Living with Regrets (No Regrets book 2)
Page 4
Teardrops were streaming down her cheeks, and once she saw that I had noticed, she rushed to wipe them away with both hands as if she was angry that I saw them.
“I moved on, Oliver… I did exactly what you asked me to do. However or whoever I choose to move on with, and whether I succeeded or failed, is none of your fucking business.”
We stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. The scene felt so similar to what had happened over six years ago. I knew that she was expecting me to say something, but I was unable to voice anything that made sense.
“I guess some things really never do change, do they, Oliver?” she sneered. “Thanks for walking me home. Feel free to not be there tomorrow.”
While standing in her driveway waiting for her to make it inside safely, I could hear her sniffling, but did nothing. After unlocking her front door she turned around and her teary eyes landed on mine. She stared at me in silence, as if she wanted to remember. Or maybe it’s because she wanted to forget…
“I tried, Oliver.”
Trust
Abbygail
Staring at my reflection through the foggy mirror, my blotchy eyes stared back at me.
Six years.
Six years without seeing him, and I still found a way to let him get to me. I thought I would have been over him and over the pain, that I’d have no more tears for Oliver Langton, but the previous night had proven me wrong: it hurt just as much. In addition to the pain, though, it pissed me off that he still got to me. I was angry because I let him see the heartbroken seventeen-year-old girl he chose to leave behind.
The knock at my front door pulled me out of my slumber.
As I looked through my bedroom window, I saw my mother standing on my front porch with a white box in her hands. My birthday was only three weeks after hers, and when my eighteenth, birthday came around, we both decided on a new tradition: every year we would get pampered and then dress up to go out together. My mother would invite her friend, Meg, to tag along, and we would pick up Stephan and Tyler later in the evening for dinner. For obvious reasons, both wouldn’t be with me that year, and since Chase got along well with my mom and me, I asked him to join me for the night.
“Hey, Mom. Happy Birthday!” I said as I answered the door.
“Thank you, sweetheart. Here this is for you.”
“What for? You already got me my birthday gift.”
“The roof was more of a house warming gift, Abby. Just take it, baby. It’s my pleasure.”
“Would you like to come in?”
“No, baby girl, I’m sorry I can’t stay. I have things to do for tonight.”
“Okay.” I frowned. “Um, what things? Don’t we have dinner reservations tonight?”
“We did, but the plans changed. We won’t be going out tonight, Abby. We’re having the party at the house. I have a caterer coming for dinner, so be home by six.”
“Wait. What? Why? I like the going out thing, Mom. Why change it?”
“More people, more fun, new tradition,” she said walking away. “Wear the dress, Abbygail. You will make me very sad if you don’t. I love you.”
Shutting the door my eyes fell on my reflection, this time in the closet mirror. I looked like crap, yet my mother hadn’t said a word about it.
···
I had spent almost all day in bed thinking about the previous evening, and then, I thought of Evelynn and how hard her passing must have been on my mom. Stephan and Kylie were right: Oliver was important to her. He was the son of her best friend; she needed him in her life. So as we were about to celebrate my mother’s birthday, I decided that my first gift to her would be to show her I could deal with his being in her life again. She deserved any form of happiness life could give her, and if Oliver made her happy, then I’d just have to deal with it.
The front door opened as I pulled my hair over to the side, making a wavy ponytail. I stared at myself. The dress my mother had bought was a long slim fit black bustier dress that hugged my curves. It opened mid-thigh, and flowed over my shoes. It must have cost her a fortune, but it was absolutely beautiful.
“Abby?”
“Yeah, I’m up here. I’ll be down in a sec,” I shouted, while adding a simple black ribbon to complete my look.
“You really should learn to lock these doors of yours. You know anyone can just walk in as they please, right?”
“Who are you? My dad?” I criticized. “This neighborhood is safe, Chase. Nothing ever happens here. Remember?”
I took a last satisfying look at myself in the mirror before going downstairs.
My mother is either very evil or a freaking genius!
Oliver
Jenna and I spent the whole day catching up. The only subject that we did not talk about was Abbygail. I wondered if it was because she thought it was a touchy subject or just the fact that she had so many questions about my life she just hadn’t gotten around do it. For years, she was a second mother to me, and although I knew she would ask about me a lot when she spoke to my mom, she never forced anything on me. I stuck with sending her a yearly birthday card, but that was it. I was young, not the best excuse, but it’s the only one I had.
As I waited for her to get ready, I sat on the split-level steps of her house, anticipating the unraveling of the whole evening. Uneasiness was an emotion I’d never experienced in the Evens’ house before. Even the previous afternoon when I stepped inside their deserted house for the first time in six years, it still felt like home.
“Nervous, Oliver?” Jenna asked, interrupting my thoughts.
“A little, yes.”
She smiled. “Come. We’ll sit in the living room and talk.”
