Anywhere But Here

by Stephanie Hoffman McManus

  I shook my head in disgust and took a step back. “You’re a bitch and a shitty friend.” I brushed past her, seeing D and Trin gathered in a group with Sam and Jeff on the other side of the gym.

  “And you’re just the guy she’s going to leave in the dust like all the rest of us,” she shot back. I ignored her and kept walking, but just like Mrs. Bradford’s, her words hit their mark.

  Eventually Shae was going to want more than I could give her, even if she didn’t think so now. She didn’t know what it was like to have to struggle, or go to a job day in and out that you wasn’t what you wanted just because it was the only option. That shit got old real fast. Having my own shop, that was years down the road if it ever happened, and I was probably kidding myself thinking I could pull it off. Besides working at Brook’s and tinkering on my piece of shit car when it broke down, I didn’t have many other skill sets that could lead to gainful employment. My art was all I really had going for me, and I couldn’t do shit with that unless I could find a tattoo shop willing to take me in and train me. My hopes weren’t real fucking high. The messing around D and I did on fruit with old, shitty equipment wouldn’t count for much.

  Shae said she could see our future together, but I didn’t know what the fuck she saw that made her want it so bad. All I could see was her bringing me to some fancy ass work party ten years down the road, where she introduced me to all of her colleagues and her boss, probably some rich CEO asshole, because whatever Shae did, it was going to be big and she was going to be successful, and I would still be nothing. When one of them would inevitably ask me what I did, I’d have to admit it, and then I’d see the look on their faces, like what the hell is she doing with a loser like him?

  How long would it take for her to get tired of being with a guy who was never going to make something big of himself? How long would it take for her to start feeling like she settled?

  I wasn’t willing to find out. I wasn’t going to do that to either one of us.

  Thirty-Four

  Shae

  June 7

  Senior year …

  “You’re quieter than usual.” I reached for his hand and wove my fingers with his. He let me. “What’s on your mind?” He was staring out over the yard like he was searching for the answers to some unsolvable problem.

  His eyes shifted to my face. “Just thinking.”

  “About …” I prodded.

  “A lot of things.”

  I let out a little huff, “Like?”

  “Like what’s going to happen after Friday.”

  I smiled. Finally he was ready to talk about our plans. “Whatever we want. That’s what’s so exciting. We can do anything.”

  The frown lines on his forehead deepened. I smoothed a finger over them. “Why don’t you look excited? You should be excited.”

  He leaned back, pulling away from my touch. “What exactly do I have to be excited about Shae? Staying here while you run off to New York?”

  A knot formed in my stomach. “Or you could come with me,” I suggested hopefully.

  “You already know I can’t,” he sighed.

  “I know you say that, but really why not?”

  “If I go, who’s going to take care of Trin?”

  “Why can’t she move in with Angela? She spends most of her time there anyway, and I’ve heard her mention more than once that she thinks they’d let her.” Trin was on my side. She didn’t want Kellen to feel like he was burdened with her, even though I knew that’s not how it was for him. He loved his sister and I loved that he loved her so much. But he deserved a life too.

  “I’m not going to pawn my sister off on other people. I’m her family. Not them.”

  “Okay, but have you talked about it with her?”

  “I don’t need to Shae. I’m not taking off so that when she needs me I’m ten hours away.”

  My shoulders slumped as I realized he wasn’t going to change his mind. “Okay, then she’s only got a few years left of high school. I can just register at Coastal for the fall and transfer to Columbia or another bigger university when we’re ready to leave.”

  That suggestion only seemed to darken his already black mood. “You’re not going to fucking Coastal, Shae.”

  “Why not? It’s a good school.”

  “Because you got into Columbia. Columbia, Shae! You’d be an idiot to give that up.”

  A hot flush crept up my face. “So I’m an idiot for wanting to stay with you?” My voice was thick with emotion.

  He let out a heavy breath. “That’s not what I meant. You just can’t stay. Not for me. I won’t let you give that up for me.”

