Alone in Paris: A Standalone Young Adult Romance

by Ashley Earley

  Because I can’t fight anymore. I close my eyes again, leaning back and resting my head against the cabinets behind me, unsure of whether I spoke the words, or just thought them. I try to focus on forcing my body to stay still and not tremble.

  I did not cut deep enough. Something should have happened by now.

  When he’s done, he finds a first-aid kit in one of the cabinets and cleans the wound more thoroughly before bandaging it. I sit quietly, biting back against the pain when he pours peroxide on the cuts.

  He shouldn’t be able to just bandage me up like this. It should be next to impossible to save me from this.

  Once I’m bandaged, he lifts me back into his arms. That’s when I open my eyes. I watch his face as he carries me into my bedroom. I can’t place the expression on his face. He looks unsure, almost hesitant, but there is also a sad confusion in his eyes. His arms keep me tight against his chest as he effortlessly carries me. I can feel each breath he takes.

  He carefully lays me on the bed. I stare up at the ceiling, suddenly unable to look at him. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from crying. I’m still shaking like a leaf.

  The bed shifts and then he’s lying beside me. We lie there in silence for what feels like hours, but mere seconds go by. Minutes, maybe. The silence is thick—roaring. I close my eyes for a long moment, taking in a long breath before letting it out. My nerves calm a little. I can think easier. My jumbled thoughts unclutter as I sigh.

  Eventually, I can’t take the silence any longer.

  “Why did you come back?” I whisper.

  “I came to tell you that my dad is coming here again to make a decision about what to do with the building.”

  I don’t know how to react. I’m not devastated like before because I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I don’t know what’s next for me.

  “Why?” he finally asks. I knew this question would come, but I still don’t want to answer it. I don’t want to talk about it. Talking about it will only make things worse. I don’t want to feel the things that will come with talking about this. I’d have to explain everything if I even attempted to explain why I tried to…take my life.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I tell him, still not looking at him.

  “Try me.”

  Water.

  Sinking.

  Loss.

  It all leads to blood. To the spilling of my own blood. How could I possibly explain all of this to him when I know he won’t understand? There’s no way he’ll understand how I feel.

  “I—I can’t. You wouldn’t—”

  “I know you might not want to talk about it. I can understand that, but if you’re just not talking about it because you think I won’t understand.” He pauses a long moment, choosing his words carefully. “Then I think you should tell me anyway so I can at least try. Whatever it is that’s going on with you…You need to talk to someone about it. Even if it’s just me, because I’m here. I’m listening.”

  I don’t know how to respond. I can’t think of a way to avoid telling him. I can’t think of a way out. I feel trapped—cornered.

  Unwanted tears well in my eyes. I close them, hoping they don’t spill over. “It all happened so fast…I—I—”

  “Shh.” He sits up, moving closer. His arm slides underneath me, and he’s suddenly pulling me to him. He leans back against the headboard, pulling me close. I’m frozen in surprise, barely even breathing. Surprise shoots through me, spreading through every inch of me with the close gesture. He shifts, pulling my arm away from my stomach, extending it out in front of him so he can take a good look at it.

  Splats of blood have seeped through the bandages. I gulp, and his eyes move to my eyes. “Why? What—what happened?”

  I close my eyes so I can avoid looking at him. I focus on my breathing for a moment, trying to keep it even. Then I try to come up with the words to answer him. There is absolutely no way of sugar coating what happened. No sugar coating the reasons for what I almost got away with. Why? The single word echoes in my mind. It’s Nathan’s voice that repeats the word over and over again, not my own.

  Because I can’t fight anymore.

  “My parents died,” I finally manage to reveal. My voice comes out quieter as I continue. “They died in a car crash and I—I couldn’t save them. They just—kept sinking and I…couldn’t do anything.”

