The Pain in Loving You

by Steiner, Kandi

  He didn’t look at me, of course.

  I should have been used to it, after the way he disappeared last week and how he’d dutifully ignored me since our day at the lake. He hadn’t gone back to his place, staying at the house with me, Oliver, and Morgan, instead — but still, he’d been lively and normal when it was just the three of them, but practically silent when I joined in the conversation, and almost immediately after I did, he found an excuse to get up and do something suddenly important.

  And honestly, how could I blame him?

  In my need to talk to him about that day, to tell him what Morgan had confessed to me, I couldn’t just leave it alone. I couldn’t just stop at let’s be friends. Instead, I’d pushed him. I’d forced myself into his space and demanded to know what he would have done had the circumstances been different.

  And the answer had fucked us both.

  I hadn’t been able to go even one minute without thinking of the way his hands felt in my wet hair, or the familiar scent of his breath on my lips, or the way his voice had trembled when he told me he would have run to me, held me, and never let me go.

  I would have never let you go.

  It was torture — absolute masochism. I asked him what he would have done in another life, and his answer showed us what could have been.

  But it couldn’t be — not now. Not when I had Jacob and he had Azra and so much bad blood had passed between us over the last several years. There were so many ways I didn’t even know the man he was now, the man he’d grown to be — and he certainly didn’t know much about who I was.

  That was then, and this is now.

  Still… it felt like he did know me, like I knew him, like no matter how much time and distance had passed between us, we would always be connected in a way that nothing would ever be fully hidden from the other.

  And after what he said, after knowing what could have happened had circumstances been different… could we really be friends?

  I sighed, watching him walk across the yard and jump in his truck, firing it to life without a glance in my direction. He was avoiding me like the plague, because he knew as well as I did that any time we were together, it was trouble.

  He was doing the right thing.

  And yet all I yearned to do was the wrong one.

  I shook my head, angry with myself as I trotted over to the Escalade just as Morgan and Oliver climbed in. But when I opened the back door, the overflowing box leaning against it nearly tumbled out and flattened me. I caught it just in time, and Morgan gasped, hopping out to help me shove it back in.

  “Uh,” I said when we had it contained, pointing to the completely full car. “Where am I supposed to sit?”

  Morgan pointed across the yard, and I didn’t have to look to know that little finger was pointing at Tyler’s truck. “We left the front seat open in the truck,” she said, as if it were obvious. “No reason to have three in one car and only one in the other. Besides,” she said, lowering her voice a little as worry etched itself on her face. “I know after what I told you, maybe you guys are trying to be friends again. And I really, really want that. Maybe the drive will help.”

  I had to fight every urge in my body not to roll my eyes up to the sky, or sigh, or huff, or grab my best friend and shake some sense into her. Instead, I smiled, nodding and squeezing her shoulder before I made my way to Tyler’s truck.

  He seemed just as surprised as me when I climbed into the passenger seat, and all I had to do was shrug and point to his sister for him to understand.

  Still, his hands gripped the steering wheel like he wanted to break it as I strapped my seatbelt on, and when we all pulled out of the driveway, I knew it would be a long road trip to the Cape.

  • • •

  An hour passed by torturously slow, with an old Eagles’s album playing on the radio and the New England summer landscape flitting by. I watched out the window as the rolling hills and thick, lush green trees slowly gave way to the city, and only when the buildings stretched up around us did I chance a look at the driver.

  Tyler still wore the look of frustration that had settled over him when I climbed in the truck, his brows bent, two perfect lines creasing his forehead and his knuckles all but white now with how they gripped the steering wheel. He seemed to sense me watching him, because he tried to relax, but failed, glancing at me before his brows furrowed even deeper.

  “So, this is just how it’s going to be for the remaining two hours of the drive?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest. “You’re going to break the steering wheel, or give yourself an ulcer, or both, at this rate.”

  Tyler let out an unamused sigh, shifting his grip on the wheel to try to appear more relaxed.

  I cocked a brow, but still — no answer.

  “Come on,” I said on a sigh. “What happened to us trying to be friends?”

  Tyler barked out a small, almost nonexistent laugh at that — one that came out like a puff of smoke from his chest. He raised an eyebrow at me, like I already knew the answer to the question I’d asked.

  And I did know it.

  But I didn’t want to accept it.

  I sighed, casting my gaze out the window again, and my chest squeezed as we rolled through Boston. In another world — the one where Tyler never let me go — I would have been here. I would have gone to college in this city, built a life with him, with Morgan.

  I almost laughed out loud at myself for the picture I’d painted, because I also could have moved to Boston for school and then been dumped by Tyler when he realized he didn’t want anything serious with his little sister’s best friend.

  Why was I so latched onto an alternate reality that could have gone a million different ways?

  But there was another life I pictured when I was in Boston, too.

  One with my mother.

  My heart ached, and I shifted in my seat, which drew a cautious glance from Tyler before his eyes were back on the road again.

  “My mom used to tell me when I was in high school that when she got through rehab and came back for me, this is where we’d go.”