She looked very elegant with her knee high burgundy dress, making me feel a bit underdressed.
“Do you want anything to drink?”
“No, thank you. I think I’ll be swearing off alcohol tonight.”
She eyed me curiously. “Don’t worry about this evening, Oliver. Everything will be fine. I invited only a few of my friends. I also invited your Aunt Hailey and Uncle Neil. They wanted to spend a little time with you before you head back to Vancouver. Oh, and you remember my friend Meg, she came to the funeral with me? She’s coming over with her husband Peter and their five year old son Shawn.”
“It’s your party, Aunt Jen, I’m just really thankful that you’re letting me stay.”
“Well, I’m happy you finally decided to come back, and you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. You have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” she admitted. She took a seat beside me on her leather sofa. “So tell me… you got in pretty late yesterday. How did the party go?”
“Good.”
“And with Abby?”
“Um… not as good.”
“Yeah, I figured that...”
I frowned, wondering what she could have meant by her comment, but then remembered her walking up to her daughter’s house earlier in the day. I could only hope Abby hadn’t mentioned to her mother the assumptions I made about her.
“What happened?”
“She and I didn’t leave on a good note. I said things I shouldn’t have.”
“Like what?”
I chuckled. “I’d rather not say to be honest. Let’s just say emotions and alcohol weren’t the best combination last night.”
She dipped her head agreeing to not pushing the subject further, and stood up to get herself a glass of red wine. “You need to give her time,” she said, sitting back next to me. “You can’t expect your relationship to be exactly the same after all these years.”
“I guess… hey, can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask me anything,” she smiled.
I had so many of them; I didn’t even know where to start…
“How was Abby after I left?”
Her smile changed. “Abby wasn’t Abby when you left. She alienated herself from everyone for a while and became a different person over time.”
“Even with our f
riends?”
“Uh-huh. The only one she could stand being around was Stephan.”
“Yesterday, she said I never wrote back. I know for a fact I did because I’m the one who returned her envelopes. So I have to ask, Jenna, where are my letters?”
She reached out to the side table, opened the drawer, and pulled out a neatly stacked pile of envelopes joined by a polka doted black and pink ribbon that had probably belonged to Abby years ago. “You mean these?”
I nodded, waiting for her to give me more to go on.
“She didn’t read them if that’s what you’re asking.”
“What? Why?”
No wonder she hates me so much…
“Oliver, I’m willing to give you some insight as to what happened with Abby after you left, and I have every intention of giving these back to you because I think you should be the one to give them to her. But you have to agree to let her read them only when you think she’ll be truly ready. You know her Oliver, and I trust that you will figure out when that time will come.”
“So basically she doesn’t even know they exist.”
“Your leaving destroyed her,” she argued.
“It destroyed me too, Jenna. I hardly think it’s an excuse.”
“It was my way of protecting her.”
I frowned. She had a lot of explaining to do.
“When the first letter was sent back, I thought it was a mistake. I figured Abby must have miswritten your address, so I checked it with your mom. There were no mistakes. I assumed that you just decided to send it back because of what happened before you left. You two had been in a fight. You were mad. I got it, so I put it aside. As much as I wanted to tell Abby, I couldn’t.”
She put her legs up on the sofa folding them under her and looked up at the ceiling, as if she was reliving a nightmare.
“She was completely demolished when you left, Oliver, and I didn’t know what to do. I did what I thought was best. When her second and third letter came back, I was disappointed. I couldn’t understand why you were doing this to her. I understood very well why you left. I even told your mother how courageous you were. I was proud of you, Oliver, but she’s my daughter. You were her best friend, and she loved you, so you have to understand that I couldn’t put her through more pain than she had already lived though. For that reason and that reason only, I hid them from her.” She paused to take a sip of her glass of wine. “Then one day she just started to feel better. She wasn’t as sad. She had her job, she spent more time with Chase, she ran regularly with Stephan, who constantly kept an eye on her, and the girls started to come over more often. She was back to a somewhat kind of normal. She wrote to you because she missed you, but she wasn’t depressed anymore, yet your letters still came back.”
I watched her features as she told the story. I could tell how much helpless pain she had suffered through. Abby rarely confided in her mother. She used to say that every time she did, her mother would find a way to subside her feelings. According to her, she was better off not talking about her emotions at all than talking with her mom.
“I understood that things didn’t go well between the both of you before you left,” Jenna continued. “But I know you, Oliver. You wouldn’t purposefully hurt her. Not for that long, anyway. So one day my curiosity got the best of me, and when Abby was out with friends, I decided to open one of the letters to see what she wrote. I started with the one where you told her you would come back for her and continued crying for her pain and yours. The thing is, by that point she was doing better. If I’d dropped that bomb on her, I don’t know how she would have reacted. So I hid them.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to avoid saying anything, and I let her continue.