  “But it’s my choice too,” I muttered weakly.

  “I’m not going to let you make a stupid one, though. I can’t do it. You’d regret it later.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” I protested.

  “You’re not staying, Shae. You’re going to Columbia,” he said it like it was final.

  “Okay, so I’m going and you’re staying,” I swallowed thickly. “We can make it work. Lots of couples go away to different schools anyway.”

  “And most of them break up.”

  My heart stopped in my chest for a minute, and then started beating double time as fear set it. I tore at the grass with my fingers, almost afraid to look at him, but I needed to see his eyes. “What are you saying, Kellen?” I asked softly, praying with everything inside of me that it wasn’t what I thought.

  “I’m saying I don’t know what we’re doing, or why we’re kidding ourselves when it’s only going to get harder the longer we drag this out.”

  I felt like I’d been socked in the chest and had the wind knocked out of me. My throat closed up and I struggled to draw in a breath. “You don’t mean that,” I forced the choked words out.

  “Yes I do,” he said firmly, but was unable to look me in the eye.

  “No you don’t,” I jerked my head side to side, refusing to accept what he was saying. “I don’t know where this is coming from, but I don’t believe it.”

  “Then get your head out of the clouds and wake up Shae! This isn’t a fairytale. This is real fucking life and we don’t always get the ending we want. We were only dreaming thinking this thing could work.”

  I felt my face blanch and tears pool in my eyes. “You don’t want to be with me anymore?” I could barely make my lips form the words.

  His angry expression softened into a pained one. “It’s not about what I want. There’s a lot of shit I want that I can’t have, and it’s best to admit it now before either one of us is in any deeper.”

  “Any deeper?” I breathed out my disbelief, pressing a hand to my abdomen. “I’m already in as deep as it gets. I thought you were too.”

  He winced almost imperceptibly. “Don’t make this harder Shae.”

  “Then don’t do this!” I cried. “Just stop! You’re scared and worried and I get it, so am I, but I’m willing to fight for this, to make it work. Why aren’t you?”

  “Because I don’t see the point,” he shouted and everything inside of me crumbled. “Aren’t you tired of pretending everything is perfect between us when it isn’t?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the fucking lies Shae. Your lies. You think I don’t know that you’re only pretending to be fine when we stay in for the tenth night in a row because I can’t afford to take you to the movies, or out to dinner, or even buy you a fucking Valentine’s gift that cost more than some shitty five dollar box of chocolates? You think you’re doing me some favor by hiding what you really want, but you’re not. So what is the point Shae? What is the point of us if I can’t even give you what you want?”

  “I thought the point was that I love you and you love me back,” I choked through a sob that was tearing at me, trying to work its way out.

  He wouldn’t look at me, just stared out at nothing with a stony expression.

  “Don’t do this Kellen, please don’t do this,” I begged softly, reaching for his a
rm, but he shook me off, meeting my broken gaze with his hard one.

  “I’m doing what’s right for both of us.”

  “If it’s the right thing, then why does it feel like this? Why does it feel like I’m dying?”

  He ducked his eyes, drawing in a deep breath before he looked back up. “You’ll get over it. We both will.”

  My mouth went slack as I tried to comprehend how he could be so callous, how this could be the same guy I’d fallen in love with over the last nine months since he sat down next to me in third period. “You can’t mean that.”

  “I do. I’m sorry, but I do. As hard as this is, try to imagine how much harder it would be at the end of the summer, or six months or a year from now, when we both get tired of the long distance, or meet someone else–”

  “I’m not going to meet someone else!” I cringed at the sound of my own desperation.

  “You don’t know that. Neither one of us knows what not seeing each other every day will do. You’ll be focused on your classes and meeting new people, and I’ll be here.”

  I shook my head and pushed myself up to my feet, shaking my head. “I can’t do this. I can’t listen to you throw us away and tell me you’re not even willing to try.”

