“I broke up with Lisa because I thought it was the right thing to do. I never meant to hurt her and I sure as hell didn’t think I was going to make you hate me because of it. For a while, it was good. I wallowed in feeling shit about dumping her and fed off your hatred for me. It let me keep wallowing in that pit where I thought I deserved to live.”
“Misery loves misery,” I said gently.
He looked at me and his eyes softened somewhat. “It does. It made me feel better to…”
“Feel worse?” I offered, knowing what he meant.
He nodded. “Exactly. It was like without anything good, the shit stuff felt less shit. Moments of happiness just made me feel more…sad.”
I’d felt that exact way. Just thinking about it made the feeling echo inside me with aching clarity.
“That time I burned myself last year and I had the bandage on my arm for a couple of weeks?” he asked.
I remembered that. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, that wasn’t a burn.”
I looked at him, not quite understanding what he meant. Slowly, way too slowly, I worked it out. I remembered the conversation in the library. The one about being able to see evidence of being not okay on a person. I finally understood what that meant.
“Sometimes, Norah…” He took a shaky breath. “Sometimes, no matter what I know is right, no matter what I want out of life, I’m not strong enough to fight for me. In that moment, I can’t climb out of the choking despair, and self-sabotage feels like the only outlet, the only way for me to feel anything – or nothing – else. Sometimes I drink too much. Sometimes I watch horror movies. Sometimes I hook up with some random. Sometimes I punch through windows or people. Once or twice…I’ve hurt myself.”
Every single piece of me yearned to reach out to him with sympathy. I could barely imagine the pain he must feel, but that was enough for my soul to hurt right along with him.
“Why are you telling me this now?” I asked him quietly.
He took my hands. “Because I want you to understand. I want you to know why I say that separated parents are better. Why I think staying with each other for the sake of kids is heinous and just causes more problems. Why I am the way I am. I want to help you not be me, Norah. I just want to help you.”
My eyes were hot. There was a lump in my throat.
I felt sad and happy and…relieved all at once.
Someone did understand. Someone did know. Someone might be able to help.
He might not have the answers I wanted, but maybe the answers I needed just weren’t going to be the ones I wanted.
I nodded, not feeling the need to break down into tears nor hold back the tears if they decided to come. “Okay,” I told him. “Okay.” I took a deep breath and uttered two words I never thought I’d say to anyone, let alone Wade Phillips. “Help me.”
His smile was hesitant. His eyes were warm. I felt like this – him, us – was impossible and inevitable all at once. As though maybe he’d come into my life exactly when I needed him. Like maybe we had to lose each other so we could find each other again.
The moment I thought it, it felt stupid. But the embarrassing kind of stupid that’s made even more embarrassing by the knowledge it might be true.
“I’ll do everything I can,” he promised.
I licked my lip, hoping my next words weren’t going to push him away. “Will you let me help you, too? Let me try, at least?”
I watched him swallow as his eyes stared into mine. Finally, he nodded. “Okay.” He said it so softly I almost thought I’d imagined hearing it.
I took his hand as I scooted closer to him and kissed him softly. I felt him smile a sad smile against me, then he leant his forehead to mine and released a breath.
“You probably want an explanation for my message after all that?”
Yes. I wanted that desperately. Curiosity would, much like the cat, be the death of me.
But I played it cool. “Only if you want to give me one.”
I felt him nod. “My biological dad has his own issues. The story goes that he got Air Force jailed for drunkenness and the only way my grandparents could get him out was to leave England for New Zealand.”
“Really?”
He smirked. It wasn’t humour as such, it was more that self-deprecating sarcasm. “I have no idea. That’s what I’ve heard.”
“So, he drank?”
Wade nodded as he threaded his fingers with mine, focussing on them like it was the only way he could keep talking.
“It’s not lost on me that I do the same thing…” he said softly. “I wish I didn’t, but… Well, one step at a time, huh?” He cleared his throat like he was tearing up. “Basically, my mum had no choice but to leave him. I was only about two. Mum didn’t have anywhere to go really, so why not come home to her parents? We were in Adelaide two days later.”
He looked up at the stars and took a deep breath before continuing, “He said we’d stay in contact. He said he’d visit. He said he’d move to Adelaide. He said a lot of things. He never did any of them. As time passed, contact got less and less until I didn’t even know where he was anymore.”
I didn’t have to ask who ‘he’ was.
“Two years ago, my sister-in-law found him through work. Total accident. But the family used it as a chance for me to reconnect with him. I had questions. I had… I was already not awesome. We all thought it couldn’t hurt.”
I rubbed his hand with my thumb. “It hurt?” I guessed.
He gave a choked laugh. “So much. After years of romanticising the guy, he didn’t even look at me during the whole meeting. He just talked about life before me. Before my brother and his early years, but nothing about me except when my birthday was. I felt like… All those years. I knew he was unwell. I knew. But I used it as an excuse for him, like it wasn’t his fault. And maybe it wasn’t. But faced with just nothing from him… It just felt like he’d rejected me. Not just when I was little, when I wasn’t worth keeping a promise to, but as a person. I felt like if my own father couldn’t…love me…no one could.”