  It’s so quiet, and we’re so close that I wonder if he can hear my heartbeat. I try to listen for his heartbeat, but there are over a dozen questions whirling inside my head as I wait for the silence to end. For a moment, I think about resting my head on his chest to listen to his heart to drown out the questions. “How did the crash happen?” His voice is emotionless as he asks the question.

  I shake my head against his shoulder. “I don’t know. One minute we were on the bridge and everything was fine, and then we were in the water the next. Sinking. My—my parents were stuck, but I wasn’t. My dad pushed me out the window.” I sit up, burying my face in my hands. “I couldn’t do anything.”

  He tries to comfort me as I choke out the whole story, pausing just before I explain what happened at the hospital.

  ∞

  The sirens are loud. The ambulance is driving crazily down the road. I’m strapped to a gurney with one EMT sitting behind me, and another beside me. They’d struggled to get me into the ambulance.

  Once the tears had stopped, I lost it.

  I tried to dive back in just to get a glimpse of the car—of my parents—only to have someone grab me and hold me back. I screamed, kicked, cried and fought tooth and nail, yet they managed to keep me just out of reach of the water.

  Eventually, they managed to strap me to a gurney and haul me into an ambulance. Now, I’m headed to a hospital while the police try to fish my parents’ bodies out of the river. My heart clenches, making my breath catch. Bodies.

  Tears spill from the corners of my eyes during the rest of the trip.

  I was admitted to the hospital before being taken to a private room where nurses stuck needles in me, and cops asked me the same questions over and over and over again as if they expected a different answer. I told them everything they wanted. I gave the whole story so they would leave me the hell alone.

  When the cops, nurses, and doctors finally give me the peace I need, it’s already dark out. I stare out the window, struggling to hold myself together. The lights from the buildings beyond the hospital are bright, making it impossible to see a single star in the sky.

  Everything begins to settle then. More tears slowly and silently begin to fall. I struggle to breathe. My heart pounds and shudders in my chest as it tries not to break. The heart monitor beside me quickens its beeping in response. Anxiety, shock, and despair are flowing inside my body, making every part of me shake.

  They’re gone. Forever.

  I’m here with barely a scratch, and my parents are dead. How did this happen? What happened? Why did we swerve off the bridge? I’d missed it all while trying to drown out their bickering.

  I ask myself the same questions over and over again until the sun rises. I don’t close my tear-filled eyes for a second. I stay awake all night as I try to piece together the last few moments in the car that we spent above water.

  When a nurse walks in to check on me the next morning, I ask for a newspaper, wanting to know if there is any mention of the crash. She hesitates and I ask again, telling her that I’d get today’s paper myself if that’s what it took. At that, she quickly runs off to get me the morning paper.

  I want to know what’s going on and what the hell the cops are saying about the accident.

  My heart drops when I see the article. PROMINENT AMERICAN LAWYER AND WIFE DIE IN CAR CRASH, it reads.

  Tragedy struck the La Seine River yesterday when prestigious corporate lawyer, Parker Clay, and his family suddenly drove off Pont de Bir-Hakeim Bridge. The vehicle quickly sank, leaving only one survivor—their daughter, Taylor Clay.

  Police won’t confi
rm how the girl is but have been chatting away about the accident.

  “We don’t think it was an accident,” said Officer Brian after taking in the scene. When questioned further, he wouldn’t release much more. “We’re not confirming anything right now, but from the looks of things, we don’t think Mr. Clay swerved to avoid a collision because there were no marks. When avoiding a wreck or hitting something, people usually jerk the wheel and hit the brakes—this wasn’t the case.”

  I throw the newspaper across the room before I even finish half the article. My chest is heaving. The monitor beside me starts beeping crazily. I hear speedy steps making their way down the hall, toward me. Two nurses burst into the room. One comes to my side; the other heads for the monitors.

  “I shouldn’t have given you the paper…” the nurse from earlier says, more to herself than me as she tries to comfort me. My heart gradually begins to calm as she rubs my arm. In response, the heart monitor slows its erratic beeping.

