“Are you joining the club that thinks it should have been me who died?” I asked.
“Trev… I joined that club the moment I heard the news.”
I nodded and shut the bedroom door behind me.
I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that what Becca said had crushed me. Everyone wished that it was me instead of Heath driving the car that night. Sometimes I wished the same.
Because if that had happened, then the letters I wrote would have meaning.
Chapter 12
Serafina
After two classes, I was walking with Hailey when I saw Max approaching. Wearing a long tan coat, hands stuffed into the pockets, his messy black hair dancing with the cool air’s soft breeze. He had the professor look about him. Always looking as though he were having a big debate in his mind, forever searching for his next lesson or perhaps a way to make the world a better place. The truth was that Max had degrees in economics and finance. He’d worked for a handful of tech companies, helping them become successful, cashing in on bonuses, and now he resided as a professor.
The closer we got to Max, the more my heart raced.
“So then I told him to just leave and call me later,” Hailey said. “I mean, I think it’s sweet that he wanted to hang out for the day, but it was weird to me. You know? We kind of met at a party and had a fun night…”
Max breezed by us with just a small hint of a smile. I took a deep breath to smell his cologne, but didn’t get any scent. I turned my head and he didn’t look back at me.
“Are you even listening to me?” Hailey asked.
“What? Yes. Sorry.”
“So what should I do here?”
I looked at her. Okay, fine, I hadn’t really heard the entire story. But did it really matter?
“If you like him, then call him. Simple. Maybe have an actual date for once. See what happens before the bedroom antics.”
“But that’s my favorite part,” she said with a grin.
“Of course it is,” I said.
“You should try it once in a while. Oh, wait, you have a secret boyfriend.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“I’ll catch you around,” she said.
She turned and walked backwards a few steps before blowing me a kiss. She took off across the grass and threw her books onto a picnic table and jumped into the arms of some guy. He spun her around. I wondered if that was the same guy I had seen in her bed with. Probably not, but who was I to judge? I just had a professor walk by who I was secretly sleeping with. All the while I sort of wished that something would go wrong with my car so I could see Trev.
And that’s when an idea came to me.
* * *
I pulled into the lot just like the first time, but I didn’t drive right up to the door. Instead, I parked my car at the end of a line of cars and sat there, waiting. Within two seconds, a couple of drops of rain smacked against my windshield.
I saw Trev inside the third garage bay, standing under a car that was high up on the lift.
Someone else suddenly came into view, giving a wave as he approached the car.
I put my window down. “I need to talk to Trev.”
“Sure you do,” he said with a grin.
I raised an eyebrow.
He acted like he knew me. Was Trev talking about me to people? If so, what was he saying? Last time I saw him, he was darting out of his apartment because someone sent him a text.
The guy walked away from my car and stuck his fingers into his mouth and whistled. A few more raindrops splattered against the windshield, starting to blur my view of Trev as he looked and saw me sitting in my car.
I gave a wave and asked myself an important question.
What the hell are you doing, Serafina?
I didn’t answer the question. I watched intently as Trev wiped his hands and walked from the garage bay. The moment rain hit him, he looked up for a quick second. The guy that had come to my car nudged his shoulder against Trev. They exchanged words and Trev threw him the middle finger.
Trev came to the open window.
A few raindrops had hit the inside of my car.
“Sera,” he said.
“Hey.”
“What’s up?”
“I think I need an oil change,” I said.
Trev laughed. “I highly doubt you drove three thousand miles in a week.”
“Oh, is that how that works?”
“When the mileage matches the sticker, then come and see me.”
“The car’s making a noise.”
“Is it really?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“So you just wanted to come and see me?”
“Yeah.” The rain started to pick up a little. “You want to come and sit in the car?”
“I’m working,” he said.
“Right. Of course. Sorry.”
“What are you doing here, sweetheart?”
“Just wondering about the other night. I mean…”
“Oh, right. The night you invaded my privacy?”
“The night you took off.”
“I got a text.”
“I know that.”
“You want to know who texted me,” Trev said.
“I didn’t say that. I just… I didn’t hear from you after that.”
“So you’re worried about me?”
“No.”
“You’re really good at lying.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Your car doesn’t need an oil change. It’s not making noise. So what are you really doing here?”
I bit my lip. I reached across to the passenger seat. “This. Here.”
I handed Trev a folded up piece of paper.
“What is this?” he asked.
“I read something you wrote. I’m sorry I did that, Trev. So here’s something I wrote. Something for you.”
He looked at the piece of paper. “I’m supposed to read this?”
“Yeah.”
“Does this have to do with who texted you the night you were in my truck?”
“No.”
“You’re interesting, Serafina. And you really piss me off.”
“Why do I piss you off?”