  The words came from my mouth without me realizing I needed to say them, and they felt like a paper cut to my tongue.

  “She said she’d pick me up, pack up our things, and we’d move to the city. She said we could live together while I went to college and while she built a career, and we’d explore all the places we’d read about, like the museum of science, and go see the Red Sox play at Fenway, and stroll the harbor, and eat cannolis in the North End.” I smiled, remembering just how she’d said it, how her voice was light and airy and she’d even said cannolis with an Italian accent that she completely botched. “She made all these promises, and though it seems impossible to me now, I can still remember what it was like to be the little girl who believed her.”

  I felt Tyler’s eyes watching me as I looked out the window, but I didn’t dare return his gaze.

  “You know it’s her loss,” he said after a while, the first words since our day at the lake. “She missed out on all your growth in high school — all the cross-country meets you dominated, the way you cared for others more than yourself, how you fought so hard to be valedictorian and managed to pull it off, your award-winning morning show.”

  I chuckled at award winning because it had been he who had printed out a certificate he made with Word that said the morning show I did every day at Bridgechester Prep was The Best High School Morning Show to Ever Exist, Ever.

  I’d lit that piece of paper on fire one night in college, a night when I was wrapped up in thinking about Tyler and wanted to do everything I could to try to erase him.

  “I told you this the day she left, and I’ll say it a million times until you believe it,” Tyler said, after a moment, pulling me from my memory. “She’s an idiot for not wanting to be a part of your life, and that’s on her, not on you.”

  I looked at him then, and he watched me for a beat before pulling his eyes back to the road.

  �
��You’ve been through so much hell, Jaz,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, living with your aunt in that little apartment, dealing with your parents — or lack thereof. And you never asked for anything,” he continued. “Even when you had two spoiled best friends who threw a fit if we didn’t get whatever we wanted.”

  I smiled. “You weren’t so bad.”

  He arched a brow at me like he knew better, but a smile settled onto his face, and he loosened his grip on the steering wheel just a touch.

  I marked it as a win.

  “I didn’t really realize it, not then. I couldn’t wrap my head around everything you were going through because I just had no idea of what it was like. But when you left,” he said, and he paused for a long time, letting those words hang between us. “I don’t know, I started thinking back a lot. And I thought about what I was going through, but even more, what you were going through.” He looked at me then. “You’re the strongest person I know, Jasmine. You’ve been through darkness most people never have to face, trudged through the mud, been hurt by the people you trusted most.”

  Those words seemed to strike us both, and they lingered between us for a long time before he continued.

  “And still, somehow, you persevere. You come out even better on the other side.” He smiled, but it slipped quickly. “You’re a warrior.”

  I chuckled, glancing out the window as Boston faded away and we continued south. “I don’t feel like a warrior,” I confessed. “Most times, I feel like a lost little girl, like I’m trying to find my way home but keep coming up short.”

  Tyler nodded when I looked at him. “I know that feeling,” he said softly.

  I waited for him to continue, but he fell back into silence, and for some reason, I was desperate to hold onto this part of him that was opening up again. I didn’t want to fight, I didn’t want to have all this tension between us.

  And I realized, distantly, that what I wanted, I couldn’t have.

  But maybe there was something in the middle that I could.

  “Where’s your favorite place that you’ve traveled?”

  Tyler raised a brow at my question, but I didn’t miss the smirk that climbed along with it. “Iceland.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded, shifting hands on the steering wheel, and I thought I saw him relax marginally — which I took as a sign that I was breaking through the ice. “It’s beautiful there, and the people are so nice. I swear, it felt like coming back to a place I’d lived my whole life rather than visiting a country I’d never been to before.”

  “That’s how I felt in Italy,” I said, thinking back to my solo trip there after college. I smiled. “I remember sitting outside at this quaint little restaurant in Florence, eating the best truffle ravioli I’d ever had in my life, drinking an entire bottle of red wine all by myself and just listening to people as they walked by. I had no idea what they were saying, obviously, but… I could imagine. You know? I could look at their smiles and hear their laughter and feel alive with them.”

  “There’s nothing else that makes me feel the way traveling does,” Tyler added. “It’s magical.”

  “Where do you want to go that you haven’t yet?”

  Tyler scoffed. “Everywhere.”

  “If you had to pick just one place.”

  He paused, chewing the inside of his lip as he thought, and the way the sun came through the windows of the truck, the way his hair was disheveled and unruly, the way the Sagamore bridge sprawled before us, welcoming us to the Cape as it always did — it grounded me like nothing ever had before. My stomach tightened at the warmth of it, at being in a car with the boy I grew up with, heading back to a place where we had made so many memories.

  “French Polynesia,” he said.

  “Shut up.”

  “What?”

  I shook my head, smiling like a doofus. “Those islands have been number one on my bucket list since I watched a travel documentary on them in college.”

  “No shit?” Tyler grinned, and the sight made my heart flutter. “Dad sailed there with one of his buddies when he was younger. He has a whole album of pictures, and an old VHS tape that he showed me when I was in middle school. The water…”

  “Amazing, right? I have to see it in person.” I shrugged on a laugh. “Who knows. Maybe we could all go together one day, the whole Wagner family.”

