by Noelle Adams
“I’m not going to throw up!” she interrupted, a hot flush washing over her. “I’m not sick. I promise. I just… I just… thought about something.”
“Thought about what? It looked like something attacked you.”
She could tell from his expression and the tone of his voice that he wasn’t going to let this go. She might as well tell him now. With a reluctant sigh, she asked, “Do you ever get hit with memories out of the blue? They just sort of pop into your mind, and they’re not good memories. And you feel everything you did back then, and then you can’t get it out of your mind. It does kind of feel like the memory attacks you.”
“Yeah. I think I know what you’re talking about.”
“For me, they’re almost always embarrassing memories, remembering when I’ve made an absolute fool of myself. It’s usually in the middle of the night, and I just replay them over and over again in my mind.” She gave him a little smile. “It’s terrible.”
“What did you remember just now?”
“Oh… nothing really.”
“You’re really not going to tell me?”
“Fine. It was from back in high school. There was a guy I liked, and I was convinced he secretly liked me. So I wrote him this horrible sappy letter about all my feelings.” Her cheeks were literally burning at the memory. “I was such a complete fool. He didn’t like me at all. I’d taken all these trivial gestures and conversations and turned them into a romance. He… didn’t like me.”
“Shit,” Timothy breathed. “Was that Jax Keller?”
She licked her lips. “Yeah. I guess you know what he did with the letter?”
Jax had made a public show of the letter, reading it out loud to anyone who would listen and mocking it endlessly.
“What an asshole,” Timothy muttered. “I didn’t realize you’d written that letter.”
“I did. I was fourteen, and I should have forgiven myself by now for being young and foolish. But I still cringe at what I did, putting my heart out for the world to see that way. I can’t believe I was ever so stupid.”
“It wasn’t your fault. It was his fault. Even if he wasn’t into you, he should have treated you better.” Timothy was almost never angry, but his jaw was clenched now and resentment smoldered in his eyes.
For no good reason, his reaction made Madison feel a little better. “I know he should have. He was nothing but an asshole. But still… I was the one who was stupid enough to…”
“To what? To be honest about your feelings? What’s wrong with that?”
“I wasn’t just honest about my feelings. I’d made up a whole love story in my mind, one that didn’t exist at all. I’d convinced myself that all those little things meant something, and they didn’t. I wasn’t just honest. I was stupid. I was stupid.”
As she said the words, she realized they rang true in more than one way. It wasn’t just her fourteen-year-old self who could be so foolish. She could be just as stupid now. It wasn’t so long ago that she was hoping Timothy had feelings for her, based on little details, trivial conversations.
She’d been wrong about him too. At least this time she hadn’t humiliated herself in the process. Or not humiliated herself so the whole world could see.
She wasn’t going to be stupid like that again.
“Even so, if he’d been a decent guy,” Timothy said, that same edge of resentment in his tone, “he would have treated you better. The fault is his. Not yours.” He paused. “Is he going to be here this weekend?”
“No. I actually checked to see, but he’s not. Thank God.” She gave Timothy a tired smile. “Do you ever have memories that attack you out of the blue?” She suddenly realized that of course he did. His wife had died. Those memories had to attack him more than anything she’d ever experienced. “Embarrassing ones, I mean. Ones that make you cringe.”
“I knew what you meant,” he said softly. He paused, obviously thinking. “When I was a teenager, my mom and I got into a fight about something. It was stupid—just about how much time I was spending playing video games. But I got really mad about it, and I told her she wasn’t my real mother.”
Madison could see the tension in his fingers, in his grip on the steering wheel.
He continued, staring out at the road. “I still cringe thinking about it. How could I say something like that to her, no matter how angry I was? Later I heard her crying by herself in her room. I know she was crying because of me.”
“You were just a kid, Timothy. Everyone says things they don’t mean occasionally. I’m sure she knew that.”
“Yeah. I apologized to her, and it was all fine. She knows how much l love her. She knows how glad I am that she is my mother. But it doesn’t take away the memory. It still attacks me sometimes.”
She reached out to squeeze his arm gently. “You know, it just shows what a nice guy you really are, that the memory that most attacks you is when you were mean to someone and not just being generally humiliated.”
He shook his head, turning his head to let his dark eyes linger on her face. “A nice guy, am I?”
“Yes. Of course. You’re the nicest guy in the world.” Her eyes were wide with genuine surprise. “You know that, don’t you? There’s no one as nice as you are.”
He focused his eyes back on the road in front of him. They were going through a little town, which consisted of a home-cooking restaurant, a gas station, and three of what Madison had always thought of as “junk stores.” “I guess there are worse things than being nice,” Timothy murmured softly.
“Worse things? It’s a good thing, Timothy. It’s a good thing!”
His mouth tilted up slightly. “Okay. Thanks.” Without warning, he put on the brakes and turned the car into the parking lot of one of the junk stores.
“What are we doing?” Madison asked.