  He rose to his feet as well. “Shae, I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m trying to save us both more pain down the road.”

  “You don’t know that! You said it yourself, neither one of us knows what’s going to happen. We could make it work.” It didn’t matter what I said though, I could already see the look of resignation on his face.

  “I’m sorry, I just don’t think we can and I don’t want to put either one of us through that.”

  “You’re just afraid to take a chance!” The first tear fell. “How long have you been planning to do this? Huh? What was the point of all of it,” I flung my arms out, “if you never believed we had a chance? Why? Why would you make me fall in love with you if you were just going to end it?” The tears were running in streaks, unashamedly, down my face now.

  His eyes closed and he squeezed his forehead, dragging his hand up and through his hair, pulling at it in frustration. “I never expected this, okay! I never wanted to hurt you … I just wanted … I just–I don’t know, but I swear I didn’t mean for this to happen, for you to get hurt like this.”

  “Then what did you mean to happen?” God, this couldn’t be happening.

  Tell me this isn’t really happening.

  “I’m sorry.” He kept saying it. It was all he could say, but it didn’t make any of this right.

  “I don’t want to hear that you’re sorry!” I cried, wrapping my arms around my stomach. “I just want this last five minutes to be erased. I want to go back! God, I just want to go back to a month ago when you brought me out here and made me believe we could have everything! Why can’t you believe it? Did you ever?”

  “I wanted to.”

  I choked back an ugly sob. “Then why can’t you?”

  He didn’t say anything. I waited, like a fool, for him to tell me why, to make sense of this, but he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, and I couldn’t stand there a second longer. Choking back another cry, I spun around and ran through the yard, around the side of the house to the driveway where my car was parked.

  I threw myself behind the wheel and as I slammed the door closed, the last shred of control I was hanging to slipped and an awful sob was wrenched from my throat. I tried to suck in breaths, gasping through the tears that wouldn’t stop. My entire body was racked with tremors and my hands shook as I tried to slide the key into the ignition and start the car. It revved to life, the radio with it, blasting Taylor Swift’s latest love song. I smacked at the dash control, silencing it, and then gripped the steering wheel tightly, struggling to pull myself together enough to drive out of here.

  I made the mistake of glancing up at my rearview, and he was standing there, watching me with an unreadable expression. He wasn’t close enough for me to see his eyes, but I didn’t think I could stand to see what was in them anyway. I threw my car into drive and peeled out of there, rapidly blinking back the hot tears that blurred my vision, but the further away I got, the harder it was to breathe and the faster the tears came.

  Thirty-Five

  Shae

  May 10

  Present …

  He didn’t even knock.

  My front door flew open and his eyes found me, still in my sleep shorts and Braves t-shirt, hunched over the counter. Our eyes locked and I sucked in a sharp breath, my own widening when I saw the look in his. I straightened, and he strode determinedly toward me. His hands slammed down hard on the counter. I jumped.

  “Where is he?” he growled.

  I drew in a deep breath and slid open the drawer beneath the counter and retrieved the picture tucked inside. I slid it across the counter. His eyes dropped. I couldn’t tear my own away. It’d been so long since I let myself really look at it. The blue eyes identical to his father’s, the little dimpled cheeks, the mop of blonde curls as pale as my own hair.

  “His name was Tommy?” I whispered, my throat clogged with emotion.

  He finally lifted his dark gaze. “I’m going to ask again … where is he? Where is my son?”

  “You didn’t read it all?” God, he didn’t know …

  “I got to the part where you pissed on the stick and decided not to tell me,” he ground out angrily.

  “I tried,” I muttered weakly.

  He smacked his hand down on the counter again, leaning over it. “You should have tried harder.”

  Something snapped inside me, and the floodgates that had been holding back an onslaught of pain, opened up. “When?” I cried. “When was a good time to try harder? When you told me you didn’t love me? When you said you didn’t see a future for us? I was eighteen and scared and alone. You’d shattered every illusion I had of us building a life together. And then the night I did try, I caught you with my best friend, so on top of scared and alone I felt angry and betrayed.”

