by J. C. Hayden
The saddest truth is realizing you have fallen madly in love with what can never be.
I’d read that somewhere once.
I buried my face in my hands and breathed in deeply before I dropped my hands into the grass, letting my fingers curl around the blades as I continued to slowly breathe in the air around me, trying to find peace.
“This sucks,” I hissed to myself suddenly, frowning hard and fighting back tears.
God, why couldn’t it be easy? Why couldn’t I have a normal life where I had a boyfriend that I had lost my virginity to, who loved me back, who wanted me as much as I wanted him? Why didn’t Brody want to be with me the way I wanted to be with him?
“Why doesn’t he love me?” I whispered to myself, the tears welling up in my eyes.
I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t wallow—I couldn’t go through this alone—I had to tell someone, I needed comfort, I needed to be comforted.
And then, suddenly, I pulled out my phone and sent a text to the one person I needed more than anything right now.
◆◆◆
Hours later, I was sitting in Marmadukes, sipping on a warm mug filled to the brim with a chai latte that I was sure the old, hunched man working the counter had spiked with a little something extra when he’d seen the look on my face as I’d ordered. Across from me, my mother was sitting, frowning at me.
After I had sent the text to my mom, she had immediately called and asked if I was okay. As soon as I heard her voice I broke down into tears and told her everything—about Holly and Truth or Dare, about the night by the reservoir with Brody, about them laughing at me, about the decision I had made, and about how I had fallen for him, stupidly, crazily, madly.
My mom told me to meet her at Marmaduke’s since she knew it was near campus and a place I frequented with my friends often. I tried to argue, knowing she was in the middle of her work day. My mother was a successful attorney who helped run a midsize firm downtown. But she had shushed me and told me there were perks to being the boss, and that meant being able to take a long lunch when her daughter needed her.
Now, my mom Mathilda Bratton-Murphy—of the wealthy Cape Cod Brattons—was sitting across from me and frowning slightly just as I had finished wondering out loud what I was going to do about the fact that I was in love with Brody.
“He told me from the beginning, mom,” I said, twirling the mug around on the table and staring at its contents. “He said he doesn’t do relationships, he said he wanted to keep things casual.”
“But he didn’t need to act like that with Tabitha right in front of you,” my mom said calmly. “No matter what your”—she cleared her throat—“arrangement might have been.”
I winced slightly and looked up. “Mom…”
She waved a hand. “I’m fine,” she said. “You’re old enough to make your own choices, and I trust your judgment. I already told you that.”
I sighed. “What do I do?”
My mother’s frown deepened as she paused, thinking. “Cat, what do you want?” she asked finally. “Regardless of what Brody said or did, what do you want?”
“I want to be with him,” I said without hesitation. “For real.”
My mom gazed at me for several long moments before she nodded. “I’ve never told you about what happened before your dad and I got together,” she started. “Not the entire thing.” I nodded in agreement and she smiled. “We went all through grade school, middle school, and high school together,” she started. “You knew that right?” When I nodded, she went on. “I think my crush on him might have started as early as fifth or sixth grade, but it wasn’t until we were juniors in high school that it got particularly difficult.”
“What happened?”
“He started seeing someone else—our friend Yolanda, I think you’ve met her.”
I nodded, wide-eyed and hanging onto my mother’s every word.
“He was seeing her and I was heartbroken,” my mom continued. “I had thought that we’d made some strides in our relationship and I thought we’d turned a corner, but then he started seeing her, and I was devastated. In those moments, I knew I had to decide. I would either have to wait and hope that he started to feel the way I felt about him, or I could move on.”
I laughed uneasily. “Well, you two ended up getting married.”
“I know, I know,” my mom said with a smile, and then she turned a bit more somber. “I decided to take the risk and wait. I didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter, quite honestly. My heart had other things in mind.” She breathed in and exhaled heavily. “But, Cat.” She leaned in closer and put her hand on my arm. “You have to understand that if you take that risk, you might not get the result you want. You might wait and wait for him and he may never come around—he may never love you the way you love him.”
My mom paused, obviously wanting that to sink in with me. I felt my hands begin to shake.
“You have to prepare yourself for that if you decide to wait, if you decide not to try and move on from him.”
“It’s not that easy, mom,” I breathed in a shaky voice.
She nodded. “I know.”
“I never wanted to be that girl,” I whispered. “The one who waited and hoped. The one who wanted to believe the relationship was something that it wasn’t.”
Again, my mom simply said, “I know.”
There was a long heavy pause where I considered both options, but most of all, considered how it would feel if Brody never loved me back.
How would I ever move on?
“He may never love me,” I said, looking at my mom.
My mom nodded sadly. “He may never love you,” she repeated. “And you have to decide if you want to try anyway, knowing that it might lead to more pain.”
“But what if it doesn’t?” I asked, trying and failing to keep the hope out of my voice.
My mom just gave me a gentle smile.
But what if it doesn’t?
