by Jessica Roe
It's home.
The air smells like the ocean, sand and food, and though not as hot as earlier, it's still warm out enough to make the skin on my exposed back tingle.
Nathan's hands move sensuously over my body, exploring, but never crossing any lines. They skim my waist, the bottom of my back, just beneath my breasts, but they don't once enter into dangerous territory. I almost wish they would.
My brain steps out of the picture and takes a vacation while my feelings snatch complete control of me. For the first time in maybe a decade, I'm the old Phee again; the Phee who followed her heart and did things because they made her happy and not just because they allowed her to be safe and in control.
Nathan buries his face into the curve of my neck, inhaling deeply. “I know you're feeling everything I am, Phee,” he murmurs softly into my skin. His tone is firm, but there's a hint of desperation to it. “I can feel this between us – it never went away. I can feel it.”
All I can do is clutch him tighter, bunching the material of his loose white shirt up in my fists. I'm unable to deny a thing.
A new song begins to play; not fast, but not as slow as the one before it. It breaks the tension just a little. Nathan pulls his face back and rests his forehead against mine, smiling fondly. “You remember back when we were kids how we planned to get married ourselves one day?”
“Of course I do.” If I tilted my head even just a fraction, we'd be kissing.
This is dangerous. Remembering is dangerous. And yet. . . “We were going to do it at the lake.”
“At dusk.”
His smile grows wider. “Just as the stars were coming out.”
“And we were going to string lights through the trees.”
“It would have been perfect. . .” He trails off, suddenly sad. “And by that point in our lives, we'd have come clean to our parents and they'd have seen how much we loved each other. They'd have forgiven the past and given us their blessing.”
My eyes squeeze shut for just a moment as a stab of pain shoots through my heart. One of my hands comes up to rest on the back of his neck, my fingers playing idly with the golden hair there. “Maybe. . .maybe I think about you more than I should,” I admit before I can stop myself. And then it all comes rushing out. “Maybe I still feel for you more than I thought. After all this time, I. . .I can't help feeling like maybe there's still something here – something I made myself forget.”
And I know, right in this very moment, that it's the truest, most freeing thing I've said in the longest time. Perhaps even since I left Norson Lake so many years ago.
Nathan swallows hard but says nothing. I'm not even sure he can speak. Our cheeks brush, our lips graze. He wants to kiss me just as much as I want to kiss him; I can feel it with every inch of my soul.
No.
Suddenly I step back out of his embrace. His arms stay outstretched towards me, shock taking over the contentment on his face. I think I surprised us both.
“I can't,” is all I tell him. “Not like this.”
And then I simply turn and walk away.
I CAME CLEAN to my parents about falling in love with Nathan, and then I broke the news of my pregnancy. Dad sat still in his armchair in complete silence the entire time, and Mom stood at the window with a hand covering her mouth, her eyes streaming with tears. They looked at me in. . .complete betrayal. I'd spent almost a year of my life lying to them about so many things, and not only that, I'd knowingly involved myself with the boy from the family who'd forced Micah away; the family responsible for us losing him.
“How could you?” Mom cried over and over again, sniffling. “How could you be so careless?”
My own tears had resumed falling, my red face so puffy and swollen by that point I barely recognized my own reflection.
We fought, we argued and we sobbed. Even my father got so angry he yelled how disappointed in me he was. He'd never shouted at me before, not once. I wasn't even sure I could remember him shouting at anyone.
When the time came to meet Nathan they tried to stop me from leaving, but there wasn't a person alive who could've kept me from him. I left, running all the way through the woods to our spot by the lake.
I was desperate to see him. All I needed was him. Everything would be okay as soon as I was back in his arms once more.
Tears were still trickling down my cheeks by the time I arrived. I doubted they'd be stopping anytime soon.
Nathan was already waiting for me. The second I saw him leaning against the trunk of a tree I ran straight for his arms.
But, for the first time ever. . .he rejected me. Nathan rejected me. Pulled away from my embrace and took a jerky step back.
Confused, I asked, “What's wrong?”
He looked up at me then for the first time and there was something. . .wrong with his face. He looked at me in a way he never had before. There was. . .disgust there. Maybe even hatred. And it was all aimed at me. That look right there on his face, it never should’ve been aimed at me. It never had before and I'd truly never expected it to be. Honestly, I hadn't even thought Nathan capable of a look like that.
Despite my misgivings, I tried to reach for him again. He swatted my arms away angrily. “Don't, Phee!”
His fury was paired with a wall of hurt, and I couldn't understand why. “Nathan, what happened?”
Was it his parents? Had they said something? Had they turned him against me?
He shoved a piece of paper my way. A letter. I read it, and he spat out the rest. Practically threw it in my face.
My heart broke. For Nathan. For my brother. Suddenly I understood more about Micah than I ever had before. About why he'd distanced himself from us. Guilt. It was all about misplaced guilt.
