by Jessica Roe
But it turns out I'd been wrong. So very, very wrong.
Because when I walked into Spencer's bedroom to find his cold body lying still, his eyes wide and glassed over and lifeless after he'd messed around and overdosed and died. . .
Yeah, that was way worse.
Chapter 5
Ophelia
CATCHING UP WITH Ivy after all these years at lunch was amazing. We talked nonstop the entire time, like we'd never been apart. Yet at the same time, just seeing her face brought back so many old memories I was left feeling raw with emotion by the time it came to say goodbye.
I knew when I left her that the right thing to do would be to go home to spend time with Mom, but seeing Ivy had me feeling exposed and vulnerable. I needed time and space before I could go back home, so instead I relieved Aunt Ellie from her shift at the thrift store. She was happy to head on home, mentioning something about climbing into bed with Mom and catching up on all their favorite old movies.
The store was empty for the rest of the day, leaving me with way too much time to dwell on my thoughts.
By the time I lock the doors I'm still not ready to head home so I find myself loitering, getting super OCD with a bunch of crap that doesn't even really need doing. I put the storeroom in order and reorganize the shelves in a way that'll make things easier for Mom when she's able to return back to work. Because she will return, she will get better. She has to. The idea of my mom not recovering from this isn't even something I can think about, it just isn't. People get better from cancer all the time these days, right? Why should my mom be any different? Why should my mom be one of the unlucky ones?
But as I reorganize the back storeroom for the second time tonight, I begin to accept deep down that the reason I'm really doing this is just. . .is just to prolong the time until I have to go home to see her looking so frail and weak. Because every time I see her, see the sickness that seems to surround her like a shroud, I'm filled with a deep sense of fear and dread that I just can't escape; a hopelessness I hide from everyone else but can't hide from myself. I'm a coward, that's all I am. A spineless, fearful coward.
My cell rings, startling my shaky nerves so much I knock an entire box of rings to the floor with a jangling clatter. Sighing and kind of just giving up on life for a few moments, I slide to the floor and lean back against an uncomfortably knobbly shelf. I pull out my cell and answer without even checking to see who it is.
“Hey, baby,” Seth sings, and his voice is so achingly reassuring that it almost raises a smile out of me. Almost.
“Hi,” I breathe, resting my head back against the wood. “I miss you.”
“Aw, Ophelia, I miss you too. You have no idea how much. How're things?”
We chat for a while. I give him a watered down version of how things are going here, not wanting to worry him too much, and he makes me laugh with stories about things going on at the hospital.
“I wish I could be there for you,” he says sadly after a while. “I'm gonna get down there as soon as I can, babe. I promise you.”
“I'm fine,” I assure him quickly. It's a huge lie, but I don't want him to become so anxious over me that he drops everything to rush here to be by my side. I just. . .I don't want him here, not in Norson Lake. It would be too much. “You should be there at the hospital where you're needed.”
“I'm needed there, with you,” he points out softly.
I press my forehead against my raised knees, missing him more than I even realized I would. What does that say about me, that I hadn't expected to miss my own fiancé so much? “They need you there more. We both know that.”
We talk a while longer before he reluctantly hangs up to go back to work.
I sit for a few minutes, soaking up the silence, before tidying the box of rings and standing. It's time for me to slip on my big girl panties and be an adult and go home. Mom needs me more than I need to wallow.
God, being an adult sucks sometimes. I'm not ready to adult. Adulting is hard.
I decide to give myself five minutes of Nellie time. That always makes me feel better.
“Hey, girlfriend!” she answers after just one ring, and immediately I feel better.
It takes only a minute to lock up and secure the store after I've finished with Nellie, and then I'm shouldering my purse and turning towards my car, shivering in the freezing January night air. Plumes of white steam billow from my nose and mouth. Why the hell didn't I put on a warmer coat?
Suddenly I freeze.
My entire body stiffens.
My blood runs cold, then hot, then cold again.
