Back to Yesterday

by Pamela Sparkman

  Wrapping utensils inside a cloth napkin, she said, “There’s no fun in that. I like the challenge you present. Keeps me on my toes.”

  “You know everything you need to know.” I tucked my notebook underneath the counter and began the process of taking dirty dishes back to the kitchen. Henry, the manager, had to leave early, so Elizabeth and I were left to close the café.

  She followed behind me. “Well, I don’t know how your date went last night. Where did Charles take you?”

  Setting the dishes in the sink, I said, “Flying.”

  “Flying? Like in an airplane?”

  “No, flying kites.” I stepped around her to head back out front to grab more dishes. Looking over my shoulder at her confused face, I said, “Kidding. He’s a pilot, of course in an airplane.”

  “So what was that like? Were you scared? Did you have fun? Did he do that thing where you flip over?”

  “A barrel roll?” I smiled at the memory. “Yes, he did.”

  Elizabeth swatted me on the arm.

  “What was that for?”

  “For holding out on me. How was that not the first thing you mentioned when you got here?”

  “Because I knew you would have that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  She looked like a kid in a candy store, all wide-eyed and ready to pounce on the first thing she could sink her teeth into.

  “That look,” I said, pointing at her face. I wasn’t ready to talk about Charlie with her.

  Elizabeth put her hands on her hips and a new look adorned her face. Determination.

  Damn it. “What?”

  “Don’t what me Sophie Louise McCormick. Why are you being so nonchalant about this? The man took you flying. Who does that? I mean, a gorgeous man who has eyes only for you took you up in an airplane…for a date. How are you not giddy? Or throwing up?”

  I had been giddy. And I did throw up, after I had gotten home and my nerves finally caught up to me, but nobody needed to know that.

  “Come on, let’s have some girl talk. I want details.”

  “No. We have work to do,” I said, shrugging her off. “Are you gonna help?”

  She started wiping the counter. “We can talk and work at the same time.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying not to lose my patience. “I don’t want to talk about Charlie. Okay?”

  “Why?”

  “Elizabeth, drop it, all right?”

  I headed back towards the kitchen when she said loud enough for me to hear. “So when do you plan on doing it?”

  I stopped and turned around. “Do what?”

  “Break his heart? Or were you planning on stringing him along for a while?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “No, it isn’t. Just like it’s not fair that Andr–”

  “Don’t say his name,” I hissed.

  “…that Andrew was a lying cad and you’ve had to suffer for it.”

  “I cannot believe we are having this conversation,” I said in disbelief. “Can you not respect my wishes? I never want to talk about him.”

  “Well, we’re gonna talk about him because you’re letting him dictate how you live your life – who you let in and who you keep out. So yeah, we’re gonna talk about him, girlie, whether you like it or not. Because Charlie is innocent in all of this. He hasn’t done anything to make you push him away.”

  “IT’S PUSH OR BE PUSHED!”

  She went quiet, her eyes softening around the edges. “God, Sophie, is that what you think?”

  My bottom lip quivered, and I gave myself a minute to get the upper hand on my emotions. I stood taller and jutted my chin forward. “I won’t be that girl ever again. The girl who threw pennies into wishing wells. The girl who sat at home and waited for him to come back. The girl who–”

  “The girl who trusted?” she asked quietly.

  I hung my head, remembering how foolish I had been. “Yes. The girl who trusted.”

  “Sophie,” Elizabeth said, sadness filling her eyes. “That’s not something to be ashamed of – you trusting someone.”

  “Isn’t it? I believed him. Every time. Doesn’t that make me an idiot?”

  She shook her head. “No. That makes him an idiot for not–”

  “I don’t want to talk about this. It’s old news anyway.” I was becoming increasingly irritated so I continued cleaning up, eager to escape the lecture I knew was coming, the lecture that always followed whenever my past came up.

  “Old news? You’re letting this old news commandeer your life.”

