White Cloud

33- We Can Only Hope

"Rhode Island is pretty far away," Jayda tells me as we're in the living room of the new house and I've got all of the samples of flooring, paint colors, and other things surrounding me along with my laptop with images of furniture and home styles. I had gone to the home improvement store with Vincent yesterday, spent the night with him last night, and he's babysitting Ava now so Jayda is over helping me get everything together.

"I know," I sigh. "But I'm going to go for it anyway because I've decided that my future is the most important and I don't want to go forward with any regrets."

"That's good," She says. I lay out all of the flooring samples that I've got from hardwood to carpeting styles. My mom, although I thought that she'd be very picky about the decorative style, basically just told me to do whatever I wanted and then run it by her before she gives it to the people who are actually going to be doing all of the installation and hard work. "And very brave of you too."

"I'm going to miss my dogs like crazy," I admit, staring at the flooring samples and hoping that something will come to me. "Do you think that I should go for carpet or hardwood?"

"You can't ask for my advice on this, I have absolutely no idea," She laughs at me. "And what about Vincent? Is he going to go with you?"

I bite my lip, keeping my eyes downcast. "I haven't told him yet."

"He doesn't know?" She clarifies. "Bea, I think that he's going to notice when you just disappear."

"I know, I have to tell him I just don't know how. We just had this fight over him not being committed enough and he insisted that he is but I know that he's afraid of it, of committing for a long term relationship and I think that this will just totally freak him out. I honestly don't think that we'd make it long distance so that only gives him two choices and that's move up north with me or we break up."

"But that's not until next fall, you have almost an entire year to decide that," She justifies. "But he should be part of the thought process."

"I know," I say again. "Okay. I've decided. I'm going to do a light hardwood with an area rug with this kind of pattern. Easy to clean and pretty to look at."

"Bea."

"I'm going to tell him," I go back to the conversation at hand because she apparently won't let me change the subject. "But what if he panics and then I don't even get accepted? Then it's all for nothing."

"And when you get accepted? How are you going to explain to him that you've been hiding this from him for months?"

"Jayda, I know that you're right but I really don't like the words that are coming out of your mouth right now," I mumble to her as I'm holding up different hardwood and carpeting samples to try and get the perfect match for which hardwood and rug type I should suggest for the living room. "I just really love him and I don't want to mess up what we have."

"If he really loves you too, which I trust that he does, he will do the right thing," She assures me. "And he'll go with you. There's nothing tying him down to Florida anyway, he's taking online college courses and he's a lifeguard. He can be a lifeguard anywhere if his heart so desires to continue on that career path."

"It's selfish of me to ask him to do that."

"It's selfish of you to not tell him at all," She counters. "My solution is to be completely honest with him and then let him make his own decision. It might suck, it might hurt, but it could also be amazing."

I let out a very loud, frustrated groan. "I don't like this at all."

"I know," She lets out a small laugh. "Well, hey, maybe I can be a role model for you because even though I thought that it was really hard to do, I broke up with Gavin."

"You two didn't get back together?" I wonder in confusion because the last time that I talked to her, they were back together after she was suspicious of him cheating on her with her sister. It was only a suspicion, which is how she had justified getting back together with him.

"No, we did for a while there but then I found out that my suspicions of him sleeping with Serena were true because she told me. Well, I found his dick pics on her phone when I was trying to call my phone when I lost it but after I asked her about them, she admitted to hooking up with him. So I broke up with him. 100% for good this time, I'm sure of it," Jayda tells me the story and she doesn't seem upset about it at all.

"Why didn't you call me?" I ask her with a frown. "I would have been there."

"I know. I was going to call you," She starts. "Because I figured that it'd be nice to have a shoulder to cry on but just as I was expecting tears, they didn't come because I realized that I wasn't sad. I don't love Gavin anymore. I don't even like him. I want absolutely nothing to do with him and I'm okay with that. And my phone was lost."

"Good for you," I offer her an encouraging smile before I start on the paint samples. "So what are you going to do now that you're single?"

"Absolutely nothing," She decides. "I'm going to go to class and I'm going to stick it to the man and I'm going to sleep and that's it. I'm thinking about moving to New York. No beaches and a lot of angry people with a cause."

"Your people."

"My people," She grins at me. "Maybe I'll wait until the end of the semester or the end of the year but I feel like that's what's next for me."

"Good for you," I tell her. "That's really exciting."

"Yeah, it is. Trying to tell my dad that I want to move to New York though, that part is absolutely un-exciting. I figure that if I beg, cry, and tell him that Serena slept with my boyfriend he'll be so terribly mad at her, feel bad for me, and let me go with minimum debating about it," Jayda explains. "But I want to get all of the specifics figured out before I tell him that way he can tell how serious I am about this."

"Well, if I get to Rhode Island, I'll make a day out of it and come decorate your new apartment," I tell her with a small smile. "They're both up in that area, right? They can't be too far apart."

"Yeah, I'll look that up in my research," She says with a joking laugh. "How'd your parents take it when you told them that you were moving?"

"They were surprisingly okay with it, actually," I say. "I thought that they'd freak but they were really supportive and blindly just agreed with it. Maybe your father will surprise you too and just be okay with it."

"Yeah," She snorts in disbelief. "Maybe if I get accepted to one of the best design schools in the country, he'll think about it."

"I haven't gotten accepted yet," I remind her. "I'm just now putting a portfolio together to send it in with my application. I have a few months but it's a lot of work and I want everything to be perfect."

"You'll get accepted," She assures me. "And Vincent will go with you and everything will be perfect you'll live happily ever after. You worry too much."

"I worry the right amount," I defend. "You just have too much faith in me, and my ability to get things to end well. But maybe things will end well, I guess, it's a possibility. Maybe things will end well for you too, you just never know."

She laughs at me and falls back to lie down on the open floor. "We can only hope."