trust that anyone would truly make me a priority. Instead, I filled the time with my studies, a few casual partners, and the sweeping, unshakeable love found in romance novels.

I thought it was practical, setting romance aside while I set up my life. And it did help: a few years later and I was on a completely different path. One without Tommy but with good friends, a fun job, a future career I was excited for.

And with Misha.

I didn’t know what was going on with him, why his bright eyes occasionally dimmed while we were together. But I would find the right time to call it out. And unlike with Tommy, it wouldn’t be in front of an audience.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said at dinner that night.

She blinked in surprise as she set a plate of roast beef in front of me. “For what?”

“For making me go through that old stuff,” I said with a shrug.

“Was it fun?” She grinned. “Seeing all the old photos and homework?”

I tilted my head, considering, then smiled. “It gave me some perspective.”

Dad joined us at the table then, and we laughed as we talked about silly memories of school and family vacations.

It had given me some perspective. But mostly, it made me miss Misha. I couldn’t wait to get back to him.

Author’s Note

B-Side Track: Corinne Bailey Rae — Put Your Records On

Surprise! This is a special chapter because it doesn’t really advance the plot meaningfully, but it gives some interesting background to Emma’s psychology that I just couldn’t find an elegant way to slip in elsewhere.

FUN FACT:

I never did yearbook, so I apologize if there’s anything inaccurate. I was a theater kid. (Maybe that’s why I like Travis so much.)

Hope you enjoyed this little bonus detour. Back to our regularly scheduled chapters Tuesday!