My mind empties of all thought, goes completely blank.
Every single one of my senses set on fire yet are doused with an icy spray of frost at the same time.
Because Nathan. . .Nathan stands not ten feet away from me, halfway between me and the rental car. He stands there, staring at me with a face so pale he could've just stumbled across a ghost.
He's older than the Nathan from my memories, definitely more muscular and his hair shorter – though messy as ever – but it's still Nathan. I mean he's looking worse for wear, drunk perhaps, but. . .
But it's Nathan.
My Nathan.
My Nathan.
Chapter 6
Ophelia
FEELINGS RUSH THROUGH me at an alarming pace, making my head swim and my body feel light. After all these years apart it's Nathan and he's. . .he's here.
We stand still for the longest time, both of us frozen in shock as we continue to stare at one another. I'm not sure I even feel the cold anymore.
His mouth opens and closes, then drops open again. “You're really home,” he murmurs, breaking the silence stretching out between us. And then he stumbles forward and begins to mutter quickly and incoherently. Definitely drunk. But how much has he had to drink? Clearly too much for him to handle.
How the hell did he even know I was here?
For a moment the pain of the last time Nathan and I saw one another hits me full blast like a sledgehammer to the gut and all I want to do is climb inside the car, drive back home and forget I ever saw him here. But reality washes over me like a cold spray and I know I could never leave anyone in this condition out here alone in the cold, let alone the man I once loved more than my own life. The guy looks like he's about to fall flat on his face, probably in a pool of his own vomit.
“Don'tcha think?” he suddenly asks, watching me with wide, bloodshot eyes.
I have absolutely no idea what he's been talking about, but right now I don't think that would matter to him one way or another so I simply reply, “Sure.” Then I take a deep breath and step forward, grasping his arms and guiding him over to the edge of the sidewalk near the rental car. I sit him down like a frigging child, grabbing a throw from the trunk and tossing it around his shoulders because he looks like he's about to freeze in his short sleeved t-shirt. He smells overwhelmingly of alcohol, but beneath that he still smells just like him. Unmistakably Nathan. That scent I remember so well hits me all at once and it's like. . .it's like coming home. I take an unsteady step back, not at all ready to deal with that.
After handing him a half empty bottle of water from my purse, I call Ivy.
“I knew we shouldn't have let him leave, I just knew it,” Ivy exclaims, fretting. She sounds close to tears. “Nash and I will be there as soon as we can. Will you. . .will you wait with him? Please? I don't want him out there alone.”
I close my eyes in defeat. “Of course I will.”
We hang up and I glance down at Nathan. He's huddled beneath the throw, staring up at me over his shoulder in childlike wonder.
He'd always been the most beautiful boy in the world to me, right from the very first moment I met him. Not classically handsome in the way some teenage boys can be; his nose had always been just a tiny bit too large and his eyes too wide and his wild hair ridiculously messy no matter what he tried with it. But to me he'd been everything. He'd been my dreams come to life. It had been hi
s easy confidence, I'd always thought, that had made him seem more attractive than most of the other boys around him.
He’s just as beautiful now as a man as he was then, even with the bloodshot, unfocused eyes and the smell of alcohol wafting off him in practically visible waves. More attractive, even. He's bulked up over the years, really grown into himself.
“Phee,” he slurs, simply because he seems to enjoy saying my name. “PheePheePheePheeeeee. . .”
I shake my head, both at him and myself, trying to control my racing heart. “How did you even get here, Nathan? Please tell me you didn't drive here drunk outta your mind?” I ask worriedly, then immediately hate myself for worrying about him at all. I don't want to feel anything for him.
“Got a cab,” he replies, then swivels around so fast to face me that the water bottle drops right out of his limp hand to the ground. He doesn't even seem to notice as the remaining contents trickle out next to his leg, wetting an ankle of his faded jeans. “Got the driver to call your house and pretend to be your friend and they told him you were still working. Just needed to see if you were really real, Phee. Needed to see if you were really back after all this time. I was so sure I'd never see you again. You're here, Phee!” He's talking so fast that he stumbles over his words and they come out jumbled, but he doesn't appear to notice that either.