  “He didn’t do it on purpose,” I tell the nurse, shaking my head against the pillow under me. “He didn’t.” She looks at me sadly, standing and brushing my hair back before leaving the room, followed by the other nurse. “It was an accident,” I say aloud to myself, before falling unconscious.

  ∞

  I tell Nathan the whole story, my voice cracking now and then as I force the whole explanation out. He sits quietly beside me, listening intently as I struggle not to shed a tear.

  When I’m finally finished, we’re both quiet for a long while. Minutes tick by. My heart is erratic as I wait, but I can’t bring myself to break the silence.

  On purpose…How could they possibly believe such a thing? Why would he even—He didn’t drive off the bridge purposefully. It was an accident. Something made him swerve. He didn’t just decide to try to drown us all.

  I can’t believe I told him all that. Everything. I can feel the regret slowly start to creep through me. I was relieved to get it all out only moments ago, but that is starting to evaporate now.

  “I’m sorry.” Nathan’s voice is so quiet that, at first, I wonder if he said anything at all. “I’m so sorry.” He almost breathes the words. “To go through something like that—”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” I quickly interrupt. I want to sit up, move away from him, but I can’t seem to move. I lay still against him, wanting to fall asleep and disappear into a dream world where everything is okay, and I didn’t try to take my life.

  I think of the blood that’s still splattered on the bathroom floor and stiffen, reaching out and touching my bandaged wrist.

  “You can’t do that again.” He reaches out and turns my arm over so he can examine the bandage there. A red oval rests in the middle of the gauze around my arm. He puts my arm back before tilting my chin up so that I have to look at him. His eyes are full of seriousness and concern and sympathy. I want to turn away, but I can’t shake the sternness in his words and eyes. He wants me to listen. “Promise me. Promise me you won’t do that again—that you won’t hurt yourself.”

  Every gesture and every look he gives me takes me by surprise and causes my heart to stutter. The feeling that jolts through me every time our hands brush together makes me feel a new and strange sensation.

  “What do you care?” I want to ask, but I bite back the words. He cares. He does. I don’t know why he cares so much, but he seems to be sincere. He wants to know me, and he doesn’t want me to harm myself.

  Can I make that promise? Can I keep fighting when I see no point—when I’m so sure there’s no reason to keep going?

  “Okay,” I finally manage. I don’t owe him anything. I can lie without feeling guilty. At least, that’s what I tell myself, regardless of the unsure feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Thought of Might

  I want to curl up in a ball and cry until I have no more tears to shed. But I don’t. I fight back the tears—keep in control—as I lie beside Nathan. I don’t want to cry anymore; not in front of him.

  He sighs, his chest rising and falling heavily beside me. I’m somehow leaned into his shoulder, half against him and half against the pillows behind us. “Want to play twenty questions?”

  I shift so that I’m looking up at him. He meets my eyes. “What is with you and that stupid game?”

  “Uh, one, it’s not stupid; and two, I want to ask you a question.”

  “Well, ask away, I guess.”

  “How did you end up here? Don’t you have family you could go back to?”

  I’m shaking my head before he can even finish. “No one came looking for me. I just…ended up here. I needed somewhere to stay to collect my thoughts for a while; to be alone, but ended up staying here longer than I expected.”

  “No one came looking for you?”

  “No.”

  “Your parents…?”

  Don’t cringe. Don’t cry. Keep calm. “All I know is that their bodies were sent back to America.”

  “But still—how did you end up here, in an abandoned apartment building—when you were in the hospital?”

  “It wasn’t hard to get out. I basically just walked out.”

  He cocks an eyebrow. “You’re kidding.”

  I shake my head. “Nope. I waited until it was dark and made a mad dash for the exit. Quietly, of course.”

  “I’m sure you were very stealthy,” he jokes half-heartedly.

  “I was practically a ninja.”

