Always Something There to Remind Me

by Beth Harbison

  I hate that feeling.

  He sighed, but still didn’t look at me.

  “It was pretty devastating to me too,” he said quietly.

  “Then why did you do it?” I implored. “You had all the choices. I had none. Okay, maybe you needed to ‘punish’ me for flirting or being manipulative, maybe you needed some time away from me, maybe we both needed to grow up a little on our own, but there were a million points over the years when you could have released that stranglehold you had on your anger a little bit so we could have at least talked. We might have worked things out.”

  “There were a lot of feelings, Erin. A lot of pain. At the time, I didn’t think I’d ever get over it.”

  I took another ragged breath. “Tell me about it. It’s a wonder you could even look at one of my friends afterwards without being reminded of me. It must have been torture.”

  “I couldn’t,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “I can’t.”

  I looked at him sharply. “What?”

  He shook his head. “Forget it. The point is, we were too young to have all those big feelings. It was bound to blow.”

  “I disagree. Completely.”

  “Think about it.”

  “Think about it? I’ve had plenty of time to think about it. Things didn’t have to end the way they did. I’m not saying they didn’t have to end, though I’m not sure they did, but it didn’t have to go down the way it did. You were cruel. You have no idea how much damage you caused.”

  “You seem all right to me.” He looked at me. “It wasn’t that much longer that you were pregnant, had a baby, moved on. Now you’re engaged. What’s to complain about?”

  “I’m not engaged,” I said again. “And if I’d ever thought you might come back, I would have waited alone like a widow on a rooftop widow’s walk for you, no matter how long it took.” God, that was pathetic. What was even more pathetic was that it was true. If I’d known for a fact that he was coming back, even if it was twenty years in the future, I would have waited for him, chaste and cobwebbed.

  “And if I’d had any idea you felt like that,” he said slowly, “I would have gone to the ends of the earth to get you.”

  It took a second for that to register.

  “But I told you!” I said, but … had I? At first, certainly, but things said in the heat of a breakup can’t be taken to the bank.

  He saw that cross my face. It was like he watched my entire thought process scroll across my forehead like the ticker outside The Today Show in Rockefeller Center. He studied me, then met my eye, and cocked his head, and I knew he knew exactly what I’d thought.

  And he was right.

  “I came back,” he said, and I remembered it as if it were yesterday. My baby shower. Nate got back into town and called my mother’s house looking for my number while I happened to be there. It was a casual conversation that had felt weighty at the time and had proven to set things in motion that I’d never anticipated. “Too late, but I came back. You were pregnant.” He shook his head. “You got me again.”

  “It was…” It was wrong to say it was an accident. That reduced Camilla to a regret, and she wasn’t. “Why did you call me that day?”

  “When you told me you were pregnant?”

  I nodded.

  “Because I was finished with school, finished seeing the world, so to speak”—he hesitated—“and I guess you were just the one thing I couldn’t forget. Especially once I came back into town. Everywhere I looked there was something that reminded me of you.”

  Another tiny crack in my heart. “Why didn’t you tell me that at the time?”

  “It was too late.”

  “I wasn’t married.”

  He gave a short spike of a laugh. “You were clearly involved.”

  What could I say? Anything I said would be disrespectful to the child who had come out of that situation, no matter how unexpected and unfortunate the situation had seemed at the time.

  “I didn’t know how long this would matter,” he added. “I believed what everyone said about young love, and how you get over it quickly because it’s not the real thing. At the time I didn’t know it would matter forever. I just…” He shook his head. “I didn’t know.”

  “I need to go to my daughter,” I said, looking out the windshield at the football field. There were some teenagers out there running the track. They’d probably heard everything we’d yelled at each other.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to me.

  I’d had no idea how much I’d wanted to hear those words, or, rather, how much it would mean to me if he said them. The tears started anew, accompanied by hyperventilating sobs.

  I felt his hand touch my cheek, and I let it stay.

  It had been too long, and I was too tired from the years of keeping my feelings for him pushed down, to be self-conscious now. All the pain and angst bubbled to the surface and I had no chance of keeping them in any longer.

  He could have opened the door and pushed me out of the car with his foot and I wouldn’t have felt any more pain than I did right now.

  But he didn’t do that. He just held his hand against my cheek for another moment.

  Then he let go and looked forward, his breath resigned. “About what just happened between us…”

  “Don’t.” I held up a hand. “I realize we should probably talk about it, but I can’t. I just—I have to calm down and go home.”

  And—I could feel it—he watched me with those big sad eyes until I’d collected myself enough to go home and be a grown-up for my daughter.

  Chapter 15

  May 1987

  Erin couldn’t sleep.

  She’d had another dream about Nate and had woken up feeling like he was right there. As usual, it had taken a moment for her sleep-fogged brain to remember the facts, and for her heart to sink all over again.

  He was gone. He never wanted to talk to her again. How could she have forgotten that, even for a split second?

