I could see through the tinted window but Elijah couldn’t see me.
I felt like a helpless puppy as we drove away. Moving my eyes from window to window to mirror, still wanting to catch a glimpse of Elijah.
But the pictures in my mind of him in bed with Rory… their baby… no matter what it was or wasn’t… it was just too much.
Even for someone like me who thought they were so strong.
“Whatever you need,” Aira said to me. “Just name it.”
My phone dinged with a text and I jumped so fast I thought my head was going to smash against the roof of Wes’s ride.
My heart raced, wanting it so badly to be a text from Elijah.
It was a text from Dex.
Hope you don’t mind. Got your number. Don’t ask how. Just tell me when I can see you again. You owe me a surf.
I shut my screen off and turned my head.
“Good or bad?” Aira asked, referring to the text.
“It was nothing,” I said.
Good or bad…?
How about both?
Chapter 11
Elijah
I sat outside with the baby monitor by my side. The only thing left to do was smoke. I wanted to go find Nova. Chase her pretty ass down. Explain everything once our heads and hearts were a little cooled off. But I couldn’t leave because of Cecily. And more than that, there was no way in hell Nova and I were ever going to cool off.
The situation was too raw.
It was going to stay that way forever.
The whole Rory in my bed thing was blown out of proportion. But at the same time, Nova was right. There was no reason or excuse to ever have Rory near my bed or in my bed. No matter the situation…
I had my legs bent, my arms dangling over my knees. A cigarette just burning away in my right hand. I lowered my head and chased every possible thought away. I listened to the ocean. The waves with their forever sound. The waves that witnessed everything. All the good and all the bad. And they never stopped doing their thing for a second.
I lifted my head and finished my cigarette.
I flicked it away and traded the cigarette for the baby monitor.
Cecily was out cold still. She hadn’t moved an inch. It had been a crazy day for all of us. In different ways though.
My thumb stroked the screen as I swallowed hard.
I tried chasing down some moments and memories with Rory, still trying to piece it all together. But what did it matter? We were together. Many times. We would meet up, have a drink or ten, talk, laugh, knowing exactly what it was and where it was going. At that moment in my life, Rory was the perfect person to have. Because when it came time to be done, she knew it and we both parted ways without question.
Except I obviously left something behind.
And she had to go through it all alone…
That was the part that hit home the worst for me.
Rory had done it all alone. It made me feel for her. It made me care for her. Not in the way I cared for Nova, but in a way that made me want to somehow make everything up to Rory. The time. The…
“Fuck,” I whispered.
I lowered my head again and this time turned the volume on the baby monitor up.
I heard the soft sounds of nothing coming from the bedroom.
When I finally stood up, I had one more cigarette and then went back inside the house. I crashed to the bed, over the sheets, the baby monitor in my hand. I stared into the darkness, debating on whether to text Nova or not.
My eyes slowly began to close.
I wanted to fight sleep but I needed it so damn bad.
I lost that fight.
But only for a little while.
The second I heard a cry echoing from the monitor I jumped up.
Cecily was awake and it was three hours later.
I hurried out of bed and went to her room.
I opened the door and before I could get to her crib, I saw a figure already standing there.
Fight mode kicked in. Dad mode kicked in.
“Hey,” I growled.
Rory turned, Cecily in her arms, and she smiled at me.
* * *
I stayed at the door as Rory changed Cecily and then fed her. The entire time I gritted my teeth, clawed at the tips of my own fingernails, seething with anger and questions. I pictured how this would have played out with Nova in my bed with me. What if Nova and I had… enjoyed each other… and were still… naked…
Rory slowly strutted to the crib with a sleeping Cecily in her arms.
Wearing jeans that looked painted to her legs. And an extra-large sized hoodie that she swam in. Looking almost like the day I met her. With her jet-black hair pulled back and done in a way that probably took her two hours and three cans of hair product.
Total. Opposite. Of. Nova.
Rory kissed Cecily’s head and gently put her down.
Rory then opened her arms and backed up. When she turned, she smiled big at me and put her finger to her lips.
It was like replaying what had already happened… just with a different person.
I reached back and opened the door.
As Rory passed me by, I could smell her. The laundry soap on her clothes. The perfume. The body spray. The smell of the hair product. The hint of makeup that she always plastered on her face.
I snuck out of the room with her.
My instinct was to fucking explode right then and there.
But I held back.
“Thought you weren’t going to be home until morning?” I whispered in a growl.
“It is morning,” she said. “Do you not know what time it is?”
“I know what time it is, Rory. I just thought… whatever. Is everything okay?”
“It’s perfect,” Rory said.
She reached for my face and I stepped out of her reach.
I had to go get the baby monitor.
Rory followed me into my bedroom.
Anger hit me one more time as I grabbed the baby monitor off the bed with force.
As she started to sit on the corner of the bed, I touched her arm.
“No,” I said.
“What?”
