The Way We Were : A second chance romance (Take Me Home Series Book 2)

by SJ Cavaletti

  “Mmmm. Yeah, it’s been viewed loads, too.”

  Just when I thought it would all become polite, his eyes raised from the floor and his lips blushed. That red again. “Guess our tragedy helped everyone but me.”

  I rolled myself closer. This was it. I had been so matter of fact when I left him. And so matter of a fact every step of the way since. I put my hand on his thigh. It was warm but hard, manly, and sent primitive signals to my brain to procreate.

  The feel of El was something not of any explainable science. Something enigmatic and yet silently understood.

  Chemistry.

  “El,” I said, taking my hand off him, trying to shake the sizzling, distracting feeling off and focus on the words I have wanted to say for years. A lump formed in my throat. I had said them so easily so many times before. In my head. Even out loud in front of a mirror but now, they came out clunky.

  “I didn’t leave because I didn’t love you. I left because I had to love me again.”

  “I already know all that.”

  And just like that, El finished his drink and shuffled in the seat like he was getting ready to leave.

  This was potentially harder for him than it was even for me. I broke up with him. And even though it hurt like hell, the control had been mine. There was power in that. A power that El didn’t have. Control El never had.

  He tapped his foot and swirled the ice around in his cup, like one does when trying to make a bit more drink but actually, it’s all gone. “I’m kind of tired,” he said. “I’m going to jet.”

  I wanted to tell him to sit the fuck down. Challenge him. Tell him to be a man and talk to me. Fight for me.

  But the closest he got to hanging on was, “I don’t want to talk about this while we’ve been drinking.” He got up, put his cup in the sink and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek.

  “I’ll let Jasmine know about tomorrow. And I will catch up with you. We’ll…” He grabbed his backpack. “You okay? Before I leave? Need anything?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He blew a kiss and left.

  Yeah. I’m fine. Just me and this vodka cran hanging out with my ghosts from the past.

  22

  Elias

  Five Years Ago

  Seattle

  * * *

  Have you ever woken up with a nasty, sour feeling in the pit of your stomach? Just knowing that something was wrong? Or something was about to be wrong?

  I inhaled slowly through my nose, out through my mouth as if trying to frost a winter window. That’s how the yoga teacher told me to breathe. I’d been trying it. It really didn’t work. Even though I knew it should. Adding oxygen into the body stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system. This should promote a state of calmness.

  What I really needed was to rid myself of the repetitive thoughts plaguing me like hideous smallpox scars. Ugly. Permanent. Impossible to ignore.

  Both of us had been up all night. Shuffling around under the covers as quietly as possible, pretending the other was sleeping. I knew Liz was awake. She probably knew I was, too. Again.

  Liz seemed settled next to me, but I knew better. We’d played tug of war with the covers all night, both in futile attempts to fend off insomnia. And when we did sleep, we woke up after nightmares. But we both dragged ourselves out of bed ragged as hell every morning. Looking worse than we did after an entire day’s work.

  Still, it wasn’t this that wrung my stomach like a wet towel today. It was something else. Liz didn’t move when I rustled this morning. She didn’t move when I sat up in bed and cold air plunged under the duvet. And she still hadn’t moved even after I came back from the bathroom and had flushed the aggressive toilet that whooshed louder than it needed to.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She was on her side, duvet pulled up over her chin and she almost looked ready to chew on it like a newborn baby. But the look in her eye was the opposite of innocent. It was haunted. The one of a person who had seen more life that they should have, in too little time.

  I sat on the bed next to her and put my hand on the side of her ribcage, rubbing her. “I’ll bring you a coffee…”

  “No.”

  “Alright. Anything I can do? Tired?”

  She shook her head slowly, not looking at me once. Something was wrong. Liz had been distant many, many times since the accident, but this was something else. A level of despondency so deep it was practically anesthesia.

  “Okay. Just let me know…”

  I stood up, but hardly made my way to the door when she spoke.

  “El?”

  “Mmmhm?”

  “I’m moving back to Florida.”

  Punched. Sacked. Tackled. My body wanted to collapse on the spot. I went back to the bed and sat next to her again. I tried not to sound alarmed. It was just words. Just a conversation. “You don’t like it here?”

  “It’s not that. I… I need to leave. Well, not leave, what I need is to go back.”

  “We can go back…”

  “No. I…” She peeked up at my face, still clinging to the blanket for comfort. For security… For courage.

  “I’m sorry…” she said, her eyes became glassy. Like a blue lagoon in the stillest moment of the dawn. Eerie. Then she blinked. And two tears trickled down her cheeks, now blushed and hot looking.

  Inside my chest, my heart hardened. My lungs petrified. Every single organ seemed to freeze in time and refuse to give me life.

  This is not happening. “What are you saying, Lizzie? Why are you sorry?”

  I asked, but instinctively knew.

  “Because…” her body rose up and down with sharp breaths. Ones that fought back sobs. She wiped tears away, but they came faster than her hand could dry her cheeks. “… I have to go back. By myself. I need to go alone.”