  “It’s called not being a victim of deceit, something you wouldn’t know anything about.”

  “No, it’s called bailing out on life.”

  Patience – gone. “Bailing out?” I got in Elizabeth’s face. “I lived it. You didn’t. The broken promises, the lies. I’m never giving someone that kind of power over me ever again. And that includes Charlie. Stop telling me how to live my life.”

  “Well, somebody needs to.”

  “Why are you doing this? Huh? You wanna know why I didn’t tell you about my date?”

  “Because you knew what I would say.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You knew I would tell you to let go of the past and open your eyes to the possibilities.”

  I gritted my teeth, needing her to stop prodding into my business. “You haven’t walked in my shoes, Elizabeth.”

  Stepping forward, she got right back in my face. “I knew you would do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Charlie is a great guy. He cares about you. You care about him.”

  “Stop.”

  “No. You care about each other. I’m not gonna let you wreck this thing you’ve got with him because of your stupid pride.”

  Red hot anger flashed behind my eyes. “STUPID PRIDE?”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant–”

  I held up my hand. “No, I know exactly what you meant. And this conversation is over.”

  A flash of lightning lit up the darkening sky the same time Charlie walked through the door. “There’s a nasty storm moving in,” he said, patting his wind-blown hair, unaware of what he’d interrupted. Neither Elizabeth nor I greeted him, both of us trying to tamp down our anger.

  He looked between us, concern etching lines into his forehead. “What’s wrong?”

  I gathered up the last of the dishes and said, “Nothing’s wrong. We were just having a slight disagreement. Elizabeth thinks she knows what’s best for me and she doesn’t.”

  “Right,” Elizabeth said bitterly. “I’ve only known you my whole life. I wouldn’t know anything about you, would I?”

  I took the dishes back to the kitchen, turning my back on Elizabeth and Charlie. I couldn’t look at either one of them because the battle between my heart and mind took precedence at the moment. I set the dishes in the sink and slipped out the back door, forgetting about the impending storm. Thunder rumbled and the first drops of rain hit my skin, feeling good on my flushed cheeks. I sat on an empty crate, rested my head on the brick wall behind me, and let the rain wash over me.

  Why didn’t he love me? Why wasn’t I good enough?

  The tears that I kept locked away unleashed with a fury and I doubled over from the anguish that escaped right along with it.

  I loved him…I loved him…I loved him…I loved him…

  It had been years since I felt this raw, this exposed, and I didn’t know why it had decided to unleash its wrath on me now.

  Anger and bitterness swept over me like a tidal wave, and the stabbing pain of abandonment seized my body.

  I hate him…I HATE HIM!

  The storm was directly on top of me, yet I couldn’t find the strength to move, to seek shelter.

  Charlie lifted me from the crate and carried me inside. He sat us on the floor…me curled into a ball in his lap while he held me in his arms.

  “Shhh,” Charlie said in my ear. “Shhhh. It’s okay. Whatever it is,
I’ll make it okay.”

  I only cried harder. I was disposable, a cast-away. And I had loved him.

  Moments passed before I heard Charlie speak again, and when he did it wasn’t to me. “Don’t worry, Elizabeth,” he said in a strained voice. “I’ll take care of her.”

  Replying softly she said, “That’s what I’m counting on, Charlie.”

  I don’t know how long I stayed curled into Charlie’s chest while he soothed away the ache, or how long the storm lasted. I don’t know how long it took him to carry me the six blocks to my house, or how long he sat with me while I drifted in and out of sleep on the sofa. I don’t know how many times I felt his touch, or how many times I heard him say…I love you.

  But I do know how many times I wished I could have said it back.

  Or maybe I couldn’t. It was an infinite number.

  When I awoke, Charlie was asleep on the floor beside the couch with a blanket and pillow I could only assume he had gotten from my mother. I watched his chest rise and fall and I matched his breathing patterns, breath for breath. Inhaling and exhaling, keeping time with his. An invisible force, an unexplainable connection, tethered my heart to his, and I hated it and loved it.

