by Nicky Shanks
Okay, maybe one good reason.
We don’t belong together.
“Let me ask you something,” he says to me when we’re nearing the first hour of our trip back to Rockford. “What could I have done differently to keep you? What can I change about myself to make you want to stay with me?”
My stomach sinks onto the floorboard and I clear my throat to stall for a moment so I can think of something to say. “Oliver, we’re just too different, okay? Neither one of us is in a good place in life to be what the other really needs, you know? Brandon messed me up and Heather messed you up—that doesn’t make what we have right.” I look into his eyes and wipe a small tear from my cheek. “I never want you to change, not for me or anyone else.”
He smiles. “But we do have something, right? I’m not going to stop chasing you,” he says to me with no regret in his voice, “you know that, right? I mean, you and me, Julie, we just…fit.”
My voice shakes as I search for the words to say to him. “Oliver, I’m not ready for what you want. I’m not ready to be that for someone.”
“I disagree.” I feel the car come to a stop and he turns his body to look directly into my eyes as the late morning light filters in through the car windows. “I think you’re just scared.” He keeps going before I can argue. “And that’s okay. I’m scared too.”
I can help you carry your things.
His voice from that very first day we met echoes through my head, bouncing off the walls of my skull and taunting me. I don’t like the way he made me feel then, just that one short week ago, and I don’t like the way he makes me feel now. Once we start seeing buildings and actual neighborhoods, my heart sinks a little. I know that our sad car ride will end, he’ll drop me off at home, and I’ll never see him again.
He’ll forget about me.
I watch him weave through the streets until we get to my brother’s house and he slowly parks, making a point to drag the inevitable out. I can hear his labored breathing; he’s trying to think of something to make me stay and I think deep down, I am waiting for that too. He opens his mouth, then closes it, opens it again, and sighs a little too loudly. “I don’t want you to leave me,” he whispers. “Why won’t you just stay?”
My eyes are like magnets to the floor. “Oliver—”
He holds up his hands. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. Can I at least walk you to the door?”
I nod in silence and let myself out of the car. He jumps out and runs around the car, sliding his arm around my waist as we walk to the front door of the house. I see someone look out the front window and realize it’s probably Clyde trying to sneak a peek at us. “Shouldn’t he be in school?” Oliver asks me as we get to the door, his arm still around me.
“He’s gifted…he goes to boarding school ten months out of the year.” I hope Clyde isn’t snooping so much that he’s listening on the other side of the door.
Oliver doesn’t speak when he lets go of my waist. His arms drop to his sides, like he’s unable to decide what exactly he wants to do with them. “I guess this is goodbye,” he says. “Although it’s the shittiest goodbye in the history of goodbyes.”
I giggle. “It doesn’t have to be a total goodbye.”
His eye light up like a Christmas tree. “Yeah? But I thought you said—”
Before I can control myself, I stand on my tiptoes and press my lips against his cheek, nearly missing his mouth. He wants to touch me, I can feel it, but he refrains and lets me lower myself back down to look up at him with wide eyes. “I know what I said. Just give me some time, okay?”
I don’t wait for him to answer before I check the doorknob to make sure it’s unlocked and slip through the front door, shutting it behind me. I collapse on the floor, weak and unsure about every single thing in life at that moment.
“I’m in love with you, Julie.” I hear his desperation from the other side of the door.
Crap.
Chapter Fifteen
Oliver
“I’m in love with you, Julie.” I could hear the desperation in my voice echo in the cracked walls of my mind. I told her I loved her after she shut the door in my face, and even if there was a slight chance that she even heard me, she didn’t open the door again to let me know.
That was three weeks ago.
Three weeks without her, three weeks of tearing my apartment apart and working out a ridiculous amount every day just to try and forget about her. No amount of physical exertion ever made me completely forget about how her jean shorts hugged her sides or how she smiled when she used a straw, biting the end and leaving her imprint in it. I can’t believe I let myself fall in love with someone; I knew love would do this to me again. I knew if I let myself love again, it would blow up in my face. That’s why I have rules. That’s why I needed to follow the damn rules.
