He covered it quickly and reeled away, slumping hard onto the coffee table where he just sat, saying nothing, his head in his hands.
“You had no right to do that!” I screeched, feeling no regret for making him bleed. “I was saving that kiss for someone I really liked!”
He looked up with reddened eyes, his lip already swelling. “That was your first kiss?”
“Yes! You jerk!” I marched over and shoved him again, but he grabbed me as he fell back, and we both tumbled onto the floor on the other side of the coffee table. I slapped at his arms, trying to fight them away from my body, but he held me tight, laughing like a madman.
“Stop it!” I yelled, bashing my fists into his chest. “Stop it. I’m not laughing.”
When I finally broke free and scurried away to the other side of the room, breathless and distraught, he slowly stood, wiping his bloody lip on his sleeve.
“Does it change anything?” he asked. “Did you feel anything when I kissed you?”
“When you stole a kiss from me?” I yelled. “No. I didn’t feel anything but hatred! And now that’s all I’ll ever feel for you, David.”
He sat down again, looking at the floor between his feet. “Why won’t you just give me a chance?”
“Because you’re insane—”
“Before you thought I was insane?” He looked up, propping one palm on his knee, his eyes scrunching with the obvious pain he was in. “When we first met, why did you give Cal a chance with you and not me?”
“I…” I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to admit this aloud. But it needed to be said. “I did like you that way, for a while, but…”
“But?” He got up slightly, eager to know.
“We want different things in life.”
“Like what?” He stood fully and moved toward me; I stepped back reflexively, making him stop. “Ara, I love you. I will want what you want—”
“But you can’t.” I walked across the room to stand near the door again. “I want to travel and see the world. I want to talk to people in every language and taste the food the way the locals make it. I want so much out of this life, David, and you…”—I looked at the door—“you’re tied down.”
“Tied down?” It took him a moment, but it clearly sunk in, making his shoulders round. “You mean Harry.”
“I’m sorry, David. I just… I don’t want to be with someone that has that kind of responsibility.”
His hand came up to his mouth and he stepped widely backward, turning away. “So you won’t love me—no, won’t let yourself love me because I have a son?”
To hear him put it that way made me feel like a beast. But it was true. I just didn’t want to be a stepmom at nineteen.
“Of all the things you could have said to me, Ara”—his voice shook, his eyes cold as they met mine—“of any reason you could’ve given not to love me, that is by far the cruelest, most cold one.”
“I know,” I said in a very small voice.
“He’s a child!” he yelled. “I don’t understand how his existence in this world can make you hold back your feelings for me.”
I shrunk as he studied me, his eyes so round and wide they looked menacing. “It’s what’s best—”
“For who? For you?” he spat. “Is that all that matters here? Because I thought we’d connected, Ara, and what about Harry? What about how he feels?”
“We can still be friends—”
“How? After what you just said! Do you have any idea how much it will break him to hear that! Any idea what it will do to him!” His whole face colored with fury. “I can’t take that back now. I can’t erase that from him!”
“I… he wouldn’t have heard—”
“Of course he heard. He has…” He pointed to his head, getting frustrated then and throwing his hands up. “Damn it, Ara!”
“I’m sorry, David, but I can’t change the way I feel.”
“No, I don’t suppose you can.” He exhaled, wiping his palm across his mouth. “And that’s just it, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“I’m the fool. I didn’t want to believe it, but you are a very different person to what I thought you were,” he said coldly. “I’ve been holding on to this idea of you, and…”—he shook his head, closing his eyes—“it’s clearly time I let that go. If not for my sake, then for Harry’s.”
“Let it go?” I started to panic. “What are you saying?”
He just sighed.
I stepped a bit closer, my heart the size of a boulder in my throat. “Are you saying we can’t be friends anymore?”
“I’m not sure we ever really were to begin with.”
“Nothing has changed, David. I’m just me, and you’re you, and maybe we’re just not really all that compatible as anything more. Maybe no amount of wishing is going to make it feel right.”
“I guess not,” he whispered, as though this entire conversation weakened him. “So just go, please, and don’t ever come back.”
“Ever?”
“You heard me.”
My eyes watered until I couldn’t see. “But you made me a promise—”
“And now I’m breaking it,” he said coldly, and turned away from me.
“Really?” My whole face crumpled, my chin tight and trembling around the devastation. I stared at him, waiting for him to change his mind. “Can you do that? Can people really just break promises?”
He pressed both hands into the top of the armchair, leaning down into them. “Just get out, Ara.”
I spun away, swinging the door open and running down the short corridor before he could see me cry. Harry reached for me as I passed the stairs, but I was faster than him. I didn’t want to stop—to say goodbye or even to tell him I was sorry. How could he possibly understand that I could adore him but not want to be his stepmother? I just wanted to run away from all of this and never come back. Never feel like this again.