“Oh, Wade…” I breathed, unable to stop myself throwing my arms around him.
He hugged me back. Hard.
I didn’t know what else to say other than, “I’m so sorry.” Nothing, even that, seemed enough.
He took a shaky breath. “I’m working on it. On me. Some days are better than others.”
“That’s why,” I said softly.
He pulled back and looked at me. “Why what?”
“Why you say it’s better parents are apart.”
He brushed a finger over my cheek, looking me over like he was committing me to memory. “If it’s what they need. I look at mine and I wonder where we’d all be if Mum had decided to force it to work for my sake. If she decided that I ‘deserved’ both my parents. Granted, not all dads have issues that make it unsafe. My parents are an extreme example. But unhappiness and resentment aren’t great either.”
I nodded. I felt tears of my own threatening. I could see now. I didn’t want to. But I could see the sense in his words. As he said, my parents’ situation wasn’t quite as extreme as his. I saw the principle being the same, though.
If my parents stayed together, what sort of home would we end up with?
Unhappiness and resentment were probably the least of our problems if they were already unhappy.
I couldn’t bring myself to be okay with it. Not yet.
I went to bed that night starting to wonder if Wade was right. Breaking up might be hard, but maybe sometimes it was for the best. After all, my parents were people as well as a mum and dad. They deserved to be happy. If they weren’t happy together maybe, just maybe, they could be happy again apart.
Chapter Twenty
The next night was Family Movie Night.
I was partially surprised that they kept enforcing mandatory family time.
Mum kept ‘checking her emails’ on her phone a
nd popping to her study to quickly do something.
Dad hovered in the kitchen like dinner was going to burn if he didn’t constantly watch it.
Koby wanted to be out at a friend’s party, but knew that Family Movie Night trumped any other plans – we’d resigned ourselves to that early on in life and it was now a habit that Friday night plans were pending until otherwise designated.
And I just wanted a break from the rapid beating of my heart and the shortness of breath the whole situation was giving me.
No one seemed to want to be there and yet Mum and Dad stood firmly resolved to make it work. If they put half as much effort into standing resolute together for the sake of their marriage, maybe we wouldn’t have been in the situation in the first place.
As much as I wished for that to be true, I was starting to acknowledge that even that wouldn’t have helped anything. I was on the verge of admitting to myself that they hadn’t spent all these years not trying to make it work. They had tried. It was just beyond repair.
I spent the night watching my parents and thinking about my conversation with Wade. I watched Koby and realised that his smile wasn’t quite as easy and his laugh not quite a carefree as it usually was. Like he was forcing it. Like he could sense the tension and was trying desperately to alleviate it.
It made me wonder just how much he knew. Had he noticed our parents’ behaviour? Did he know what was coming? Worse yet, had they told him but not me and it was just all three of them pretending everything was fine for the sake of stupid, fragile Norah?
I knew it was a ridiculous thought as soon as I’d had it. No one in my life would ever describe me as fragile. Not a single person who knew me would think that about me. I was the one running headfirst into situations and thinking about the consequences later. It was something I’d learned from Koby at a young age. He’d been a daredevil and I’d done anything to be just like my big brother.
Even with Koby’s smiles and jokes, Mum and Dad seemed tense.
I almost knocked over my glass of cola and Mum snapped, “Norah, careful. I don’t want to have to be getting stains out of everything.” She took a deep breath and squeezed my arm gently. “Sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to snap like that. Just be careful, yeah?”
I nodded, painfully aware of how differently she would have spoken to me even a year earlier. She certainly wouldn’t have been worried about stains back then. Was she worried about stains now because there were sales coming up in our future? Or was it just her being stressed out?
Being around them like this was like constantly walking on egg-shells. Anything to avoid doing something that would have them griping or speaking more harshly than intended. They apologised every time, but it didn’t stop them from snapping in the first place.
And it was only getting worse, week by week. Like, the closer we got to Christmas and their separation, the worse they got. As I watched them, I realised they were like two caged up animals, chomping at the bit, railing against their shackles.
Freedom.
They wanted freedom.
It was nothing more or less than I wanted.
To be free.
To not live with this cloud hanging over them.
For me, the cloud was the uncertainty of the future.
But for them, the cloud was the present. It was their marriage.
As I watched, I realised I was becoming more okay with the idea of their divorce. If that’s what it took to get my parents back, then okay. I didn’t like it. I hated it. But maybe I could be okay with it. Eventually.
I knew my life would change irrevocably with their separation, and that terrified me. It would be two houses instead of one. It would be two holidays instead of one. It would be two everything instead of one. It was maybe even never having them in the same room ever again.
I could also see what Wade had meant. If they’d be happier apart, then things wouldn’t be like they were now. If them forcing it to work was what was making it bad now, then the only solution was for them to let it break.