“Because I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I felt my stomach do a backflip as my heart jumped a few extra beats.
Trev reached into the car and put the letter on my lap.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I don’t want to read that,” he said.
“Why not?”
“It’s not my business.”
“I’m telling you it’s your business.”
“How about you bring that over to my place later,” Trev said. “Then I’ll read it.”
“Maybe you’ll read it now and I’ll stop over later.”
He laughed. “I wish you’d tell me who you really are.”
“I could say the same thing to you, Trev.”
“Yes, you could. We’re just all sorts of fucked up, huh?”
“It appears that way,” I said.
I realized just how soaked Trev was getting. Rainwater starting to run down the inside of my car.
“You’re getting wet.”
“It’s just rain,” Trev said. “I’ve been through worse.”
Like the car accident? The one that killed your stepbrother? Is that what that letter was about? Or the text you got?
“Here,” I said again as I picked the letter up off my lap. “Please read it.”
Trev took it from me and smiled. “I’ll look through it and give you my thoughts later.”
I laughed. “Jerk.”
“Hey. Listen. I didn’t mean to take off like I did. It was an emergency kind of thing.”
“Everything okay?”
“No,” Trev said. “But it will be.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then I guess I’ll see you later.”
“I’m done here at five. You can stop over whenever you want.”
“I’ll see you then.”
He backed away and I put the window up.
I turned on my wipers and saw him standing there, holding the letter in his hand.
My heart raced again.
I couldn’t believe what I just gave him to read.
Chapter 13
Trev
I sat in the bed of the pickup truck and listened to the rain fall. The truck wasn’t mine. It was in the garage, there for a timing belt. I didn’t feel like working on the truck. The guy brought it in earlier and we told him we’d call tomorrow. As far as I was concerned, my day was done.
“Hey there, what are you reading?” Nick asked. “Love letter from the chick with the car?”
“Yup.”
“How fucking pathetic. Why don’t you write a letter with your tongue? Right between her-”
I looked at Nick and he shut his mouth. I didn’t need to say a word to get him to stay quiet for good. He showed his hands in defeat and stepped back and away.
I had the letter from Sera in my hand. It was interesting. Everything about her was interesting. She intrigued the hell out of me. And we were both obviously hiding stuff, which only meant that things were going to be messy and would continue to be that way.
I opened the letter.
Trev -
I didn’t exactly mean to take off on you that night. I had other plans besides the party. So I didn’t do that to hurt you or come across like a bitch. It’s just that things aren’t what they seem in my life. Whatever you think you know about me or want to judge about me, you’re wrong. You may think that’s intriguing, but believe me it’s not.
I read that letter for a couple of reasons.
First, when a guy says to me ‘I’m not that kind of guy’, it’s usually bullshit. That’s the crap someone says to get into someone’s pants. The strange part though is that I wanted to believe you. You seem like you’re a decent enough guy. But hearing you say that really made me want to roll my eyes. So when I saw something fall out of your pocket, it caught my attention.
The second reason why I read that letter… I write letters too. I write letters to someone who was really important in my life. She still is important in my life. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit that I write letters to someone. But I do. I write letters to my best friend. She and I had something planned out for our lives, but it didn’t work out.
I guess that’s how things go in life. You can plan everything out, day by day, but all it takes is one second to change everything. It makes me laugh sometimes when I think about it… and then it makes me want to cry. I feel like I’ve done nothing but waste time in my life making plans that never happened.
If I invaded your privacy, Trev, I’m sorry. I would never read something you wrote and then judge you on it. Or tell anyone else about it. I know that it was private. I know that it mattered. And I swear to you that I stopped reading before the letter ended. I guess I have a heart because I felt guilty for taking and reading it. I wanted to tell you all of this in person the other night (or morning), but that didn’t happen because you took off. You have no idea how badly I want to know about the letter. Who it was written to and why. And how badly I want to know where you went and why. Yet I know it’s none of my business. At all.
In fact, if I had just signed that stupid banner for your stepbrother, we wouldn’t have met or talked. None of this would be happening. So, again, plans get twisted in a second. Sometimes it’s all I can think about. The plans I made. The plans that got ruined. And then I end up wasting so much more time.
Wow, I feel like I’m starting to ramble here. Like I’m going to say some stuff that I would end up regretting later. Then again, anything I write, I can take back. I can simply rip this piece of paper up and throw it out. I could burn it. I could make it so that you never see the words. So that’s kind of a sense of power, isn’t it? To keep your secrets hidden and then keep your thoughts even more hidden. Flirting with the intention of writing and then taking it back.
So who knows… maybe you’ll read this. Maybe you won’t.
Just know that I had good intentions when I picked that letter up off the ground. And whoever you wrote that to, I hope they get a chance to read it.
