Right Place, Wrong Time

45. On My Mind

Everyone had told Joey to enjoy his summer, one of the last truly free summers of his life, but he found it impossible to do with Lauren on his mind the entire time.

Besides, the day he arrived back at his parents' it poured with rain, as though the universe were attuned to his mood. It took effort to stay upbeat for them, be present there when his mind was on the opposite coast.

"This smells delicious, mom," he said, when they all sat at the table for dinner that first night and the plate was put in front of him.

"I bet you missed this," she said, laughing.

Joey laughed weakly. As much as he had missed them, and being home, and his mom's cooking, what he really missed was Lauren. He started eating so he wouldn't have to respond, and his parents followed suit. The only sound was knives scraping plates and glasses thudding against the table until all three had eaten every last mouthful.

"Can I be excused?" Joey asked then.

"Are you feeling jet lagged?" his dad asked.

"Yeah," he seized the excuse. "I'm gonna go to bed early."

"I hope you sleep well, honey."

He hugged both of them, trying to act more tired than he was, and escaped upstairs. He lay motionless on his bed, feeling Lauren's absence keenly, until he finally fell asleep by thinking about their last night together, his body curled around hers, his hand on her stomach and her hair tickling his face.

He and Lauren talked a few times a week, but he didn't want to bother her any more than that as she found her feet in a new apartment, a new city, a new job, and the days without word from her stretched out, the long summer days doing him no favours.

Even so, before he knew it he was returning to school, moving back into a house with his friends, kept busy by homework and extracurriculars and parties, though it seemed every street, every building, every shop was layered in bittersweetness, memories of times spent there with Lauren. There was no escape from reminders of her, and he thought about her even more often despite everything else occupying his brain.

Not long after Thanksgiving break, he was with Brian on the bus home from rehearsal for the show that would be going up a few weeks before Christmas. His enthusiasm was rejuvenated by the fact that Lauren was coming to see it, her first visit back. But as the bus pulled away from a stop, he thought he saw a short blonde pass in the window. Jolted to alertness, he spun around in his seat, craning his neck.

Brian laid a hand on his arm. "Dude, it's not her," he said gently.

Joey managed to catch a glimpse of the girl's profile as she turned her head to cross the street, to find that Brian was right. He couldn't believe he could have confused the two. This girl's hair was a darker blonde, her dress sense totally different to Lauren. Nor could he believe that he'd been so transparent to Brian. He settled forwards in his seat again, leaning his head against the glass even though the juddering of the bus rattled his brain. Maybe it would shake some sense into him.

"How are you really doing?" Brian asked. They'd had this conversation before, at the start of the semester, but Joey had insisted he was fine.

"It's fine," he said, attempting a lofty shrug that would have fooled no one.

"You miss her," Brian said.

"I've moved on." Perhaps the least convincing lie he'd told in his life, and Brian wasn't letting it slide.

"Really?" he said, raising an eyebrow. "Because you almost jumped off this bus because you thought you saw her. And she's still the picture on your lock screen."

On instinct, Joey clicked the button to bring up his phone's display. There it was. One of the picture's Julia had taken of them at prom — his favourite, in fact, where they looked at each other as though the camera wasn't there at all, the height difference pronounced, Lauren's face aglow with a smile. As painful as it sometimes was to be reminded of everything they'd lost, that night was one of the best of his life, and it brought him peace to be able to see it every day, as soon as he turned his alarm off in the morning, whenever he needed comfort, in the background of every text she sent him.

"So?" he said quietly. "It's a nice picture. And she's my best friend."

"I know it's hard with her gone," Brian said. "You don't have to pretend it isn't."

"It's not like I can do anything about it," Joey replied. "I have to get on with it."

"You'll see her soon." Brian's smile was sympathetic, and Joey hummed an affirmative, not trusting himself to speak. Her visit was what was getting him through the days without her, but then she'd go back to New York and he'd go home to California for Christmas and the missing her would start all over again.

When they finally got into their house, Joey went straight upstairs to bed, not in the mood to talk to any of the other guys. He lay on his bed, head hanging off the edge, and toyed with his phone, lock screen displayed again. Opening up their most recent text thread, he reread the messages. A few jokes about one of his professors, a picture of a cute dog she'd seen on the street, confirmation of her trip back here. He pulled up the text box to send another message.

'You free to facetime tonight?'

It was about five minutes before her reply lit up the screen, covering his face in the picture but leaving hers smiling below.

'Can't tonight, I'm babysitting. Sorry'

'No worries', he sent back. 'Another time'.

She replied with a sad face emoji and a heart, and he returned the heart before clicking the phone off and dropping it to the bed. He'd underestimated just how hard this would be.

It was a long time that he lay there staring up at the ceiling, thinking about her, about them. Long enough that he heard the sounds of the other boys heading to bed. But it had become routine for him to lie awake at night. Thinking about their almost. What could have been, if the timing had been better. He'd found her, this person who completed him, only for her to have to leave him. The injustice of it burned.

He almost wished he could forget her, in spite of his promise to her, just to make it hurt less. But it really was impossible. In the space of two years she'd become the light of his life, changing the way he saw everything. And the heartbreak was worth it to have even the memory of her smile in his life. That was the image he held in his mind as he finally fell asleep, and the image that appeared in his dreams. Little did he know that hundreds of miles away, just getting home from her babysitting gig, Lauren was doing the same thing.