When I got home and saw the car wasn’t in the drive, I felt relieved. There was no way I could tell Brett what a horrible thing I’d done, and I knew if he was home, it would all come pouring out. I ran upstairs and didn’t even turn on the light as I slammed my door, sliding down the back of it and finally letting myself cry.
Something in me had detached when David told me to get out—when he severed the strings of that promise and cut me from his life for good. I hoped he was just angry and hadn’t actually meant it, but the look in his eye made me certain he did.
I leaned forward and ripped off his jacket, throwing it across the room. It felt wrong to wear it now that we weren’t friends anymore, and as the cold night air touched my bare arms, the full weight of everything I’d lost bore down on me. I buried my head in my arms and closed myself away from the world, the thunder outside drowning out the severity of my broken-hearted sobs.
* * *
The naïve girl in me was dying. Almost completely dead. But she still sat on the porch steps for most of the night, waiting for David to come to her birthday party. He didn’t show, though. Not even when it was time to blow out the candles.
“Ara?” Cal sat down beside me, leaving a neat gap between us. “Are you okay? You’ve been really distant today.”
“Not really.” I sunk my elbows onto my knees, resting my chin in my hands. “I had a fight with David on Thursday night.”
He closed the gap, putting his arm around me. I almost pushed it off, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone else’s feelings this week. “Wanna talk about it?”
“I…” My ribs tightened as I tried to hold back the tears. “I’ve never felt so awful in my life.”
“What did he say to you?”
I wiped my cheek. “He told me to get out. And he looked at me like I was the worst person in the whole world—”
“Aw, Ara.” He squeezed me, and it felt nice.
“He broke a promise, Cal,” I said, shaking my head. “I… how can someone make a promise and then just break it?”
“People do that all the tim
e, Ara.”
“But why? I mean, how? Promises are supposed to be kept—”
Cal laughed. “Yes, they are. And if he made you a promise and then he broke it, he’s a bad guy.”
“But he’s not a bad guy,” I insisted. “He was hurt by what I said, but even then…” I tried to make sense of it. “Friends sometimes say things to hurt each other, right? But they always make up. That’s what the promise is for.”
“Yes.” He brought his other arm up to hug me, pressing his cheek to my head. “That’s how it’s supposed to be. But not everyone can make good on a promise, and the ones that do—time and time again—they’re your true friends.”
“And the other people? The promise-breakers?”
“They’re not worth crying over.”
I sniffed hard, wiping my nose on the back of my hand. Cal laughed and offered me his shirt sleeve. I smiled, waving him away.
“So what was the promise he made?” he asked.
“He said that he’d never shut me out—that we’d always be friends.”
“And then at the first test, he shut you out?”
I nodded, folding my head into my lap to cry again.
“You must have really hurt him?” He chuckled, making light of it all. “What was the fight about?”
“He told me he’s in love with me.”
Cal nodded, exhaling loudly.
“You don’t think that’s insane—after knowing me for only six weeks?”
He laughed, his teeth showing from under his wide smile, and traced a line over my face with his blue eyes before gently sweeping a curl off my brow. “There’s a lot to love about you, Ara. If that makes him insane, then I guess I’m insane too.”
“Oh, not you too!” I hid my face in my hands.
“It’s not so bad.” Cal rubbed my back. “I’m a pretty good guy.”
“But I’m seventeen,” I lied. “I don’t want love yet!”
“Well, I’m sorry.” He held his hands out apologetically. “But it’s your fault, you know?”
“How?” I spun a little at the hips to look right at him, my pretty yellow party dress catching on the wooden step.
“You’re everything I could want, Ara—everything I’ve ever looked for. And the fact that you’re new to this life in a lot of ways just makes you even more interesting, and unfortunately for you, makes you a lot easier to love than other girls.”
“But we’re only kids, Cal. We aren’t supposed to know what real love is.”
“Then maybe it’s not real love,” he suggested. “Maybe it’s just the kid kind that only lasts a month or two, or less,” he added with a hopeful grin, bumping shoulders with me. “But it doesn’t mean it’s not real now.”
Love. I looked up at the stars. Why was it so complicated? Why were there so many hidden corners in its maze? So many exits and entry points? How could one person have only one lifetime to figure it out?
Cal sat quietly beside me as I combed through my thoughts, and after a while, I decided that if there were people in my past that had loved me through all the tragedy and heartache I suffered before my death, then maybe I needed to go back to them in order to understand this complex emotion. Maybe it was time to get the truth, time to fall in love with those from my past again, so I could be free to make mistakes and so that the hurt I might cause wouldn’t make them turn away from me. I was making a rotten mess of this new life and destroying hearts in the process. David and Harry were the last people on this planet that I wanted to hurt, aside from Cal, and now I just didn’t know how to fix it.
“Do you want me to talk to him for you?” Cal offered.
“It won’t help,” I said sadly, pressing my cheek onto my knuckles. “He hates me.”
Cal laughed. “Ara, if he loves you like I do, he can’t hate you.”