I’ll talk to you later,
Serafina
* * *
I sat at the table with Sera’s letter next to me and had a blank sheet in front of me. This woman really did something to me. My version of this would have been a one-night stand that led to an honest conversation of where to find your clothes, your keys, and the door. But Sera triggered something inside me. Beyond this hidden bullshit of hers. It intrigued the hell out of me. She had me sitting at the table, writing a response to her letter. Like we were in eighth grade, passing notes around in class.
It was crazy.
But it worked.
It actually felt a little good to write a letter to someone else. At least this letter would end up in Sera’s hands and she would probably read it. All my other letters… I never knew where they’d ended up. Judging by the lack of response, they’d ended up right where I thought they’d go. Into the trash to be forgotten about. Hell, that’s why I started keeping the letters myself. So I had proof on my end, in case something ever happened.
What a way to live life.
Forever standing in a shadow, in darkness, so nobody saw you anyway.
I scribbled the last couple of lines of the letter to Sera and folded it up and stuffed it into my back pocket. Then I took her letter to me and hid it in my nightstand.
Sera showed up thirty minutes later.
* * *
I sat with a beer in my hand on the edge of the couch. My feet up on the table. She curled herself up in the chair in the corner like she had been here a hundred times before.
“So are you going to tell me who your letters were written to?” I asked.
“What about yours?”
“Someone that I think matters to me.”
“You think?”
“Maybe it’s someone I’ve never met.”
“Oh, a mystery,” Sera said, raising her eyebrows.
She had one beer and switched to water. A subtle hint that she had no plans of spending the night. Which was fine with me because the bedroom was the last place on my mind, yet at the same time, I felt disappointed that she wasn’t going to stay. And I was disappointed in myself for not wanting to take her to the bedroom and forget about the rest of the hours we had between each other.
Not that she wasn’t beautiful. Not that I wasn’t thinking about it at some level.
She just struck me differently.
“Everything about us is a big mystery,” I said. “I mean, what if we’re secretly married to other people, with families… or we’re in some protection program because we saw some mobster commit a murder?”
“I don’t think we’re that messed up, Trev.”
“But damn close, I’m sure,” I said as I stood up.
I killed off the beer and walked to the kitchen for another one. I also purposely stood at the fridge with the door open, letting the cold air hit me a little. Just seeing Sera cuddled up in the chair was enough to drive too many emotions crazy at once. I thought about Becca for a second too. The fact that we had zero romance. Which was a good thing. That meant that cutting loose ends should have been easy. But it was far from that. The world left me carrying guilt that sometimes was almost impossible to sling over my shoulder.
I slammed the fridge door and turned to find Sera standing there with something in her hand.
More letters.
“What are they for?”
“You,” she said. “What I wrote to someone else. I guess it’s only fair…”
“I don’t want to read those, Sera. I want you to tell me what they say.”
“I don’t want to do that,” she whispered.
I walked to her and put my hand over hers and pushed her hand away.
“I want to know,” I said. “I don’t want to
read some letters.”
“Did you read the letter I wrote you?”
“Of course I did. That was for me. But anything that’s not, I don’t want to read.”
“Trust me, you do,” Sera said. “I don’t know what you think is happening here, Trev. Or what’s going to happen.”
“Am I supposed to be thinking that something is going to happen?”
Sera licked her lips. “Please… just read one…”
I slid my hand down her hand and took the letters. She expected me to start reading them, but I didn’t give a damn about the letters. The tension between us was getting to be too much.
I put the letters on the counter behind me and inched even closer to Sera.
That was the only warning she was going to get from me.
My hands touched her waist and I lifted her as if she were a feather. My hands quickly memorized the curve of her hips, sending thoughts scrambling through my head like a broken radio signal.
Holy shit… the only two words I could clearly find in my vocabulary.
I walked her back to the dining room table, put her down, and leaned down to kiss her. She put her head back, giving me her lips, not at ounce of resistance in her blood. Now, as far as regret would go… that was something totally different. I could live with regret in many ways, but not the regret I would have for not kissing Serafina.
Even her name was interesting, intriguing, stuck to me like honey.
And speaking of honey…
I kissed her harder, my tongue flicking against her thin lips. She opened her mouth and sighed as I tasted her tongue.
The kiss went from gently flirting to wickedly hot in a second.
My hands moved around to the small of her back and pulled, wanting her closer to me, feeling all of me.
Sera put her hands to my chest. I felt the hesitation coming, her fingers curling, nails pressing against my skin through my shirt. She opened her hands again and pushed.
Pushed me away.
Now, to be fair, if I didn’t want to be moved, I wouldn’t have moved. I felt the quivering of her lips as we kissed when she pushed me away.
EVERYTHING WRONG WITH US_a novel by: Page 8