  Tears threatened—they were always quick to threaten these days—and she turned on the light and went to the bathroom to splash her face with icy water. She was sick of tears. Her eyes burned all the time now from crying so much.

  It was raining outside. A car shushed through the wet street, leaving a hollow silence behind.

  He’d come to his senses if she waited, she knew he would. She just had to be patient somehow. She wasn’t all that good at it, but she had to try. Things would be okay, because she loved him and he loved her and people who loved each other that much had to be together.

  Didn’t they?

  As soon as he stopped being so mad, he’d give her the chance to explain and he’d see it had all been a big misunderstanding. He’d probably feel awful for punishing her like this for something she hadn’t done, but she’d forgive him because it had looked bad. And, of course, there had been a certain level of disloyalty on her part in opening the door—literally and figuratively—to that interpretation.

  So she didn’t blame him, really. But enough was enough. It had been months now and Nate wouldn’t talk to her at all. It was the longest she’d gone without talking to him in two years and it felt really weird. Fifty times a day something little would happen and she’d want to tell him, but then she’d remember—again and again—that she couldn’t. If she called, he’d hang up. If she went to his house, he wouldn’t answer the door. If she went to his work, she’d embarrass the hell out of both of them.

  She knew because she’d tried all of the above.

  Repeatedly.

  And, like gazillions of teenage girls before her throughout the ages, she’d written terrible poems, she’d plagiarized terrible poems, she’d made mix tapes, and she’d rewritten song lyrics that almost perfectly expressed how she felt. Worse, she’d offered up some of them to Nate as a means of expression for the things she couldn’t say, or he wouldn’t listen to.

  She was pretty sure he threw them out.

  The tears threatened again, but this time she couldn�
�t stop them. She missed him so much she ached. Her arms ached, as if she’d been holding something heavy and dropped it.

  Her heart ached.

  The tears started anew.

  There was a knock on her door and it opened a crack.

  “Erin?” Her mother came into view, squinting into the light. “What’s wrong?”

  Erin turned her head and squeezed her eyes to make the tears stop. “Nothing, I’m fine,” she said in a voice that indicated otherwise. How could she admit she was still such a mess? Maybe no one expected her to be completely over it now, but they probably thought it was weird that she was still crying over it almost all the time. She wished she could be angry instead. Part of her was.

  But most of her felt guilty and was trying desperately to scramble back in time to undo the single stupidest thing she’d ever done in her life.

  Time travel was out of the question, though.

  Things were hopeless.

  She felt the bed dip as her mother sat on the end. “No, you’re not fine. Why are you so upset?”

  “It’s nothing. I was just … thinking … about something sad.…” She shrugged haplessly and sniffed.

  A little flint of impatience came into her mother’s eyes. “Did you talk to Nate?”

  Erin shook her head. “He won’t,” she squeaked.

  “I don’t know why you won’t just let go,” her mother said. “You should have been over this already.”

  “I don’t want to stop loving him.” Something like panic rose in Erin. How could her own mother not understand even a little of what she was going through? “I just need to make him understand.”

  Her mother shook her head. “Forget about Nate. You need to get out, meet other boys. Date. The best way to get over someone is to go out with someone else.”

  That’s what everyone kept saying. Erin wanted to ask her if she’d just “go out with someone else” if her dad left, but decided against it, since it wasn’t really comparable and it missed the point. “I don’t want to,” she said sullenly. Because that was the point.

  She didn’t want anyone but Nate. She never really had.

  “Erin. You need to stop this.” Her mother laid a cold hand on her shin. “In fact, your father and I have been wondering if maybe you should see someone. A professional.”

  So they thought she was crazy? Because she had a broken heart?

  Erin had never felt so utterly alone in her life.

  “There’s a doctor at the Chestnut Lodge who specializes in teens—”

  “The Chestnut Lodge!” Horror filled her. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You think I need to be committed?”

  “Calm down. They have an outpatient program there too. You could just go for an hour a couple of times a week and break this cycle you’re in.”

  It was clear that her mother would never understand.

  So Erin decided her best course was to play along, to make her mother feel better in order to get her off Erin’s back.

  “I don’t think that’s necessary,” she said, with a sniff and an attempt at a smile. It felt more like she was baring her teeth. “But you’re probably right, I should just get out more, distract myself. Find some other guy.” The words made her feel sick.

  “That’s right. Someday, when you’re older, the right man will come along and you’ll know it.”

  What if the right guy has already come along? she wondered silently. What if fate screwed up and introduced us too young and I was stupid and he was stupid and now it’s over and we’ll never find that kind of love again?

  She tried to picture some anonymous man in her future, someone she would somehow adore and who would erase all memories of who came before him, but all she could come up with were suit-clad Ken doll look-alikes she could never, ever love as much as she loved Nate.

  “And none of this will matter one whit then,” her mother went on. “It already doesn’t, you just don’t know it.”

  Every word she said made Erin’s pain worse.

  She had to get out before Erin screamed.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Erin lied, snugging herself under the covers, implying that she was ready to go back to sleep.