Suddenly realizing his ankle is soaked, he starts in an almost comical way, reaching down to pick the bottle up in surprise like he's never seen anything of the like before. A tattoo on his inner forearm catches my eye; a flower. A pink azalea. It's beautifully precise, right down to the curling of the petals. It should probably look out of place on a man, but on Nathan's thick forearm it just looks. . .sexy. He pulls it off in a way most men would never be able to. But then, Nathan always did have the charm and the confidence to pull off anything he wanted to. It was why so many people always adored him, including me.
That azalea tattoo, it's like a painful arrow right through my heart. Because that flower means something to us. It means so much. Hell, it was our whole beginning. And sometime since we last saw one another that awful day almost ten years ago, he's had it permanently marked on his skin in a place he has to see every single day. This confuses the holy mothering hell out of me, because the last time Nathan saw me he was all about hating me more than anyone else on the face of the planet. So why would he put a permanent reminder of me, of us, onto his skin?
He's not in his right mind and I know I won't get much sense from him, but I have to ask. There's no way I can leave something like this unspoken. “That tattoo. . .” I begin, feeling breathless and almost dizzy. “I don't understand. You hated me. Hated me, Nathan. Why would you want to remember me like that?”
His face crumbles at my words. “I never hated you, Phee!” he protests desperately. “Not ever. I fucking hated myself, hated those shitty things I said to you. But God, I never hated you.”
“Could've fooled me,” I murmur, staring up at the cloudless night sky as I try and stop the tears pooling in my eyes from falling. I hate that after all these years he still has the power to affect me this way so easily.
It's been minutes, mere minutes, since he's crashed back into my life, and already I'm feeling more than I've felt in the entire time since I saw him last. I have no idea what I'm even supposed to do with these emotions storming through me like a herd of wild horses. How does he do this to me after all this time? How am I letting him do this to me?
I won't lie; I've imagined many, many times over the years what would happen if Nathan and I ever crossed paths again – not that I'd planned on allowing that to happen. But if there was an unfortunate chance that he and I would come face to face, I'd known exactly how I'd react. Planned it all out again and again as I lay sleepless in bed many nights those first couple of years. I'd be cool, calm, collected. Dismissive. Yet at the same time I'd show him exactly what kind of awesome he'd missed out on by breaking me to pieces all those years ago. I'd planned a hundred cold, contemptuous lines to throw over my shoulder as I walked away from him, just like he'd walked away from me.
But of course, none of that actually happens. Instead I'm still just that dazed, head over heels sixteen year old girl I'd been back then. Even drunker than a hobo and looking like crap, he still has the ability to pull me right back in again, to draw me in the same way he always could. What in the hell is wrong with me?
I open my mouth to say something, to say anything, when suddenly Nathan lunges at me so fast I have no time to react, no time to stop him. On his knees on the hard, cold cement ground, he wraps his arms around my waist and buries his face in my stomach, inhaling me like I'm the very air he needs to breathe. “I'm so sorry, Phee,” he groans into my shirt. “So fucking sorry. Sorry for what happened back then, sorry for all the shitty things I said to you that day, sorry for everything. I've wanted to apologize to you so many goddamned times over the years, lain awake nights on end thinking about it, but I was a motherfucking coward and I hate myself for that. I. . .” He grips me tighter, so tight I can barely breathe. “. . .I think about who our baby could've become every single day. Every single fucking day. I know it's my fault you lost it and I've never stopped blaming myself for that. Never stopped hating myself. Sometimes I can barely even stand to look at myself in the mirror. All I see is a monster.”