She didn’t call. She didn’t email. She didn’t text.
But I’m still totally in love with her.
My phone rang off the hook that first week we came back, and between Casey and Heather, I stopped even looking at it when it started to buzz constantly. Okay, that’s a total lie…I had to look.
Every.
Single.
Damn.
Time.
Hoping that once, just once, it was her, but it never was. So, here I sit, in my dark apartment on a Thursday—wait, no, Friday—night, the late August air drying out the corners of my eyes. My days blend together—who cares what day it is? I want to hate her so badly, throw myself into bed with dozens of other women whose names I don’t care to remember, but that rule has already been broken. There’s no going back from here.
I miss her lips and her thighs, the way she giggles when I say something completely moronic, and the way she studies me when she thinks I’m not looking.
I’m always looking.
My phone rings on the table in front of me.
Casey.
“Screw you,” I say. “I hate you.”
“No you don’t, dude,” I hear him say from the other side of my apartment door. “Come on, Ollie, open the door.” I shake my head like he’s in the room with me. “Ollie, open the door.” I hear keys jingle. I forgot I’d given him a key last year when Heather and I went to Hawaii. He lets himself in and I don’t even bother to look behind me to make sure he’s alone—I don’t even care. Whomever he’d dare bring into my room of depression should suffer the consequences like he’s about to. “Dude, you stink. When was the last time you showered?”
I sniff the air. “Who cares? It’s not like I have anyone to smell good for anymore.”
Casey sits down next to me and I can feel his sad eyes examine me closely for any bumps and bruises I might have from punching any walls around the apartment. “You should care. What the hell is wrong with you?”
I hold my hand up for him to stop and shut the hell up. “Just go, okay? I don’t feel like talking to anyone right now. Especially not someone responsible for me meeting her.”
He snorts. “She’s just a girl, Ollie.”
Rage builds inside of me. She isn’t just any girl. She is the girl.
My Julie.
“Dammit, Casey, get the hell out of here,” I roar, throwing several sofa pillows at him. He dodges them all. “I said I don’t feel like talking to anyone right now.”
He frowns and shakes his head. “Okay, then just listen to what I have to say, then you can throw me out. If you care about her so much, why are you sitting in your apartment, not showering or eating or sleeping—” He looks around and notices the empty energy drink cans littered around. “—or even being a human being? Go find her, go talk to her, and figure it out.”
I close my eyes, hoping he’ll just go away. “She obviously doesn’t want to talk to me or she would have called me by now. It’s been three weeks.”
Casey sighs. “Dude, just call her.” He picks up my phone, finds Julie’s number, and hits send before I can open my eyes and stop him. He throws the phone at me and I don’t want to hear h
er hit the ignore button, but I hold the phone up to my ear and wait anyway. I hadn’t planned to leave a voicemail, I know that much. I won’t whine and beg for her—unless she wants me to.
I take the phone from my ear and nearly touch the end button when I hear her voice. “Oliver?”
“Ju-Julie?” My throat is so dry I think I’m going to choke on her name before I can spit it all out. “I’m sorry, Casey called you on my phone…I didn’t know—”
I hear her giggle and nearly lose my shit right there. “It’s okay, I’m glad you called. How are you?”
How am I?
I want to stand outside your house and hope to catch a glimpse of you somehow. I want to touch you one more time, even if it’s just our fingertips. I want to kiss you and hold onto you so tightly that you can’t run from me again. I want to make you mine again, I damn sure don’t want you to leave me.
“Oliver?”
“I’m here,” I say and shake the fuzziness from my head. “I’m here, Julie. What did you say?”
She sighs. I can see her full lips frowning inside my mind. “Are you okay?”
“No, he’s not okay,” Casey says, making sure she can hear him loud and very clear. “You fucked him up, big time.”
