Clean Break

I spent my first weeks in Big River searching for local street art to hang on my walls and watering the succulents on the window sills, my mind racing with the city's noise until the 10-hour shifts at Steigenga’s turned my excitement into a dull ache in my arches.

I spent my days at the promotions firm, with the phone receiver to my ear, only to rush home and add my Steigengas’ name tag to my blazer. My bank account barely grew, but every paycheck felt like a key to a door they couldn't lock.

Despite my hectic schedule, I always made time for my friends, especially Tracy, a new friend, who was dating Mark, Sam’s older brother. We had become each other’s confidants over the last two years of dating brothers.

Watching them together was often disorienting. I remember one evening sitting on a patio with them, sharing a cheap bottle of red wine. Mark, who typically wore his work shirts starched stiff enough to stand on their own, had his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Tracy whispered something in his ear, and he threw his head back, letting out a loud, uninhibited belly laugh that startled the dog. He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her flush against him, looking less like the heir to a rigid dynasty and more like a man simply, helplessly in love.

However, being part of the DeYoung family came with its own pressures, and that easy laughter didn’t always survive the transition indoors.

One night, shortly after that evening, Tracy joined me for drinks and slammed her purse onto the table.

“He screamed at me,” she said, her voice shaking.

“Over earrings.”

I blinked, mid-sip.

“What?”

“I put my earrings on his dresser last night. This morning, he went ballistic. Said I was going to scratch the finish.” She laughed, a brittle, sharp sound.

“The finish, Tara. As if I’d taken a key to his Corvette.”

“That’s… crazy,” I said, carefully.

“Did he realize how ridiculous that sounded?”

She shook her head, flagging down the waiter for a double.

“No. And I didn’t stick around to explain it to him. I grabbed my stuff and walked out. I’m not living with someone who loves his furniture more than he loves me.”

I stared at her. My grip tightened around my glass, the condensation slick against my palm. The upbeat rhythm of the bar music warped, slowing down into something dissonant and hollow. I set the drink down carefully, staring at the liquid's trembling surface. I watched Tracy's hand as she reached for her drink. In Mark’s world, a scratch on a dresser was a tragedy; a woman walking out was just another variable to be corrected.

After that conversation, the walls of the apartment felt tighter, the air thinner. I found myself restless, with a growing urge for a clean break. I couldn’t wait for Sam to decide if he wanted me by his side. My own path was calling, and maybe some distance would clarify what we had between us.

When a job opportunity materialized from Prospect College’s placement office at a national women’s clothing store opened in New England in August, I applied on a whim, treating it as a fantasy. I touched the heavy, embossed letterhead of the offer. My name was there, printed in ink that didn't belong to Prospect College or the DeYoungs.

I sat at my kitchen table, the smell of bacon still heavy in the air. I held the offer letter in one hand and a framed photo of Sam in the other. I looked at the boxes of my roommate's things in the hallway, then set Sam's photo face down on the table. It meant walking away from Sam, risking that the distance might break us rather than fix us. I traced the line of Sam’s smile in the photo we’d been together now for almost four years, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. But then I looked at the letter again. This was my path. If I stayed, I would be waiting for him, not for me. I took a shaky breath and picked up the phone. I couldn’t afford to hesitate any longer.

“You okay with this?” my friend Cally asked later that week. We had met over drinks to discuss her wedding to her college boyfriend, Craig, but the conversation inevitably shifted to my departure. I was leaving in less than seven days.

“I have to be,” I replied, swirling the ice in my margarita.

“I can’t sit here waiting for him to make space for me. If I’m not enough reason for him to step up, maybe my absence will be.”

Cally wiped a tear from her eye.

“It sucks. It shouldn’t be this hard.”

I looked at Cally and smiled, though it didn’t quite reach my eyes.

“Sam thinks love is just something that sits there. He doesn’t get that you actually have to choose it.”

Cally sipped her white wine, a thoughtful look crossing her face.

“You’ll see him in a couple of weeks at the wedding,” she said, tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder.

“Sometimes guys just need a front-row seat to realize what they’re missing. Seeing Craig and me up there… maybe it’ll wake him up to what it’s supposed to look like. Possibly distance truly does make the heart grow fonder.”

The day after Labor Day, I packed my belongings into my new ruby-red Mazda RX-7. The interior of the Mazda smelled of fresh leather and the sharp, cold promise of the open road. I didn't look at the house; I just watched the tachometer needle jump as I revved the engine. I was ready to start my next chapter. I had the chance to start fresh again, to prove I could build a life beyond the world I had known in the safe confines of Prospect College and Big River.

I looked at Sam in the driveway. He didn't reach for my bags or ask me to stay. He just stood with his hands deep in his pockets, his shoulders slumped as if the weight of the DeYoung name had finally pulled him toward the pavement. He didn't move toward the car. He stayed on the sidewalk, a small, receding figure in my rearview mirror as I shifted into second gear, then third, the radio blasted the words,

“I fooled around and fell in love.” I turned the radio up to drown out the sound of my own breathing. I didn't look back until the Big River water tower was a speck.

