by Jessica Roe
I give her everything I am.
Chapter 15
Ophelia
IT WAS THE night of Nathan's eighteenth birthday. His parents were throwing him a big, fancy party up in their enormous mansion. It'd be a busy affair, but would only be attended by his parents' contacts and business associates and not a single person that Nathan actually cared about and wanted to spend time with, save for his gramps. Not one of Nathan's friends had been extended an invitation, not even those he'd had since childhood. The whole shindig was just a networking event wrapped up in the disguise of a birthday celebration. It was a way of showing off their son as he followed them down that merry old path into their shiny, awful world.
I'd holed myself up in my room that night. Actually I'd pretty much camped out in there and refused to leave for the few weeks it had been since Nathan had confessed everything to me. I hurt too much to do anything other than curl up in a pathetic ball beneath my mountain of duvet covers and imagine Nathan at his party with one of those impossibly beautiful rich girls on his arm, fluttering her long eyelashes and pouting her big red lips. The classy kind of girl I could never hope to be.
Would he dance with her? Kiss her? Would she make him happy? Make him laugh and smile at her the way he only ever smiled at me?
Would he like her more than he liked me?
Those thoughts rolled around inside my head in an endless loop until my concentration was mercifully broken by my mom, knocking at my bedroom door. She'd been worrying a lot about me, probably thought I was going down the same road as Micah. I'd told her I'd had a fight with Eamon and that had seemed to reassure her somewhat.
“Phee?” she called softly, popping her head around my door. “There are some friends of yours at the door. I don't recognize them but they say they know you from the lake.”
I was intrigued enough by this to pull myself from my duvet cocoon, and found Nash, Ivy and Keegan waiting for me outside the front door. Mom had offered to let them wait inside but from their wide eyes I could tell they were worried my folks would somehow sense they were friends with Nathan and get me in trouble.
“What're you guys doing here?” I whispered, but I was glad to see them. Nathan wasn't the only person I'd hid myself away from. I closed the front door behind me so Mom and Dad wouldn't overhear our conversation and wrapped my arms around myself to keep warm in the cool night air.
“We're breaking our boy free from that lame ass party he's trapped at,” Nash told me with a wide grin. “You coming or not?”
EVENTUALLY NATHAN AND I manage to calm ourselves down, pull it together then pull apart. He dries my tears with the pads of his thumbs and without a word, we climb into his car to drive out to the lake.
With the two of us, it always seems to come back to the lake. All of our best and worst moments have happened here. It's a part of our story, a part of us.
We make our way up to the rocks I jumped from the very first day we met and sit, our legs dangling over the ledge.
We talk. We talk for hours.
Eventually he asks about the tattoo on my hip. I should've known I wouldn't get away with that one.
“Drunken night back in college,” I explain, hoping the dark night sky sufficiently disguises how heated my cheeks have become. “I'd told my best friend, Nellie, all about you for the first time. She was the only one I ever talked to about you. I just. . . The more I talked that night, the more I missed you. I'd managed to hold it all in for over a year but it just took me over. It was more than I could bear. I don't know why we thought the tattoo would be a good idea, but suffice to say the physical pain helped mask the emotional stuff. At least until I'd sobered up again anyway.”
“Yeah, alcohol'll do that to you.” He grins lightly, looking out at the lake instead of at me. He's trying to hide it, but I can tell how much he loves that I have that tattoo. Smug bastard. “What do you tell people it stands for?”
Lowering my face, I let out a laugh. “N for Nellie. We tell everyone I lost a bet.”
He chuckles loudly at that.
The lightness of our conversation soon fades away as we move onto my mom.
“I'd known,” I confess, staring down at my feet. “I'd known Mom wasn't going to live through this. Knew it the second I came home and saw her. I've been kidding myself this whole time, letting Mom tell me everything's gonna be okay and pretending to believe it because it was just. . .”
“Easier?” Nathan guesses, dead on as always.
“Yeah, easier. It was easier than the alternative.”
“That's understandable. Accepting that your mom is. . .” He shakes his head. “I get it.”
“Yeah.”
“How much time does she have?” he asks gently.
“Not long.” My shoulders haunch. “I feel so helpless. There's nothing I can do.”
“That's not true, Phee. You can make her comfortable. You can spend your time left with her making sure she's happy and rested. Peaceful. You can spend every day making sure she knows how much you love her.”
Tears fill my eyes again, but they don't escape. I'm on the edge of an emotional precipice, but this time I don't fall over and plummet into despair. “I just need to be stronger. Strong for her.”
Nathan doesn't bullshit me like most people would, like most people do every day. He doesn't encourage me to keep my hopes up or give me false reassurances that it all might work out in the end. He doesn't tell me a miracle might occur, that Mom might get better after all. And I appreciate that more than I can say, because those kind of lies aren't what I need right now. What I need is to be able to get this off my chest, this unbearable weight that makes me feel like I'm drowning, like I can't breathe, like I'm trapped somewhere cold and dark and terrifying. Nathan makes me feel, for a small bubble in time, warm again. Like that single ray of sunshine fighting its way through the heavy clouds, shining down upon my face, heating my skin, lighting my way.