“We’re not going to be in here,” I said. “Not anymore. This is my room. I don’t want…”
Rory stood next to me. “Temptation, Elijah?”
“Not even close,” I said.
Rory smiled. “You’ve said that before to me. Remember?”
I gritted my teeth. “That was different.”
“Was it though?”
“The only reason you’re here right now is because of Cecily. I want to make that clear.”
“Is that supposed to hurt me?”
I almost forgot that Rory couldn’t be hurt. Which, again, made her so perfect during the time I needed her. Killing those days, weeks, and months until I could get to summer and return to Hidden, back to Nova.
She loved these kinds of games, even if they weren’t games to me.
“Let’s go outside and talk,” I said to her.
“Lead the way,” she said. She quickly put her hand to my chest. “No. I’ll lead the way.”
Rory walked toward the door. She casually lifted the hoodie up to show off the tight jeans on her ass. I shook my head and focused on the baby monitor.
A few minutes later I was sitting in the same spot where I had been hours earlier.
I wasn’t alone, obviously.
I took out a cigarette and lit it.
I turned my head and sighed. “Want one?”
“I’ll take that one,” Rory said.
I gave her the cigarette and then lit one for myself.
She smoked it perfectly.
As she exhaled the smoke, she laughed. “My parents caught me smoking when I was fourteen. They hated it.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said. “They lectured me. They yelled at me. They tried to ground me. But then they learned that it just made me want it more. Tell me no… and I
want it more than anything in the world…”
Rory grinned as she spoke those words.
“So what did they do?” I asked.
“As I got into a little more trouble here and there, smoking didn’t seem so bad,” she said. “So they let it go. I won. Because I always win, Elijah.”
“Rory, there’s nothing to win here,” I said to her. “I need you to understand that. I’ll be there for you the best I know how. And I’ll take care of Cecily. But… this thing…”
“It’s okay,” Rory said. “We’ll see what happens.”
Again, nothing bothered her.
“Rory, I have to know something. Why did you show up when you did? Why did you send me that letter? I mean… I don’t think you realize what that did. The problems it caused.”
“Problems?” she asked. She laughed and took another drag. The smoke spilled from her lips. “Problems. I didn’t know what else to do, Elijah. My parents were done with me. I had nowhere to go. I sent you a letter to see what you would do. You took off.”
“I took off because I thought the letter was something else,” I said.
“Your girlfriend?”
“Something like that.”
“I had no choice but to come find you. You always told me about your father’s house. And if I’m being honest, I heard about your brother. What happened to him. I know you two weren’t close, but still… that sucked. It was like everything started happening at once again. Really fast too. And I just didn’t want to be alone again. So I showed up to see you. Maybe there was a better way to do it. I don’t know. They don’t teach this kind of stuff in class, do they?”
“Speaking of that,” I said.
Rory laughed. “What? Worried about me? Let’s just say I’ve stepped away for the moment. My hands are kind of full.”
“That’s not good, Rory. You need to…”
“What? Are you really going to turn into this? What, Elijah? I need to… what? Do something with myself? Do something with my life? Huh?”
“Are your parents rich?”
“Wow,” she said. “Is that where this is going now? You’re worried about money? Wait a second… you think I’m here for money, don’t you? Because obviously your mother doesn’t have any. But your father does. And he will do anything to keep his little bastard a secret, right? So it fits my personality, right? I show up with a baby. And then I get close to you. Next, I demand cash… or else…”
I didn’t say a word.
Rory laughed again. And her eyes filled with tears.
“Fuck you,” she whispered.
She took another drag of her cigarette and tried to stand up.
My eyes shut as I grabbed her hand and pulled her back down.
“Don’t,” I said. “I wasn’t implying anything, Rory.”
She crashed down next to me again. Closer this time.
“Then what are you asking me?”
I looked at her dark eyes. “Why didn’t you say anything to me? I had no idea, Rory. No fucking idea. You know? And if I did…” I shook my head and looked toward the ocean. “I would have been there for you. For Cecily. But I wasn’t. I didn’t even know. I didn’t get to see any of it. What it looked like. Your belly. Finding out that Cecily was a girl. If you even did find out or not. Naming her. That’s a name I know nothing about. And then giving birth to her… alone. Waiting months to come find me. I feel like a piece of shit over it, Rory. Yet I didn’t know. And now there’s all these hearts all fucked up because of it.”
Shit.
Everything started to really weigh on me.
I collected myself.
Rory put her hand on mine.
“I didn’t know I was pregnant until I was almost halfway there,” she said. “I was one of those people. I knew something was different but I refused to believe it. It wasn’t until my stomach visibly popped… my parents…” Rory cleared her throat. “My parents aren’t rich, Elijah. They’re not poor but they’re not rich. Okay? If you want the full story… no. I’m not telling the full story of my parents and everything that happened. I ended up as their only child, okay? And I was the wild one. And when I came home pregnant, like really pregnant, they were more than pissed at me. If I had found out sooner, they would have forced me to do something…”
I looked at Rory again. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” she said. “But since I was so far along, they went right to adoption. I was allowed to live there as long as I didn’t contact you and as long as I gave up the baby at birth.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
“I did find out what the baby was. So my parents could make sure whoever was adopting Cecily would actually want her.”