I was less angry about it than I had been. Now I was just sad. I was grieving. Grieving my current life. Grieving what was. For them. For me. For us as a family. Oddly, it didn’t make me feel any better. I didn’t feel like I’d made progress. Resigned grief wasn’t exactly a step forward in my book.
Chapter Twenty-One
The next week at school, I wasn’t so much restless anymore as I was just…despondent.
Nothing held my interest. My mind wandered. I wasn’t nearly as witty or amusing or clever as I usually was. I didn’t even give two hoots that Mrs Finch was terribly unimpressed with my performance on the practice exam.
My world wasn’t so much ending anymore as it was ended.
I knew what Wade had said. The world wasn’t coming to an end. But it felt like it. Made all the more cruel because no one else had noticed. It was just me. It was just my world. Everyone else was still going along their own merry way.
Including Lisa, which was the only good thing to come out of it.
Her and Matt were as cosy as ever, but she was maintaining they were just friends. Despite the giggles. Despite the shy smiles. Despite the hair flicks. Despite every sign and signal screaming ‘we’re both totally into each other’, she still maintained they were just friends.
It was getting exhausting.
“You know, it’s been ages since I saw Wade hooking up with anyone,” Lisa commented as we sat in the Common Room at Recess.
“Will you literally think of anything else to avoid performance jitters?” I asked her.
Being the last Wednesday of term three, it was opening night of the school musical and, while Lisa was objectively amazing at her goal profession, she was also a perfectionist.
“No,” she said, kicking her head in his direction. “I’m not avoiding anything. I’m making an observation. It’s been…how many weeks since we saw him with that girl after Clara’s party?”
“Eight,” I said without thinking. I looked up quickly. “Or so. I think. Maybe.”
Lisa smirked. “All right, calm down. You’re allowed to know the weeks of the term,” she laughed.
What she didn’t know was that I was counting down the weeks since I’d found out my parents were getting divorced, and I vividly remembered that had been on the same day. I only just then realised that she was right. We hadn’t seen Wade hooking up with anyone since then.
“Oh, maybe he’s changed?” Lisa said eagerly.
I rolled my eyes. “He hasn’t changed.”
Lisa was too busy staring at Wade.
I saw all plans of getting her to go out with Matt trickling away before my very eyes.
“In two years, he’s never gone this long without hooking up with someone,” Lisa argued. “Something has to have changed.”
“Well, I doubt it’s him.”
“What would you know?” Lisa chastised, but it was a gentle reproach full of fond exasperation. “You just antagonise and argue with him.”
“There does seem to be something…different about him,” Erin offered.
“Pfft. Like what?” I scoffed.
Erin shrugged. “I dunno. He’s less…something. More something else.”
“Helpful,” I noted.
Erin grinned. “More something good. Less something bad.”
“More helpful,” I commented.
Lisa turned to me, her hands clasped under her chin. “Oh, Norah!”
“Oh, Lisa?” I asked.
Her smile was wide. Her eyes shone with hope and wonder and excitement. “That’s good, right?”
I sighed and had to force back my preferred retort. “I’m sure it’s just a passing phase. He’s probably just hung up on passing the year and getting to try out all the new offerings at uni.”
“Or, he’s settled.”
I could see it in her eyes. She was banking on settled. No wonder she’d turned Matt down. She was going to keep turning Matt
down no matter what he did because she thought Wade had changed. She thought he was the guy she’d fallen in love with.
I didn’t know how to change her mind back. I didn’t know how to convince her he was the same old guy. I had to admit to myself that he wasn’t the same old guy that I wanted to convince her he was, but that was due to a partially very selfish agenda. What I wanted was to not get her hopes up, and I had no clue how to do that.
There was only one thing for it.
I hung back at the end of Recess and cornered him where I hoped no one was going to notice us.
“Speaking to me at school?” he teased with a warm smile. “Have we made progress?”
“You haven’t hooked up with anyone at school in weeks,” I blurted out.
He blinked. “Hello to you, too. You’re wrong, though.”
Now, I blinked. My heart also jerked unpleasantly in my chest. “What? Who did you hook up with?”
He grinned and I loved it. “You.”
Confused, it took me a second to realise what he meant. “A kiss in the library doesn’t count as hooking up,” I informed him.
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“Why not?”
“Because no one saw!”
“I thought that was the point?” he asked, his lips tipped up in amused confusion.
My argument deflated momentarily. “Well, yes. But Lisa’s noticed!”
“That we kissed?”
“No! Are you being obtuse on purpose?”
He laughed as his hand grazed my arm. “No. I’m legit confused. Start over.”
“You have to flirt with someone.”
“Okay.” He took a step towards me, dropped his eyelids, licked his lip and directed one of his most charming smiles at me. “Hey, Norah. What’s up?”
My chest fluttered and I almost grinned that goofy smile, but I controlled myself. “Not me!”
“Why not you?”
“You need to flirt with someone else.”
“I don’t want to flirt with anyone else.”
I bit my lip while I tried to remind myself that yes that was nice, but not what we needed. “Why not?”
the Art of Breaking Up Page 18