Faking a yawn, he stretches, and then slides his arm around the back of my seat. Just like he used to during our brief relationship. It was charming then. Not so cute now.
I give him a look. He waggles his eyebrows, and I push him away. “Hands to yourself, Haler. You get plenty of action with me during play practice. Now, walk me to the door like a gentleman.”
Cam sighs but obliges. At the doorstep, I can’t help comparing him to Auden. They’re different in so many ways. Cam’s like my brother. I’ve known him since the fourth grade. Maybe that was part of Auden’s appeal. He was a mystery to be discovered. Cam’s the open book I’ve read a thousand times.
“I did have fun,” I say. “So thank you.”
He takes my hand. “It was a pleasure, my lady.”
“Guess I have to give you your coat back, huh?”
Cam smiles and holds his hands out to help me. I turn, and he slides the jacket from my arms. And then, in a swift and smooth movement, he spins me around, slides his arm around my waist, and kisses me.
One quick peck on the lips, and then he steps back, grinning.
I stare at him. “What was that?”
He blinks. “Just an innocent kiss between friends.”
“No, Cam. Friends don’t kiss on the mouth. I’ve never kissed Grace on the mouth.”
“Well, maybe you ought to try it some time. And, uh, let me know when that’s going to happen.”
I glare at him and he rolls his head back.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not one of your conquests, Cam. And this isn’t rehearsal. You don’t get to kiss me without asking.”
His eyebrows raise hopefully. “So you’d say yes if I asked?”
“No. I absolutely would not.”
“Even if I said I was overcome by your enchanting good looks?”
I smile in spite of myself and shove him. “Go on, get out of here. And maybe I’ll let you keep your front teeth.”
“Can’t blame a guy for trying.” He bows low. “Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
I’m still shaking my head as I close the front door behind me. He can be infuriating, but he’s not a bad guy. Knowing Cam, he’s probably off to be the king of the theater crowd’s after-party somewhere. And I’d bet ten bucks he kisses another girl before the night is out.
Mama’s dozing in her chair. She hasn’t waited up for me in years. I come into the living room and give her arm a tiny shake. She opens her eyes with a startled half snore, half gasp.
“I’m back,” I say, softly.
“Did you have a nice time?” She asks, her voice heavy with sleep.
“It was a lot of fun. Thanks for convincing me to go.”
She smiles. “I’m so glad, baby.”
I pat her arm. “Go on back to bed. I’m home safe.”
She nods, and I help her out of her chair and into her bed. Back in my room, I shut my door with a sigh. A surge of negative memories from the last few days spent crying greet me. It doesn’t seem possible to escape.
My eyes fall to my window. Blake securely nailed on the screen this morning. No more late-night visitors for me. Except a flicker of movement outside catches my eye. Goose bumps rise on my skin. I take a step to the window, but I hear him before I see him.
Auden. Standing on the front lawn, calling my name at the top of his lungs.
Chapter 28
He calls my name again, probably waking half the neighborhood. I run for the front door, not certain if this is reality or a bad dream. I know it’s not a dream when I see Mama and Blake fly out of their room. I’ve never seen so much rage in Mama’s eyes.
“Blake, get your shotgun.”
“What? Are you crazy?” I screech.
She has her phone in her hands. “I’m calling 911.”
I grab her arm. “Mama, please! Don’t. I can handle this.”
“You won’t be saying a word to that boy.” Mama shoves past me. I cast a pleading look to Blake, but he just follows Mama, his brow deeply furrowed. All I can do is run after them.
The picture that waits for me on the front lawn is like something out of my worst nightmare. Mama and Auden, face-to-face, screaming at each other. Mama looks like she’s going to rip his eyes out. Auden looks awful, like he hasn’t slept in three days. And he probably hasn’t.
“I warned you,” Mama screams. “I told you to stay the hell away.”
“She’s not your property,” Auden yells back. “She’s free to decide who she loves.”
“She could never love a murderer like you.”
Now it’s my turn to scream. I pull at Mama’s shoulder. “STOP THIS!”
Mama’s eyes burn past me, pouring molten rage on Auden. “I’m calling the police. You’ll never see her again, because you’re heading back to prison.”
Taking advantage of Mama’s distracted fury, I lunge and pull the phone from her hands.
“Shelby!”
“You’re not calling the police,” I say.
“Don’t be an idiot. Blake, give me your phone.”
I turn to him. “Let me talk to him first. Please.”
“Blake,” Mama snaps.
Tears well in my eyes, prickling in my throat. “I’m not going to go back to him. It’s over between us. But let us say goodbye.”
I can’t look at Auden as I say this. I don’t think I could bear the pain on his face.
Blake sighs and then gives Mama a single nod of reassurance. She’s breathing hard, red in the face, but she relents to his judgment.
“You have five minutes,” she says to me. “Say what you need to say, and if he’s not one hundred yards away in five minutes, so help me God, I will have the police drag him away in handcuffs.”
