It was startling how easily Carter could disappear from my life. At one point I seemed to stumble upon him around every corner, whereas now it was as though we were once again thousands of miles apart. I was fairly certain he was avoiding me. Three weeks passed and the only connection I had with him was by checking his social media. Where he had once been my present - possibly even my future - he was now strictly lost to the past.
I missed him. I missed being able to check in on him with a text; missed our late night phone conversations; missed watching movies in bed with our legs tangled together. But the worst part was that there was nothing I could do to make things better. It was my careless words that got us into this mess and now I was helpless to claw us out of it. Somehow, I'd gotten the boy I loved back only for him to end up somebody that I used to know, all over again.
I knew that I was miserable company for Maya and Alice as I retreated more and more into the confines of my bedroom. Whenever Michael suggested grabbing a drink after a class I made an excuse to get out of it. It was as though any enthusiasm to embrace my time at Yale had drained from me.
Instead, I threw myself with more fervour than ever into my studies. After all, that was the reason I'd ended whatever Carter and I had, right? Increasingly, I became unsure of my reasoning.
Eventually, though, my roommates had had enough. When I arrived home from the library, cold and tired and depressed, the last thing I wanted was to see them both waiting for me in the kitchen. But I was starving so I had no choice than to face them.
"Oh, good, Sydney, you're here!" Alice said upon noticing my presence, overly chirpy.
"Yeah, hi." Most of my conversation had decreased to single syllables recently.
"We wanted to talk to you," Maya announced, seriousness in her tone only emphasised as she stood up from her chair.
Internally, I groaned. "Is this an intervention?"
"No!" Alice exclaimed at the same moment as Maya replied, "Yes."
I didn't say anything, just crossed the room to my cupboard and got out a pack of pasta. I could practically feel their eyes boring into me as I busied myself making my food with my back to them.
"We know you're upset and we get that, but you need to try to move on," Maya said, voice softer now. "You can't be in love with Carter forever, not when it's making you so sad."
I paused, jar of pasta sauce in one hand. Taking a deep breath, I turned around. "I can't help it. It's not something I can just switch off, you realise that? I don't want to spend all my time moping around like this but I don't know what else to do. I'm not good at this, okay? I have no real experience; Carter is the only boy I've ever loved, so yeah, I am bad at moving on from him. You don't need to tell me that."
I let my eyes remain on them as I walked across the kitchen to where my pasta pot was boiling over. They looked a little taken aback by my outburst, both staring back at me silently. My emotions were now running high and I was overwhelmed by a sudden urge to cry.
Biting it back, I carried on talking, voice more restrained this time. "All along I've thought that he's the one who's bad at commitment and relationships - all that love stuff. I mean, I'm the one who's had an actual, genuine relationship before. But that was different; I didn't love my ex, so it didn't feel anything like this. Then I got Carter and suddenly it was so intense and exhilarating and new. Except I was terrified of my feelings being so out of control, to the point that I pushed him away completely. So it turns out I'm the one who's bad at love, and, honestly, that really sucks."
Having finally said everything I wanted to say, I slumped down into a chair and put my elbows up on the table, chin resting in my hands. The girls were both speechless for a moment, possibly realising that their intervention wasn't the best idea. Restless, I stood up again and finished making my pasta, tipping it into a bowl and pouring way too much sauce onto it. A tense, uncomfortable silence hung in the air. Maya distracted herself by biting on her thumbnail while Alice stared resolutely down at her phone screen.
I walked across the room to the door then, before I left, I turned back to them and said more gently, "Listen, I appreciate you guys being worried about me. But I need you to understand that I'll move on in my own time and until then I'm gonna need time to wallow."
The door thudded shut behind me as I made my way back to the refuge of my bedroom. In an act of habit, I placed my bowl on my desk in order to reach down and switch on the sets of fairy lights strung up above my desk and around my bed. When I picked up a soft grey blanket from the end of my bed and wrapped it around my shoulders as I ate, I was struck by the thought that this was nothing like the year abroad experience I'd been expecting. Not only was I at a dead-end with Carter but, despite the hours of work I was putting in, my academic progress seemed to be stagnant, too. I felt, for what must have been the hundredth time in the last few weeks, hopelessly disappointed in myself.
***
The following morning, I was tired and unfocused as I walked to my nine o'clock lecture. I arrived a couple of minutes early to see a few classmates I recognised standing outside the room. Usually, I would have approached them and made idle, early morning conversation. This morning, though, I hung back and pulled my phone from my coat pocket. To my surprise, I had a new Facebook message from someone named Kyle Brown. After a moment of confusion, I registered that this was Carter's Kyle.