“We’re stopping to get our minds on something other than memories attacking us. Look. They have fudge here.”
The idea of fudge perked her up considerably. Plus she kind of needed to go to the bathroom anyway. So she got out of the car happily and went inside the store, where they were greeted by a friendly middle-aged woman.
When she came out of the bathroom, she heard Timothy’s voice from the hallway, before she stepped into the main room of the store. He was asking the woman about the store—how long ago she’d opened it, what kind of customers she got, how she decided what to stock. He was obviously genuinely interested. He was an anthropologist, after all. If he hung around for long, he’d be asking about the cultural history of the town and the makeup of the population.
The woman was clearly happy about the interest, and she kept chatting with him at great length as Madison came out to stand beside him.
“What about you?” the woman asked. “Where are you from?”
“We’re from DC,” Timothy said, glancing over at Madison to bring her into the conversation. “We’re just driving through on our way to West Virginia.”
“Oh, I meant you.” The woman looked briefly flustered, and Madison immediately knew why.
It wasn’t the first time someone had asked Timothy where he was from in her presence. His appearance was clearly Asian, although he spoke English exactly like Madison did herself.
It had always bothered her, this assumption that he wasn’t as American as anyone else.
Timothy smiled at the woman. “My parents were Korean, but I was adopted as a baby, and I’ve lived here all my life.”
The woman relaxed at his gentle words, and Madison could tell that she was relieved she hadn’t offended him. “And this is your wife? Your girlfriend?”
Madison was hit with a weird combination of embarrassment and pleasure. She couldn’t help but like the fact that the woman thought she and Timothy were a couple even though it made her feel awkward.
“She’s my good friend,” Timothy said softly, glancing over at Madison again.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the woman said, clearly believing she kept putting her foot in her mout
h. “I just assumed…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Timothy said. He gave her a conspiratorial smile. “I’m still working on more than that.”
Madison stared at him in surprise, as the woman giggled, clearly pleased by his teasing comment.
The woman said, “Well, don’t give up. Here, let me get you some fudge.”
They left the shop a few minutes later, and Madison was still filled with confusion and pleasure and self-consciousness over the conversation.
Timothy was probably just smoothing over the woman’s little blunders. He was kind that way.
He obviously didn’t mean what he’d said.
He wasn’t working on changing their friendship into anything more.
He’d never said a word about it. He’d never made a single move.
She needed to let it go.
Just because she wanted to read meaning and feelings into every little word and gesture he made, it didn’t mean there was a reality underlying it.
She ate her piece of fudge and reminded herself that this wedding weekend wasn’t about Timothy.
He wasn’t hers to win.
Two
An hour later, they crossed over the West Virginia state line. Timothy was still driving, and they’d been sitting in silence for a few minutes.
“Is there anyone you’re really looking forward to seeing at the wedding?” she asked after a while.
He glanced over, looking surprised by the question. “I don’t know. I guess it will be nice to catch up with some of my old friends. I don’t know that I’d call myself excited.”
“Have you kept up with many of them?”
He gave a half shrug, his eyes resting briefly on her face. “Not really. Just on Facebook or whatever. I never had any really close friends like you had with Hannah and Charlie. Other than Emily, of course. And you.”
She was strangely touched that he’d included her as a close friend. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s just Charlie, Hannah, and you for me. A lot of the girls I used to know are just… really different from me now.”
“Yes. Me too.” He looked like he might say something else, but Madison’s phone chimed just then, and he sat in silence while she checked it.
It was Kevin, saying he’d gotten to the hotel. He was a groomsman, and so he’d needed to get there earlier than regular guests.
“Who’s that?”
“No one.”
Timothy arched his eyebrows. “No one?”
Feeling stupid for her reply, she said, “I just meant it was nothing important. Just a text from Kevin Donnelly. Do you remember him?”
“Oh. Yeah. He played soccer, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re still in touch with him?”
“We just text some. He lives in Boston.”
“What did he say?”
The question made Madison feel awkward for no good reason. It wasn’t really Timothy’s business what Kevin had texted her, and she didn’t understand why he’d even asked. He could have just been making conversation, but she wasn’t sure what she should say.
She told him the truth since that was the easiest thing to do. “He was saying he’d gotten to the hotel. He’s part of the wedding party, and they have some sort of lunch today.”
“Oh.” Timothy’s eyes darted from the road to her face a few times. “Have you made plans to meet up with him?”
“No. Not really. I mean, I assume we’ll say hi, but it’s nothing…” She felt herself blushing, and she hated blushing.
She didn’t think she was someone who did that sort of thing, so it always bothered her when she did.
Timothy was silent for a long time. Then he murmured, “Well, I won’t get in your way.”
“What?”
“I won’t get in your way. With Kevin, I mean.”
“I know you won’t get in the way,” she said quickly. “I mean, there’s nothing to get in the way of.”
“You didn’t want to reconnect with him?”
