by Ellie Hall
I spiral away from the street in New York City, two brave souls amid a storm, and back to where it all started.
I try to rush past the gatekeeper that is my mind and into the muscle memory of my heart.
My mind, the traitor, parries with my heart that’s wanted Kellan so badly. It steps away from the battle waged for so many years with an offering, a declaration of armistice. His mouth and mine smooth over the rough edges of my wounds, healing at last.
The army in my brain, intent on protecting me, insists this can’t be. It’s wrong.
My heart throbs out a steady beat: want, need, love.
Our kiss continues, stretching beyond the past, into the future, and wrapping us in infinity.
Kellan pulls away, no apology in his face, and in its place, a deep and relentless want, need, love. His voice is low, husky, almost a growl. “I love you, Catherine. Never forget that.”
“I love you too.”
He went from someone I couldn’t have, to someone I didn’t want, to something else: yet to be defined. Possibility? He’s a manmade vision of muscle, strength, and confidence, with a poetic tongue, and a persistent desire for me, at least right now. I push away the later.
We kiss for a few more minutes before we walk home in the falling snow.
But I can’t help but feel the storm isn’t over.
The next morning I’m floating on clouds and not because fluffy white snow fills the window frame. What has me dreamy and warm like I’m inside a snow globe are Kellan’s kisses. Yes, plural. Those lips on mine could sustain me for the rest of my life. Yet I’m hungry for more. I feel fierce and vulnerable, a fighter and a lover, a rebel and loyal to the insistent beating in my chest.
I think about the night of the housewarming party. We were talking about the look, the smolder, the hot I’ve got my eyes on you and only you lazy gaze. My breath catches when Kellan’s image pops into my mind, giving me just such a look last night.
But it wasn’t only in the eyes. There was the way his warm fingers grazed my chilly skin. The way his lips dipped against mine as gentle as a whisper. The way my heart pounded in answer. How a kiss turned into hunger, into us breathing each other instead of oxygen, into the simple movement of two mouths providing our every need.
As the snow falls outside my bedroom window, I don’t hear Kellan stirring in the apartment. We stayed up late talking...and kissing.
Warm and cozy, and a big ball of I’ve fallen in love mush, I roll over and open Love Letters by K.C. Flynn. Two chapters in and I’m about a paragraph away from doodling C + N 4Ever in the margin. The plotline is familiar, but I read this book so long ago and have read so much since that it’s like reading the book for the first time.
I can practically hear Kellan narrating the text in his husky voice. After a few more chapters, I lose track of time and place, engrossed in the story.
Then the book takes a turn. The main character and the love interest finally have their moment—a blissfully big one—but then he leaves her to struggle through a crisis on her own. My eyes flick from word to word, sentence to sentence. I see myself in the main character, Olivia. Kellan in Xavier. I see us in the story, and I’m humiliated all over again.
Tears I don’t want to shed stream down my cheeks and I sob, lamenting all that happened in the past.
Kellan is a jerk, a betraying mongrel. He had no right to write about this, even if he changed the names and identities of those involved. I read between the lines and share the same stinging guilt with Olivia.
I hate him.
Snow Day
Kellan
This morning I woke to Blizzard Bob raging outside and with my heart melted by a girl who I’d frozen in time, keeping her in the past so I didn’t have to deal with my fears.
I have big plans and don’t want anything to go wrong...like me backing out.
I don’t hear her awake yet, so I pull on my boots, coat, and hat, heading outside to walk my way to the truth. First, I need to summon courage to embolden me to believe the best is possible because as usual, I fear the worst. She might reject me. She might tell me she hates me and never wants to see me again. She might say we should go our separate ways. I have to be okay with all of those possibilities, but the hope brightening inside me since that first encounter makes me fear I won’t be able to handle anything other than a yes.
The rumbling plow trucks create furrowed walls where the edges of the sidewalks should be. The shushing of the snow and the scrape of the plow blades are the only sounds against the stillness of the city. I breathe deep, welcoming the peace so that I can think.