  Any other person in the universe would have asked her why. Why we couldn’t go together. Why she had to go alone. But I knew why. I didn’t have to ask. She didn’t have to say anything more, but I listened anyway.

  “El, I just need to get back to where I have some sense of my old self. Be with people who know me outside of being in a wheelchair. And you need to move on with your life. You don’t need me weighing you down…”

  I stood sharply and then kneeled in front of her face, which still lay on the bed, her cheek now resting on a warm puddle of tears.

  “Don’t say that. You can say anything you want, but don’t you ever say that. You don’t weigh me down. You lift me up. And everything around me is better when you’re here…”

  “No, it isn’t, El. Don’t…”

  “Stop. Stop right now. If you need to leave, you need to own it. Don’t put this on me.”

  Her eyes caught mine. Her irises quickly and her pupils went from dull blue to the sharp, icy hue I knew always meant business. She pushed herself up in bed, never taking her eyes off me. “You want me to own this? All of this? Because from what I know, it takes two to have a relationship.”

  “All I’m saying is I don’t want you to say this is for my sake. To save my life. I love you Liz. I’m willing to put in the work.”

  Her nostrils flared slightly, like they did when she had too many things to say but had to choose one. Like they did when she held something back. Like they did when she didn’t get her way.

  Silence crept into the space between us. A million words sat precariously balanced on the edge of my tongue. Piling higher and higher. I wanted to force her to stay. Manipulate her emotions until she changed her mind. Beg her. I wanted to plead. But these strategies were futile. We’d let it go on for too long and now there was no turning back.

  Liz’s mind was made up. This was how she planned to fix her pain. OUR pain. She was going to run away from it.

  The shadow of this last year had depleted my strength. And even my belief that I deserved her. I stayed true as best I could.

  “Liz, we have everything together. We really do. Sometimes couples just need to accept that things aren’t
always perfect. Every couple has something they don’t see the same way or… I don’t know. I just don’t think you moving back to Florida without me is the answer.”

  A last-ditch attempt to have her stay. Weak and feeble as it was, I was too selfish to walk away. Too selfish to admit out loud something fundamental was wrong.

  I ran my fingers along my forehead and scratched my eyebrow, then dared to meet her eyes.

  They were tear filled again. But she was braver than I. “Elias. If we keep talking,” she said, putting her hand on mine, “We won’t be able to even be friends. I don’t want to say anymore because deep down inside, I know we’re thinking the same thing. You just think we can overcome it and I don’t.”

  “We can… it’s only been a year…”

  “In my mind it’s already been a year, not only… El, I just can’t anymore. But it isn’t you. It’s what happened… I do always want you in my life. Always.”

  “No, you don’t…” my defenses didn’t even work, I didn’t mean a word of that. I knew she did. It was fate that fucked us over.

  “El, yes I do. And I know you want me in your life, too. I know you do.”

  I nodded. The edges of my mouth drooped. The skin of my face melted to the ground. Everything inside melted. I lost all shape and form. Even my mind oozed and like an out-of-body experience, I could almost see my entire self-softening, dissolving, liquifying right before my eyes.

  It was over. I was over. I’d never put myself back together after this.

  An impossible choice. Liz and I could say the words that might never allow us to look at each other again. Or, we could keep them buried and stay friends. What we were both thinking was too painful. Too powerful.

  “I want you in my life, Liz.”

  She put her hand on mine. “And I want you in mine. I really do. So let’s not do this. Let’s just stop here. Count our blessings. And…”

  “And move on?”

  She nodded.

  Her beautiful face stared up at me. I tucked one of her golden strands behind her ear. Her little pixie ear that once she left, I wouldn’t be allowed to touch again. To kiss again. She was worth fighting for. Liz was worth dying for.

  And yet, if she spoke about the real reason she was leaving… We were at a total impasse. Like two people standing on landmines. If either of us moved, we’d both self-destruct and destroy the other person in turn.

  So we’d have to sit. Sit on our internal bombs that were set only inches too far away. So close. And yet too far to touch each other ever again.

  23

  Liz

  Present Day

  Uyu

  * * *

  Last night didn’t go to plan. El and I still needed to talk. To heal. To say the words neither of us had been brave enough to face but hadn’t gone away with time.

  It was annoying to get so close to that conversation, then watch him walk out the door. And take the vodka with him. But as was El, he inadvertently saved me again. At least I woke up without a hangover.

  I woke up on day four and I swore I could still smell his cologne hanging out over in the captain’s chair. I could even see it smile at me, and a strange sense of comfort enveloped me. Everything felt so much better when El was around.

  His scent made me idealize the past and re-imagine the future. And in these visions, it was hard not to want him back. I tried. In the past. Now. Whenever I wanted him back, I tried to see him, in my mind’s eye, getting with another woman. Because that was the one “bad” thing he could do that was actually realistic and I thought it would make me hate him. Because yes, I could be a tad bit jealous. But instead of hating him in these apparitions, I just hated the fictional woman. I’d had sex with the guy and he knew how to make all your booboos better. So in this method of mind manipulation, I just wanted to be her.