I arrived at my new home, on the second floor in a building that used to be offices in the early 1900s, located in a bustling downtown that never seemed to sleep. I unlocked the door, the key turning with a satisfying click that echoed in the empty hallway. Inside, the apartment was the size of a postage stamp, smelling permanently of carbon copy and paper from days bygone. My view was an office supporting a local man running for Congress and a slice of gray sky. Still, when I opened the window, the cacophony of traffic and distant sirens became my new soundtrack. The constant motion on the streets below—people rushing to work, vendors shouting, the clatter of life—coursed through me like caffeine. I dropped my bags on the floor and spun in a slow circle. I was alone, yes, but I was forging my own way.

Though I missed Sam, I found a quiet contentment in my freedom to live on my terms. However, the phone calls soon established a rhythm in our relationship.One Tuesday night, I was curling up with a book when the phone rang.

“Hey,” Sam said, his voice warm and low, immediately bringing a smile to my face.

“I was just driving past the lake out in Nederland as we used to. I swear I could smell your perfume. I miss you so much.”

“I miss you too, Sam,” I said, closing my eyes and leaning back into the cushion of my futon.

“It’s been a long week. Tell me about your day.”

“Oh, you know. Work was fine. But listen, I was thinking about Thanksgiving. Maybe we could—” He cut himself off, and I heard a muffled sigh on the other end.

“Hold on. Mom’s yelling for me.”

I waited, listening to the hollow echo of their hallway. Then, the sharp, percussive sound of a garage door opening.

“I gotta go, Tara. Mom says she needs help with groceries.”

I looked at the clock. 9:15.

“Is she bringing in an entire supermarket? Why can't Jerry help?”

“He’s got the game on. Besides, she says the driveway light is flickering. She won't step out there alone.”

The receiver felt heavy in my hand—a plastic weight that I suddenly wanted to drop.

During moments like that, Tracy’s words often went through my mind: I’m not living with someone who loves his furniture more than he loves me.

In November, it seemed like he was finally going to break the pattern.

“I booked the ticket,” Sam told me over the phone, his voice breathless with a rare rebellion.

“I’m coming for a long weekend. I don’t care about the cost. I need to see you.”

My heart soared. I spent the next three days scrubbing my apartment and planning an itinerary filled with fun sights and the cuisine of my new city, but forty-eight hours before his flight, the phone rang.

“I can’t make it,” Sam said, his voice flat.

“What? Why?”

“Mom had a fit. She started crying about 'what it looks like' and 'decency' the second she saw the flight confirmation, you know how she feels about us being together overnight, because we aren’t married.”

“Sam,” I pleaded, gripping the receiver until my knuckles turned white.

“She’s absurd. You are a 23-year-old man, an adult, Sam. You bought a ticket.”

“I know, Tara! I know!” He sounded desperate, his voice cracking.

“But she was crying, saying I’m embarrassing her. I tried to tell her she was being ridiculous, but she just… she kept going on and on. You know how she gets.”

I hung up the phone. I didn’t cry. I just sat there, staring at the wall, feeling a heavy, dull weight settle in my chest where the excitement had been. He had tried, I told myself. He had wanted to come. I listened to the dial tone, a long, mechanical hum that sounded like a door being barred from the other side. The itinerary I’d spent three days planning sat on the counter, mocking me.

Six months later, I rushed home, bursting with news. I dialed Sam’s number, pacing the length of my small living room.

“Sam, you won’t believe it,” I said the moment he picked up.

“I got a promotion. Not just that—they want me to open a new store as the manager, which has never been opened. In New York! I’m going to be running my own location.”

“That’s… wow, Tara. That’s big,” Sam said. There was a pause, and I waited for the excitement, the questions. Instead, he let out a heavy sigh.

“My life isn’t so exciting. Mom’s on her regular rampage. She left me a list of chores and expected them all to be done before she got back from work.”

I stopped pacing mid-step, the phone cord tangling around my wrist. I looked at the New York skyline, then back at Sam's voice on the line—a voice that was currently arguing about a lawn that needed mowing.

“Sam, you really should start looking for your own place, you aren’t their servant.”

“I know, I know,” he rushed to say, but his voice lacked energy. “It’s just… It’s busy here, Tara. She’s demanding. I am just trying to save money for our house.”

I sat down on my couch, exhaling a long breath.

“I get it, Sam, and I’m here building my career.”

Despite the frustration, Sam and I stayed connected. The distance didn’t break us, but it changed the texture of our relationship. Sam had started hinting about marriage in our more recent calls. I wanted to build a life free from his mother’s critical gaze. I didn’t know exactly what that would look like. I looked at my reflection in the New York office window. I was no longer looking for Sam’s mother in the glass; I was just looking for the next store to open.