I take a lap around the park, ignoring my cold toes and frigid fingers. All I need are words.
An older man in a fur cap with earflaps shovels the sidewalk in front of his café.
“Are you open?” I ask.
“In this? Ha! This is what we call a regular Saturday back home,” he says in accented English.
I order a coffee, a tea, and select a few Danish pastries from the case.
“You are good not to let a little bit of snow stop you from leaving your apartment and carrying on with your day,” he says, handing me the paper bag. “Some people can’t handle snow. This is nothing. A little storm. They shut down, close up, and lock themselves inside their houses. Everyone thinks, Snow day! Save me!’” He pulls the flaps down around his ears and mock cowers, freaking out at the first flake.
A smile plays around the edges of my lips and I say, “No, this is Saturday.”
He smiles appreciatively and salutes me. “That’s right. Enjoy it.”
“I will.” Encouraged, I march back into the snow, into Saturday, and balance the paper cups and paper bag in one hand.
I head back to the apartment, wiping my boots on the mat. I can do this. After everything that’s gone on, I owe us a chance. I live with enough regret as it is, but I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t try to make a future for us.
As I exit the elevator, dogs yap from behind a closed door.
Catherine sits on the couch when I enter. “Don’t bother taking off your coat,” she says.
“Are you okay? Is something wrong?” I ask, hoping, but not necessarily expecting, her to say yes to my question, but certainly not anticipating such a frosty reception.
“Yes, Kellan. Something is wrong.” Her arms fold across her chest and her face is pink and puffy.
“What happened?” I ask gently.
“You happened.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I got to chapter seventeen, Kellan.”
My face lifts into a smile. “You’re reading Love Letters?”
She chucks the book at me. “I read enough.”
I fumble but manage to catch it. “You don’t like it—?”
“No, Kellan, I hate it. And I hate you.” Her eyes blaze and the words burn a hole in my heart.
“What? I don’t understand,” I choke out.
“I don’t appreciate being humiliated all over again. Once was enough, thank you.”
“Humiliated?” My shot at redemption slips through my fingers.
“Kellan, when you came home for Claire’s funeral—” She swallows what looks like a bitter taste.
“And we were both so upset. I apologized for how everything went with you and Zach.”
“And then later that night we met on the beach and you told me how sometimes tragedy makes us realize important things—”
“And I confessed how much I cared about you, how I’d always cared about you. I told you I loved you. I did then. I’ve never stopped.”
“You showed me exactly how much you cared by leaving me the night we’d planned to elope. To make something good out of something so bad.”
The night rushes back like the storm raging outside. “I left because I was afraid. I’d lost my sister. I feared losing you. I wanted to forget everything that happened.”
“You had me. You chose to leave me,” she says in a small voice.
&n
bsp; I want to hold her so badly right now, but we have our adversarial armor on. “No, I freaked out. I couldn’t deal with being around my family, dealing with the guilt about how I should have knocked sense into Claire’s boyfriend when I had the chance.” I scrub my hands down my face. “Not a day passes when I don’t wish I could punch that,” I refrain from using the word I’d like to, “in the face.”
“I just call him a world-class jerk,” she whispers.
“He can’t hear you. He’s dead.”
“Exactly. And so is the past.”
I fear she means us.
“You left me to deal with it all on my own, Kellan. We were going to get married, and you practically left me at the altar.”
We’d planned to elope, to make a future out of a broken past. “What about now?”
“You ruined it when you left without...I waited for you. I shouldn’t have trusted you. Kissing you on the night of the funeral should have been a huge red flag.”
Here comes the truth, the one a Marine shouldn’t be afraid to admit. I set the book down and inhale. I try to explain it as best I can. “I’d already enlisted but hadn’t told anyone. At the time, going into the military was less scary than having a relationship, Catherine.” I sink onto the stool in the kitchen. “I was afraid of what would happen to you if I didn’t come back. You’d already experienced the loss of your best friend. What if I didn’t make it? What if we’d gotten married and then died in a bombing or was shot?” My eyes burn. Hers are wet.