She shrugged and made a face. “I don’t know. It’s nothing definite. We were just… texting.”
Timothy nodded, looking very sober. “I see. I won’t get in your way.”
“You don’t have to worry about getting in the way.” When Timothy just looked at her for a moment, she groaned and said, “Shit. I don’t know why this is so weird. It’s just been so long since I’ve had any sort of social life, it feels like I’ve… I’ve forgotten how to do normal things.”
“I know how you feel.” His voice was different now. Softer, more natural.
Madison’s heart ached for him. “I know you do. You must know better than I do.”
“I can’t believe it’s been almost two years now.” Timothy let out a visible breath. “Two years.”
“Does it still feel… new to you?”
His expression was reflective as he replied, “Not really. It doesn’t hurt me all the time the way it used to. I don’t miss Emily every minute the way I did at first. But in some ways that’s even harder. Because it will hit me suddenly and hurt like hell. Then on top of that I’ll feel guilty—that I’ve forgotten her for so long, that I’ve let myself…”
“Let yourself what?”
“Think about… other things.”
“I guess that must be normal. Unavoidable really. To feel guilty about moving on. But you have to eventually. I think we all have to. Otherwise, how can we even live our lives?”
“We can’t. Of course we need to move on. I know Emily would want me to. But knowing something in my mind isn’t always the same as making my heart believe it.”
“I know.” She smiled to herself, slightly poignant. “I definitely know that’s true.”
“Do you?”
“Of course.”
He’d shot her a close look before turning back to the road. “What does your heart believe that your mind doesn’t think is true?”
The answer to that question was very clear to Madison. Her heart still kept believing there might be something for her with Timothy even though her mind knew very well it wasn’t true.
She could hardly tell him that though. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do know. You just don’t want to tell me.”
She was starting to get a little annoyed about his pushing, when it really wasn’t his business. He was normally such a nice, sensitive guy. There was no reason for him to be acting this way. “What’s wrong with that? I can have a few secrets, you know.”
“Why?”
“Why do I have secrets?”
“Why do you have them from me?”
Her breath hitched at his light question, but she wasn’t going to read into it. She was smart. She knew how to keep things in perspective.
She wasn’t sure how to answer his question, however, so she just didn’t.
***
The hotel was a beautiful white Georgian building in the mountains, and Madison and Timothy had a good time driving through the property and looking around before they pulled up to the front doors. Their rooms were on the same floor, across the hall from each other, and they arrived early enough to shower and rest for a while before the first events.
That afternoon there was “tea party” for the women and a “pub party” for the men, so Madison dressed carefully in a pretty rose-pink skirt and vintage-style top with heels. She spent way more time blowing her hair out than she normally did, so it was smooth and shiny when she was done. She also spent a long time working on her makeup—it had been so long since she’d worn much that she was out of practice in applying it—and she even put on jewelry, something else she just forgot about most of the time.
She was pleased with her appearance as she stood in front of the mirror. She looked almost like a stranger. A pretty, blond stranger who wasn’t wearing yoga pants and a ponytail and looking tired and stressed out.
She smiled at herself, feeling kind of like Cinderella who’d finally managed to get to the ball.
She was s
urprised when there was a knock on her door, and she walked over to get it, wondering if it was Charlie or Hannah.
It wasn’t.
It was Timothy, standing across the threshold in a gray suit.
“Hi,” she said, smiling at him.
He was staring at her, his eyes moving from the top of her head to her shoes and back. She couldn’t read his expression, and he didn’t say anything.
“Hello to you too,” she said after a minute.
He gave a little jerk, and his eyes met hers. “Sorry. You look… you look…”
“I look what?” She felt self-conscious at his obvious surprise at her appearance. Apparently she’d been genuinely dowdy all this time if he was so startled that she could dress up.
“Pretty.”
“Thanks. I didn’t mean to shock you by it.”
“I’m not shocked,” he said quickly. “I mean…” His eyes narrowed as he recognized that she was hiding a laugh. “Sorry,” he said in a different tone. “I’m not used to seeing you so dressed up. You look really pretty.”
“Thank you. You look pretty good yourself.”
“I didn’t know if you wanted to go down together. I know you were wanting to meet up with Kevin, so…”
“Of course we can go down together. I have no plans of any kind, with Kevin or anyone else.”
“Okay. We’ll go down together. But if you find someone you like better, I’ll understand. Don’t let me hold you back.”
She didn’t like that he’d said that, but she wasn’t sure how she should respond. She swallowed and said, “Okay. You too.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Okay. You never know.”
“I know.”
She sighed. “Okay. I guess we should go down.”
He nodded and waited for her to grab her key. Then they walked down the hall together.
She knew he was checking her out as they walked. He kept scanning her face, her body, as if he wasn’t sure she was really herself.
She felt awkward, self-conscious.
Things kept getting weird between her and Timothy.
She wished they weren’t, but she wasn’t sure how she could change it.