Since the time in the library, I hadn't come across him again, though he was my only connection to Carter now that Maya's class alongside him had finished. In a way, it was reassuring that he hadn't felt the need to contact me again about Carter's downward spiral; it must have meant that he wasn't being too destructive. But a large part of me feared that in reality Carter could be struggling more than I knew, only I wouldn't find out because Kyle had been told the truth: that I couldn't be a part of his life right now. Increasingly, I found myself leaning towards the latter.
Now, heartbeat jumping, I quickly clicked on the message.
Hi it's Kyle, Carter's friend. He hasn't mentioned you in weeks (which is really weird) so I don't know what's going on with you two but just to let you know he's not doing so much stupid shit now, so you don't need to worry about that anymore. He's been coming to every football practice and really getting obsessed over that instead. Maybe you could come to a game some time. I think he misses you. Hope you don't mind me sending this.
A storm of emotions rose inside of me. Most powerful was my relief that Carter wasn't acting out and getting himself into danger. Then, despite the fact the message wasn't exactly good news, I felt myself smile. Maybe we weren't so different after all; following the implosion of our almost-relationship I'd thrown myself into my studies and he'd done the same with football. As well as that, as silly as it was, I couldn't help but be happy learning that Carter usually talked about me to his friends, to the point that it was noticeably weird when he stopped. Despite his radio silence the last few weeks, I was reassured that I meant more to him than other friends or girls he slept with.
A small, soft glow grew in my chest - a treacherous kind of hope. Was it really possible that we could both make it through this? That we could actually be together in the way that I'd dreamt of since I was a wide-eyed, naive thirteen year old? It seemed too good to be true.
And yet.
And yet it was like something in me had shifted, like the whole world would not be righted until the two of us were.
I got home at lunchtime, but food was the furthest thing from my mind. Instead, I dropped my stuff on my desk and sat on my bed, phone poised ready in my hand.
Out of habit, my thumb pressed Carter's name and opened our messages, making me wince slightly. If I scrolled up, I saw a continuous stream of conversation about anything and everything, the kind that flowed easily between us. But recently, there were only two messages, five days apart, both unopened and unanswered.
The night that I accidentally told him I loved him: I'm sorry, I know you didn't want to hear that right now.
Then, later, when it became clear he wasn't going to reply: Hi Carter, I'm not going to bother you if you don't want to talk for a while. I'm here so just text or call me whenever you want.
Desperately, I wanted to type out a message to him - there was so much I had to say. But I closed the messages and clicked on the girls group-chat instead.
Who's up for going to a football game some time soon?
***
The glimmer of hope I'd felt spark up after reading Kyle's message caught alight, spreading like wildfire into other parts of my life. For a while, I had ended up simply studying because I needed a distraction. But even just the tiniest improvement in my mood suddenly made an unexpectedly huge impact on my approach to university. I no longer studied because I didn't like myself and felt in dire need of improvement; now, I studied because I believed in myself and I wanted my work to reflect that. There was still a Carter shaped hole in my life that needed filling - either with him, or new experiences and people and feelings, depending on how things went. For the first time in a long time, though, it didn't feel like a hole that I would have forever; it was just a temporary empty space, not a gaping wound.
The message was only fairly inconsequential in its contents. But it was enough to provide a light at the end of the tunnel, however faint and distant a glimmer that may be.
The change in me was appreciated by Maya and Alice, who began to see more of me than just my back as I disappeared into my bedroom. But I didn't realise quite how much impact it had made until I was packing my notebook and pens into my backpack at the end of a class.
"Sydney, can I speak with you for a minute?" asked my professor, a kind woman in her early thirties who'd also taught me before Christmas.
My natural instinct was anxiety and I was painfully aware of the classmates who looked in my direction as they filed out of the room while I walked to the front.
"I just wanted to talk about the assignment you handed in recently," she began, filling me with relief as she smiled. "I've just started marking it and, I've got to say, it's very good. It seems like you've really come into your own with this one, Sydney. I hope you can continue to submit work of this standard because I can tell you're definitely a talented student."
My face broke out into a grin as I thanked her profusely. Ridiculously, it was all I could do not to burst into tears in front of her. I managed to hold it together until I left, although my throat continued to ache as I began walking across campus to my next class.
It happened to be Valentine's Day and, that morning, I'd felt my resolve waver. It was hard to remain positive and confident when the whole world seemed to revolving around being in love, and you were alone. Except it was worse than just being single; being hopelessly, irrevocably in love with someone you couldn't be with on Valentine's Day was more like a form of torture.
But now, with just this a couple of reassuring sentences from a professor, I felt re-energized. Re-empowered. Maybe next Valentine's, I'd have someone to spend it with, doing all that cliche romantic stuff, as I'm sure Alice and Sam were. But for this year's, I'd spend it in my own company, falling in love with myself a little more. And that was enough. I was enough.
I could do this. I could do all of it - college, Carter, anything else the rest of the year threw at me.