Waiting at Hayden's

by Riley Costello

  “I was kissing you,” Christopher said. He was grinning like a teenage boy who’d finally gotten the nerve to ask his crush to dance at a junior high mixer in the disco-ball-lit gymnasium. “You felt something there, didn’t you?”

  “What? No!” Charli reached for her glass of iced tea and finished it off, washing her mouth out.

  Christopher’s face suddenly turned a deep shade of red. “Really? Nothing?”

  “Nothing, Christopher,” she said, enunciating her words to drive her point home. It wasn’t the worst kiss in the world. And under a different set of circumstances, maybe she could have felt something for him. But not with how she was still feeling about Jack. And definitely not considering Jack had mentioned in his letters that his future with baseball was up in the air. Charli didn’t think he’d actually hang up his cleats for good, but there was no way she was going to get involved with someone else when she knew there was a chance Jack might be coming around soon.

  Christopher’s face reddened even more, and he stared down at his plate of shrimp swimming in grits. “Man . . . I thought maybe if I just went for it, you’d realize that you and I had something. Maybe I should have asked you first, but you know how you can ruminate about things, Charli. I figured I’d just bypass that step and take a leap.” Then he laughed at himself slightly like he couldn’t believe he’d thought that. “I like you so much,” he confessed, looking up.

  Charli softened, feeling sympathetic. She cared for Christopher and didn’t like seeing him upset. “I’m just not ready for anything new,” she explained, reaching across the table and resting her hand on his.

  “What is it about your ex that’s got you so hung up on him? From what Rebecca’s told me, you two sound like such different people.”

  “We are,” Charli said. Jack definitely didn’t tick the same way she and Christopher did, but that didn’t mean he didn’t understand her. They connected on a deeper level than their interests, and there was something inside her that burned for him. He was the one person who made her feel like she had returned home anytime she stepped into his arms. “I can’t help myself from loving him,” she said, feeling no need to give Christopher any more of an explanation.

  Christopher just nodded, slipped his hand out from under hers and then squinted up at her in the sliver of sunlight that had slipped in under the umbrella.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For understanding.”

  “I’m trying my best,” Christopher said. He took a long drink of his iced tea and then apologized for making her uncomfortable.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Charli assured him.

  “So, can we just forget that ever happened? This won’t ruin our friendship?” Christopher asked.

  Charli pretended to seal her lips and toss the key away. “I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.”

  Christopher’s shoulders relaxed. “Thank you.” He cleared his throat and stirred his shrimp around a bit. Then, sitting up straighter in his chair, he said: “So, before that whole thing that didn’t just happen, happened . . . what was it you were saying?”

  —

  JACK PACED BACK and forth in his motel room staring at the phone cradled on the receiver on top of the coffee table. Maybe I should just call Charli. Tell her I’m here and what I saw. Ask for an explanation.

  He’d been debating it for the last fifteen minutes. Part of him wanted to. But part of him was afraid of what she might say. “Yes, I’ve moved on. I’m sorry, I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  Fuck it. I’ve got to. I’ve come all this way.

  Taking a seat on the edge of the bed, he picked the phone up. After a deep breath, he punched in Charli’s number.

  Ring.

  Ring.

  “Hello?” A man answered.

  Had he dialed the wrong number? He must have. Jack was about to apologize when he heard Charli’s laugh in the background.

  “Christopher, give me my phone!” she squealed.

  Christopher . . . So the curly haired guy had a name.

  Charli giggled again. “Christopher, come on. Hand it over! Who is it?”

  “I don’t know—random number. Try to reach it.” Jack pictured Christopher dangling the phone above Charli’s head. His heart ached at the sound of their flirtatious banter. It was almost more painful than seeing the kiss.

  “Christopher,” Charli laughed again.

  “All right, all right,” Christopher said. “Here you go.” He must have passed the phone to Charli because the next thing Jack knew she was on the line.

  “Hello?” she said. “Hello. I’m sorry. Who is this?”

  Charli . . . Jack wanted to say something. It killed him not to. But what was there to say? Charli had clearly moved on. If the kiss hadn’t completely convinced him of that, this phone call had.

  “Hello?” Charli said again. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. Their timing was off again. Just like when they made the pact.

  As the realization set in, he slammed the phone down.

  “Damn it!” he screamed. Standing up he grabbed a pillow from the bed and pitched it across the room into the blinds. Then he reached into his pocket and took out the engagement ring. He sunk down onto the floor and stared at the diamond until the room started to grow dark. He’d fucking lost her . . .

  twenty

  THEN

  “AND THEN WHAT happened?” Jack’s mom looked across the canoe at him as they took a break from paddling along the Tualatin River.

  It was Jack’s first time out of the house since he’d returned home three days earlier. When he landed in Portland, he texted his mom to pick him up at the airport, and once she arrived, he climbed into her car and didn’t say a word the whole ride back to their house.