She stays silent as I punch Casey hard on his shoulder and he cries out in pain. “Julie, I’m sorry he called and bothered you.”
“Oliver, you will never be bothering me.”
My entire body melts onto the floor in front of me. I’ve desperately needed to hear that for three weeks. I could bawl my eyes out like a damn baby, but I keep myself composed and clear my throat. Casey looks over at me still wincing in pain. “I miss you, Julie,” I blurt out.
“I miss you too.”
“Can I see you?” I ask, positioning my body away from Casey, who has turned on the flat-screen and started playing video games. I throw a pillow at him to turn down the sound, but he hardly notices anything but the car he’s racing on the television. “Julie? Can I see you?” I ask again, and this time, I hear a man’s voice in the background and she covers the receiver for a moment.
She uncovers the phone and says, “Of course, I want to see you, too. When?”
“Now?” I laugh like an idiot and then smell myself. I need a shower before seeing her—I look like death warmed over a thousand times and I smell like it too. “How about tonight? I can pick you up and make dinner for you?” I can hear her smile into the phone.
“That would be nice; do you remember how to get here?”
I’ve only been pining over you for nearly three weeks, girl, did you think I haven’t driven by your house a million times? “I think so,” I lie. “I can manage to find it again.”
“Can you pick me up around six? Clyde is leaving for school soon and I want to spend as much time with him as I can.” I have to concentrate on her voice. My entire fucking body is vibrating with excitement. I can’t believe all I needed to do was pick up the damn phone and call her. This is my chance—my chance to get it right.
I cough up the dry air that has been bouncing around in my lungs before I even realize I hadn’t taken a single new breath. “Six o’clock. I will definitely see you then.” I wish I could say more, but my damn body won’t function with all the adrenaline running through it. “Thank you, Julie.”
There’s her laugh again. “For what?”
Casey sticks his tongue out at me and laughs. “You’re such a pussy, dude.”
I mouth a “screw you” to him and shake my head. “For seeing me, thank you.”
“I would never want to not see you, Oliver,” Julie says to me and puts my entire world back into place—the pieces of my broken life that she shattered rise up and hover over me, finding their way back to their partners. For the first time in three long-ass weeks, I feel free from myself. Free to feel something again.
I don’t want to hang up on her because I want it to be real, and it won’t be unless I can hear her voice. It’s noon; I have to wait six hours before seeing her. I’m not sure I can do it, but I’ve gone three weeks without so much as a bread crumb, so six hours is nothing to me. I jump up and zip around the apartment for a few minutes, holding my grumbling stomach and wondering if I’ll be able to hold something down. I want Julie here with me so I can show her that we belong together more than she is trying to deny it, and maybe—just maybe—she’ll see it my way.
Casey isn’t any help as he chomps on potato chips in the living room, getting crumbs everywhere as I start in the kitchen, cleaning up my three-week dirty mess of dishes and pizza boxes. After cleaning every room in the apartment from top to bottom, only three hours have passed and I’m left in silence once more with more time on my hands than I wanted.
“Dude, go shower. I’ll finish cleaning up in here and head out.” Casey shakes his head.
I need to shower badly, so I mope into the bathroom and start the water, spacing out as I watch the fast stream hit the shower walls.
God, I miss her so damn much.
How can it be possible to love someone this much?
My entire body hurts from thinking about her every second of every damn day. I stopped being angry with her long ago; I know it’s my fault that she left. I just don’t know how to fix it when I don’t even know what I did wrong…
The hot water feels good on my skin and I make it a point to slowly enjoy the heat, washing parts of my body several times just so that when I finally get out, I’ve wasted half an hour and I’m that much closer to seeing her. My heart flutters when I look at the clock and see that it’s almost four because I wasn’t sure that I had anything in the fridge to even cook for her. Panic fills my stomach when I realize that I don’t even know how to cook beyond a high school home economics level.