His words, they stun me more than anything else he ever could have said, and suddenly I'm aching so much I can barely stand it. And not just at the mention of our lost child. Clutching his shoulders, I push him back a little until he looks up at me with his tear stained face, his cheeks red with anguish. I'd never realized the loss of our baby had affected him just as much as it had me.
“I never, ever blamed you for losing the baby,” I choke out, devastated that he's put that on himself all these years. That was a weight he never should have carried. If I'd known he'd blamed himself I would have. . .I would have. . .I would have done something. My heart breaks for him “It wasn't your fault and you should never think it was. Losing the baby, it. . .it was just nature's way of telling us it wasn't supposed to happen.”
He sniffs, another tear rolling down his cheek. Unable to help myself, I brush away the messy strands of hair from his forehead tenderly.
A pair of headlights shine a bright glare over us and I pull away from Nathan's weakening clutches as Nash and Ivy pull up. They were much quicker than they should have been; I wince as I think about how many speed limits they must have smashed through. They jump out of the car, running over to us with matching looks of guilt on their tired faces.
“Come on, big guy,” Nash grunts as he heaves Nathan up. “Let's get you back to our place. You can sleep this shit off in the spare room so we can keep an eye on your dumb ass.”
“Tired,” Nathan slurs helpfully.
Nash throws Nathan's arm over his shoulder, dragging him over to his car. “Hey, Phee,” he calls over his shoulder. “Good to see you again.”
I give him a limp wave. “Hey.” My voice is small as I reply, barely even there. I watch Nathan's back as he leaves me, hating how much it hurts to watch him go, like he's taking another piece of my heart with him. How many pieces can one man take before there's nothing left?
“Aaaaand he's out,” Nash tells us after he's shoved Nathan head first in the back of the car, where he promptly passes out.
Ivy turns and hugs me tightly, clearly sensing my warped shock and emotional vulnerability. “I'm so sorry for telling Nathan you're home,” she says when she pulls back, biting her lip in distress. “I promise I didn't mean to. I was going to call you tomorrow and warn you – I had no idea he'd show up here tonight. I don't even. . . I'm really sorry.”
“Don't be, I'm not mad,” I assure her honestly, wrapping my arms around my body. To protect myself from the cold or just to protect my vulnerable state, I don’t know. “I never should've asked you to keep a secret from one of your best friends. It wasn't fair of me.”
“Maybe this is a good thing,”
she suggests with a forced cheer, her grin too wide, too false. “You've gotten the initial confrontation outta the way, right? At least now you won't be worrying about what'll happen if you bump into him. . .”
It's kind of like putting icing on a cake made out of mud, but I appreciate her attempt at trying to make me feel better anyway.
After making sure I'll be okay and promising to call me in the morning, Ivy joins Nash and Nathan in the car and they drive away. I'm left standing alone in the empty parking lot, watching in silence as their taillights get smaller and smaller until they completely disappear from sight. And even then I just continue to stand and stare unseeingly, leaning back against the car and wondering what in the hell I'm supposed to do with myself now.
THE BOY, THE one that Micah had been hanging around with too much and taking drugs with, had died of an overdose. It was awful and tragic and all I could think was how that could have been Micah there in that coffin and not him. I felt so very selfish for being grateful that it hadn't been my brother who had died when there was a family out there mourning the loss of a son they'd probably loved every bit as much as I loved my big brother, but I couldn't help it. And I wouldn't take it back.
But that family, they blamed Micah for their loss. Told everyone who would listen in Fortune, in Norson Lake, in all the other towns nearby, that it was Micah who had given him the pills that had killed him, that it was all Micah's fault their son was dead.
Micah became a social pariah overnight as the scandal spread like wildfire, and it was only days before he was receiving hate mail, before he was being verbally and even physically abused in the street, before bricks and other horrible things were being thrown through our windows with awful notes attached to them, before vandals were finding new and inventive ways to destroy our house. Micah's life, and mine and our family's, became hellish; became a living nightmare twenty hour hours a day. There never seemed to be a rest from the torture.