All Nathan does is listen. He listens while I talk. He just listens.
As time ticks by, neither of us mention the kiss. It's become an unspoken, forbidden topic, a moment in time that didn't happen inside the world we live in now. It was a moment of comfort, of need.
But as we sit side by side on that uncomfortably hard rock, our hands rest in the gap between us, our pinkies and ring fingers entwined. The touch is tiny, innocent, and it makes my whole body burn.
I pointedly ignore the burn.
When night begins to fade away into the cold grey of morning, we decide it's time we get back home. Back home to real life.
“You gonna be okay driving back?” Nathan wants to know when we're back at the rental car. I lean against the door frame and he stands in front of me, close but not touching.
“I'll be fine,” I assure him. We stand, regarding one another for a few seconds more, before Nathan nods once and steps away.
Inside the car, I've only just shut the door behind me when he's tapping on the window. I wind it down and he leans inside. For a moment I think he'll kiss me again. For a moment I think I'll let him.
“I meant it,” he promises with a strangled voice. “I'm going to do what's right by you, Phee. I'm going to let you live your life now. I'll stay away.”
It takes me a few seconds too long to be able to form words. “Goodbye, Nathan.”
“Bye, Phee.”
He steps back and I drive away, leaving an irretrievable part of myself behind with him.
Chapter 16
Nathan
I WAS HATING every minute of my Godforsaken birthday party. Hating. Hating with a passion that bordered on absolute rage. The party wasn't even for me, not really.
More than anything I wished I was with Phee instead of a room full of people I didn't know. I hadn't even met most of them before that night.
God, I missed Phee. Missed her more than I could fucking stand.
I'd barely seen her since our talk at the lake, barely even spoken to her. She'd been avoiding me and I couldn't blame her fo
r it. If the roles had been reversed, I knew I wouldn't have been able to deal. Hell, even her fake dating Eamon made me uneasy, and I knew for certain that guy was more likely to hit on me than her by the way he was constantly checking out my ass. But the idea of her genuinely dating someone else, it would crush me. Even thinking about it made me want to smash everything in the room.
I was miserable, and to make matters worse my family had practically been shoving my 'date' and I together the whole evening.
Winifred her name was. She was beautiful, I couldn't lie. Voluminous glossy brown hair, long legs, spruced up to the nines with everything money could buy.
But Winnie, it turned out, was just about as miserable at being pimped out as I was.
“Why are you even going through with this?” I asked her in a hushed voice as we stood at the edge of the empty dance floor, pretending not to notice our parents watching us interact with their hawkish eyes.
She shrugged a dainty shoulder, pulling a disinterested face. It was an expression she pulled off to perfection. “Let's be honest – my parents rule me, just like yours do you. They hold the money which means they hold the power and the key to my living the lifestyle I desire. Even if I don't like it, I'll do whatever they wish so I can keep living the way I do. I like to be comfortable and pampered, and being cut off would put a pin in that.”
Her explanation was blunt and honest to fuck, and I found that I actually couldn't fault her for it. She was spoiled as shit but she owned the crap out of it and didn't try to hide it. She was exactly who she said she was, which was rare in our world. “Fair enough.”
She gave me a once over. “Besides, I suppose I could do worse. You don't seem so bad to look at.”
I let out a huff of laughter. The girl was decent. Spoiled and a total bitch, but maybe one of the only tolerable people in the room, Gramps aside.
She let out a sigh and turned fully to face me, giving me her whole attention for the first time. One of her manicured hands came up to rest on my chest and it confused me for a moment, until she shot a quick look over at our parents and I realized she was doing it for show. “Look, one of us needs to be brave and walk away from this before we actually end up married, and I'll warn you now that it's not going to be me. I won't do anything that will risk displeasing Mommy and Daddy.”
It hit me in the gut right then, as I stood in that room filled with unfamiliar people with this strange girl's hand on my chest, that she was right. Completely fucking right. One of us needed to walk away. Now.
And once I came to terms with that, everything else fell into place too like the pieces of a puzzle finally coming together.
I needed to follow my fucking heart and do what I wanted to do instead of bowing to my parents' unreasonable demands. I was eighteen, an adult, a man. I was old enough to think for myself, finally grow a pair and start making my own decisions. It was my life, and I needed to live it instead of trying to be the son my mom and dad had lost.
Gramps sidled up beside me then, sipping casually from a champagne flute with a sparkle in his blue eyes. “Don't look now, but there are a few familiar faces peering through that small window over there. I think they might be trying to gain your attention. You'd better give it to them before somebody else notices besides me,” he informed me, laughter bubbling beneath the surface of his voice.
Glancing over to where he'd nonchalantly nodded his head, my heart skipped a beat then began to race double time. Phee stood outside the window. Keegan, Ivy and Nash were there too, but she was the only one I really noticed.
My mind was instantly made up.
I'd been in the wrong place all night long. Those people out there, they were where I was supposed to be. They were always where I was supposed to be.