There are several takeout menus in one of the kitchen drawers, so I find one with options and order a meal for a small army over the phone. Satisfied with what I chose, I bite the inner flesh of my cheek and try to calm my nerves. “It’s not like she’s a stranger,” I tell myself as I walk toward the bedroom. I open drawers and throw a pair of jeans and a black sweater on the bed, followed by other essentials. Then I drop my towel, standing naked in the middle of the room.
I hear her voice in my head. Well, just you is pretty intimidating.
It’s nearly five when I’m finally dressed and groomed. I comb my floppy dark hair back toward my neck and stare at myself in the mirror. I really hope this is enough to make her stay, but I can’t make any promises to myself. The doorbell rings and the delivery guy hands me two huge brown bags full of food and I give him a twenty-dollar tip for his trouble of carrying them all the way to the sixteenth floor, even on the elevator. I make it a point to put all the food into containers that make it look like I actually prepared the meal myself, stashing the bags and takeout containers in the hall closet. I notice the clock.
It’s almost six.
My Julie.
My mind races the entire drive to her house.
What will she be wearing?
Will she hug or kiss me?
Will she be happy to see me?
What can I do to make her stay?
It’s getting dark outside when I pull up, but her brother’s huge suburban mini mansion is lit up inside like it’s on fire. The curtains in the living room shift and I know someone is peeking outside as I pull up. Once I’m outside of the Jeep, I fiddle with my keys and walk up and down the driveway several times.
“I knew you were a loser,” I hear someone say behind me the last time I walk quickly back to the car. “Couldn’t you have refrained from hurting Julie before figuring that out for yourself?”
Clyde.
He makes a sour face at me and acts like he’s standing guard so I can’t pass him on the walkway. He’s scrawny, but through his thick glasses I can see the fire in his eyes. “I bet you didn’t even finish high school—do you even have a job?”
I smile at him and nervously tug at my sweater. “Maybe you’re right, Clyde.” His mouth wr
inkles like he’s trying not to throw up. “I should have just left her here that day, huh? Maybe I should have just brought her on home when she wanted me to, then she wouldn’t be sad right now.”
He looks a little sad. “I didn’t say that.”
“But you sure wanted to.”
The red-haired kid looks sick enough now that I take a few short steps backward. “Clyde?” I hear a male voice call for him. A man my height with the same honey blonde hair as Julie’s comes into view and frowns at me. “Oh, you must be Ollie.”
“Oliver,” I correct him politely and extend my hand for him to shake, trying to show him that I’m a nice guy. “I’m here to pick up Julie—you must be her brother Randy?”
He nods but says nothing. He sure as hell doesn’t take my hand, either.
I slowly retract my hand. “Okay, well, nice to meet you.”
Randy scoffs and then shakes his head at me in disappointment. “All you jerk-offs think it’s okay to just rip her to pieces, don’t you? Like she’s a doormat for you to shake your shit all over and then leave her to put it all back together herself?”
I hardly know what to say to the man. He’s at least a decade older than me, but you could only tell because of the few wrinkles lining his otherwise smooth face. But he has no idea what the hell he’s talking about and that pisses me off.
“I think you’ve been misinformed,” I say through my gritted teeth. “She left me in pieces, not the other way around.” I can tell that even if he believes it, he’s going to treat me like the loser he’s convinced I am.
Randy shakes his head. “I don’t think so.” He steps closer to me, pointing his finger directly at my chest. “I think you’re a worthless little rich boy who finds pleasure in seeing how far he can push someone until they break under his spell.”
“What?” I roar and move closer to him this time. He doesn’t back down from where I’m about to pounce. “Watch your damn mouth.”
“Can we not have a showdown on the front lawn?” Julie says next to us and puts her arms in between our bodies, gently pushing us apart. “Randy, I will be fine. Oliver, let’s go.” She tugs on my arm and pulls me away from her brother, who looks like he was about to pounce on me at any moment. Julie pushes me into the Jeep and buckles her seat belt before looking at me in wonder of what’s coming next.