Unbeknownst to me, sometime between when I talked to my mother and when I had my first exam the following week, I had gone on a date with Callum.
When Talia confronted me about it, I hadn’t a clue what my friend was talking about.
“I can’t believe you went on a date with Callum,” she’d begun several days ago.
I looked up at Talia, who had been standing next to the table I was studying at in the library, my friend’s hands on her hips.
“I…” I laughed because the notion was so absurd. “I what?”
Talia rolled her eyes. “The jig is up, Cat, I know you’ve been seeing someone”—my heart had suddenly started to hammer quickly—“All those late nights, not coming back—I just didn’t know it was our best friend.”
I swallowed and tried desperately to play it cool. “Talia, I truly have no idea what you’re talking about. And keep your voice down.”
Talia had huffed angrily and sat in the chair across from me, placing her elbows on the table and leaning in as she spoke in a hiss. “I overheard Callum talking to Carver. He said you lot had a fucking picnic by the reservoir. And Carver was all, ‘I knew it I knew it!’ He bloody well didn’t know anything because there’s nothing to know. You two don’t like each other, you never have and you never will. It doesn’t even make any sense.”
“Um…” I didn’t even know how to begin to dissect what I was hearing. Mostly, I was stunned that what I had honestly perceived as just lunch between two friends had suddenly turned into a date. Sure, Callum had kissed me after the festival, but he hadn’t brought it up since and neither had I. No conversation had been had about what had happened or what it meant, and to think that one kiss meant we were now a couple was just… well, it was just silly.
“I had no idea he thought it was a date,” I’d said slowly, almost to myself. “We eat lunch together all the time.”
“By the reservoir? On a blanket? After you kissed?” Talia’s hiss was so venomous that I bit my lip nervously.
“How
d’you know about that?”
Talia gaped. “That’s what you have to say—no explanation for why you deigned not to tell me?”
“I… I was still sorting it out in my own head,” I said truthfully. I had never thought of myself as an oblivious person, but over the past few weeks I had been making some absurd mistakes, especially when it came to Callum, and now I was quickly approaching the point of no return.
“You had no idea it was a date?”
“No!” I had whispered harshly, wringing my hands in my lap. “He asked if I wanted to have lunch with him by the reservoir,” I said. “He didn’t say anything about it being a date.”
“Oh, my God, Cat, you aren’t that oblivious,” Talia had said, echoing my thoughts.
I sighed and put my face in my hands. Apparently I was.
“Do you…”
I remember the change of Talia’s tone making me look up.
“Do you want to date Callum?”
“No,” I’d said automatically. Then, “I don’t know. No. Maybe. I don’t think so.”
It would certainly be one way to move on from Brody. I could saturate my mind with Callum so I could try desperately to forget about the way Brody had lit me up inside, made me feel like no one ever had, made me dream of things I’d never dreamed of, want things I’d never wanted. It could end it disaster, Callum and I, but it couldn’t possibly break me more than Brody had. Fuck.
“Well,” Talia had contemplated, interrupting my pathetically wayward thoughts. “How was the kiss?”
I shrugged. “It was… nice, but…”
“‘Nice, but’ isn’t a great reaction to a kiss.”
I smiled slightly. “I don’t know, Tal, I just didn’t feel…” …what I felt when I kissed Brody, I finished in my head. Out loud I said, “Sparks.”
Talia nodded sagely. “Sparks are definitely necessary.” Talia then gave me a stern look. “Well, if you don’t want to date him, then you two need to have a conversation about what’s happening, because it seems to me like you’re both confused, and if you don’t make things clear now, someone’s going to get hurt.”
Now, days after that confusing and troubling conversation, I was packing up my stuff after English Lit, and Callum was talking to the professor at the front of the room. My jaw was sore from how badly I had ground my teeth, and my neck and shoulders were aching from how tense I’d been throughout the entire class.
We’d had another group discussion that day, and Callum had once again facilitated our discussion. Only this time, Callum had wedged his chair in between me and Connie, a girl I was friendly with in class, so the entire time during the discussion I sat next to him tensely, trying not to make any move that could be construed as more than friendly.
Every time Callum had made any movement in my direction, I made a conscious effort to distance myself. At one point he had put his hand on the back of my chair and I had jerked so hard I had to cover it up by pretending I had sneezed. I made sure not to laugh too hard at any of his jokes about the reading or the discussion, and I was focused on looking at him so it didn’t seem like I was avoiding it but also not looking at him for too long. I was turning over and over in my head all the things Talia had said, while trying to ignore the wild fluttering of nerves in the pit of my stomach.
I hadn’t even known what the conversation was about, what any of my classmates were talking about, because all of my focus had to be on making sure I was acting appropriately to Callum.
When the professor had announced that we would be ending class fifteen minutes early so she could have extended office hours with finals coming up, I visibly sagged with relief. I couldn’t wait to get out of this room and away from my friends and away from the back of the blonde head of Brody Galen.