I shook my head and handed the letter back to Nathan, who crumpled it up and shoved it in his jeans pocket. “Nothing's changed, Nathan. My brother may have given yours the pills, but he didn't force him to take them. It was still Spencer's choi-”
“EVERYTHING'S CHANGED!” he roared, so loudly I flinched back in shock. “Your brother killed Spencer! He fucking killed him!”
“No!” I protested. “Your brother knew the risk of taking drugs. He. . .” Spinning in a helpless circle, I scrubbed at my face with my hands. Dropping them, I stepped towards Nathan, almost sobbing out loud when he retreated. “It doesn't matter, Nathan.”
“How can you say that?” he spat.
“Our families' pasts are not ours,” I reminded him of what he'd always insisted. “We can't let it destroy us, especially not now.”
But I could tell my words weren't breaking through the gigantic wall of loathing he'd built up around himself. The letter was still too fresh in his mind and he was allowing bitterness and resentment and anger control him. It made him ugly, hard. Cold. Just like his parents.
“I hate him,” he threw at me. “I hate your goddamned brother more than anyone on this fucking planet. I hate your family and. . .and just the sight of your face hurts me right now, Phee. Can't you see that?” Turning, he stalked away a few paces before twirling back to face me. His eyes were wet, his face red with rage. But then something new came over him; something calm. It was worse than the anger. Much worse. “I don't ever want to see you again. Or the baby, if it's even mine.”
I stumbled back, an involuntarily action, as if his words had been a physical slap. They'd been harsh, unforgiving, and devastated me to my very core. I could never before have imagined Nathan being so cruel to anyone, let alone me. It was unthinkable.
“Nathan. . .” I croaked helplessly.
He looked down his nose at me in a horrifyingly accurate imitation of his parents, then shook his head and he. . .he left. Just turned around and walked away, leaving me to fall apart alone. Completely alone.
I dropped down to my knees, barely feeling the sharp twigs and stones pressing into my skin. This time there were no tears. I was empty.
Nathan Alders had ripped away my soul.
+++
EVENTUALLY
I PICKED myself up off the forest floor, because no one else was going to do it for me. I managed to drag myself home to where my parents were waiting for me, but after taking one look at my face they let me go straight to my room and didn't say a thing for the rest of the night. Tears began falling again. They began and they didn't stop.
It felt like my life was over.
I stayed in bed crying for an entire week, only getting up when completely necessary. Mom came in to check on me multiple times a day, forcing me to eat, but we didn't talk. There was so much to say but neither of us could find the words.
And then it happened. I miscarried my baby and my heart broke again. It was only losing the baby that made me realize how much of a comfort to me it had become. The baby had been the last little piece of Nathan I had left. In that one week I'd come to love our baby, and losing it broke me.
I was completely, irrevocably broken.
Phee Quinlain would never be the same again.
Nathan didn't contact me the entire time, not once. Not even when I lost the baby, and I knew he'd been told; I'd overheard my mother making the painful call to his parents. She'd felt it her duty, and I'd appreciated that because he deserved to know and I don't think I would have made it through saying the words out loud. The two of them agreed to keep the whole scandal a secret. No one outside our families would ever need to know what had happened.
I wanted to call Nathan, ached with the need of it. But I couldn't. His last words to me by the lake that day echoed around inside my head and heart until they were the only thing I could hear, day and night. It was like a constant, living nightmare.
My parents could no longer look at me, and when they strongly suggested I went to stay with Aunt Ellie for a time while the dust settled, I wasn't even surprised. Of course they wanted rid of me. I also knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I would not be returning home to Norson Lake. Mom and Dad insisted the move was what was best for me, though I suspected they just wanted me gone. But by that point, the old Phee was dead and I no longer had the ability to care.
A piece of me died the day I lost my baby. The tears dried up, that empty feeling returned.
I became the empty girl for good.
Chapter 20
Nathan
TIME STOPS AS Phee walks away, leaving me standing there on the beach amongst the throng of dancers. For long, endless moments I stand there in shock, gaping after her retreating figure until she disappears around the back of the beach bar. The fiery red of her dress seems to burn my very eyes.
I had her in my arms, right here, just seconds ago. I had her, and now she's gone. She just. . .walked away from me when I know, I fucking know, she was feeling it too. She was feeling everything I am; every locked away, pent up emotion we've been trying to keep at bay. She was feeling me.
She left me standing here. Alone.
Just like you did to her all those years ago, a little voice whispers in the back of my mind, and I tell it to shut the hell up.
Because what. The actual. Fuck?
My friends around me are making a point of not staring, of trying to act like this isn't as awkward as it is. None of them look my way except Nash, sat over at the bar with Ivy on his lap. One hand is wrapped securely around her waist and the other holding onto a beer. He catches my eye, but there's no pity in his expression. Only challenge. He raises one dark eyebrow, daring me to stop being such a pussy and get shit done. If Ivy had walked away from him like that he wouldn't still be sat there at that bar, that's for fucking sure.
I get that all from one damn eyebrow.
And he's right.
Because no. Just no.