“Kellan, at least if you’d told me that I would have known instead of being left with questions that chipped away at my heart, breaking it bit by bit. And it was wrong what we did. I’m convinced it was all punishment for betraying Claire. When we made The Boyfriend Book she told me we should hook up.” She shakes her head. “I told her I’d never hook up with you. I promised her. I am the one who broke a promise.”
“Please believe me when I say, I didn’t regret or feel guilt over us. Claire used to tease me about the crush I had on you. She wanted us to be together.”
The ache in her face flashes to surprise.
“She always thought we’d be perfect together. She even tried to get me to ask you out, but I knew Zach liked you. I was afraid you’d say no because I was your best friend’s brother—it all comes down to fear which is a difficult thing for me to admit.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell anyone anything? I felt the same way.” She shakes a notebook in her hand. In bubbly letters that I recognize as my sister’s writing, the cover says The Boyfriend Book.
I toe the wood floor with my boot. “You could have told me.”
“No, I couldn’t have.” Her voice is a whisper. “I was afraid too. Terrified you might not feel the same way. And then there was the tall, gorgeous, blond cheerleader and the girl on my field hockey team, the redhead that always brought you lunch, the girl with the terrible laugh...” she trails off, citing some of the girls I dated.
I shake my head.
“And Zach, your best friend. And Claire, I didn’t want anything to come between our friendship, but in the end, everything fell apart anyway, not in the way I feared, but much, much worse.”
“I’m so sorry, Cat.”
Using her nickname, must pierce something inside because she turns on me. “I am too. Sorry for the guilt I’ve felt for kissing you on the night of my best friend’s funeral. I’m sorry for the aching heart I’ve carried around, wondering why you walked out on me. And I’m sorry to say, I want you to go. I don’t want to see you again. This is too much.”
I want to ask her why she’s sorry, but then the last words catch up with me. “Can’t we talk now?”
“We were talking. I’m done with words.”
I rally. “But I’m not. You only reached chapter seventeen. There’s more to go. Don’t you want to know what happens?”
She shakes her head. “I know what happens. I’m sorry I’ve wasted so much time, energy, and tears on someone so insensitive.” She steps closer to me, her eyes flaming with anger. She stabs the scar and tattoo on my chest and says, “Kellan Connolly, last night I fooled myself into thinking you were the one, but you just broke my heart all over again.”
I capture her finger, twining mine through hers, trying to find stillness amidst this fight. The brush of my skin on hers sends a hot thrill through me just like it did when we’d secretly hold hands in my dark living room watching movies. Just like it did when we were at the couple’s yoga class. Just like it always has.
Our eyes meet and the softness I see fans the flame of hope.
The envelope practically pulses in my pocket. I have to do something before I give it to her. Something I should’ve done the first time. “I’m trying to be brave, Catherine. I don’t want this to be goodbye. I’ll only leave this time if you truly want me to. Otherwise, I’ll wait until you trust me again, until I have proven to you that the depth of my feelings for you goes back years and years. That I’m no longer afraid of what our families might think or of hurting you. I tried to write it out with a plot twist. I thought you’d see that. The only thing worse than taking a chance and failing is living with the regret of not having tried. I want to try with you, Cat. Please.”
“This is goodbye, Kellan. Leave.” The finality of her words keeps me glued to the stool.
I’m a fighter. I don’t want to let her go. I sit there when the door slams to her bedroom. I’m still seated when her roommate returns, her cheeks blazing and wearing the kind of smile I’ve only seen on Catherine’s lips once.
I already miss that dimple.
The Horizon
Catherine
I cry until the snow stops. I cry until I’m out of tears. I cry until I’m at the train station. I stare out the window as the rough water of the Long Island Sound appears and then disappears behind snowbanks and the backs of coastal towns.
