There were days I became so angry with her for giving up on her baby that I had to take a drive so I could get away from her. Otherwise I knew that I would say something that would hurt both of us.
None of our friends had come by to see her. After I had gotten her settled into my apartment, I had tried calling Reggie and Shane but neither answered the phone or returned my calls. I was being avoided. That was obvious.
I was standing in line at the grocery store, having picked up a deli sandwich and some potato chips to take home for Dania, who was still not eating regularly unless forced. I realized that Stu was standing several people ahead of me in line, two large cases of cheap beer under his arms.
“Stu!” I called out. He looked over at me and gave me a barely noticeable incline of his head before turning back to the cashier and handing her some cash. Without saying a word, he headed out of the store. I dropped my stuff and rushed after him.
“Wait, Stu! Hold up!” I called out. Stu stopped but didn’t bother to turn around.
I was wheezing by the time I caught up with him. “Hey, Ellie,” he said, dropping his sunglasses down over his eyes. He looked put out, as if I were keeping him from something.
“Where you headed?” I asked, looking pointedly at the beer.
“A bunch of us are hanging out at Shane’s house watching football. You wanna come over?” he asked.
“Uh no, I’m heading home. You know Dania’s living with me now,” I said, raising my eyebrows, hoping he’d get the hint.
“Oh, okay. Well I’ll see ya around,” he said and started to walk around me to get to his truck.
“Hang on a second!” I hollered. Stu looked back and this time he looked really annoyed.
“It would be really cool if you came by to see Dania. I know she’d like that. Weren’t you guys together again?” I asked incredulously. I knew the people I had hung out with for the last ten years were selfish assholes. I guess I just never realized exactly how much.
I honestly thought that Stu would have been by to see Dania, considering their history. Even if I had always suspected he was missing a few key emotional components, I thought he’d make some sort of effort.
I had been very, very wrong.
“Why? So she can scream at me again? So she can flip the fuck out? I’ve had it with Dania’s drama. It ain’t even my kid,” he said dismissively.
“But, you’ve known Dania for almost ten years!” I argued, getting angry. “I knew you were always a dick, but I thought just maybe you’d be less dickish for Dania’s sake. She could really use her friends right now,” I said, trying to suppress the urge to inflict bodily harm.
Stu shrugged and opened up his truck door, putting the beer on the passenger seat. “I wish her luck and all, but I don’t need that shit in my life. There are plenty of bitches in the sea. No sense in straddling myself with one who has a kid and issues. No fucking thank you. So you’re more than welcome to swing by when you’re done playing babysitter. But if you’re just gonna be a bitch, stay away. We don’t need the buzz kill.” Before I could say anything else, Stu hopped up into his truck and drove away.
I never mentioned to Dania that I had run into Stu. What would have been the point? And she never mentioned the fact that our so-called friends never bothered to come by. If she noticed, she didn’t say anything.
It was hard to tell if she cared or not. It was impossible to know if she cared about anything anymore. Because she had gone into complete shut down. Nothing and no one mattered.
Except me.
She became clingy and tearful and I knew I couldn’t leave her alone. Despite everything she had done, everything she had said in the past, none of that counted now. Because she was suffering. And I couldn’t turn my back on her.
My life became consumed with helping her. Taking care of her. Trying to get her to put her life back together. She was incapable of doing anything for herself, her hollowness crippling her.
I tried to convince her to go to her doctor to get some medication but she insisted she didn’t need it. Even as she fell further and further into the black pit of her depression.
And she was taking me with her.
Because my entire life became focused on Dania and her issues. There was no room for anything else. My needs had been put on the backburner.
The life I had been building was flushed down the toilet and I found myself right back where I started.
Stuck and alone.
I woke up every single morning thinking about Flynn. I wanted to call him. I wanted to see him. I wanted to hold him and touch him again. But it seemed the longer I went without doing any of those things, the easier it became to convince myself that he was better off. That the only thing I could give him was pain.
After telling him that it was me who had burned down his house, I could never expect us to have a relationship built on anything other than distrust.
I knew I was being a coward by not at least talking to him, but the more time that went by, I became certain that there was no future for us. And it was easier to avoid him than to face the condemnation I was sure I would see on his face.
Numb and hard Ellie McCallum was fighting to make a comeback. The newly soft and cuddly Ellie McCallum was fighting just as much to hang on. And they were both miserable.
So even though I missed him so bad it was like a physical ache, I never called him. I never allowed my car to drive the familiar road to his house. But I could stop my heart from loving him or my mind from thinking about him.
There were some things I just couldn’t control.
And he it wasn’t as though he had tried to contact me either. And even though I knew, deep down, he was taking his cues from me, that perhaps he was feeling a rejection just as devastating as my own, it hurt that he hadn’t bothered.
As the weeks passed and the holidays came and went without a word, I realized I had ruined my chance at happiness. And now I was lost.
Because my life officially sucked.