“What happened, Rory?” I asked.
I almost didn’t want to know the answer.
“I made the decision myself,” she said. “I’m an adult, Elijah. We all are. I’ll be honest though. There was a part of me that thought giving up Cecily was the best thing to do. She could be with a family. A real family. But when I felt her moving inside me… and I picked a name… I knew I couldn’t do it. I refused to do it.”
She wiped the corners of her eyes.
She took the final drag of the cigarette and flicked it away.
“Want another?” I offered her.
“Maybe,” she said. She laughed. She sucked in a breath. “Look, Elijah, I don’t know what else to say. I had Cecily and I decided to keep her. It changed my life. I’m trying to rebuild things with my parents. That’s where I was. I had been living with a friend and that got old fast because of a newborn crying. I begged to go back to my parents place and they let me. I was in the basement with Cecily. And it was about what you have here with your father and…”
“Rosemary,” I said.
“Yeah. Exactly. You don’t even consider her being your stepmother.”
“Nope.”
“I wasn’t sure what to do about you,” Rory said. “For this reason right here. You have every right to maybe be pissed at me for not telling you anything. But this is my life. And no matter how many times I thought about talking to you… I chickened out. That’s right. I chickened out. The crazy, tough chick was scared to talk to you. So I stupidly wrote you a letter and dropped it off to see what would happen. I thought you’d dig around and… I don’t know, Elijah. I really don’t know. Then you left. And I just finally decided to show up. Here I am.”
Rory shut her eyes and fought back tears.
She took a few deep breaths.
I let out a sigh.
I put my arm around her and she put her head to my shoulder.
There was nothing I could say to change a thing. I didn’t want to discount her feelings. And I didn’t want to send the wrong message.
So I sat there with her with the only noise being the ocean waves.
I never thought I could be so ripped in two.
I sat in silence as long as Rory wanted to.
When I slowly turned my head, I realized she had fallen asleep on my shoulder.
I put my right hand to the ground and left it there and left Rory sleeping on my shoulder. She meant nothing the way Nova did. But she still meant something.
My eyes moved to the baby monitor.
Cecily was peacefully asleep.
She meant something too.
And yet as I sat there, my heart found itself starting to beat faster and faster.
All I ever wanted was my Summer Girl… for good.
* * *
It was a strange meeting.
That’s the only way I could really describe it.
I hadn’t talk to Simon and Darius in a while, and that was on me. I hadn’t checked in with them. Things had gotten out of control so fast, it amazed me the way time was just slipping right by me.
So when Simon said they were near Hidden, I had to see them.
I was with Nero, Lars, Paxton, and Turner.
We ditched out of Tech to meet up with Simon and Darius.
Parked
in an empty lot near the border of Hidden, I sat on the hood of my car and finished a cigarette as Simon and Darius showed up on motorcycles.
They rode dark blue street rides that had flames that sometimes showed when the sun hit the right way. The flames were black.
I wasn’t much of a street ride guy personally.
Ryland was though. He and Simon and Darius only met a few times but when they did, they talked about their street rides.
I also knew how much Wes hated anyone who rode those kinds of motorcycles. The only reason Wes popped into my mind was because of Aira and Aira because of Nova.
I flicked my cigarette high into the air as Simon and Darius took off their helmets.
Simon was my height and build. Darius was a little taller but really skinny.
They looked like trouble and that’s what made us all become friends.
We didn’t need to talk about causing trouble.
We just fucking chased it down and enjoyed the ride.
I hugged Simon first.
Then I shook hands with Darius.
We had our own secret handshake and it amazed me I still remembered it.
“You look like shit, man,” Darius said. “Baby keeping you up all night?”
“Or is it Rory?” Simon asked with a wink.
I laughed. “A little of everything. Come, meet my crew.”
I made the introductions and everyone shook hands or gave fist bumps.
“I take it you’re the baddest fuckers in this town?” Simon asked Nero.
“We do what we have to do,” Lars said. “You?”
“Same,” Darius said. “Amazing how this loser keeps everyone together.”
Darius made a fist and tapped my shoulder.
“I’m a peacemaker,” I said. “I bring the people together.”
“Bullshit,” Turner said. “You’ve caused so many problems here…”
“That’s what he does,” Darius said. “He always made us look good. That was the best part of hanging with Elijah.”
“I just keep things real,” I said. “And honest.” I climbed up on the hood of my car again. “So what brings you around here?”
“The only way to see you, brother,” Darius said. “You’re a fucking ghost now.”
HIDDEN CREEK CRY: a hidden creek high noval Page 13