  Although his mom knew something terrible had happened, she had been smart enough not to pester Jack with questions and allowed him the time he needed to make sense of what went wrong. That was the rhythm they usually settled into when Jack had to work things out. Over the years he had made her learn the hard way that there was no warming him up for the heart-to-heart chat that waited at the end of each of his crises. Jack was either ready to talk or not, and when he was, he always let her know.

  Until then, she knocked on his bedroom door twice a day to tell him she was setting down plates of food for him. She’d left all of his old favorites—her extra-cheesy macaroni, spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, fish tacos—but Jack hadn’t been able to stomach most of it.

  Now, after days spent tormenting himself, he finally felt ready to open up.

  “Then I gathered my things and caught the first flight out of there.”

  His mom brought out the lunch she had packed for them. Although Jack had told her he still didn’t have an appetite, she said she wanted to be prepared just in case he changed his mind.

  “I can’t imagine what that was like to see,” she said, a pained expression crossing her face. “And then to hear them on the phone interacting like that.”

  “Yeah.” Jack lifted the oar off his lap, set it down and sat back on his hands. “You were right, Mom. The surprise attack was not the best move.”

  Jack had lost count of the times in his life when he wished his mom hadn’t been right. Like the time she warned him about going dirt bike riding with his older cousins and had ended up in the emergency room with a busted jaw. Or in junior high when she suggested he take a break from pitching during the summer to give his arm a rest, and he ended up with Little League Shoulder at the end of the summer season, which left him benched for part of fall ball. The look on his mom’s face told Jack that she got little pleasure out of being right. She handed him a plate loaded with a turkey sandwich and his favorite barbecued chips.

  “I know I wasn’t a big fan of your plan, Jack, but I still find it so strange to think that she moved on. It just doesn’t seem like Charli.”

  “It completely blindsided me.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want
to try calling her again? Get the whole story? I feel like if she knew that you wanted to be with her, then she’d dump the guy she was with.”

  “You didn’t see the kiss for starters,” Jack said, the image popping into his head again, his stomach getting queasy. “There are categories of kissing, Mom. This wasn’t a drunken bar make out. It was a mid-day, I’ve-got-my-wits-about-me kiss. It was long, and it said, ‘There’s more where this came from.’ And then the tone of her voice when I heard her talking to that Christopher guy over the phone . . . it was just like when she used to flirt with me. It’s not meant to be with us . . . right now at least.”

  A warm wind picked up and pushed their canoe so that it started to drift diagonally toward a thicket of trees with broken branches dipping into the water. Jack set down his lunch, lifted his oar back up and tried to maneuver them back to the other side.

  “It sounds like there’s more than heartbreak in your voice,” his mom said.

  Despite his best efforts to control how much of his feelings he showed to his mom and when, she always managed to sense what he wasn’t saying.

  “I’ll admit I’m mad too,” he told her. “All that time when Charli was telling me in her letters to stick with baseball and give it more time, I thought she had my back, trying to make sure that I gave my dream my best shot before walking away. Now I’m thinking she was just trying to keep me from flying out to Charleston and ruining the good thing she had going with this other guy.”

  He saw his mom’s eyes start to well up with tears as he set down his oar again.

  “I’m so sorry, Jack. I know how disappointing it can be when someone you love doesn’t live up to your expectations.”

  Jack knew this whole conversation had to be reopening wounds she was still nursing after separating from his dad, and realizing they were both dealing with such a letdown made him feel closer to his mom than ever before.

  “This also must feel like such a big hole—Charli took up a lot of space in your heart for such a long time.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jack said. “And the part that Charli didn’t fill, baseball did. Now I’ve lost them both.”

  “Well, have you?” his mom asked. “Can you go back to baseball?”

  Technically it was an option. He could try and get picked up by another team next season as a free agent, but he didn’t want that.

  “Baseball wasn’t doing it for me anymore,” he said. “Charli may have fallen out of love with me, but I fell out of love with baseball, and I don’t think knowing I can’t be with Charli now will change that. Honestly, for the first time in my life, I have absolutely no clue what I want.” He shook his head and stared out over the river, watching as a goose flapped its wings, rippling the water, and took flight.

  “Well, okay, let’s regroup here,” his mom said, switching into problem-solving mode. “I don’t think it’s healthy for you to just sit around. Why don’t you take off and try and start over somewhere fresh? There are so many memories around Portland of you and Charli, and California would probably remind you of baseball. Pick a new city. Move. Try and find something else there that will make you happy. It might be a job, a new girlfriend, a hobby. I’m sure your dad will support you until you get on your feet. He’s all about trying to make things right with you now.”

  Different cities popped into Jack’s head—Chicago, LA, Seattle, Houston, Denver, New York. He could even go abroad. Although the idea of starting over completely was the first suggestion that hadn’t lodged a pit in his stomach in days, he wasn’t sure.

  “I don’t know. It sounds a little bit like running away.”

  “I think it depends on which way you’re facing when you leave,” his mom said. “There’s a new dream out there somewhere waiting for you, and you just need to have your eyes wide open to see it. I’m afraid if you stay here, you’ll be so busy looking back at what you’ve lost, that the next best thing could be right in front of you, and you wouldn’t see it.”

