On campus, they saw one another at the same time, looking away, then re-entering each other’s line of sight, feeling held by each other. 

Jamie had wanted to talk to her. His friends told him she was at Northwestern, too. He told them he was over her, yet he would walk the long way to class in hopes that their paths would cross. By the time sophomore year rolled around, he still hadn’t seen her, he figured she either didn’t really go there or maybe they weren’t meant to see each other again. 

Now, at three o’clock in the afternoon on the first day of their senior year of college, he saw her again. Jamie was headed south of campus and Sarah was going north. They held their gaze until they were standing right in front of each other, two feet apart, on the sidewalk between the Deering Library with its dramatically arched windows, and ivy that blanketed the aged brick, and the Deering Meadow outlined by amber and yellow leafed trees. Sarah took out her headphones. She put her music on pause, and said, “It’s been a while.” 

Her hair was shorter. It ended at her shoulders and she had bangs now that seemed to compliment her natural beauty. It was still brown, like the bark of an oak tree.

“Yeah. What, like three years?” Jamie smiled with his lips pressed together tightly as his eyes floated on her’s.

He wore a forest green polo that emphasized the broadness of his shoulders. He wore polos every day now, hoping to impress his professors and get letters of recommendation from them. His closet looked more like his father’s than a twenty-two-year-old’s. 

“Are you still majoring in education?” Sarah asked. 

His heart pumped. That was what he wanted to study, and she remembered. He shook his head. 

“Finance, now.”

“That’s a shame. Becoming a teacher was all you talked about. You wanted to be like-like… oh, what’s his name, our English teacher.”

“Mr. Jensen.” He half smiled as he said his name.

“Yeah! He was your idol.”

“Yeah well,” he shrugged. “There’s no money in teaching.”

She tilted her head slightly and scrunched her eyebrows together. “Since when did you start caring about money?” 

“Since I grew up. You know what they say,” he said, “if you can’t beat them, join them.”

She raised her eyebrows, and her eyes slid to the side, then back to him.

 Jamie tried to deny what he had become, but he was aware of his transformation, fostered by his need for validation from his teachers and father. Sarah was the only one who had encouraged him to pursue his dream of becoming a high school English teacher. If it weren’t for her, he wouldn’t have started out as an education major, and if it weren’t for his father, he would still be an education major. He had threatened to stop paying his tuition. He wanted him to follow in his footsteps. “All the men in our family were in finance. Don’t question your genetics,” his father had said.

“Are you still studying art?” he asked, clearing his throat. He didn’t want to talk about himself anymore.

“Yeah. I guess some things never change.” She smiled, showing her single dimple on her left cheek.

He figured she would still be an art major. She would never change her major unless she wanted to. She didn’t like being told what to do, which she got from her tough-loving mother, the founder of one of Chicago’s many non-profit feminist organizations. He still had the drawings she drew in the margins of his high school notebook. He kept them in a drawer between his checkbook and calendar. He looked at them just the other night. His favorite was her drawing of penguins sliding around the sheet of paper and flying off an icy cliff at the bottom of the page. It always made him smile. Simpler times then.

“You don’t still work at that art store on Nina Street, do you?” she asked.

That was where their relationship changed from classmates to friends. He helped her find special drawing pencils and added his employee discount to her purchase. Months later, when they changed from friends into something they were too timid to label, she used one of those pencils to draw in his notebook.

He smiled remembering. “No, I work at my dad’s firm now. Gotta’ wear a suit and everything.”

“A suit? You haven’t even graduated yet. ”

His smile faded. In a year, he would be wearing that suit every day. 

“Are you ready?”

“For what?”

“To graduate and all that?”

“Surprisingly, yes. I think I’ve learned everything they could teach me.” She quietly laughed to herself. “I’m just counting down the days now. But I moved out of my parents’ house and got my own place.” She tucked her hands in her front jean pockets and glanced at the ground. “My aunt passed away, and left me her apartment in the city. I’ve been living there for a few months now.”

“Wow, that’s nice, I-I mean, not that your aunt died.” His face flushed. “But that you got her place.” 

She laughed at his nervous attempt not to sound unsympathetic. 

“What about you? Do you live around here?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a place just down the road with some buddies. Five of us share it. I would say we try to keep it clean, but it really is as messy as you’d probably imagine.”

“You weren’t messy. I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

“You remember my room?” His face flushed.  He didn’t think she would care to remember her past with him.