My mind is as blank as the gray sky. I feel washed of color, empty.
A car waits for me, ferrying me to the Cape.
I spend several days shrouded in silence as though I left my voice in the kitchen with Kellan. After what I read in the book, I can’t imagine how many other people saw my story in his words. He claims never to have told anyone he authored Love Letters, but there’s no reason for me to believe him.
Time passes. It doesn’t matter.
My room smells like salt-air and the subtle, nose-tingling residue of hairspray and perfume. My sheets are clean, my pillow fluffed. Hazel must have called ahead to tell my mother that my complete and utter failure at life was complete.
My bedroom door creaks open. A plastic tray clinks on the wooden surface of my desk. The curtains whoosh open, and I squish my eyes tighter. The mattress shifts. My mother strokes my arm.
“It’s time to get up, Catherine dear.”
I mumble something along the lines of, No, leave me alone-I’m never getting up-I failed at life and can’t face myself.
“I understand you’re sad, but today is Valentine’s Day. You’ve spent enough time alone.”
Gee thanks, what a gentle reminder.
“Hazel mentioned you’d been going on some dates, but then had a falling out with an old friend after he told you something important.” I imagine the string of pearls bobbing on my mother’s neck as she swallows. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I shake my head, mashing it into the pillow. I don’t want to talk or think about it, but it’s all I can do, going over the battleground and inspecting the casualties until my mind has turned to ash.
“Listen,” she starts, but the door slams into the stopper on the trim.
A solid, mountainous figure stomps in. My sheets whoosh off me and I flinch, tucking my legs to my chest.
“Honey, you said fifteen minutes. It’s only been ten,” my mother says.
I roll over, confused at my father’s presence on a weekday afternoon.
“Enough is enough. Young lady, I think you’ll agree that since you came back here you still consider
us your parents and as such, I expect you to listen. On your feet.”
“I’m not one of your petty officers,” I hiss.
“No, you’re my daughter and I expect you to get dressed and report downstairs in ten minutes.” He stomps down the hall.
My mother shrugs delicately and whispers, “I think it’s safe to say he means five.”
I begrudgingly get dressed, brush my teeth, tie my hair into a knot on top of my head, and go downstairs.
The night I got home was a blur. I vaguely recall my parents had the kitchen remodeled. Something licks my ankle.
“That’s Sailor,” my mom says, picking up the cavalier King Charles spaniel puppy.
“You got a dog?”
“Your father brought him home from a dog rescue.”
He wags his tail, and I let him sniff my hand.
“Dear, don’t furrow your brow, you’ll get wrinkles,” my mother warns. “He misses you.”
“I’ve never met him,” I say.
“Not the dog, you. Your father misses you.”
“He replaced me with a puppy?”
“No, he just needed someone to order around.” Her smile hints that she’s joking.
“He’s waiting for you in the car.”
“Where are we going?”
Her tight-lipped shrug tells me she knows exactly where he’s taking me. To walk the plank? Back to the train station? To boot camp, to shape me into the son he always wanted?
I harrumph outside to find him warming up the SUV. He’s silent as he winds down our long driveway toward town.
“Where are we going?” I ask, but then he pulls into the all-American restaurant he’d take me to the second night he was home on leave.
The first night my mother would make a big dinner and then he’d sleep off the rocking of the sea.
The second night he’d take me for pizza and ice cream and no matter the weather we’d walk along the water.
Then, exhausted, I’d pass out back home. He and my mother would stay up late into the night talking and dancing. I only know this because once when I was eight, I had a stomachache and couldn’t fall asleep. I went out to tell them but just sat on the stairs, watching them waltz to a softly playing record. From then on, when my dad would return home, on that second night I’d do whatever I could to keep awake and watch their love story unfold in little shuffles from side to side, my mother’s head on my father’s chest, their hands clasped, and the music like a lullaby.