The Girl Who Fell

by S. M. Parker

  “So was I.”

  “You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that.”

  “So how did we get here?” I pull my hand away, furious we have slipped so far from that perfection.

  His fingers pull at his hair. “I was hurt. I wanted to celebrate with you more, be with you. When you blew me off for Lizzie tonight I was so bummed. I went to Waxman’s, hoping I’d get to see you.”

  “It didn’t look like you were trying to find me.”

  He holds up his hand. “Let me finish. I saw you in the cafeteria with Slice today. The way he was talking to you.”

  “That was about his sister’s wedding. And he talked to me. I can’t control what he does.” I huff, shake out my frustration. “That so doesn’t even matter.”

  “I know. I figured it was something meaningless and I didn’t freak. But then you pulled away from my kiss in the caf. It was like you didn’t want anyone to know you were with me but you didn’t care who watched you talking to Slice. And then tonight, I saw you and Slice alone together and then he was hugging you. And then I saw you hug him, Zephyr.”

  “So?”

  “I’ve told you how much it bothers me that you hang out with him and there you were. You two have years together and we’ll never have those kinds of memories—so to see laughing, talking—I guess I felt like words weren’t going to cut it; I needed to show you how it felt. Make you live it the way I do.

  “You have no idea what you do to me. You make me crazy. I lost it. It was all to make you jealous. I thought if you could feel what I feel when I see you with Slice then you’d understand.” His eyes beg mine. “I was selfish, I know, but I want to spend every minute with you and I felt like you didn’t feel the same way. I thought”—he knocks his forehead with the heel of his hand—“I guess I thought if I made you feel the same way—second best or something, then you’d understand. You wouldn’t choose your friends over me.” He bites his lip, pleads at me with his stare. “I was stupid not to think it would backfire.”

  His explanation.

  His apology.

  His regret.

  It’s a lot to process.

  “You did this because you were hurt?”

  “Yes.” Shame licks the word. “And because I love you. Too much. I’ve never loved anyone before, Zephyr. You make me beyond jealous and I know how much Slice digs you. I’d do anything not to lose you. It sounds totally effed up when I say it out loud, but that’s pretty much all I ever think about.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” I feel myself tipping forward. “I love you, Zephyr actually. I just never knew love would make me do such insane shit. But it will never happen again. Tonight when you wouldn’t answer my calls I thought I’d lost you. It was the scariest feeling. I’ll do anything to make it up to you. Anything.”

  My resolve softens and he senses it. Alec reaches up, brushes his lips against mine. The tender kiss calms me and excites me all at once. My insides are a jumble, but the kiss, the kiss feels right.

  He rises and sits on the bed, pulls me onto his lap. He burrows his face into my neck and I feel the warm wet of his tears. “I swear I will never hurt you again. You’ll see. Next year everything will be different. We’ll be together always.”

  I hear the purity of that promise, that gift. “Alec?” He draws his eyes up to meet mine. “What if I don’t get into the University of Michigan?”

  “Of course you’ll get in. You’re brilliant and athletic. If Boston College wanted you, Michigan will too.”

  “But—”

  He silences me with a finger to my lips.

  “No matter what happens, we’ll figure it out, just like we’re doing now. That’s what love is.”

  I see my parents then, fumbling through love even after twenty years. My dad, acting in the extreme. My mom finding space to forgive him.

  “We’ll get through it together. Just promise you’ll forgive me for being a complete ass.”

  And when he kisses me I let my mind wash of everything but his lips. His tongue so familiar.

  It’s not until I get in the car that anger rises. It is the same kind of anger I felt after learning of Dad’s note. Why couldn’t my father or Alec talk to me about the way they were feeling? Why was their instinct to hurt me?

  “You okay?” Lizzie says when I pull on my seat belt. “Did you forgive him?”

  “Not totally.”

  “So you forgave him a little?”

  “It’ll never happen again.”

  Lizzie hangs her gaze on me too long.

  “What?” I snap.

  She lifts her fingers from the steering wheel in surrender. “Nothing. You’re a smart girl. I’m sure you did what you thought was best.”