I smiled at him then, letting myself acknowledge the kid love that was growing between us—the love I would have to shut down before it got any worse, like I should have done with David long before now. “Thanks, Cal. But I need to talk to him—tell him what I should have told him to begin with.”
“Which is?”
I cast my eyes to the stars again, tuning in to the noise of the party going on inside without me. “That I’m not ready to love anyone, and if those that are close to me can’t accept that, then they need to keep their distance,” I said, brushing my skirt off as I stood and walked back inside.
20
David
I am a black hole. Ara is dead and, worse, the girl in her place is now dead to me. I can never return home. I can never look at her again.
I wish she’d stayed dead.
I wish I’d died with her.
21
Ara
Time changes hearts, or at least they say it does. But it didn’t change David’s. When school finished on Monday with no sign of him, I figured he’d take a few days to get over his depression and then he’d be back. But when Friday came around and then another Monday, I got worried. Over time, I’d spent my nights thinking about what I said to him and the way it would’ve hurt Harry. I adored Harry, and I adored David too—as a friend. And even though he was overbearing and way too clingy, if I had just fallen for him, none of this would ever have happened. But he just didn’t give me enough time. I wasn’t ready for him to admit his love. I felt cornered-in that night, and insulted that he kissed me the way he did—disgusted, actually. My first kiss would always and forever be an icky memory now because of him.
In fact, all of this was his fault. If he hadn’t pressured me and crowded me and forced himself on me, I wouldn’t be feeling like crap right now. I wouldn’t be wishing I’d fallen in love with someone I didn’t actually love!
I got up off my bed and grabbed his coat off the end, marching for my door. I needed to throw this at him and tell him I wasn’t the bad guy!
I reached his house faster than humanly possible and rapped decisively on the door. Mike answered again, his smile dropping when he saw me. “Ara.”
“Is he in?”
“He left.”
“Left?” I rocked back on my heels, the fluidity of forward motion ceasing too quickly for my brain to catch on. “When?”
“About a week ago—just after you came to visit.” He didn’t say it, but it was written all over his face that he heard everything.
“You think I’m a horrible person.”
“I think you’re a different person to what we… to what he thought you were.”
“You mean to who you knew before,” I snapped.
“What?”
“Just give it up, Mike,” I said. “I know we knew each other before I lost my memory.”
He went sheet white, stepping out and slightly closing the door behind him. “What do you know about it?”
“Not much. I only know that we were apparently best friends growing up.” It hurt to say that, thinking back to the way the smell of his brownies had made me feel—so lost and so disconnected without that love. “And that you made brownies.”
He laughed, closing the door fully. “Who told you?”
“Brett.”
Mike nodded, and there seemed something so familiar in the motion. “Does David know—that you knew me?”
I shook my head. “I still haven’t told him what I am.”
He looked relieved.
“Why do you keep it from him—the truth about what you all are?” I asked.
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
“I…” He shifted awkwardly, uncomfortably. “I’m not really at liberty to tell you anything, Ara. If you want to know about your past, it’s up to Brett to tell you, okay?”
My past? I didn’t ask about my past. I asked why they didn’t tell David what we all are. What did that have to do with my past? “I don’t want to know anything, to be honest. Well, except for one thing.”
He flipped his chin at me as if to say ‘shoot’.
“Would the people that loved me b
efore my accident still love me now?”
“Of course. And I know they do.”
“So you know them?”
“Yeah,” he said with a soft nod, his face warmed with a half-smile.
“Was I worth that love?” I asked, letting the silence hang for a moment. “Did they think I was horrible for the way I felt about things?”
Mike took a very deep breath, his eyes moving past my shoulder to a figure walking up the path in the darkness.
“Hey guys,” Elora said in a cheery voice. “What’re you doing out here in the cold?”
“Ara’s just now learning that David left.”
Elora nodded, her look of disapproval making me feel even worse.
“I am sorry, you know?” I said. “I didn’t really mean to say what I said, but he pinned me down and kissed me, and I couldn’t think straight—”
“He did what?” Mike screeched.
“He stole my first kiss. I… I only half meant what I said about Harry when, in truth, I’ll never love David because he’s just not…” Not what? I wasn’t sure. I only know what he was: he was the kind of guy that would pin someone down and force a kiss on them, then break a promise. “I just don’t love him, and I don’t see why I should have to have a reason!”
A total and dead silence rolled over the night, killing all the crickets and even halting the calm breeze.
“So it’s true then.” Elora looked at Mike. “He did lure her the first time.”
Mike nodded, closing his eyes.
“What are you talking about?” I looked between them.
“None of it matters now,” Mike said, reaching down to take David’s jacket from me. “If you don’t have any feelings for him, Ara, then stay out of his life from now on, okay? Don’t come around again.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s been through enough,” he said.
“They both have,” Elora barked, moving over to us. She sighed, placing a hand on my shoulder and talking to me like I was a child. “You and I will always be friends, but David needs to forget you for a while, okay?”
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