Flashback to I love you
Novel Excerpt
I’m taking the long way home. Actually, I’ve driven past my house three times already. I’m fuming about Diana’s massive fuck up, and worrying about my mother, and hoping Officer Brandon pulls me over for reckless driving so I can punch him in the home wrecker face.
And I’m just not ready. To see Christian.
It’s been a year since it happened. We’ve been fine. No drama. But the signs keep adding up, and I can see where we’re headed.
Our fight at lunch today. Was that the fight? Or is the fight still in front of me?
If only this could be like last time. When whatever was about to happen would be erased the next morning. Because he wouldn’t remember.
Of course, I still do.
“Ava, you need to come get me.”
I kicked myself for answering the call. If I hadn’t been awake for the last three hours planning my next verbal assault on him, I wouldn’t have heard the phone buzz on my bed table.
“What? Where are you?”
“I’m drinking. I drinked. I can’t drive home. Can you come get me?”
Oh my God. Unbelievable.
“Christian, no. I barely got my license a week ago. I’m not supposed to drive without another adult in the car. Do you really want me to wake Diana up?”
“No. Not Diana. She won’t like me anymore. Just you. Please.”
My stomach knotted up. What was that? Concern? I don’t know. I just knew I didn’t trust anyone at that idiotic party to take care of Christian if he was this drunk. And this stupid.
“Christian.”
“Ava. Please come get me. I need you. Just you.”
I resigned myself to the task of rescuing him, if only to provide me an opportunity to rip into him for being a complete and total asshole. Even though I’d already told him as much that afternoon when he tried to convince me to go with him to the end of the year party at some deviant senior football player’s house.
Parties were, for me, a trauma inducing hellscape of low inhibitions and moral depravity, and I had no intention of letting Christian drag me through that.
But he was all, “This is real life, Ava, and you’re missing it.”
And I was all, “Good. If ‘real life’ is getting shit faced and groped by football players, then I want to miss it.”
And he was like, “But I’ll be there. I’ll be with you.”
And I was like, “So?”
And he said, “I’ll protect you. I would never let anything happen to you.”
And I said, “I don’t know that.”
Then he got all serious and said, “After all this time, you don’t trust me?”
Then I said, “I don’t trust anybody who pushes my boundaries. You obviously don’t know me at all.” Then I called him a selfish jerk and said something shitty about how he would have an easier time getting laid if I wasn’t there, so he should just go for it.
Then he looked like he was going to cry.
And he said, “If that’s who you think I am, then you don’t know me either. And maybe we shouldn’t be friends anymore.” Then he walked away in the wrong direction, but he didn’t stop. He kept walking until I couldn’t see him anymore.
He was sitting on the lawn of the deviant senior’s house when I got there. He was more drunk than he sounded on the phone. Like barely able to walk drunk. I almost wished I had brought Diana with me because I had a feeling he was going to end up on the ground at some point and I would have to leave him there.
“Sit in the back,” I said sharply. “And don’t talk to me while I’m driving.”
“Yes.” He stumbled up to the car and banged his head on the way into the backseat. “Owie.”
“Are your parents home?” I asked.
“Nope. Wait…nope.”
Great. That meant he was sleeping it off at my house. As pissed at him as I was, I wouldn’t leave him alone in his empty house only to have his negligent parents discover him drowned in his own vomit on the bathroom floor the next day.
“God,” I said. “I hate that you’re drunk. I fucking hate this.”
I slammed myself into the driver’s seat and adjusted my review mirror. I don’t know why I wanted to look at him.
“Ava, don’t be mad,” he said, pleading into the mirror at me. “I was sad from our fight and there was drinking there. They told me it would help. But it didn’t.” He slumped sideways against the window as I pulled away from the curb.
“No kidding,” I said.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not supposed to be talking.”
“Okay. I’m not talking.”
I listened as he fumbled with his seatbelt for the next three or four minutes.
“Ava?”
“No.”
Silence again. Then he started humming. I couldn’t make out the song. If it even was a song. But every few seconds he would stop and just whisper my name over and over. “Ava ava ava ava ava…” I bit down on my bottom lip, refusing to let it make me smile.
“Ava?” This time he wanted me to answer. But I didn’t.
He was asleep when I pulled into my driveway, so I had to poke him with the back end of a rake to wake him up.
“Get out,” I said. “You need to walk inside by yourself. Unless you want me to get Diana.”
He stumbled out of the car and inhaled sharply as he stood up. He shut his eyes and then leaned his forehead onto the roof.
I was done.
“I’m going in. You can have my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch. Don’t wake everyone up.” I started up the walk when his voice stopped me in my tracks.
“I need you to tell me you don’t want me.”
“What?” It was a mistake not to keep walking. Stupid.
“I need to know. Because if you tell me that. I’ll listen. But if you don’t. I can’t stop trying to get to you.”
“Christian. Please stop talking.” This was worse than fighting. I would have rather been fighting than hearing this.
“You’re an island, Ava.”
“What?” I almost laughed.
“An island. And I’m on the beach.” He was rocking his forehead back and forth over the roof of the car. His eyes still closed. “And I can see you. You’re pretty, Ava. God, you’re so pretty. You’re there. And I want to be there too. But I can’t get there.”
“You’re talking like a crazy person,” I said.
“I’m not. This is important.” He straightened himself and closed the car door. He kept one hand on the roof, but he was solid on his feet. Momentarily sober. “Ava?”