  “What would you have done?” I explain how Alec was hurt and wanted me to know what that felt like. How he was acting out of love. How he didn’t actually do anything with that girl.

  Lizzie is quiet for a long moment. “I don’t know what I would have done, Zee. I’ve never had to deal with this with Jason.”

  They are the last words Lizzie and I exchange as she drives me home, and the stillness leaves enough room for uncertainty to creep in. Because I don’t see the dark shadows of Ashland Drive as we drive down my road, I see Alec hovered over Katie, too intimate, too easy.

  An endless haunting.

  When I’m inside, I go to my bedroom and watch the clock tick numbers until long after midnight because it’s easier to watch time pass than to replay that twisted scene on a constant loop. The image is tortuous and cruel and I wish my memory could forgive Alec the way my heart has. The way my body has.

  I look to my collage, to Alec’s cards. Proof of his love. He is the Alec who leaves me flowers, trusts me to know his quiet dream of becoming a chef. He is the person I can talk to about Dad and my future. That person would never hurt me. Not intentionally. It is this thought that carries me into a welcoming darkness and the reprieve of sleep.

  And when I hear a knock, my brain mistakes it for the sound of a field hockey stick connecting with a hard white ball. My arm reverberates at contact but then the sound echoes and the lush green field fades from view. I am pulled to my bed, to reality. I look around my room, my closed door. Daylight sneaks in through the sliver between window and shade. The knock sounds again.

  “Come in.” I burrow under my down comforter. A warm chocolate fog enters the room and someone’s weight depresses the end corner of my bed. Too tentative to be Mom. Lizzie? Gregg?

  “Hungry?”

  I pop from my covers and see Alec. “Alec? How?”

  “Your mom let me in.”

  My hands fly to my hair in a taming attempt.

  “I needed to see you, Zephyr.” He places a mug on the table. “Last night sucked so bad.”

  “It did.”

  “I want today to be so much better.” He holds up a brown paper bag. “Would breakfast in bed be a good start?” The scent of hot cinnamon bread fills my head. “Next year I’ll make you eggs in our kitchen. Next year I won’t be a complete idiot.”

  I want to believe that. But, “Smells delicious” is all I can say.

  He opens the bag, flattens a napkin across my comforter and sets out two thick pieces of cinnamon nut bread.

  “Did you make this?”

  “Special for you.”

  A skip, a flutter. My heart can’t help it. Alec leans over and plants an apologetic kiss on my cheek. When he pulls back I see the circles under his eyes, his drawn expression. “You look tired.”

  “I didn’t sleep. I screwed up so badly. After we talked I kept imagining Lizzie telling you what an ass I was, trying to turn you against me.”

  “She’s not like that.”

  “I’m glad. Because this is between us.”

  I raise my hand to his jaw, the angry raw line of purple I’ve just noticed. “What happened here?”

  “Gregg.” Just the one word, no details, no explanation. He bends toward me and our foreheads p
ress together. “Say you forgive me.”

  I want to forgive him. I remember Lizzie telling me how love makes people do stupid things. And I see my mom, forgiving my dad. If his huge mistake wasn’t enough to destroy their marriage, don’t I owe it to Alec—and me—to try to find forgiveness? But I can’t quite make the words I forgive you form. Instead, I say, “I do.”

  They are enough. Alec lets out a relieved sigh, nuzzles his head onto my chest. We stay like this for a long time, him listening to my heart, me combing my fingers through his soft hair.

  But then I tell him, “You can’t stay.” He shifts off me, his heat a stain on my skin.

  He questions me with sad eyes.

  “I need to write my essays for Michigan.”

  He smiles, kisses me hard on the mouth before standing. “Call me when you’re done?”

  I nod. He kisses me again before slipping out of my room with a high step, almost a skip.

  I go to my computer and log on to the University of Michigan’s website. I research student life and academics and their field hockey team. And I can imagine myself there. With Alec. The version of Alec that has promised never to hurt me again. The version of him that made me choose to be with him next year.

