Forever With You

by Beverley Kendall

  “Yes, it is. I don’t know what happened between you two, but don’t you think it’s better if you talked about it? Got if off your chest?”

  I tried! And I failed both times. Graham doesn’t want to hear anything I have to say. But instead of responding, I study my fingernails.

  “Em,” April coaxes. “It can’t be that bad.”

  I snort silently to myself. You wanna bet?

  “Do you realize you know everything about me? Everything about all my relationships, but you’ve kept me in the dark about your life. You never talk about your family, except your brothers. The only reason I know that your mom’s a famous modeling agent is because of what happened with Troy. The only boyfriend you’ve ever talked about was the guy you went out with at Berkeley, and you said that wasn’t serious. And you’ve never mentioned Graham. I wouldn’t know he even existed if we hadn’t run into him at the mall.”

  Well that was quite an indictment. She makes it sounds as if that’s due to my life being shrouded in secrecy as opposed to me being an intensely private person.

  You do shroud it in secrecy because you have something to hide.

  I peek up at her. “I’m a terrible friend, aren’t I?”

  Her expression softens. “Of course not. That’s not what I meant. I’m simply saying that I trust you and I hope you feel the same about me.”

  I reach for her slender hand and give it a squeeze. “I do trust you, April. You’re my best friend.”

  Staring deep into my eyes, she whispers, “Then talk to me. Tell me what happened between you two. Tell me what has him so mad.”

  I let out a shaky breath, feeling the walls around me crumbling. She’s making it almost impossible for me to say no to her, and I don’t know that I want to anymore. How many years have I kept this bottled up inside? Too long.

  Sadly, I can’t really talk to my family about it. They blame Graham for everything. Well, except for my mom. She’s the only one who accepts that me lying was the mitigating factor. And even if I’d wanted to, I dared not say anything about it to Heather, my best friend in high school. She and her mother were super close and Heather told her everything. And if it got out, my parents would have been humiliated and I’d have been labeled the slut of Oyster Bay High School. So I hadn’t breathed a word of it to anyone.

  April would be the first.

  I emit a heavy sigh before taking a plunge into uncertain confessional waters, praying the waters don’t turn out to be too deep. “I did something really bad when we were together, and he’s never forgiven me.”

  “You said you had sex,” she says, keeping her voice soft and regarding me with sympathetic eyes.

  Oh, that’s right. I told her that, didn’t I? Now I just need to summon up the courage to tell her the rest.

  “Stop it.”

  I give a slight start at her gentle reprimand. “Stop what?” I squeak, my voice reflecting my confusion.

  “Stop thinking about what to say and just tell me the truth. You think I don’t see your mind working a mile a minute as you weigh and measure what you should tell me? My mom and sister used to do that to me all the time and it doesn’t work. As one of my best friends, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t give me the sanitized version.”

  I offer her an anemic smile. “I can’t put anything past you, can I?”

  Tenderness softens her gaze. “No, you can’t and I don’t know why you even try.”

  I fall silent. Keeping her friendship is a pretty good reason.

  She tilts her head to the side and studies me closely. “What is it, Em? What are you afraid of?”

  Unable to meet her gaze, I stare blindly down at my pink cotton shorts. “What I did was horrible,” I mumble.

  “And you think I’m going to judge you for it?”

  I don’t look up or respond.

  “Did you kill someone?”

  I peer up. “No.”

  A teasing smile plays across her lips. “Armed robbery?”

  A reluctant smile pulls at the corners of my mouth. “No.”

  She laughs softly, her green eyes sparkling with subdued mirth. “Then you have nothing to worry about. Although, if you killed or robbed someone, I’m sure you’d have a perfectly logical explanation for it. You know, like self-defense or your Robin Hood complex.”

  “You have more faith in me than you should.”

  “I know that no matter what you did, you’re a good person, and I’m lucky to call you my friend.”

  Okay, now she’s going to make me cry. God, I love her.

