Camryn Quinn is finally getting what she wants...sort of. Moving into a dorm and away from her not so supportive father is a good first step, but like everything with him-it comes with strings. She must attend the college of his choosing for at leas...
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I spend one more day in the godforsaken shit hole our country calls NashVegas to allow Gabi to show me around. She shows me all of her favorite places on campus and around the city. Where she and her friends like to go out, her favorite coffee shop and local shops, but also her newest hobby, Disc Golf (gag me at the idea of throwing a disc towards a metal net for eighteen holes).
Her new friends are even great. Each one compliments one of Gabi's best qualities. Andi, the reserved environmental major, is so timid until a topic of passion is brought up and then she makes a very convincing argument. Linley is PreMed, and perfectly cut out to be Gabi's study partner. Lastly I met Grant, a boy she met at her favorite coffee shop. He began a conversation when he saw her Pugs Not Drugs sticker on her laptop. He's unbelievably cute and sweet. And by the way he looks at her, I know Alyssa would bet on them being a thing before winter break.
Every single stop on the tour has demonstrated the truth in her words. Gabi's confidence and joy showing me around is plastered on her face, basically expelling from every single one of her pores. She fits in here wearing her black and gold, in cowboy boots and Indie bookstores.Gabi Brown makes sense here, but it's very clear that Camryn Quinn does not.
We spend our last evening together filling in the blanks on both of our parts, acknowledging that we have both been busy with school, activities, and new friends. But we make it clear that no one was more at fault than the other. Which is a good thing. It means doing exactly what college is meant to do, help you blossom into the adult you were meant to be.
Gabi once again helps me reach an epiphany when she poses the question of what I want to pursue for myself and no one else. I show her my photography, my art that I have once again discovered. It's then that I get to share my new found love for photojournalism. The amount of satisfaction that I get from telling a story through my images is unmatched to anything I've ever felt in any of my classes. Gabi raves over my pieces in The Daily Scoop. This makes her swear her utmost respect and a waning jealousy over Alyssa for pushing me into the news room. Gabi confesses that she felt a little snubbed by Alyssa at first, thinking that I had somehow found a way to replace her.
I also eventually fill her in on Taylor and the list he created for me. I didn't let myself go into too many details though, considering the wound of his betrayal hasn't yet scabbed over. But I couldn't tell my story of my first semester of college without at least mentioning it. All of my adventures include him and Alyssa.
After sharing the list with Gabi and reliving each item. I realized my words don't do them justice, so I open up my computer and pull up my saved images. I pull up the file containing the digital version of the timeline I've been keeping.
"You're making this again?" she asks as she flips through the digital pages, stopping to read the script paired with each.
"Yeah. I uhm, I just pulled my camera out one night." I flip back to the first page and pull out a picture of Taylor that I snuck when he took me to the waterfall. Back before he was much more to me and than someone I didn't hate to be around. I let myself stare at the image on the screen. It's the first time I've seen his face since I left his house two days ago. I've avoided looking further than the images that my mind has conjured of him. Taylor's silhouette fills the screen painted in the remnants of a sunset as he sat on the dock at the Hidden Lake. His brown hair was still long then and worn pushed back from his forehead in his typical fashion. The left side of his face faced my lens, revealing a single dimple that he has since wielded with power over me.
I captioned this one, I See You and You See Me. It's from a poem I once randomly found on Tumblr. It talks about being able to see one another because you give yourself to them voluntarily and them to you. It's about finding freedom in being able to give yourself to someone, to love them wholly for who they are.
I look at the picture again, willing the truth to be written in it. If only it could skip off the screen the way Taylor had skipped rocks across that water. But it doesn't. When I look at Taylor I feel regret for all the times I gave myself to him voluntarily. And I don't want to feel regret, not with him.
"He's so photogenic it makes me sick," Gabi says.
"You have no idea, I've tried to take a bad picture of him, it doesn't exist. His mom and sister are the same way." I scroll, looking for a specific picture. I stop when I reach the ones from last weekend. God, how was that just last weekend? How were things so perfect less than seven days ago? I stop on a picture of his family. Shea's face is pressed between her two children. Their smiles are identical, each one spreading from their lips to their eyes. It's scary to feel so much happiness from a single frame, happiness that I manifested.
"You really like him," Gabi says, except she's no longer looking at the image. Instead, her eyes are fixed on me.
"I think I might love him," I admit. My eyes linger on the digital version of his. I want them to reveal their truth to me. The truth that Taylor seems to think would change the outcome of his choices. "But I don't know if I can forgive him."
"I'm not saying forgive him, but if he's anything like the picture you've painted of him. I think there's more to it, C. We both know your dad and brother. They have a way of manipulating situations in their favor. Do you think you would at least hear him out?"
"Part of me feels like I should, that I owe him that because he was there too. It wasn't a one way street, the things he shared with me hurt him, too. You don't do that to yourself even as collateral just to get what you want."
I haven't let myself dwell on Taylor too much, everytime he or the situation has popped into my head I've done everything I can to occupy my mind. I even went on a run with Gabi today. But now, uncovering these pictures, our memories refuse to be silenced. A literal timeline of us is laid out before me. I don't know what to believe or where it all went wrong.
"I wouldn't even know where to begin," I say. "Part of me wants to avoid him, make him sweat and cause him physical pain—but part of me is in physical pain at the thought of never talking to or seeing him again." The pain is more than just a flesh wound. I feel it everywhere. I just can't decipher if the true damage is coming from the betrayal or the love I have for him.
The hurt must be visible in my facial expressions or body language, because Gabi changes the subject. I'm sure she doesn't want to spoil our last night together. Instead, we push forward having one last sleep over. We smoke a joint from the stash Gabi keeps in a shoe box in her closet while we use drugstore face masks. We take turns spooning mouthfuls of Tonight Dough into our mouths as we watch other people's manufactured drama play on a Bravo reality show.
We drift into a marijuana and sugar induced sleep holding onto each other. Tomorrow when we wake up, our roles will shift. Gabi will always be my best friend, but part of wanting to be an adult is understanding that although you grew up together, you can't always grow together. Gabi and I will continue to grow on parallel paths instead of a perpendicular one. We will always be a lifeline for one another, but we no longer need to intercept in the middle just because it's easy and safe. And I'm perfectly content with that.