“Then came the day of the arrival of your last letter: after reading it, her whole world crashed, destroying her completely. She lost it, Oliver. She had no control over herself. I had to watch as she smashed and broke everything she could reach in her room. Each picture frame you were on, shattered. Every gift you ever gave her or anything you ever touched was on the floor. When I finally got her attention, she looked around her room, and with one single tear rolling down her cheek, she walked out of the house.
“When Stephan managed to bring her back home, she packed up everything that was remotely related to you and went to bed. The next morning, when she woke up, the box was gone, and the light she’d always had in her eyes had switched off. The blue became permanently gray, and life went on as if she’d completely forgotten who you were.”
I exhaled, listening to Jenna’s pain as she described how I had chosen to put seventeen years of friendship to the ground with my last letter.
“She changed. She was uncaring to me or anyone else in her surroundings. She started to date Chase for the second time right after, alleging she was over you. I think he knew that she didn’t love him, but he stuck around hoping as she pretended to humor him. After a month, he couldn’t take it anymore so he left her. Things went spiralling down even more after that. God only knows all the things she was doing...
“By mid-summer it went from bad to worse, and then one night, I did the only thing I hadn’t tried. I contacted Abby’s father.”
“I’m sorry, you did what? She hated him. He was never there. He left her…”
“Maybe, but I had no other choice.”
“You had me.”
“You had your own demons to face, Oliver. I couldn’t ask you to come back.”
“Had you called me, I would have come, Jenna. No questions asked. This whole thing is a fucked up misinterpretation of everything.” I grabbed my hair with both hands. “Did my mother know about this?”
“She did”
Un-freaking-believable…
“What happened with Simon?” I asked angrily.
“I forced Abby to spend the remainder of her summer with him. She came back and started the new school year with new goals. Everything wasn’t perfect, but it was better, and I decided I could live with that.”
“Why didn’t you just give her the letters then?”
She shrugged. “I guess I was afraid of how she would deal with the whole thing.”
“You didn’t trust her,” I accused.
“Oliver, please believe me when I tell you that I wanted her to know how much you loved her. I wanted her to see that you both missed each other equally, but whatever was going on with her was beyond you. She had to learn how to be her own person. I refuse to regret any of it because it’s what made her who she is today.”
“So, what now?”
She handed me the letters. “She has a life, she has a career, great friends, but she still isn’t the same person she was when you were here. The light in her eyes never came back, Oliver”
I frowned.
“When you moved away, she let you leave with a part of her that she never found the desire to get back.”
“Why?”
She stood as we heard the knock at her front door. “I guess the only way we are going to know, is if you try finding out for yourself.”
“Oliver?” Aunt Jenna called as I made my way to my room to hide the envelopes. “There is a lot of lingering pain between the both of you. I see hers every day, but I can see yours, too. Give it time.”
Orchids and Willow Trees
Abbygail
Fall was my favorite season. I liked the fresh air, the crisp apples, the outdoor smell… but mostly it was all about the colors. Granted, the end of November was kind of late to enjoy the different shades of red, yellow, and orange, but that evening, when I stepped out of my house with Chase, it was unseasonably warm. For me, this was the best news of the day because I knew that after dinner, I would be spending time under my willow tree, my favorite place in the world.
“What’s taking so long?” I huffed impatiently.
Chase stood behind me with his arms crossed. He looked cute with his black pants, grey shirt, and spiked hair. “I don’t understand why we don’t just walk in, Abby.”
Well, not quite a disaster. It was a pretty enjoyable view actually!
My mother let us inside after our third knock. As we walked in I admired how my mother had once again outdone herself. The dimmed lighting from the scattered candles made her house look absolutely beautiful. Chase went to the kitchen with the wine and flowers while I stepped inside the dayroom with her, and gave her the Rose Gold necklace I’d bought her as a gift.
“Now let me take a look at you, sweetheart.”
Taking off my shawl, I did a little twirl and the skirt of the dress flowed with my spin.
“Absolutely gorgeous, Abby. I knew it, the second I saw it.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
The sound of a low groan made me pull away from my mother’s embrace. I turned and saw Oliver standing on the first step of our split-level living room. He was wearing light faded grey jeans with a loose linen white shirt. The whole scene felt like a dream.
Unable to peel my eyes away from him, I watched him come down the stairs. It was my mother’s fingers squeezing my hand before she left my side that made me realize that it was all real. I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply.
I missed him. So damn much…
“Abby,” he murmured. “You look stunning.”
Not trusting myself with what I was about to say, I remained mute and met his dark eyes as he stood before me holding a long-stemmed, freshly cut white and blue orchid. It was absolutely beautiful and exactly the same as the one I’d received every year on my birthday.
I sucked in a breath. “I can’t believe you remembered.”
His head cocked to the side as he regarded me with a questioning gaze. “And I can’t believe you think I would have forgotten.”
“Hey man,” Chase called, interrupting our moment.