I opened my mouth, but Gramps beat me to it. “How about a dance, Winifred? Something nice and showy to give everyone something to look at, I think. Let's let our Nathan slip away.”
Smiling genuinely for the first time all night – Gramps had that effect on people – Winifred took his hand with an over the top curtsey. When she smiled like that, all teeth and dimples, she was truly beautiful in a way money couldn't buy. I hoped she knew that. “I'd be delighted,” she trilled, allowing him to lead her out to the empty dance floor.
And so, knowing it was going to infuriate my parents and not giving a damn at all, I edged my way out of the party while all eyes were on the show Gramps and Winnie were putting on, and practically sprinted outside to join the only people who really mattered. My friends. My true family.
As soon as she saw me, Phee ran straight into my arms. I caught her and span her in a circle, kissing her hard; kissing her in a way I'd been longing to do for weeks.
“I fucking missed you,” I gasped into her mouth.
She clutched at my hair and gave me a relieved, watery smile. “I missed you too, idiot.”
That night, the five of us went out to the lake and set up tents and a bonfire. We drank cheap beer and ate cake and s’mores and danced and laughed until my stomach ached.
Later, when Nash and Ivy had vanished inside a tent and Keegan had wondered off to flirt with some girls camping nearby, Phee and I crept inside our own tent and made love for the very first time.
TO MY FUCKING joy because I miss the bastards when they're not around, Blair and Silver are back in Fortune for their upcoming wedding. They chose a short engagement after deciding all they want is to just be married to each other and not all the mayhem that goes along with it.
But though marrying one another is all they want, neither seem overly excited at the prospect of their big day like they probably should be – like any normal couple madly in love should be. When I hang out with them, the reason for this becomes all too clear.
It's the moms. It's always the fucking moms.
Both of their moms have gone way overboard with the whole wedding thing, which is exactly the opposite of what the happy couple want.
Blair's step-mom is determined to make the day big and fancy and traditional whereas Paget, Silver's mom, wants some kind of hippie tribal ceremony. The two of them have been clashing and causing all kinds of shit, turning the whole thing into a big fucking mess.
“We just wanted something simple,” Blair grumbles sadly as our little group of friends have dinner at Nash and Ivy's place. And by dinner I mean takeout, 'cause neither of those guys can cook for shit.
“And small,” Silver agrees with a nod. “Something us.”
“Told your folks that?” I ask, more out of curiosity than anything else. I know more than anyone the stress of dealing with overbearing parents.
“You know my mom,” he gripes. “Dances to the tune of her own freaking drum. Doesn't listen to anybody but the voices in her head.”
“And Blair won't talk to Mom,” Nash adds with a roll of his eyes, shoving a forkful of food into his big ass mouth.
Blair shrinks into herself a little at that. I hate that. Blair isn't the kind of woman who shrinks into herself. I already know what her deal is; we've talked about it over beers before. Blair is touched Felicia is taking such an interest in her wedding, touched that she's as excited as she would be if she was her real mother. It's not something Blair ever thought she'd have. Her own mom was shitty in all kinds of ways, more interested in getting high than her daughter's well-being. Honestly, the whole wedding isn't something Blair ever thought she'd have either. She'd always just assumed she wasn't the kind of girl guys would want to marry. Until she and Silver fell in love, that was.
And now Blair doesn't want to risk hurting Felicia by raining on her wedding parade.
Blair has never said this, but I like to think I know her well enough to conclude it on my own and I suspect that even though she's been with her family for a good few years now, she still worries if she says the wrong thing or upsets the wrong person, she'll lose them for good. She got so used to losing things in her life before she moved to Fortune that it became second nature to her. It'll probably be a fear she's ne
ver quite able to let go of, which fucking sucks ass because she's awesome and she should know that every single person in her life adores the shit out of her and would do anything in their power to keep her, myself included. Silver most of all. Hell, that guy would die for her a thousand times over and still come crawling back for more.
But this whole mom/wedding catastrophe, it's definitely having an effect on their relationship. They're visibly stressed and unhappy, and I get a little niggle of worry it might be coming between them. They haven't been all sickly sweet and draped over one another like they usually are, which is just plain fucking weird and I don't like it one bit. Never in my life did I think I'd miss their PDA's, but now they're gone, I do. Even worse than their lack of affection is the lack of bickering between the two of them. Blair and Silver, they fight. All the damned time. It's just what they do. It's like goddamned foreplay for them, the dirty fuckers. But there's been nothing. Nada. Not a single word.
A hollow pit forms in my stomach. When Blair and Silver stop fighting, that's when it's really time to panic.
When Silver's grams passed away a couple years ago he inherited the house he'd lived in with her. It was the house across the street from Blair's, which I guess made staying apart from each other difficult back in the day. Not quite ready to let the place go, he's been renting it out to tenants for the past couple years.
But the place is empty right now, so he and Blair have been staying in it while they're back home. Blair's dad tried to object to this, tried to get her to stay across the street, but the girl laughed right in his face at his over protective notions.
In a bid to cheer Blair and Silver up and get the two of them to chill the fuck out, Jemma takes it upon herself to throw them a party at their place a few nights before the wedding.