I lived with a sliver of hope that Dania would snap out of it. That one day she’d wake up and be the old bitchy drama queen she used to be. But that never happened. And every day I felt more and more trapped because of it.
I tried not to resent her. But it was difficult. And the longer I went without speaking to Flynn the less bright and shiny my future became.
After the holidays, I started my new classes at Black River Community College. I had thought about dropping out, not sure school had any place in my life now. But the small campus was the only place I could pretend I was okay. But my excitement about school had waned and now I was just going through the motions.
Kara had invited me to go out a few times but I was less inclined to start a friendship that would go nowhere. Eventually she stopped asking. Even though she was still nice enough, a definite chill had taken the place of her easy candor.
I became more and more isolated, reverting back to the Ellie I had once been. It was like putting on a pair of shoes that I had outgrown. I wanted to wiggle my toes but they were tight and restrained.
I tried not to look for Flynn on campus. I tried like hell to pretend he wasn’t there at all. Repression had always worked so well for me in the past, this should be a piece of cake, right? I had once pushed my feelings for him away; I could do it again.
But my heart had evolved since the last time I had let him into my life and then discarded him. It wasn’t my heart to close off anymore. Flynn owned it. He owned me. And there was no getting rid of him.
Dania’s depression was catching. I found myself falling into a sad cycle of working at JAC’s, coming home and tending to Dania, and going to school. I rarely talked to anyone. I had given up. Just as Dania had.
We had lost ourselves.
I thumbed through the trashy magazine, counting down until I could get out of there. JAC’s was a little busier than normal but it wasn’t enough to stave off the boredom. I tried to stifle my jaw splitting yawn and wished I could prop open my
eyelids.
I had been sleeping on my second-hand couch for months. I had never noticed how uncomfortable it was until I was forced to make it my bed. I spent most of the night tossing and turning, trying to find a position that didn’t involve a coil digging into my back.
I covered my mouth on another yawn and rubbed my eyes. The bell above the door dinged and I cringed, wishing Jeb would get it fixed already.
I felt the presence of someone standing on the other side of the counter and rolled my eyes. I was not in a help the customers kind of mood so I didn’t even bother to lift my head.
“Can I help you?” I asked snidely, yawning again.
“I hope so,” a voice said and I froze. My head jerked up and I met a pair of green eyes I hadn’t seen in almost two months.
Flynn, wearing his typical khakis and crisp, long-sleeved button down shirt. His brown hair was in a perfect mess and my fingers itched to touch him. To brush the strands back from his forehead.
What was he doing here?
My heart sped up the longer I sat there, looking at him. My tongue was ice in my mouth and my lips couldn’t form words. My eyes drank in the sight of him, dizzy on the rush of being in his presence again after all this time.
It felt like forever since we had gone to the beach together, but I had thought about it every night as I tried to go to sleep. The bittersweet memory was the only thing to put a smile on my face anymore. So much had changed that it felt like those smiles and memories belonged to another person in another life.
Flynn was staring at the counter but I could see his hands balled into fists at his side. He wasn’t rubbing them together but I could still tell he was agitated.
“You never came,” he said, startling me.
“What?” I asked, shocked by the vicious anger in his voice.
“You left and never came back. I’ve been waiting for you to come. But you haven’t. Why?”
I had both longed and dreaded for this moment. But in my head it never played out quite like this. I had thought myself prepared for his hurt accusations, but I hadn’t counted on the tortured pain on his face.
How could he feel sad over not seeing me after everything I told him?
“I just, well, Dania isn’t well. And honestly, I thought you wouldn’t want to see me,” I said lamely. I sounded pathetic. My excuse ringing falsely in my ears.
“Why wouldn’t I want to see you?” he demanded, frowning.
“After what I told you, why would you want to see me?” I countered.
“You never let me talk about any of it. You just left. You never called. You never came by the studio. Why would you do that?” he demanded. He was angry. I could see the vein popping on the side of his neck.
The bell dinged above the door again as several people walked inside.
“This isn’t the time to talk about this, Flynn,” I said quietly, trying not to cause a scene.
Flynn slammed his hand down on the counter. “When is the time to talk about this? Because you’re doing the exact same thing you did to me in high school! You said you were sorry for that! Why are you doing this to me?” He sounded agonized and I felt myself swaying under the weight of his unhappiness.
“You’re not upset about what I told you? You don’t hate me for telling you what I did?” I asked, still trying to keep my voice down. We were getting a lot of attention. It seemed that suddenly, JAC’s was the busiest it had been in weeks. People weren’t even trying to hide the fact that they were staring.
“I’m upset, Ellie! Because you won’t talk to me! Because you always hurt me! You make it so hard to love you!” he yelled and I flinched.
I felt like I should just tattoo I’m sorry on my forehead with the amount of times I said it. I was tired and exhausted and had no real excuse for avoiding him. Except that my guilt and self-loathing had made a nasty reappearance.
