Shannon didn’t know what they could be optimistic about, but she didn’t want to bring Dina too close to her truth. Dina didn’t deserve to know so much about her.
Suddenly, Shannon spotted Russell on the other side of the square. He wore his massive headphones, which he always had on, and he was looking at his phone. She felt an urgent desire to get out of Dina’s orbit, to throw her arms around Russell and burrow herself into his chest. They’d been friends since right before she’d met Cole, so Russell had seen her through every iteration of her college and graduate career.
“I have to go, Dina,” Shannon said darkly. “Um, thanks for the coffee.” She got up and rushed for Russell, waving her arm till he noticed her. He raised his chin and smiled sadly, then hugged her tightly, just the way she’d wanted him to. They stood like that for nearly a minute, feeling the May sunshine on the tops of their heads.
“Were you with Dina?” Russell asked then, breaking the silence.
Shannon pulled back and grimaced. “I have no idea what that was about. I think she feels bad.”
“She should,” Russell said. “She’s put you through a lot.”
“That’s an understatement.” She scoffed.
After learning what had happened in the lab, Russell offered to come help Shannon clean up. “You can finish the experiment tomorrow,” he said. “Honestly, nobody’s going to give you a hard time about it. Everyone knows what you’re going through.” After a beat, he added, “I didn’t tell, by the way.”
Shannon smiled. “Rachel?”
“Of course,” he said, laughing.
For the next half hour, Russell and Shannon cleaned her lab table, then scrubbed up and left campus. Shannon wanted a few hours to talk and think about something unrelated to her father’s stroke and her lab experiments. Russell suggested they hit up one of their favorite bars—a dive with a jukebox and onion rings and cheap beer. She said, “Thank goodness. A thousand times yes.”
Russell orderedtwo beers and a basket of onion rings, then joined Shannon back at the booth. It was the booth they’d traditionally sat in since they’d turned twenty-one and could drink legally in public. For years, they’d shared this booth with Cole and Mimi, Russell’s longtime girlfriend. They’d gone on maybe a hundred double dates, although Cole and Russell had never really hit it off.
Russell raised his beer and said, “To being single, I guess?”
Shannon’s jaw dropped. “What are you saying?”
Russell laughed gently. “Yeah. Mimi dumped me. Last week.”
“You’re kidding!” Shannon had thought Mimi and Russell were headed for marriage and children. She would have bet on them far more than she would have bet on her relationship with Cole.
“Something’s in the water, I guess,” Russell said. “Stacy and Greg broke up, too.”
Shannon hadn’t heard that either. But she’d been sort of out of it.
“I wish you had called me,” Shannon said. She’d spent the entire weekend alone, nursing her wounds, calling her mother, wondering if her life was over.
“I didn’t want to bother you with my silly breakup. I know you have more important things on your mind,” he said.
“I want to be here for you,” Shannon said.
They were quiet for a moment. Someone put a dollar in the jukebox, and a moment later, Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” started up. Once, Shannon had watched Russell perform this song at karaoke. He’d been incredible. Mimi had hid her face with embarrassment.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?” Shannon asked. She wanted to hear about someone else’s problems for a change. Maybe that was selfish.
“Well, I mean, she got a job in the city,” Russell said, speaking of course of New York. “I think she started to see herself as someone different from me. She wants prestige and money. She thinks being a scientist is not entirely… you know, chic, or whatever.”
“You’re going to change the world!” Shannon cried. “That’s ridiculous.”
“She’s in fashion,” Russell reminded her. “She doesn’t really care about changing the world. Maybe on paper, we were never going to work out? At some point, maybe, your college relationships are supposed to stop making sense. It’s 2026. People don’t marry their college sweethearts anymore. Right?”
Shannon’s stomach tightened into knots. “How did your parents meet?”
“College,” Russell said, laughing. “What about yours?”
Shannon considered the fact of her parents’ early days: how they’d met in Nantucket, how her father had been wealthy and charming and probably a little manipulative, how her mother had been a brilliant scientist working on the island as a lifeguard for the summer. On paper, they hadn’t really worked, either. But they’d been married for twenty-five years! Now, her mother was literally nursing him so that he could remain at home!
Was that true love?