  I’d stopped trying to make him less likeable in order to move on and continued to work on me. But the way I still felt around him made me realize that distance and personal development were no match for whatever this was between the two of us.

  Simone rolled over on the top bunk. I had no idea what time she got in I was so passed out, tired from the emotional and physical exertion. The mattress slats creaked above me, and it sounded like a cat crying. Like how my heart felt for the past five years.

  Every goddamn day. Every day I felt like letting out a little whine. Though after leaving El, I found my confidence again. But it came at a huge cost. The only thing that had made that cost bearable was being three thousand miles away from him. Not smelling him. Not watching his deliberate, manly body take care of business. Not feeling that warm glow that radiated from his skin, because he was literally the most caring person in the world.

  I rolled over and shoved my face into my pillow.

  “You awake?” Simone asked from above.

  “Yes.” A barely audible muffle answered her.

  “How did it go with El last night?”

  A diplomatic answer. “Fine.” Turning over so she could hear me better, I added, “Things would always be fine with El.”

  “Mmmm,” was her only answer then the slats whined again and her pretty feet and red, glossy toenails hung over the edge. She jumped down and joined me, crouching uncomfortably to sit next to me. “So you didn’t fuck him?”

  “Hilarious. Really funny.”

  “It’s not that funny.”

  “I need to close that chapter. And with that keep my legs closed as well.”

  “Yeah, I get it. Close the proverbial legs. But you still want him.”

  “Anyone would want Elias.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “You don’t answer the damn question. Well, you say yes but in a way that’s totally uncommitted. Saying everyone would want him. It’s avoidance.”

  I shoved myself up onto the pillow, but it was flimsy and unsupportive so I awkwardly propped myself up on a stiff arm.

  “Sim, I get people make up, break up and make up again all the time, but El and I? We need to be careful. It took a lot for both of us to heal and move on with our lives.”

  “Did you really, though?”

  “What?”

  “Move on. Did you really move on?” She asked, head tilted. Like the lack of truth made it lose interest in giving me full attention. “You haven’t even dated anyone, really. Three months with Dave and really, even with him, you were on the road for at least half of it. Which as the person who manages your schedule I have to say that was the only time YOU requested for ME to make more bookings. You upped the ante. As soon as you started seeing Dave, you temporarily did more gigs. I mean, come on. And you haven’t tried to date anyone since. I even tried to set you up with that speaker from the Dallas gig…”

  “Why would I want something long distance?”

  “He was moving to Boca and still lives there now. Plus, you can live anywhere in the world.”

  I put my hand on her thigh. “I need to wee.”

  She stood, and I inched myself to the edge of the bed and then clumsily into my chair. Bunk beds created the open space this motorhome needed but weren’t great in the morning.

  I turned my back to Simone on my way to the bathroom when she said, “Except Seattle.”

  I stopped but didn’t turn around.

  She repeated, “Except Seattle. You couldn’t live in Seattle.”

  Even though she was being funny, the joking lilt in her voice apparent, El wasn’t something I took lightly. Maybe I acted too cool about the whole thing. Hidden it for too long and now here I was, partying on pirate ships and letting El carry me up and down ladders and ride on my chariot. It seemed like fun and games. But to me, it really wasn’t. I was in a total conundrum.

  El and I still had things to say. And though that conversation would surely bring closure, it was possible the door would lock for good. If we didn’t say what really tore us apart all those years ago, we could never move on, but if we did, we mi
ght never move on.

  That spot in the space and time continuum might be the last dot on the graph we ever visit together. And by delaying the conversation, I could stay there on that little dot with him and not go back to the lonely one I’d inhabited for the last five years.

  I finally turned around to face Simone, who stood with her hands across her chest and a grin smeared across her face. “You know I’m right. You still want El.”

  I glazed over her the best way I knew how. Pretend she didn’t say that. “I’m going to get dressed. It’s art today for our research session and I also told RollerBunny we’d go to a show with him later.”

  My diversion worked.

  “Oh,” Simone said, the previous thread falling to the cutting room floor, “That sounds fun.”

  “Yeah, a halfpipe and one of the world’s best wheelchair freestyle guys. It’s promising. I think Jasmine’s coming, too.”

  “Cool. On the other hand I have no idea where to begin on the art angle. I guess we could do it by months? Like go out along January then back along the February dial?”

  Uyu was huge. For as many things are there were to see, there was also a decent amount of space in between those things, no signposts, no show program to follow. But one thing I knew was that there were two things on the must see list.

  “Let’s start by seeing the temple and clock tower. Then we can ask some people there what they liked best? Otherwise it will take all week to scour Center Camp. We need to get down to it and ask for highlights.”

  An hour later, with clean armpits, two full bellies and soothed by a drum circle over breakfast at our camp, Simone and I pulled up to the temple. And opposite that, about fifty feet further on, the clock tower.

  I had heard from other Gypsies that the temple changed every year. Last year it was a gothic cathedral, one year like Stonehenge, another a mosque, shrines… always like a place of worship or sacred site recognizable in human history. This year, it was nothing I’d ever seen or heard about.