She storms back into the house, Blake following behind her. The sound of the front door slamming makes me flinch. I stare down at the grass. I want to run from this moment, erase it from my memory forever.
“Not one call,” Auden says, his voice low, trembling. His tone cuts me right to the heart. “Not one text. Is that how you say goodbye, Shelby?”
“Mama took my phone. She’s had it all weekend.”
“And you couldn’t steal it? Demand she give it back?” Auden swears and scrapes a hand through his hair. “Maybe you didn’t care. You sure seemed your usual cheerful self tonight.”
My face snaps to him. “What?”
His eyes blaze with a mixture of pain and anger. “I saw you kiss Cam Haler.”
“So you were here?” I seethe. “Have you been stalking me this entire time? Watching my every move?” Grace’s words flashing through my mind about Mike Jasper stalking her. Maybe he and Auden really are alike.
“No, of course not,” he says, letting out a frustrated growl.
“Oh, so you just happened to be in the neighborhood at eleven thirty at night, strolling by my house at the exact moment?”
“I had to find some way to contact you, okay?”
“By stalking me?”
But instead of another furious outburst, Auden falls to his knees. He pounds his fist into the grass. “You have no idea what I’ve been going through,” he says, his voice soft and strained.
“Auden…”
He looks up, his dark eyes glistening with tears. “You’re tearing my heart out, Shelby.”
I was barely holding on before, but his words break what little resistance I was holding on to. Hot tears stream down my face.
“I’m sorry, okay?”
“Why, Shelby?” he asks, in a strained voice.
I just shake my head. He presses again, his voice trembling. “Why? Why are you doing this?”
“You know why.”
“I don’t.”
I wipe my eyes furiously. “You lied to me about your pris
on sentence. And about the accident. A plain, bold-faced lie.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“You did. Don’t make it worse by trying to justify it. You lied. And who knows what else you’ve lied about.”
“It was only a half lie,” he says, miserably. “I really did try to run away and steal my dad’s credit card. And he did let me spend a night in jail. It really happened, it just…”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. I shake my head. “I’m tired of not knowing what’s true. I’m sick to death of it. I have to trust what I know. Who I know. Mama has her issues, but she loves me. And Grace too. And they both think you’re bad for me.”
“Of course they do,” Auden says fiercely. “They want you to fall in line and become who they think you should be.”
“I could just as easily say the same about you.”
He stares at me, stunned. “Shelby…how can you even say that? You know that’s not true. You know who you are, who you were before you met me. Why do you think we were so drawn to each other?”
He jumps to his feet. There’s a desperate glint in his eyes. “Don’t let them do this to you, Shelby. Don’t let them break you.”
He reaches for my arm, but I back away. “Don’t touch me.”
My words freeze him in place. He drops his hands to his side, staring at me as if I were about to swallow poison. And in some ways, he’s not wrong.
“It’s over,” I say through the tears. “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to.”
“What about your dreams? Forget me if you want. What about acting? What about Hollywood?”
I hug my arms around myself, suddenly aware how cold and utterly exhausted I am. “It’s not realistic and you know it.”
“I don’t know that, Shelby. You have an amazing talent.”
“It’s a pipe dream,” I say, cutting my hands through the air. “I wouldn’t last one week in Hollywood. Because I don’t belong there. At least here in Orchardview, I mean something to people.”
His expression is one of complete disbelief. “So…you’re giving up? Just like that?”
That question stabs me deepest of all. I can’t bear even one more minute of this. Reaching deep within myself, I look up at Auden.
“This is goodbye. Please don’t try to contact me.”
“Shelby,” his nostrils flare with emotion. “No.”
“I won’t keep Mama from calling the police if you come back.”
It takes all of my strength to turn back to the house.
“Shelby, please.”
The raw pain and desperation in his voice almost make me stop, but I force one foot in front of the other.
But I can’t stop myself from glancing back at him.
Our eyes meet for a final time. In spite of all the anger, I can’t deny how much I still care about him, as foolish as that seems. I wish I had the strength to offer parting words, something beautiful and true. I wish he had some poetic words for me to remember instead of this terrible pain.
But I step into the house and close the door, sealing Auden Keplar out of my life forever.
Chapter 29
No one speaks the next morning at breakfast. Or all that day. Mama and Blake wisely leave the house. They know I won’t go running back to Auden now, but they also know that it’s best for me to have my space.
Sometime after dinner, they return and quietly present me with a new phone. A fancy new phone, the newest model you can buy. Complete with a new number.
Then Mama goes back to normal life as if nothing happened. Maybe it’s because I’m not crying my eyes out in my room. Auden isn’t calling nonstop or showing up in the yard. And I try—I really try—to feel normal. If you could force yourself into a certain emotion by sheer power of will, the world would be a happier place. Nonetheless, I proceed with the life that Mama and Grace tell me I want. I go to school and rehearsal. Hang out with Grace. I watch TV with Mama and Blake.