  “I wasn’t honest with him when we were dating,” I blurt out before my courage fails me.

  “And by not honest you mean…?”

  Ripping off the Band-Aid is the only way to do it. “I lied to him about my age and got him thrown in jail for statutory rape when my parents found out.”

  Her mouth snaps shut as the gravity of what I just divulged sinks in. “Wow. Okay.” Her response comes after a prolonged silence.

  I shift uncomfortably in my seat and continue. “Now you can understand why he hates me so much. Why he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

  “But, Em, you were only…”

  “Sixteen,” I supply. “I was going to turn seventeen in three months.”

  “You were young. You didn’t mean to get him in trouble, right?”

  “Of course not. I was head over heels in love with him.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Twenty-one.” He’d only turned twenty-one two months before and that had made things worse under the law.

  “What happened?” April asks, assuming a cross-legged position on the couch.

  I grimace. This is the hard part. The part I don’t like to think about. “He spent three weeks in jail before the charges were dropped. I went to visit him while he was locked up but he refused to see me or take any of my calls. He spoke to me once after he got out and basically told me to leave him alone. I didn’t, though. I kept calling and texting until he changed his phone number. A while later, I found out he’d moved back to England.”

  I’d cried every day for a solid week after that.

  “Wowee.” April looks somewhat dazed. “I expected major drama, but not the epic New York Housewives kind.”

  A wave of relief washes over me. I’m not sure what I expected but I didn’t expect her to take it this well.

  “I guess he’s back.” Then her eyes become saucers as if a thought just occurred to her. “Wait, did you know he was back?”

  My first instinct is to lie, which is beyond sad. I catch myself just in time.

  “I heard his dad had died and that his mother wanted him back stateside.”

  “What do you mean you heard? From who? Did you have mutual friends?”

  As if I didn’t know that would be her next question. “Someone,” I say, reluctant to reveal this part. Not even my family knows about it.

  Grabbing the cushion from behind her, April uses it to hit me lightly on my upper arm. “Spill.” Then she slaps her hand over her mouth and exclaims, “Oh my God, you’ve been stalking him, haven’t you? You knew he’d be at the mall.”

  I don’t have to feign offense as I yank the cushion from her grasp and pull it tight to my chest. “Seriously, April, I did not follow him to the mall. Whatever you think of me, I’m not psycho.” Stalkerish but not psycho.

  She snorts a laugh. “I’ll be the judge of that after you tell me how you just happen to know what’s going on with his folks.”

  Seeing I’ve told her the worst, I might as well come clean. “I’ve kept in touch with his mom.”

  April goes stock-still, her back rigid and her mouth agape. “You kept in touch with his mother?” Her question is a hushed whisper.

  I give a solemn nod.

  She blinks owlishly at me and gulps. “His mother talks to you?”

  That’s the real shocker. That his mother would speak to me after what I’d put her son through.

  “Believe me
,” I state dryly, “no one was more surprised than I was that she didn’t slam the door in my face when I showed up at her house.” Just thinking about it now makes me wince. I can remember exactly how desperate I’d been to get in touch with Graham. I’d stumbled over my apology and then she’d held me—a girl she was meeting for the first time—gently patting my back as I’d bawled like a baby.

  “She didn’t hate me, and that was like a gift to me when my whole world felt like it was falling apart. She’s a wonderful woman.”

  April readily nods in agreement. “I’d say. Not many mothers would—you know—be so forgiving.”

  “What really surprised me was that she didn’t even hate my dad for what he did. As a parent with a child, she said she understood where he was coming from, although she thought that given the circumstances, he took things too far.” I can’t say I agree with her on that. What my father did was wrong. He didn’t have to have Graham arrested, especially after I’d begged him not to do anything.

  Especially since it was all my fault.

  But did he listen?

  Nooooo. Asshole.

  Yes, he’s my dad and I still love him. But he can be such an asshole.

  “Is that why you don’t go home much? Why you don’t talk about your family?”