  “He refused to leave,” someone whispered.

  I sat up and spun around to find the voice. My dad sat in one of the armchairs across the room. “He refused to leave,” he whispered again. The streetlights that filtered in through the window illuminated his face enough so that I could see the tilt of his head and the compassion in his eyes. I opened my mouth to respond, but he echoed the same words again, only this time he added, “Hear what I’m saying, baby girl. He…refused…to…leave.”

  This time, the words knocked the breath out of my lungs. “Dad,” I choked.

  “He refused to leave,” he repeated. Each time he said it, it was quiet, unassuming, yet relentless.

  “Stop,” I begged.

  “He refused to leave.”

  “Dad.”

  “He refused to leave.”

  A fat tear rolled down my cheek.

  “He refused to leave.”

  “You have to stop,” I pleaded.

  Dad went quiet and I silently thanked him for the reprieve. I laid my head back down and folded my arm over my eyes.

  “Go back to sleep, baby girl. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I listened until his footsteps had carried him upstairs and I let out a shaky breath. Years of hurt had managed to catch up to me that night and I didn’t know why. I had been numb to it, putting all of my emotions into a box and keeping the lid closed, and now that lid had been opened, I desperately wanted to slam it shut, lock it away in a closet, and throw away the key.

  I lay there for a while trying to unravel how I had become so unsteady, however, my swollen and puffy eyes grew heavy and sleep was fast approaching.

  I was just dozing off again when I heard a whisper in the dark say, “I refused to leave.”

  Sitting up, I rubbed my tired eyes. The sun was barely peeking over the horizon and the room was still blanketed in darkness. Sophie was sleeping on the couch, and I was grateful she’d found rest, unlike me. I had stayed awake the better part of the night, worrying about her, checking on her, making sure she was okay. I needed to be awake in case she needed me.

  “Charlie,” someone said quietly. I shifted in the direction of the voice. “Come outside with me, son. We need to talk.”

  I got up, careful not to disturb Sophie, folded my blanket, and walked onto the front porch with Mr. McCormick, gently shutting the door behind me. He held out a cup of coffee for me, which I graciously accepted. “Thank you.” I took a much-anticipated sip while he gestured for me to take a seat next to him.

  “Sophie hasn’t told you much about her childhood has she?”

  “No, sir. She hasn’t told me anything about it actually.”

  He leaned forward, elbows on knees, his coffee cup secure in both hands. “We adopted Sophie, Virginia and me. She was seven when Andrew brought her here, no advance notice of any sort, just…showed up.”

  I leaned forward too. “Andrew?”

  “Her father,” he said. “Andrew was married to Virginia’s sister, MaryAnn. About a year after they were married, they had Sophie, and a year after that, MaryAnn got sick and died. It was sudden. Andrew started drinking heavily and then one day he took off, left town, Sophie in tow. We tried looking for them but he never stayed in one place long enough. Until the night he showed up on our doorstep. We hadn’t seen them in years. Sophie didn’t even know who we were.”

  “Wait, so he just left her here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he ever come back?”

  Mr. McCormick hung his head. “No. Every year on her birthday he sent a postcard from wherever he was with promises he’d come back for her as soon as he settled down somewhere. He never did. The last postcard she received from Andrew was on her tenth birthday.” After a brief pause he said, “That year we decided to adopt Sophie, make her our daughter in every sense of the word. We took all the legal means to find him, everything our lawyer said we had to do, we did. Several months later, she was legally ours. So by all intents and purposes, she is my daughter. And if Andrew ever shows back up again, so help me, God…”

  I leaned back in my chair and let it all soak in, no longer interested in the coffee in my hand, I set it aside. When I couldn’t sit still any longer, I stood and paced the length of the porch. Things that Sophie had said, things that I didn’t really think about at the time, came back to me, and they took on an entirely different meaning.

  I have no intentions of falling in love with anyone.