But there’s an emptiness inside me. An ache. And to make matters worse, my panic attacks resume. When I’m taking a test. Or walking to my car after school. Moments that have nothing to do with Auden or Mama.
It’s always the same. A shortness of breath and racing pulse, accompanied by that dark feeling of dread. Something isn’t right. The words peck at me like birds.
Something isn’t right.
One day after school, I’m listening to music on my bed, trying to ease out of another such attack, when I hear a distinct tap on my window. The noise puts my whole body on alert.
My heart rate picks up even more. I stare at my dark blue curtains. I’ve taken to keeping them closed, cocooning in my room. Pressing my lips together, I pull them open.
A box balances on the window ledge, resting against the glass. It’s Auden’s memory box. The one we spent all those afternoons sifting through.
I cast my eyes out over the yard, but he’s gone. I press my forehead against the window.
It’s been more than a week since that awful moment out on the lawn. For days, I moved about with both a fear and a hope that Auden would try and contact me. That he would try to convince me to change my mind. I expected him to fight for me. The fact that he hadn’t was a relief, but also a source of pain.
And now this.
Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I go outside to retrieve the box. Thankfully, Mama’s at work, so I don’t have to sneak. I sit on my bed, placing the box in front of me. Only then do I see the note tucked into the folded flaps. With trembling hands, I slide out the small piece of paper.
Auden’s handwriting makes my heart leap with hope. But then I read the words:
It’s clear that you’re abandoning what we had. I can’t live with these memories, but I don’t have the heart to destroy them. Since you are immune to all that our relationship once was, would you do me the favor of disposing of them?
• • •
“You know,” Grace says at lunch the next day. “I’d act surprised, but I’m totally not. That is the exact kind of crap that Mike would pull. He’s manipulating you. He’s trying to make you feel bad and come apologize to him.”
Watching her fume I can’t help but smile. She always was good for a rant session. And lucky for me, Brad’s out hunting with his dad and uncles this week, so I have her all to myself.
I stab my fork into the fruit cocktail. “I don’t blame him for being upset.”
“Oh, like it’s your fault? Please, Shelby. Don’t fall for this.”
I sigh. Grace frowns. “Okay, you know what? I say you do it. Let’s go out to the lake after school and burn that box.”
I give her a look, but she’s completely serious. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“It’s not mine to destroy, Grace.”
She widens her eyes, incredulous. “He told you to destroy it. You would just be doing what he asked.”
“I don’t know…”
Grace is quiet for a moment, and then she pushes her lunch tray aside. “We’ll go together. I have something to burn as well.” When I give her a dubious glance, she suddenly loses a bit of her spark. “It’s some papers. Chats. Between Mike and me. I…would always print them out after so I could save them for our future kids.”
The information floors me, but I try not to show it. “And…you still have them?”
She bites her lip and shrugs. “At first I didn’t really have the heart to toss them in the trash. But I also didn’t want my mom to find them.”
In that moment, I see how deep love can cut. Even after years of pain, even after fully moving on, the scars will always be there. I simply nod.
• • •
Grace and I are quiet as we drive out to the lake. I almost suggest we pick another spot. Any other spot. But it’s fitting to do this here. End these memories where they began.
We carry our items to
a fire pit near the picnic tables, me with the box, Grace with a full manila folder. After starting a small blaze, there’s a moment of hesitation between both of us. I sit down on one of the worn stumps that form a circle around the pit.
Grace purses her lips. “Here we go.” She holds the manila folder over the flames and then drops it in without ceremony. The moment the pages hit the fire, she lets out a breath. I offer her a little smile.
“I’m proud of you.”
“It feels good. I should have done that a long time ago.”
My turn now. The box feels irrationally heavy on my lap. Like it’s going to crush my bones. I struggle for a good breath. Not here. Not now. I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment and try to push back the panic. Not now.
Drawing in a shaky breath, I open the box. Pictures and letters stare up at me, accusing and sad. Auden and I went through the whole box over the course of a few days. I may not remember the events the items in the box record, but the memories of those hours with Auden beat fresh in my mind.
“Do you want me to help you?” Grace asks.
I shake my head and pick up a stack of pictures. It’s impossible not to look through them one last time. These memories and moments that don’t belong to me anymore. They paint a lovely scene, though. Two people in love. You can tell Auden has a filmmaker’s eye. So many of the pictures are like stills from a movie, playing around with interesting angles and lighting. Most of them are pictures of me.
One picture of the two of us stands out. We’re arm in arm, in full Renaissance costume, standing by a large bonfire. I frown at the image. It’s not so much a memory but knowledge. This is a Halloween party. And Auden and I are supposed to be Romeo and Juliet.
Where did I get that gorgeous blue dress? And why don’t I have it anymore? It would work perfectly for the play…
Auden and I are both smiling for the camera, but somehow…somehow I know that we were fighting just before they took this picture.
Remember Me Always Page 18