  She was right. Being here, Jack constantly felt reminded of what he’d lost. Even sitting out on this canoe triggered thoughts of Charli. How many rides had they gone on together over the years? Jack couldn’t begin to count. If he got some distance from Portland and his memories of her, it might help.

  “Okay, maybe you’re right,” he said.

  His mom smiled across the canoe at him and took a bite of her turkey on wheat. To please her, he put a chip in his mouth and chewed on it slowly.

  “But what do I do about the pact Charli and I made? Do I just forget about it now?” he asked.

  He’d been carting the to-go box from Hayden’s with the date and time of their reunion on it everywhere he went since he and Charli split. When he got home, he threw it in the back of his closet in a fit of rage and cursed Charli for ruining things.

  “That’s up to you,” his mom said. “I doubt she’s given up on the two of you completely, but it sounds like she has put you out of her mind for right now at least. You might need to put her out of your mind for a while, too, to allow yourself to get through this. If, down the road, you decide that you’re still curious about a future with her, well . . . you can deal with that then.” She set her sandwich down and reached across the canoe, resting her hand on Jack’s knee. “In theory, what you and Charli were trying to do with the reunion was great, Jack. But things got messed up a bit here. You need to look out for yourself right now.”

  Jack stuck another barbecue chip in his mouth and looked back out over the water.

  “So, I shouldn’t keep writing her letters anymore either then.” He said it as more of a statement than a question, but his mom still came through with her opinion.

  “I wouldn’t. Knowing what you know . . . it would be too hard for you to pretend you’re doing okay.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. He definitely wasn’t okay. And he had never been one to hide his feelings when he talked to Charli. If he kept in touch with her, he’d eventually give away the fact that he’d gone out there and that he’d seen what he saw. Then she’d be forced to write a letter confirming that she was seeing someone else, which would only make Jack feel worse. He’d already taken one dagger to the heart. He didn’t need another.

  His mom rubbed his knee. “You’re going to get through this, Jack,” she assured him. “I promise.”

  Jack sighed skeptically. Despite her track record, this was one time Jack thought she might be wrong.

  —

  CHARLI JOGGED OUT to her mailbox as she did every morning when there was a chance Jack might be responding to a letter she had last sent. Excited to find one resting there, she tore it open right away.

  September 21, 2013

  Dear Charli,

  I’d appreciate it if we stopped communicating. Our plan to stay in touch by writing letters isn’t working for me anymore.

  Sincerely, Jack

  She read it once. Then a second time. And then, in the middle of her driveway, she collapsed onto her knees and cried.

  Click here to see scenes from these chapters unfold and to Shop the Book™ or visit sincerelyriley.com/scene-6.

  twenty-one

  THEN

  CHARLI HAD DROPPED five pounds in the past five days since she’d received Jack’s two line letter telling her he wanted to cut off communication between them completely. The only thing she’d managed to stomach was a bowl of soup, which Rebecca had brought over and spoon-fed to her, a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream, which Rebecca had insisted would make her feel better (it didn’t), and a couple bites of pizza at a study session last night.

  Why? she asked herself, rolling to the other side of her bed and pulling the covers up underneath her chin. Why? Why? Why? She’d been living in her bed unless she absolutely had to get out of it—for class, lab, or a study session—and ruminating about that very question.

  It was a question Jack hadn’t given her an answer to in his letter and that he wouldn’t answer for her no matter how many times she tried calling him and no
matter how many voicemails she left.

  “Please explain this to me,” she had said desperately the day she got the letter. “You can’t just write me something like that. It’s unfair.”

  No response.

  “Jack, I need you to tell me what’s going on,” she tried another time. “At least let me know that you’re okay.”

  She got a simple text message response:

  I’m fine. But please stop calling.

  She tried reaching out to his mom after that, hoping maybe she could give her an answer for why Jack didn’t want to hear from her anymore. But Grace must have been under instructions not to communicate with her because she hadn’t called Charli back.

  Charli had been left to devise all sorts of different theories as to what his explanation for the letter could have been.

  Sometimes she convinced herself that Jack had written it because it had simply gotten too hard for him to hear about her life knowing that he couldn’t be a part of it. Other times she let herself believe he’d sent it because staying in touch with her was distracting him too much from focusing on baseball. She knew that those theories didn’t make much sense. If they were the real reasons, it seemed Jack would have just explained them to her in his letter. He had to have known that she would understand both. But they hurt less than believing the most likely one—that Jack had met someone else.

  Charli had made it clear when she and Jack made the pact that they shouldn’t kiss and tell. His letter could very likely have been his way of telling her, without breaking that rule, that he was seeing another girl. She hadn’t really considered how difficult it would be for whichever one of them moved on first to keep communicating with the other one. There was a chance writing to her was making Jack feel unfaithful to his new girlfriend. Or that his new girlfriend found out he was staying in touch with her and was uncomfortable with it.