  “Not good enough, sweetheart. You had no right to keep that from me, to keep my son from me.”

  I lowered my eyes, “I know … I know, and I realized that later.”

  “Then where is he?”

  Thirty-Six

  Shae

  July 1

  After graduation …

  Oh God.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  I stared at the tiny screen as if by sheer force of will I could make the results change from a positive to a negative.

  It didn’t change.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was still sitting on the floor of my bathroom, and I was still pregnant.

  Pregnant.

  Before that word could send me into another fit of oh Gods I sucked in a deep breath and closed my eyes.

  It’s going to be okay.

  It was so not going to be okay, but I had to keep telling myself that, lest I have a hysterical breakdown. First things first, I had to accept this. I drew in a few more calming breaths.

  I was pregnant.

  It was a fact. One confirmed by three separate over the counter home pregnancy tests and the fact that I was late, more than a month late.

  Freaking out wouldn’t change the fact that there was a tiny person being formed inside of me. I set my hand over my stomach and closed my eyes. Actually thinking of the little baby in there, the one that probably looked more like a tiny bean than a person, surprisingly helped to calm me. I tipped my head back against the vanity and just let it sink in.

  A baby.

  Not just a baby, but my baby.

  My baby and Kellen’s baby.

  Our baby.

  There, that was a little better.

  I exhaled and opened my eyes. Next step was figuring out what I was going to do. I needed a plan. That was the part that started to overwhelm me again. I felt tears pooling and my chest constrict. I needed help. I needed someone who could think rationally and help me work through this. I couldn’t go
to my mother. Not a chance. Didi was a safe person, but I was afraid she would be disappointed in me. I couldn’t go to her. Not yet.

  Kellen was out for now. I hadn’t talked to him since two days before graduation when he took a sledgehammer to my heart.

  I called in sick to my own high school graduation. How pathetic was that?

  I just couldn’t go and face him, or any of them. My mother had threatened to drag me from this house, lecturing me on appearances and commitment and responsibility. I just didn’t care. I told her she could go ahead and try.

  She didn’t. I don’t think she knew what to do with me. We’d hardly spoken since. I’d hardly left my room since.

  The hole inside my chest just kept growing deeper.

  I felt sick all the time. Now I knew part of that might be due to the pregnancy. Doing a little bit of math in my head, I guessed I was somewhere between six and eight weeks along. The window of opportunity was pretty narrow. We’d had four whole weeks of intimate bliss before he started pulling away. Somehow in that short time we’d managed to create a life, despite the use of protection.

  Everything hurt, and I was angry at him for being a coward. So damn angry. Still, sitting here now, literally staring the consequences in the face, I couldn’t bring myself to regret it. I think that was the hardest part. Even knowing how it ended, if I could go back, I’d do it all over again, only somehow, some way, I’d try harder to convince him that we were worth taking a chance on.

  I hadn’t heard the ticking clock counting down our relationship, but he’d known all along we had an expiration date. Graduation. It was supposed to be this special, monumental day. Instead it was the end of everything special.

  Or maybe it wasn’t.

  I really needed someone to talk to.

  Cammie was the only person I could call. She wouldn’t flip out or lecture me and she’d be honest with me. She wouldn’t let me lose it or do something crazy like drive over to Kellen’s right now and fall apart on his doorstep.

  I picked myself up off the floor and went to find my phone on the nightstand beside my bed. I flopped back on the bed, staring up at the galaxy mural on my ceiling that made my chest ache. Kellen spent two weeks in February working on it every chance he could around school and work. Without my mother even knowing, we’d gone and bought black paint and little cans of glow in the dark paint, and all the supplies we needed for him to create the masterpiece. Swirls of blues and pinks and purples, dotted with bright white constellations.