Because he was the other elephant in the room. Not only was I tense from trying to act just so around Callum, I was also incredibly tense trying not to look at all in Brody’s direction.
My skin was practically tingling in awareness of him.
After that afternoon of the festival when he stopped me at Marmaduke’s, I had made sure not to look at him at all. I didn’t want to think he was affected by the end of our relationship. Because if he was affected that meant something. It meant I meant something. And if I meant something to him then what the hell were we doing? So I just avoided it all together despite the conversation I’d had with my mother about waiting for him to feel something for me.
I would wait. I would wait for him to realize what we had was real, but what I wouldn’t do was pine over him and cry over him and beg him to come back. I would wait. But waiting meant he would have to see on his own. I wasn’t going to force him. That wasn’t love.
I was packing my stuff up, and I tried not to visibly jump when I heard Brody’s voice at the front of the classroom. He was clearly talking to the professor about something, which meant that Callum would be headed in my direction. I took a deep breath and finally let myself feel calm for a few seconds, even though I knew that I had to have a conversation with Callum, and soon.
I slung my bag backpack over both my shoulders, and just as I was wondering what I could possibly say—I think you think we’re dating, but I don’t want to date you because I’m in love with a dude I was fucking not too long ago who happens to be standing ten feet from us and who I haven’t stopped thinking about for weeks—I hardly noticed the solid warmth that slid into my hand.
For a flickering, hopeful moment I imagined it was Brody. That he had set everything aside, whatever hang-ups he had over relationships and me and us and that we could just… be. I would’ve pushed everything aside for him in that moment. I would’ve thrown myself at him. I would’ve declared my love for him if that’s what he wanted.
But then all of my thoughts froze as I looked up and saw Callum looking at me and smiling as he intertwined his fingers with mine and guided me toward the front of the classroom.
I wanted to pull away, wanted to yank my hand from his grip and flee, but I also didn’t want to make a big deal out of the entire situation. Not here.
As we walked out of the classroom—hand in hand—the only thought in my mind—which, I would later think was so wrong and completely unlike me and not really at all what I wanted—was that I hoped Brody could see.
◆◆◆
A few hours after Callum had held my hand after class, I was sitting in the library trying to study for my arrangement final, but I was hopelessly distracted, my mind too filled to the brim with all the thoughts and chaos swirling in my head.
It was wrong. It was stupid. It was utterly selfish.
I shouldn’t have held his hand—I shouldn’t have let him hold my hand—Why did I let him hold it all the way back to my apartment—Why didn’t I say something after? But what would I say? Hey, I know you held my hand and we went on a date that I didn’t know about, but I was banging Brody Galen up until a few weeks ago and I kind of fell in love with him, so maybe we shouldn’t be holding hands for the entire damn world to see.
I was ruining everything. My mind and my heart were so messed up over what was happening with Brody, with Callum, with everything, that I couldn’t take the time to fix what had become so massively screwed up in such a short amount of time.
When Brody and I had first begun our no strings arrangement, I told myself not to think, not to let the machinations of my mind get in the way of what I knew I truly wanted. But now I just couldn’t get my thoughts straight. I couldn’t make sense of this new, uncharted world. I couldn’t focus or process or rearrange the scattered pieces. The pieces were chaotic. They were lost. I was lost.
I kept thinking about what Talia would say if she knew what had happened after class, but I didn’t have to wonder very long because as soon as I got into the apartment, the questions came flying. She had seen the two of us walking up, and she had seen the peck he had given me as he said goodbye. She wanted to know what the hell I was doing, what the hell I was thinking. She wanted me to explain myself.
But how could I explain myself when I didn’t know how to answer the damn questions in my own head! All I wanted to do was go back to the morning before the soccer game, go back to that morning and that moment and change everything—to just stay in bed with Brody and somehow convince him to skip the game and to somehow get everything to go back to how perfect it was when he was lying beside me.
God, I wanted to go back.
Where I did not want to be was sitting in the library trying to study music arrangement while at the same time trying to understand what I was supposed to do about being in love with someone who didn’t love me back while my best friend was holding my hand and apparently dating me.
I buried my face in my hands, scrubbing my hands up and down my face, hoping that it would do something to alleviate the pressure in between my eyes. And when I removed my hands and opened my eyes, I gasped loudly in the silence of the library when I saw a familiar form sitting across from me.
He looked, in a word, incredible.
My skin tingled with awareness and my blood thrummed with the excitement of being able to look at him, of being this close, and my hand physically trembled with the overwhelming need to reach out and touch. His blonde hair was swept back from his face, the warm, dim lights of this part of the library casting shadows over his face, making the angles sharper, its beauty more prominent. His eyes were glowing, slightly wide, and in that moment I wanted to throw myself at him. Self-respect be damned, dignity non-existent. All I wanted was for him to know how I felt, for him to know that I would wait as long as it took until he finally came around, until he realized he felt just the way I did.