  The university accepts the common app, which I give them permission to view, and I enter in my references, same as I’d done for Boston College months ago. I spend the rest of the morning trying to focus on my essay. Trying to crowd out doubt. It’s a relief to hear a knock at my door.

  “Feel like decorating the tree?” Mom asks.

  And it is the exact thing I want to do. Something simple and mindless and wrapped in the comfort of years.

  I follow her to the living room, where Frank Sinatra croons the words to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” from Mom’s favorite 1950s holiday CD. Hearing the lyrics makes me feel like a kid again. I’m suddenly grateful for the small things that will never change. Like the blue spruce tucked into the same corner as every year. This one is smaller than usual and Mom didn’t drag out all the boxes of decorations, but these tiny changes don’t make me sad now that I’m facing huge changes. Like starting an unexpected life with Alec.

  Mom’s untangling a string of tiny white lights but doesn’t miss how preoccupied I am. “I didn’t know teenage boys brought their girlfriends breakfast. Alec seems very considerate.”

  “He is.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “I am.” I just wish last night didn’t taint how lucky I feel.

  “And that shiner on his jaw?”

  Leave it to Mom to notice all the evidence. I pull at the corner of my lashes and the lie races off my tongue. “Hockey.” I pray Gregg doesn’t tell his mom the truth about any part of last night. So Mrs. Slicer won’t tell Mom. The need to get farther away from all things Sudbury burns deeper than ever.

  “Lizzie called the house earlier, said you left your phone in her car. She offered to drive it over if you wanted.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That I wanted you all to myself to decorate the tree. And that I think you can live without your phone for a day.”

  “I can try.” I don’t tell her a quiet day at home feels exactly right.

  Mom grabs a new mound of lights, tackles the untangling anew. “I thought we’d get a small ham since it’s just the two of us this year. And Rachel asked me over for drinks Christmas Eve. You want to come? See Gregg?”

  Oh god. I hadn’t even thought about facing Gregg. “I’m good, but you should definitely go.”

  “Rachel says she misses you coming around.”

  “I’ll see her at the wedding.”

  “True.” Mom considers. “But no plans on Christmas Eve sounds lonely.”

  It was the same thought I’d had about my father. How he’s not here sharing any of our traditions new or old. “I was thinking of calling Dad.” If I can forgive Alec for the way his love made him act, I can try to forgive my father. At least take the first step.

  Mom smiles a soft grin. “That’s the best Christmas gift I could ask for.”

  We wrap the lights around the girth of the blue spruce and when I plug in the cord I have to stand back. The display is beautiful. So much light on the darkest day of the year.

  Chapter 30

  I use the house phone to call Dad while Mom’s out last-minute Christmas shopping. It’s not that she’d eavesdrop, but I need to be alone when I make the call. My nerves are untethered explosives, squealing in every direction. I pace the house, trying to give my whirling anxieties somewhere to go.

  “Olivia?” When I hear my father’s question, the world stops.

  I summon my voice. “It’s Zephyr, actually.” This inadvertent string of words makes me aware of how much of my life my dad has missed.

  “Zephyr?” I hear the way surprise nearly steals his breath.

  “Hi Dad.” A bridge.

  “It’s good to hear your voice. How are you? How’s school. Merry Christmas.” His sentences come rapid-fire. Like he doesn’t know what to say and can’t say it fast enough. “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine, Dad.” It’s a lie but I’m not sure how much I’m willing to share with him yet. I pace the kitchen, my thumb trailing along the island.

  “You had me scared there for a minute.”

  “You’re scared because I called you?”

  “I guess you caught me by surprise.” I hang on the cadence of his words, the depth of each syllable, and it is a relief that this part of him has not changed. His voice, here in the kitchen with me now, it fills me. “What really scared me, Zephyr, was thinking I’d never talk to you again.”

  “Same.” Because it’s always been that. Even when I convinced myself I was scared of running into him around town—even then I was more afraid of never seeing him again.

  “You don’t know how happy it makes me to hear you say that, Zephyr.”