“Flynn…” I began but his hand shot out and knocked over the stand of lottery ticket. It fell to the floor with a smash. Everyone was now staring openly.
“Just leave me alone!” he screamed and practically ran from the store.
I looked at the people gawking and then to Flynn’s quickly retreating form as he rushed down the sidewalk, away from me.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream like I wanted to. Instead I calmly came out from behind the counter and slowly picked up the knocked over lottery tickets. The familiar numbness spreading and taking over. Soft and cuddly Ellie began her steady retreat behind impenetrable walls.
Flynn wanted me to leave him alone. And even as I vowed to do just that, his words still pierced the newly formed ice around my heart.
-Flynn-
Many years ago…
I went back to school. Mom said I had to finish the year out and then we would move away. That I would never have to live in Wellsburg again.
But Wellsburg was my home.
I liked it.
It’s where Ellie was.
Or where she used to be.
But I never saw her again.
She stopped coming to school.
I heard people saying that she went to jail. I didn’t understand why she would go to jail.
Jail was for bad people. Ellie was mean sometimes, but she wasn’t bad.
People were looking at me a lot now. More than they used to. I knew they were talking about me as well.
It made me angry and anxious. I didn’t like people looking at me. Or talking about me.
Stu and Dania were still calling me names. They had gotten worse. They said it was all my fault. I didn’t know what they were talking about.
I wanted to ask them where Ellie was but they scared me. I didn’t want to talk to them.
Mom and I were living in an apartment until we could move. I asked her if they ever caught who set fire to our house and killed Marty. She said yes. That they had gotten into a lot of trouble.
I asked who it was. Mom said I didn’t know them. She wouldn’t look at me when she said that. It made me nervous.
I couldn’t sleep in the new apartment. I hated the small rooms and the kitchen smelled weird. I wanted to go back to the house in the woods. I wanted to live there again.
Mom said we wouldn’t live there anymore. That made me angry. But I didn’t throw things. I slammed the door to my room and screamed into a pillow. But it didn’t make me feel better.
Everyone was talking at school. I heard people saying Ellie’s name. Then they’d look at me. They were always looking at me.
Two girls were talking in English class about the fire at my house. It made me sad to think about it. To think about Marty who had died. One of the girls said that Ellie had gone to jail because she had burned my house down.
And I had yelled at them and said that wasn’t true. They didn’t laugh at me when I yelled but they moved to other seats.
I ran out of the class. I had never been so mad before. Those girls said Ellie burned my house down.
Did she?
I went to the bathroom and started to scream. I couldn’t stop.
The principal came and called my mom.
She came and got me and took me home. I was so upset. I asked her if Ellie burned down our house. She didn’t say anything.
Ellie burned my house down.
My dog had died in the fire.
I hurt inside. It felt like I had eaten glass. I felt pain and knew it was because of Ellie.
I felt really, really bad.
Why would she burn down my house?
I wanted to talk to her but she had gone to jail for kids. She had gotten into trouble. A girl named Reggie told me that Ellie had been sent away. She had spit on me and told me it was my fault.
But I didn’t want Ellie to be sent away. I didn’t like thinking about her in jail. I wondered if she was feeling bad too?
I wanted to see Ellie.
But I never did.
And then we moved.
But I always thought about her.
And after a while it s
topped hurting when I remembered.
-Ellie-
And the months kept passing…
Days, weeks, months marched along, oblivious to my desperate desire to stop them.
I felt like I was living my life on an endless loop.
Hope, happiness, possibility…it was all gone.
Vanished like a popped bubble. Lost when Flynn yelled at me to leave him alone.
But even the numbness only lasted so long and then that too disappeared and I was left with something so much worse.
Regret.
Winter faded into spring and the world kept moving on. So why was I stuck in the past?
I slipped the tiny sand castle Flynn had given me into my pocket as I got ready that morning. I never left the house without it. I tried so hard to pretend that losing him hadn’t ruined me…but that one simple act called me a liar.
There was no coming back from loving Flynn Hendrick.
Ever.
I was supposed to be attending a study group in a few hours. I was trying to prep for my end of the semester essay.
As the rest of my life fell back into stasis, school continued to be my only escape. For the longest time after Flynn and I parted ways and Dania had moved in, I thought I had lost my enthusiasm for it.
But I had been wrong. Some things had changed within me that couldn’t be undone.
My illogical (and impossible) dream of becoming something better was one of them.
My love for Flynn was the other.
Neither had abandoned me even when, in the depths of my self-destruction, I had hoped they would.
The post office was empty when I walked in. I headed to my tiny box back in the farthest corner. I opened it and pulled out the pile of magazines and useless junk mail. This would teach me to check it with a lot more regularity.
I stood there, sorting through everything. Most of it ended up in the trash. There were a few items for Dania that I tucked into my bag.
Reclaiming the Sand Page 29