  “My mom’s not too bad. She gets that I was mostly responsible for what happened.” I pause and sigh. “But my dad is a whole other ballgame. He’s the one who forced the issue and got his DA friend in New York county to bring charges.” And I still haven’t forgiven him for that. Can’t imagine a time that I ever will.

  April makes a face. “Ugh. That must have been horrible for you.”

  “Worse for Graham. He’s the one who spent time in jail because of it.”

  “I know,” she says softly. “I’m talking about how guilty you must have felt.”

  I bite the inside of my mouth until I feel pain.

  “How you must still feel.”

  Compassion floods her thickly lashed eyes, causing tears to prick the backs of mine.

  “You saw him, April. He hates me. And I don’t think there’s anything I can do or say to make things right. Not in his eyes.” And it’s that feeling, that knowledge that’s been eating away at me the last four years. Needing to make it up to him…somehow. Make his life better any way I can. And then one day, maybe, I’ll be relieved of this guilt I’ve been carrying around.

  “Wait, is that why you transferred to Warwick? Because his mother told you he was moving back?”

  Absolutely not. “I came back because this is home and I wasn’t happy at Berkeley.”

  When I graduated high school, I’d wanted to move as far away from my parents as possible. My acceptance to Berkeley had seemed heaven sent, and it helped that they’d thought a change of scenery was just what I needed. They’d also liked that I’d be close to my brother Tyler, who’d taken a job out there after graduating from Cornell the year before. But living on the west coast hadn’t been the panacea I’d hoped, and I’d ended up transferring to Warwick.

  “Anyway, his mother only told me she wanted him to move back not that he was going to. There was always a chance he’d stay in Chelsea and run his father’s pub.”

  “Yes, but would you have transferred if you hadn’t thought it was a possibility? I mean you transferred in the middle of your sophomore year. That’s kind of abrupt. Why not finish the year?”

  “Because I was miserable,” I state, a trace of exasperation in my voice. “But if what you’re really asking is if I wanted to see him if he came back, then the answer is yes. I wanted to apologize to his face.”

  She watches me for a few beats before she asks, “Are you sure you didn’t know he was going to be at the mall?”

  I suck in an aggrieved breath. “No. How many times do I have to tell you? I am not stalking him. I’d already transferred to Warwick when his mother knew for a fact that he was moving back. Plus, it’s not like she told me where he’d be living and I never asked.” Even though I’d desperately wanted to. As it is, the subject of Graham rarely comes up during our conversations. Mrs. Collins usually calls to see how I’m doing. No doubt checking to make sure I haven’t steered my life off a cliff.

  Chuckling, April holds her hands up in mock surrender. “Alright, I was just checking.”

  I’ll never admit that I tried to Google his address after I saw him at the mall and came up with nothing.

  “He works at Zenith’s.” Might as well get that out there too. She’s going to find out eventually.

  Her eyes widen in surprise. “No way.”

  “Yes, way.”

  A look of comprehension dawns on her face. “Oh my God, he was there the last time we went, wasn’t he? I knew something was off with you when Troy and I came back from dealing with the Colin stuff.”

  “He was bartending.”

  “Damn. I should have gone up to the bar.”

  “And I thanked God you didn’t. I didn’t want you to see him.”

  April sits up straight. “Why? I wouldn’t have made a big deal of it.”

  “Yes you would.”

  She considers it and then admits, “Okay, maybe I would’ve just a bit. But at least I’d have understood your change of mood.”

  “C’mon, I wasn’t that bad.” I’d gotten quieter, that’s all. And since she’s never known me to be the life of the party—not even close—I didn’t think it was that marked a difference.

  She gives me her are-you-kidding-me look, brows raised, head tilted to the side. “Why do you think I’m treating everyone to dinner tonight? How else was I going to get Troy out of the house to give us time to talk? It’s a sacrifice for me not to be cuddled up with my man right this second.”

  I choke out a laugh. The girl is diabolical.