  “Dad . . . I-I was wondering if you maybe wanted to meet up for dinner.”

  “Yes.” An intake of breath. “I would love that.”

  We decide on a Chinese restaurant halfway between here and him. Neutral ground. After the holiday.

  “I’m so glad you called.” I hear the relief in his voice, feel it in my own chest. It is the first time in months that order feels like it could be restored. Or at least, redefined.

  I curl up in front of the television with Finn and find a showing of Miracle on 34th Street before there’s a knock at the door.

  “Come in!”

  Lizzie pops into the kitchen under a dusting of snow. She kicks off her boots but doesn’t take off her jacket. She joins us in the living room, twisting her hands for heat. “You doing okay?”

  “I’m good.” I scrunch my legs, make room for her on the couch. “I called my father.”

  “No shit.”

  “Shit.”

  “What did he say?”

  “We’re gonna meet for dinner.”

  She leans back, lets out a surprised hmm. “I think that’s great. What brought on your sudden change of heart?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a while and it seemed like the right time. Christmas and all. I figured I won’t be here next year so . . . time’s running out.”

  “Because you’ll be in Michigan.”

  I pet Finn, avoid Lizzie’s gaze. “That’s the plan.”

  “Is that your plan or Alec’s?”

  I cut her a look. “That’s not fair, Lizzie. You don’t even know Alec.”

  “I’m aware. You’ve had considerably less time for me since you met him.”

  “Why don’t you just say what you came to say, Lizzie? That Alec fucked up and—”

  “He did, Zee. What I saw last night was beyond fucked up.”

  “Agreed. He got crazy jealous and admitted what he did was stupid. And hurtful. We’ve all done stupid shit for the right reasons. There. Now, can we move past it? I have.”

  Lizzie throws up her hands. “No boy is
worth losing a friendship over. I don’t need you going to Michigan hating on me.”

  “I could never hate you, Lizzie. But I need you to trust that I know what I’m doing.”

  “Okay, if that’s what you need.” But even now I hear her doubt. “Listen, I can’t stay.” She gives Finn a quick pat. “Gotta do some stuff at the house before Saint Nick gets here. I just came by to make sure you were okay.”

  “I am.”

  “Good.”

  She stands and suddenly I don’t want her to go. I don’t want to be alone with my doubts. “Lizzie? Thanks for coming over. For checking on me. Last night too. It means a lot.”

  She nods, considers. “Course, Zee. Always.”

  Always. Since my father left, I’ve been consumed with redefining the word, but as she throws a wave from the door, I know Lizzie’s definition of “always” remains unchanged.

  I curl tighter against Finn and check my texts.

  Alec: Call me

  Alec: What r u doing?

  Alec: Where r u?

  And then one from Gregg: Are you around to talk? I read it a few times. My curiosity swells for how that talk would have gone.

  Alec: Going for a drive. Text when u get this

  Alec: Zephyr, I’m officially worried

  Alec: Call me. Now. Please. Let me know ur okay

  And one just after midnight: Can’t even sleep I’m so worried about u

  Then: Where are u???!!!

  Six more from this morning, almost exactly the same.

  And then another from Gregg: Talk. You know, that thing where friends exchange words. Sentences even.

  I punch up Alec’s number and he answers on the first ring. “Zephyr, are you okay?”

  “Totally. I left my phone with Lizzie and just got it back.”

  “I was so worried.”

  I give him the number to the house phone in case he can’t reach me again and tell him there’s nothing to worry about. I only wish my friends didn’t make me doubt my own words.

  I go to my bedroom and dive onto my bed, my hip nicking the University of Michigan catalog from the edge of my desk. It flutters to the floor but I don’t pick it up. Instead, I let my eyes roam to the acceptance letter from Boston College. It is tacked to my wall, among the photos and cards. Even from this distance, I see the maroon crest. It draws me up, until I am close enough to read the letter, and I remember how happy I was when Alec delivered it to my hands. It seems like a lifetime ago. I look to the date printed in the lines above my name.