  There’s a moment of silence where neither of us moves or looks at each other. Then, we both burst out in laughter. My small joke wasn’t even funny, yet here we are, laughing like idiots. When our laughter finally dies down the silence is back. It’s a silence I immediately want to break. Silence is loud. Silence is noticeable and can be so many things and mean so many things, but I hate silence, because whenever it’s quiet, your thoughts grow louder.

  The memories, the thoughts, everything comes rushing back as soon as it’s quiet. And I can’t handle it anymore.

  I open my mouth to say the first thing that comes to mind, but like always, he beats me to the punch. “It feels wrong to laugh.”

  I suppose breaking into hysterical laughter minutes after cleaning my self-inflicted cuts isn’t the correct response, though, I’m not sure what is.

  “I feel like we need to talk about—That you need to talk about, well—everything.”

  I immediately go rigid against him. I don’t want to talk about what had almost happened. It’s none of his business. It had nothing to do with him. It was my decision. He wasn’t even a playing factor.

  “Please? Maybe if you talk about it, you’ll feel better, or maybe I can help.”

  No one can help. Talking won’t make me feel better. Nothing can make this go away—make it better. How does he think he can help?

  He can’t possibly make this better. Nothing can. Even if I succeed next time, I can’t erase the past. I can only make the pain go away.

  “This isn’t just something that will go away, Nathan.” He opens his mouth, but I quickly interject by adding, “And you can’t help. There isn’t anything you can do.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I do. How could you possibly think I could just get over this?” I snap.

  “I don’t think you’ll just get over it. I want to help in any way I can. I don’t want you to—to try that again. I don’t understand what you’re going through, so I won’t pretend that I do. I just want to help; that’s all I’ve ever wanted. I—I’m repeating myself. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “You’re not listening! There isn’t anything you can say, or do. I am broken. I’m beyond helping, or fixing.” I get to my feet just as my eyes start to well with tears. I touch the bandage on my arm, tempted to rip it off and let the blood flow down my arm and onto the floor. I want to bleed—to take away the emotional pain by replacing it with physical pain. I am so frustrated that my head is spinning. I can hardly see through my tear
s. Everything I look at is just a blurry mess.

  The bed creaks and Nathan is suddenly beside me, pulling my fingers away from the bandage I had been struggling to take off.

  “You just need a distraction.”

  Nothing will help.

  He squeezes my trembling hand tightly, making me look up at him. “Hey, it’s okay. Let’s do something. We can talk about all this another time.” He waits for me to say something—to agree, or nod, or something. When I don’t, he asks, “Have you been to Pont des Arts?”

  I shake my head to try to clear it. “Where?”

  A smile plays on the corners of his lips. “The Lock Bridge. Have you been there?”

  I shake my head, causing the smile to grow. “Isn’t it a long walk to The Lock Bridge?” I ask as I follow him out of the building. His footsteps are quick and speedy as he leads me down the alley and to the street. I have to jog to keep up with his strides.

  “Yep, but I don’t plan on walking there.” He suddenly leads me to the left.

  “Then how…?” my voice trails off when we come to a stop in front of a dark blue car. I stay planted on the sidewalk as he walks around the front of the car and opens the driver’s side. He steps to get in but then notices me frozen on the sidewalk. “Tays?”

  I take a step back, shaking my head. “Can’t. Nope. Can’t.”

  He slams the door shut, coming back to me. Realization crosses his face when he reaches me. “You haven’t gotten in a car since…” he trails off, looking at me like I might break at the mere mention of my parents’ deaths. I wince. “…have you?”

  I continue to shake my head, pressing my lips into a thin line. He rests a hand on my arm. I stop shaking my head to look at him. His eyes are sincere as he says, “You need to get out of that apartment for a while. You need fresh air. You need to think. Don’t go back. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  I stare at him. He doesn’t want me to go back into that apartment. He’s worried I’ll hurt myself again. The truth is…I might. He has good reason to be worried, or concerned, or whatever he is because—if I’m left alone with my thoughts again—I might hurt myself. Kill myself. I might succeed this time. Like Ryan.