  “You’re welcome.” She gives me a wink, a smug smile on her face.

  “It isn’t enough that you go at it like rabbits every night?”

  “And sometimes twice a night and once in the morning. Jealous?” she asks, all smiles.

  “Damn right I am,” I playfully grouse.

  “So what are you going to do about the Brit?”

  Her question has a sobering effect. What am I going to do about Graham? I got him where I wanted but not how I want, hating me with every fiber of his being.

  I shrug and swing my legs from beneath me and onto the carpeted floor. My feet have been asleep for a couple minutes and it’s getting super uncomfortable now. “I would like to apologize but—well, you’ve seen him. And he wasn’t any more receptive at Zenith’s. He can barely stand to look at me.”

  April grabs the other cushion from behind her, plops it between her crossed legs and asks innocently, “Is that all you want?”

  I know what she must be thinking. “I’m not trying to get back together with him.”

  However, her rapid-fire denial says the opposite. “I didn’t say you were.”

  “It’s the guilt. You don’t know what it’s like knowing you ruined someone else’s life.” It nearly debilitated me for a whole year. Junior year in high school was a blur. I ended up missing so many classes, I had to make up two courses in summer school. My parents hadn’t known what to do with me. Only contact with Jennifer—Graham’s mom—had kept me sane. Knowing that he was doing alright with his father in England had been a weight off my shoulders.

  “You can’t say his life is ruined. I know it’s crappy that he spent three weeks locked up but you said the charges were dropped and nothing more ever came of it. Things could have been a lot worse.”

  “He should never have had to go through it in the first place. And he did because of me. He went back to England because of what happened. He didn’t even finish his degree, and that’s also because of me.”

  April leans over and places her hand on my arm. “Sweetie, you’ve got to stop beating yourself up over this.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “Well it’s obvious you need to get closure. If apologizing to him
is going to help you get that, then you need to do it. Talk to him.”

  I roll my eyes. If it were that easy. “It’s hard to talk to someone who doesn’t want to have anything to do with you. Do you know how I know? I’ve tried.”

  “Alright then, make him listen to you. Maybe it’ll be enough to get it out—the apology. Just remember, you don’t have any control over what he decides to do with it. How he handles it.”

  Which is precisely why I haven’t stepped foot in Zenith’s again. I’ve been more than tempted to go there and force a confrontation. Preferably, catch him when he’s either going in or leaving for the day. I haven’t worked up the nerve yet, mostly because I’m terrified of being shot down again.

  “What if I apologize and he doesn’t say anything? Or what if he walks away before I can finish? Or what if he won’t stand still long enough—”

  “And what if a meteor hits tomorrow and obliterates all life on earth,” April interjects with a nice bit of fatalistic melodrama.

  I sigh and loosen my hands from around the cushion.

  “Seriously, Em, you’re looking for trouble. Yes, anything can happen and you have no idea what he’s going to say.”

  I stare at her. Has she lost her freakin’ mind? “April, he told you to make sure I stayed the fuck away from him. Did that somehow slip your mind?”

  “He didn’t say anything to you at the bar though, right?”

  “Hold on, I’m trying to follow your logic. You think because he didn’t curse me out at the bar, he won’t if I manage to get him alone?”

  “I’m giving him a pass for the bit at the mall. He was shocked to see you and he did spend time in jail. That’s harsh. I can see him still being pissed since you guys hadn’t had contact for years. Then you caught him flatfooted at his job. Now he knows you live here or thereabouts. I’m sure he won’t be that surprised to see you again.”

  “That’s exactly my point,” I exclaim, the pitch of my voice on a steady rise. “Who knows what he’s going to do or what he might say.”

  “Sweetie, at this point you only need time to say two words. I’m sorry. You can get that out in two seconds flat. Everything beyond that is—I don’t know, bonus.”

  She does have a point. I could have said just that the two times I’ve seen him. My problem is I was trying to feel him out, gauge his response. And that’s more about me than it is about him. Me feeling better about myself.