  The words were out of my mouth before I realized the implication behind them — that I was still a part of that family. And I knew that I was, in every way but blood, but the way I’d casually said let’s take a family trip! made it seem like I’d be back, like there was more of this in our future.

  Like we could take a trip together — his parents, Morgan and Oliver, him and Azra, me and Jacob — and everything be just peachy.

  Tyler’s grin faltered a little, but there was a dazzle of something in his eyes when he glanced at me. Hope, maybe? And he said, “That would be the trip of a lifetime.”

  He smiled, and I smiled, and that hope I thought I’d seen in his eyes flittered through me, too.

  Suddenly, my phone — which was tucked in the cup holder between us — shrilled and buzzed violently, vibrating the whole console.

  The sound was so abrupt compared to how softly we’d been speaking that I jumped out of my skin trying to silence it, and when I did, I stared at Jacob’s face smiling at me from the screen.

  I glanced at Tyler, who had his hands stiff on the steering wheel again, looking at the road with the same narrow-eyed focus as before.

  “Hey, you,” I answered, shifting to the other side of the truck like if I spoke quietly and leaned away, I could keep from Tyler the fact that I was talking to my boyfriend.

  Why?

  “Hey, gorgeous. You on the road?”

  I cleared my throat. “Yep, should be there in a couple hours.”

  “Good,” he said, and a pause stretched between us. “I wish I could be there with you. I miss you so much.”

  Why did it feel impossible to breathe, let alone say those words back? I felt Tyler like he was the air around me, pushing in, suffocating instead of offering oxygen.

  “I miss you, too,” I managed.

  And I did — I did miss Jacob. I missed our lazy Sunday mornings together in his apartment, missed the warm summer afternoons we spent riding bikes by the beach, missed the way he felt so right and so uncomplicated before I got on the plane that took me back to this place.

  “I’ll see you in just a few days,” he reminded me. “And then we can explore the Cape and get all dressed up and celebrate Morgan and Oliver.” I could hear his smile through the phone. “And I’ll get to dance with my girl, and then take her home and do filthy things to her.”

  Heat flushed my cheeks so fast and furious that I pressed my cold fingertips to the skin, glancing at Tyler like he could hear.

  When I didn’t respond, Jacob laughed. “You’re in the car with other people, aren’t you?”

  “Sure am,” I said, and this time a genuine smile found my lips, because I could picture Jacob’s grin, how devilish and seductive he could be when he teased me.

  “Well, I’ll let you go, then. I just wanted to hear your voice. And make you blush in front of your friends.”

  “You succeeded.”

  He chuckled again, but then a longing sigh left him. “Alright, babe. I love you. Let me know when you make it.”

  “I love you, too,” I whispered, and then we ended the call, and I held my phone with both hands in my lap, my eyes focused somewhere in the distance outside the passenger side window.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  Guilt and shame swirled in me like a raging storm, taking their turns pummeling me from every angle. Here I was, digging and pining and doing everything I could to be close to Tyler, to talk to him, to feed that connection and chemistry that had always existed between us.

  All under the pretense of being friends, when I knew in my heart it was a pathetic lie.

  I d
idn’t look at Tyler again. I didn’t try to push the let’s be friends point again, either. And I didn’t entertain the thought I’d had, thin as smoke, just before Jacob called, that we could somehow exist in this friendly, neutral territory without anyone else getting hurt in the process.

  Because that call from Jacob had been a wake-up call, and Tyler and I both already understood the truth without saying a single word.

  Now that we knew what we did, now that we’d cleared the air, now that I knew he wanted me back then just as much as I’d wanted him — it wasn’t the same.

  I couldn’t be just friends with him.

  And I couldn’t be more.

  Which meant we only had one option of what we could be.

  Nothing.

  And that word sank into my skin like a tattoo with each new mile we drove, until I could no longer ignore it or pretend it wasn’t true.

  Chapter Twelve

  WHEN WE FINALLY MADE it to the Cape, Tyler parked his truck in the driveway of one of the three-story cottages we’d rented for the party and he bolted out of the truck like it was on fire. He’d already given quick hugs to his parents and shoved his hands into his pockets with his feet moving him toward the beach before I’d even opened the passenger side door.

  I watched him go, watched the way the muscles of his back shifted under his t-shirt and the sea breeze blew through his hair, but it was only a millisecond before Morgan was at my side, barking out orders to everyone around for what to grab out of the truck and where to take it.

  “Glad you two made it safely,” Robert said, pulling me into his side for a hug before he grabbed the first box out of the truck.

  Amanda had me in her arms next. “You look as beat as we were after our drive out the other day. Why don’t you run up and get showered, you’ll feel good as new.” She pulled back with a smile, and I loved the way she looked in that moment — hair in a messy ponytail, glasses on her nose, not a stitch of makeup on. She was in beach mode, and I realized that when she looked like this, I saw every feature Morgan got from her.