  Outside, the rain came down harder.

  She wanted desperately to be alone. Her throat was tight and she could feel a sob working its way up her chest, like a knotted fist.

  “Good. That’s my girl.” She patted with her cold hand. “Now get some sleep.”

  Erin gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “No problem. Anytime you want to talk, I’m here.” She turned out the light and made her way out of the room and down the hall, the floorboards creaking as she went.

  There was no way in the world Erin was ever going to seek out her mother’s advice again. She didn’t understand at all.

  No one did.

  No one except maybe Nate.

  He was the only one who could possibly know what she was going through. She was sure he did, somewhere deep down, he had to be feeling it too.

  She had to get through to him. If he knew the truth—if he could just listen to her for ten minutes and actually hear what she had to say—he’d understand. Because he always understood. He was the one person in her life who had always understood her. He was the one person in her life who had always been there for her.

  She could make him understand again.

  Then everything would be all right.

  Finally.

  * * *

  The phone rang three and a half times before he picked up.

  “Don’t hang up,” Erin said quickly. “I just want to—”

  He hung up.

  Her stomach hurt.

  She looked at the phone. The same yellow Princess phone she’d been whispering into while talking with him long into the night for two years now, scuffed from falling off the shelves a million times, splotched with specks of paint from when she changed her walls from white to pale rose. The plastic had held a million secrets, the wires transmitted a million laughs and tears.

  Now it was just a cold, hard piece of equipment that had gone from representing something good to representing something bad.

  She was sick of feeling this way.

  She was sick of missing him. Sick of the wound that wouldn’t seem to heal, no matter what she did.

  She contemplated the phone. Calling back would be groveling. Humiliating. But she’d crossed the Groveling/Humiliating line a long, long time ago now. This was Desperation Territory, and Desperation Territory didn’t ask for a passport proving intelligence, dignity, self-respect, or any other sort of personal virtue.

  Desperation just needed intention.

  And she intended to get through to him, even if it killed her.

  At this point, it was really and truly feeling like it might.

  She lifted the phone receiver, hesitated, punched in the digits again, then cringed to herself as the phone started to ring. He’d know it was her. Even if she hung up right now, he’d know it had been her and not, say, a wrong number or some absentminded friend of his mom’s. She’d committed by dialing, now she had to see it through.

  It was the rationalization she’d used almost every day since they’d split up.

  Once upon a time, Nate had eagerly waited for her calls, answered on the half ring, called her himself, talked until they both fell asleep while the sun was coming up outside the window. Now it had come to this.

  She was a fool. And absolutely everyone knew it.

  She called again. It rang about thirty times. Finally he picked up. “What do you want?”

  “You have to listen to me,” she said, wishing she’d come up with the perfect thing to say in ten words or less. But that wasn’t possible. There was no perfect thing to say, much less one that happened in ten words or less. She’d screwed up, but not to the degree he thought, and she had to make him believe her. “It wasn’t what you thought.”

  “I don’t care.�
��

  Yes, he did. That’s what all of this was about! He hadn’t just turned on her after two years because he didn’t care anymore … had he? If he had, that wouldn’t bring on this kind of hostility, would it?

  Six weeks of this. She’d gone through six weeks of this already. Two months ago, this was a guy she was sure was going to love her forever. Two months ago, she’d been sure they were going to get married someday. Two months ago, they’d had a routine; she’d been flirty and charming and he’d been older and responsible and together they’d been in love, strong, solid. Everyone thought so.

  How long was he going to punish her?

  She’d learned her lesson. God knows she’d learned her lesson. She never should have taken him for granted.

  Erin tightened her grip on the phone and swallowed back the impulse to puke. “Nate, I love you.”

  There was a hesitation. She knew he wanted to hang up, but, for that split second, he couldn’t. He wanted to hear it. He wanted her to love him. He wanted everything to be all right. She knew it.

  Then he said, “I don’t care.”

  He might as well have shot her in the stomach. It would have hurt less than this.

  She started to cry. She had no control over it. “Nothing happened,” she said, but it came out weak. Like it didn’t matter. Maybe it even sounded like it wasn’t true. “It was just … stupid. But nothing happened. I’m so sorry.” If there was a word bigger than sorry, she wished she knew it. If there was an appropriate penance to pay, to prove her regret, her devotion, she would happily have performed it. Cut off a finger? She’d still have nine left. Shave her head? There were wigs. Stab herself in the heart? People had quintuple bypass surgery; the chances had to be at least fair that she’d survive. Maybe it would be touch and go for a while, but if anything, that might make him realize what he stood to lose, so maybe it would be worth it.…

  “It. Doesn’t. Matter.” He was obviously speaking through gritted teeth. She had no reading, no sense, of what might be behind it, other than complete anger. But it seemed disproportionate.

  She didn’t understand.

  “Why are you this mad?” she asked, pushing the words out hard with a voice that had no strength left. “Why won’t you even listen? I don’t get this at all. You’ve misunderstood everything. Don’t you even want to feel better?”