After having Phee back in my arms for most of the evening and hearing those things she whispered to me, I'm no longer going to be able to sit back and leave her be. I'm not letting her get away this time; I'm not okay with this shit anymore. Fuck it, I was never okay with it to begin with and I was kidding myself this whole time thinking I was; thinking I could stay away from Phee now I've had her back in my life. I can't do it, not now I've been near her again, felt her again, danced with her again. Not now I've kissed her again.
Stiffening in determination, I clench my fists and stalk after her, kicking up a cloud of sand in my wake. I follow her path around the back of the bar, wondering why the hell she chose here of all places to come. Was she looking to get fucking mugged?
It's darker around here without the lights of the bar to brighten the place up. There's just a small, sandy clearing, with a line of trees opposite the bar to block us from the quiet road beyond. The sound of music and voices quickly fade as I round the corner, finally catching sight of her.
I open my mouth, full on ready to go bat shit crazy on the stubborn little bitch and then make her admit she still has feelings for me, when I hear the unmistakable sound of a sob. It's her.
“I'm sorry,” she cries, her words heartfelt. She's facing away, and for a second I think she heard me arrive and is apologizing to me, but then I spot the cell held up to her ear. “I'm the most awful person in the world, Seth. . . I am. And I'm so truly sorry, but I can't marry you, I just can't. Coming home, it helped me remember who I am. I tried to pretend otherwise at first. God, I tried to pretend for so long, but I can't be the Ophelia you know anymore. The Phee that I am here. . .that's the real me. And the real me can't marry you. I'm so, so sorry.”
It takes me more time than it should to realize what's going on. To realize. . .what's fucking going on.
Phee left me standing there on that beach to call her fiancé. To end things with her fiancé.
Phee is breaking off her engagement.
I freeze up, and all I can do it stand there in a hopeful kind of shock, my mouth hanging open.
“Please don't cry,” she begs into the phone, swiping away at her own tears. Her shoulders hunch. “You're worth so much more than me, so much. . . No, Seth, I'm not. . . Of course I care about you. More than almost anyone.”
She stops to listen for a minute, shaking her head back and forth. “Because you deserve more than I can give you, and I should've admitted that a long time ago but I was selfish. Please stop. . . I. . .I'm sorry, Seth. I can't do this. I have to go.”
After she hangs up, her shoulders drop and begin to shake. It's a minute before she turns around and notices me still standing there.
Her eyes are glistening, in sadness and also relief, but the tears are no longer falling.
She's so fucking beautiful it hurts.
We stare at each other across the small, sandy clearing.
One heartbeat.
Two.
And then we fly towards one another. I don't know who makes the first move. It doesn't matter. I reach her and clutch her cheeks, pulling her face up to mine.
And then we're kissing.
I WAS A dick. An idiot. A mother fucking piece of shit asshole who didn't deserve to breathe the air I'd been gifted with.
Yeah, I knew that.
I'd just. . .I'd been hurting so goddamned much; so much that I hadn't been able to deal with it and I'd fallen into a pit of complete irrationality. It had turned me into something else entirely. The Nathan that had gone to see Phee at the lake that day, he'd been a monster. I'd turned against the one person I loved more than my own life, consumed with the need to lash out and make her hurt just as much as I'd been hurting. I'd become the worst version of myself, had become my very own nightmare.
The following days after reading the letter that caused me to destroy everything good about my life were dark. I isolated myself from my family, my friends. From the whole damn world. Even Gramps. I secluded myself inside my room; in a cold, empty, lonely little prison all of my own making. I refused to face anybody. I wasn't ready to talk about it, not with anyone. Hell, I wasn't even ready to fully process it inside my own brain, let alone try to make sense of it for someone else.
So I stayed down in that deep, dark hole I'd crawled into where nobody and nothing could reach me. Not even my own guilt.<
br />
I'm not sure how many days passed by while I lay on my bed and pretended the world didn't exist, but I remember watching the shadows on my walls grow longer and shorter as the moon rose and the sun fell and vice versa, again and again.
Perhaps it was what depression felt like, but I wasn't about to put a name to it.
And then one day my bedroom door opened. I was surprised when I opened my eyes to find my mother there, her arms folded in disapproval – I couldn't remember the last time Mom had visited me in my room. But my surprise only lasted a moment, because I'd kind of lost the ability to give a shit about anything.
“What?” I demanded sullenly when she made no move to speak.
For once, she didn't berate my bad attitude. There was something different about her that day, something. . .careful.
Picking her way distastefully around the mess on my floor, she came closer, taking a seat gingerly on the very edge of my bed. The powdery scent of her expensive perfume tickled my nostrils. “I have something to tell you.”
I waited. “Okay?”
“Phee's mother telephoned,” she began, and my heart lurched at the sound of her name.
“And. . ?” I couldn't think of any reason Phee's mom would have to call mine. They knew we were done. Mom had seen to that. Something began to eat away inside me.
Mom stared down at her hands. She was wringing them in her lap. Mom never fidgeted. “Phee. . .lost the baby, Nathan. She lost it.”
. . .
. .
.
For the longest time I said nothing. I couldn't speak. For a moment I couldn't even breathe. There was a lump trapped inside my throat preventing me from making any sound at all.