“Yeah, I do. Blue walls, gray door with a Nickelback poster taped onto the back. Right?”

“Right.” 

 

He thought about her and the night she spent in his room more often then he’d care to admit. On his first night in his new place, he had thought about it. It was her first time and he worried that she’d be scared, but of course she wasn’t. He could almost feel her gentle, slow, and savoring touches. He had stared at his white popcorn ceiling trying to fall asleep in his new surroundings. The neon red sign from the bar across the street leaked through his blinds and stained the ceiling like wine soaking into a tablecloth. As he lay there, drifting between the past and the present, he remembered the smell of her perfume, but it was slipping away. He considered buying a bottle of it from the department store, but he knew it wouldn’t be the same. After hours of tossing and turning, as if his body was dough being kneaded, he put his pillow in front of him and hugged it to his chest, fooling himself into believing the silky pillowcase was her bare skin.

 

“How’s living in the city?” he said.

She rocked back and forth between her feet like an excited kid. “It’s loud and overcrowded for sure, but I like it. It’s freeing, I guess, if that makes any sense.”

It made sense to him how it made sense to her. She didn’t like feeling tied down. He was surprised she stayed in college this long. Jamie remembered the time in math class when she told their teacher he could go to hell and she was given detention. He couldn’t remember why she had said it, but he remembered the look on her face, self-reliance and poise. He knew how much she valued her independence. It was the reason they broke up. He didn’t know if that really was the reason, but it was what he told himself. 

They never made it to prom. They never even made it out of the neighborhood. They ended things as his car idled in her driveway. She sat in the passenger seat as she told him it wasn’t working out. “We’re moving too fast,” she had said. “And I know you don’t want to slow down.”  

He thought about asking her why she refused to let him in, but he knew he wasn’t capable of asking such a direct and confrontational question. He didn’t have the strength to do that three years ago. And he didn’t know if he had the strength to do it now. She had said what she needed to say and was out of the car before he could react. He stayed there for a few minutes, but she never looked back.

She was who she was and he was who he was. They had both changed since high school, everyone does, he could see that, but he couldn’t see how much they had changed. 

“Are-are you seeing anyone?” She said with her voice higher pitched than usual.

His eyes widened, then he frantically blinked. “No, no. Are you?” 

She shook her head. She looped her headphones cord around her finger, unlooped it, then started again. “I’m, umm.” She sharply inhaled. “I’m sorry, by the way, for how I treated you…”

He tried to find her eyes as her glances bounced between him and her headphones cord. 

“I think I was just scared of-of love. The seriousness of it. You were so good to me and I—”

“It was a long time ago, you—” 

“But I think about it all the time. About you. And when you told me you loved me, I didn’t say it back, even though I…did.” A tear fell, but she didn’t wipe it away. 

Jamie replayed the moment in his mind. It was the morning after their night together and he had his hand in her hair and the other on her hip. He wasn’t thinking when he said it. It was the only moment of courage he had ever had and he didn’t even have to think about it. That was the effect she had on him. She stayed still and looked up at the ceiling. After what had seemed like minutes, she said thank you. He laughed and said, “You’re welcome?” He should have known then that she didn’t want him, but now she was saying she had loved him.

“Is that why you broke up with me? You were scared?” He muttered, the words barely making it out of his throat.

She nodded and now her tears were pouring out. 

He took a step forward and brushed her watery cheek with his thumb. She looked up at him in surprise. “It’s okay. We were kids. We didn’t know anything.”

She sniffled her nose and wiped her other cheek. “You did. You knew how to love me.”

He smiled and they stood there, his hand still on her cheek, looking at each other like they had three years ago.

Then the bell tower rang and they were suddenly aware of the students passing by them. He let his hand drop to his side. In a dreaded voice, he said, “I’m sorry, I have to get going. I have class.”

She looked at the ground, then back at him. “Yeah, me too.” Her eyes were still red and watery.

He took a step away and balanced on the side of his worn charcoal gray dress shoe. 

He began to walk away. He felt dizzy and wobbly, like his legs turned into water. He felt the way he had when he sat in his car in her driveway, like he was in purgatory. He stopped and looked back. She was still standing there, watching him. They smiled at each other. Then she turned and walked away.

His eyes welted as she disappeared into the crowd. Was that it? After three years of waiting to see her again, he was going to walk away? No. He wasn’t going to give up, not this time. 

“Sarah!”