  You seem a bit too perfect Mr. Hudson. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  I can’t do this with you. I have dreams you know. And they don’t involve me sitting around waiting and worrying all the time.

  And then when Elizabeth tried to warn me, it suddenly made a lot more sense.

  As easy-going as Sophie appears to be, she guards herself. She won’t make this easy for you. So keep that in mind when she pushes, and she will. You may need to do some pushing of your own.

  I sat back down with a thud and placed my head in my hands. “Christ,” I murmured. “She has abandonment issues.”

  Mr. McCormick eased out of his chair and put his hand on my shoulder. “Yes, Charlie, she does.”

  I looked up at him, beseeching him to help me figure out how to handle it. He shook his head, knowing I was imploring him for answers. “I think you’re on the right track, son. Keep doing what you’re doing. I just wanted you to understand where she was coming from is all.”

  “Thank you,” I said, my voice cracking. “I’m glad you told me.” I stood, shook his hand and thanked him once more. I didn’t know what I was going to do or what I was going to say, but I knew I would never abandon her. I would love her ‘til my dying day.

  Now, I just needed to convince her of that.

  I awoke with a start and immediately sat up. The first thing I noticed was Charlie’s absence. His blanket and pillow were neatly placed on one of the chairs. At first I smiled, remembering how he had stayed with me, until that feeling gave way and I felt bereft.

  I walked down the hallway to the bathroom. In the mirror, my red, puffy eyes were a clear reminder of the night I’d had. Turning on the faucet, I washed my face and scrubbed as though I were washing away years of hurt and layers of pain. If only it was that simple. I regretted how Charlie had seen me unravel and I wished that I could undo it all and start yesterday over. What must he think of me?

  When I stepped out of the bathroom Charlie was standing outside the door and I let out a surprised squeal. “Jesus, Charlie, you scared me.” I placed my hand over my rapidly beating heart. “I thought you left.”

  He tilted his head, concern written on his face. “I was on the porch. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said unconvincingly.

  He stepped closer. “You had me worried.�
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  The house was quiet. The only sound was the ticking clock in the hallway. I repeated softly, “I’m fine. I’m…okay.”

  He held out his arms. “May I?”

  His coffee-colored eyes were fixed on mine, quiet and sober. Longing and desire clung to the edges, sadness filled in the rest.

  My chest began to burn, spreading up and out like a wildfire set on destruction until my eyes also started to burn. I stepped into his waiting arms, not sure who needed a hug more, him or me.

  I breathed him in. His clothes, skin, hair…everything that made him Charlie, and I felt more grounded, more secure than I ever had. My arms found his waist and I held onto him like I might float away otherwise.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “For what?” he whispered back.

  “I’m…I don’t know what came over me. I’m so embarrassed.”

  He only held me tighter while the clock kept the time.

  Tick

  Tick

  Tick

  Maybe no words needed to be said. Maybe it was enough that he held me when I needed his strength. And maybe it was enough that I held him when he needed someone to hold.

  We stayed like that, clutched in each other’s arms until his warmth became my warmth.

  I lifted my head, peered into his eyes, and when he blinked again the sadness in them flitted away and hope took its place.

  “Sophie,” he said, bringing his hand up to touch my cheek. His forehead pressed against mine and his breath wisped across my lips. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

  Whenever Charlie touched me my heart thrummed, playing a melody that only he inspired. I squeezed my eyes closed and chased the memories. I was tired of living with them. So tired.

  “No,” I whispered. “I don’t.”

  Warm lips pressed against mine and careful hands anchored me to the ground. “Let me try,” he said, pulling away so he could look at me. “I want to be the guy you run to when the world caves in around you. I want to be the guy who can put a smile on your face and kiss away all the bad stuff…the one who gets under your skin because I’m all you can think about. But mostly I just want to be the guy you call yours, because you’re that girl for me, Sophie McCormick.” His eyes held me in place, and he breathed out a heavy breath. “I want to be that guy.”