“What?” I couldn’t move. His eyes had found me, and I couldn’t pull away.
“If you tell me you want me, I promise I can do it. I can be with you and not…be with you. I know I can do it. Because I’m already doing it. It sucks, Ava. It really, really sucks. But I can do the suck part if I know you want me. Does that make sense?”
“No. It doesn’t.”
Of course, it did. I knew what he was saying. I just couldn’t let myself hear it.
“It does,” he said. “It makes sense because… you’re my best friend, Ava.”
“Christian. Please shut up.”
“Ava, I love you.”
I let everything else around me fill my ears. Crickets, the wind in the oak tree over us, the sound of distant traffic, my heartbeat. He didn’t really say it.
“I love you,” he said again. “Do you love me?”
This time I swallowed it. Bit down on my tongue and sent it back, down and away with the faint taste of blood. Because he was drunk, and this was stupid. Stupid. And none of it mattered.
“It’s okay if you don’t,” he said. “Just tell me you don’t. I can take it. I mean. I can’t. But I will.” I don’t know how he was still on his feet. How he wasn’t about to pass out. Because I was. “I just need to know if you don’t want me. Or I can’t stop trying. I’ll never stop trying to get to you.”
My tongue moved toward my teeth, and I felt my mouth start to open. There were words perched there, waiting to come out. I didn’t know what they were. Only that I needed to stop them.
“Ava?”
“What?”
His eyes drifted to a spot over my shoulder and his lips closed tightly. His hand flew to his mouth as he lurched forward onto the grass and threw up. I took a breath in, and it felt like the first one I’d taken in over a minute. I was shaking. Dizzy. I couldn’t stand the sound of Christian retching violently into my mother’s azaleas. Seeing him broken and helpless in front of me.
I covered my ears and ran into the house. I woke Diana up and she followed me silently outside. Christian was sitting up, leaning against the car with his hands over his face. He was crying.
Diana helped him to his feet and into the house.
I followed them at a minimal safe distance.
I paced my bedroom, useless, while Diana helped Christian clean up in the bathroom. I turned the covers down on my bed and found his blue flannel shirt, tucked under one of the pillows. Stupid. I brought it to the bathroom and handed it to Diana through the crack in the door.
I could see Christian in the mirror. He was sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Diana handed him the shirt and turned away from him. But I kept watching him in the mirror as he took off his t-shirt and worked open the few fastened buttons on the shirt I’d been sleeping with for the last several nights. As he slid his arms into it, he stopped. He grabbed the fabric by the collar and brought it to his face. He breathed in and his eyes closed. And then he was crying again.
My throat seized and I put my hand over my mouth to stop whatever sound threatened to escape. I turned silently on my heels and hurried back to the doorway of my bedroom.
I stood by as Diana tucked Christian into my bed. She smoothed his blond hair back from his forehead and I was gripped by a sharp, sustained pulling, deep in my chest. I gritted my teeth against it and turned my head away.
I was jealous. So fucking stupid.
“I’m sorry, Ava,” he said to her. “Please forgive me.”
Then he was out.
Diana led me by the elbow to the living room. I waited on the couch while she gathered some blankets and a pillow for me. Then she tucked me in, too.
“I think you should,” she said suddenly.
“Should what?”
“Forgive him.”
I sighed and rolled toward the back of the couch so she couldn’t see my face.
“Does that mean you already did?” she asked.
I didn’t have an answer.
“You know, Ava, part of loving someone is learning how to forgive them,” she said.
“I don’t – that’s not what this is.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I lied.
“I’m not so sure.” I knew she was smiling.
I turned to face her. “So, this is what love is? Watching someone puke their guts out on your front lawn?”
“Sometimes, yeah.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
“Sometimes, you disappoint each other,” she said, smoothing my hair off of my forehead, just like she’d done for Christian. “But you surprise each other, too.”
“But is it worth it?” I asked. “Knowing that you’re going fuck everything up again later?”
“Watch your language.” She smiled. “And yes, Honey. It’s worth it.”
She kissed my forehead, and I pulled the blanket up under my chin and closed my eyes, trying to breathe over the lingering tightness in my chest. She stayed next to me for a long time. And I started to drift. I forgot she was there. And I don’t even know if her next words were real or part of a dream.
“Christian needs to hear the words, Ava. He’s not like you and me. He can’t just feel it and know it’s true. Your path hasn’t been easy. That’s my fault. But Christian isn’t going to leave you until you tell him to. Because he wants to make your life beautiful. And I think you should let him.”
I’d love to say I was nice to Christian the next morning. But I wasn’t. I’d love to say that when he apologized for his behavior, I forgave him. But I didn’t.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. He was halfway down the porch steps, hungover and visibly ashamed.
“For what?” I said distantly from the loveseat.
“For touching you.”
“What?”
“Last night, when you were helping me to bed,” he said with his eyes on his shoes. “I think I tried to hold your hand.”
My insides boiled. I wanted to scream. He didn’t remember a thing that happened before that. The weight of the words he dumped all over me in the driveway.
I stood up, fighting back stupid, angry tears. “That wasn’t me. That was Diana.”
His face went scarlet, and he started to open his mouth, but I slammed the front door on whatever his excuse was going to be.
I let him get too close that time. I couldn’t let it happen again. I should have told him that I didn’t want him. That would have broken the cycle.
But I didn’t tell him that. So, I know he’s still trying.
And I’m not a hundred percent sure I want him to stop.
This story is brought to you by The Romantic.
