The Secret History of Us

by Jessi Kirby

  I’m sitting there, staring at the photo, when my phone buzzes with a text from Paige.

  Everything okay? Worried about you. Call me please???

  I stare at it a moment, then hit the button to call her back.

  She answers right away. “Hey—is everything okay? You’ve been MIA for the last couple of days, and Matt said you’re not answering his calls or texts either, and I was just worried about you. What’s going on?”

  “I’m fine,” I say, picturing them driving away together, and thinking I should probably ask her the same thing. But something in me decides to let it go. “Sorry,” I say. “We did family movie night last night, and then I had to work today. I just haven’t really had a chance to call.”

  “Gotcha. That makes sense. How was your first day? Did Sam take advantage and order you around all day?”

  “Not too much. I was actually out delivering most of the time, so it wasn’t bad.”

  “That’s good!” she says brightly.

  The line goes quiet, and I still have so much to tell her, but I ask her a question instead.

  “Hey—this is kind of random, but did you ever take a picture of me with my camera?”

  Paige laughs, and I hope this means the answer is yes. All this would be so much easier if her answer is yes. She would know what was going on with me if the answer is yes.

  “I’ve taken lots of pictures of you,” she says.

  “I mean with my actual camera.”

  “The old one you used to lug around everywhere? Liv, what are you . . . ?”

  “Never mind,” I say, and I try to keep the disappointment out of my voice. “I was just going through some old pictures, and there was one I really liked that I thought you might’ve taken.”

  “I doubt it. You never let anyone else touch that camera.” I think about it, and she’s right. I didn’t trust anyone with it. Especially not to take pictures of me. “Anyway,” she says, “are you and Matt still gonna hang out tomorrow? He said you guys made plans the other day, but he hadn’t heard back from you.”

  “Yeah, I . . . I need to call him back next.”

  “You want me to come over and help you get ready again?”

  “No—I mean, that’s okay. I’m good.”

  “Well, I’m here if you need me, even just for moral support.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And give me a call after. Let’s hang out.”

  “I will.”

  “Good. Love you, Liv.”

  “Love you too.”

  I hang up and take a deep breath. Get ready to call Matt next. We haven’t spoken since he dropped me off after the interview, so I’m not sure what to expect. He answers on the first ring too.

  “Liv, hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “How are you?” he asks. “How’d your first day of work go?”

  “Fine, it was good.”

  “Good.”

  There’s a long pause on the line.

  “So did you still wanna hang out tomorrow after you get off work?” he asks.

  “Yeah, I do. I’m off at three, so maybe pick me up at three thirty?”

  “Sure. That sounds good.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Okay,” he repeats.

  We both laugh.

  “See you tomorrow, Liv.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  I hear him laugh again as I hang up, and I hope this isn’t the way the whole thing goes tomorrow. I think of what he said to Paige, about both of us trying. He still is. And if he’s willing to try for us, then I think I am too, but I need to see him again to know for sure.

  I get up to get in the shower, but remember my necklace in my pocket. I don’t want to lose it again, so take it out and set it next to the pictures. And then, for good measure, I repeat the little poem in my mind.

  I sit there a moment, phone in my hand. And then I tap the Instagram button and scroll through my own feed for the umpteenth time, looking through all the photos of me and Matt for I don’t know what. A shot that’ll make me excited to see him tomorrow? A picture of us that’ll evoke something familiar in me? I’ve already memorized the first frames that show up, so I keep scrolling, back, and back, looking for anything that might have that kind of effect. Anything that will convince me that we are still right for each other. That I actually should still be trying.

  And then I land on something. A photo I hadn’t paid any attention to before. Hadn’t even seen—maybe because it’s one of the only shots not filled with smiling faces. I click on it to get a better look.

  This one is just of the sky and a crazy swirl of clouds, lit from beneath by the setting sun. It’s beautiful, a breathtaking moment, and I wonder if this is one of the shots Chloe was talking about, where I was working on capturing light. I examine the fiery horizon, and the dusky ocean, and then something that’s just barely in the frame catches my eye. It looks almost like it could be a mast, and there is a hand resting on it. I look down to see what I wrote about it, but there is no caption. It’s the only one, out of them all, that has no caption.

  But looking at it now, there’s that feeling again, that this means something.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE NEXT DAY, work goes by in a blur of deliveries that don’t go very well. I make mistakes, get lost, take too long, because I’m not really there. I’m in my mind, still sorting through conversations and stories and pictures and details. I try not to feel frustrated, try to just go with the now, like my dad said, but today it feels like everything I need to know is right there below the surface, beneath some invisible, impenetrable barrier that’s in place for me alone.

  After work, I shower and change but don’t have time to put on any makeup or do my hair like Paige did before Matt arrives to pick me up, and his surprise shows on his face when I answer the door.

  “Hi,” he says, with an awkward smile. “You ready to go, or did you need more time?”

  “I’m ready—unless I need to dress up. Do I need to dress up?”

  He shakes his head. “No. You’re perfect just like that.”

  We get into his truck, I remember how to work the seat belt, and all of it feels more familiar this time.

  “So,” I say, as we drive out of the neighborhood, “where are we headed?” I try to keep my tone light. This is the first of many questions I need to ask him.

  He smiles. “You’ll see. It’s kind of a surprise.”

  “Okay.”

  We’re both quiet as he pulls onto the highway that heads north, out of town, then he glances over at me. “So. How was work?”

  “Busy. Crazy. How was yours?”

  “It was good.” He smiles. “Finally got this little guy who was terrified of the water to let go of the wall and swim halfway across the pool to me. He was pretty proud, so that was a win.”

  “Aw. He’s gonna remember you for that.”

  I cringe even as the words come out of my mouth.

  Matt glances over at me. “Maybe. I mean, I hope so.”

  He drives, and I look out the window, and it’s so quiet I roll mine down, just to have something other than the silence between us because I can’t think of anything to say. At least, nothing that I’m ready to say yet.

  “So this place we’re going,” he says finally. “It’s where I took you on our second date. You packed a picnic, and we just sat on the beach and ate and hung out, and I was thinking it would be nice to do that again.” He looks at me. “Does that sound okay? I mean, we can do something else if you want.”

  “No,” I say. “That sounds really nice. You should’ve told me, though—I would’ve packed us a picnic again.”

  “I took care of it,” he says, and motions to the backseat of the truck.

  Sitting there on the seat is a neatly folded blanket and picnic basket.

  “You did that?”

  “I had a little help,” he says. He looks at me. “Paige.”

  “Ah. She’s good with that sort of thing.” I laugh
a little. “She probably helped me out with it the first time.”

  “Maybe,” he says.

  We’re both quiet, and the silence stretches so tight you could burst it with a pin. We both start to say something.

  “I’m not really—”

  “We don’t have to—”

  We stop. Laugh awkwardly. Matt looks at me. “Sorry. What were you gonna say?”

  Now I wish I’d just let it be. He looks so nervous. But I don’t know if I’m actually up for a picnic—or trying to re-create our second date. I clear my throat. “I just . . . I’m not very hungry, so I don’t know if—”

  “It’s okay,” he says quickly. “We don’t have to go all the way up there. It was just an idea. Just a place to go.”

  I glance up the road and see a park near the beach. “Can we maybe just park over there? Take a walk or something?”

  “Sure, yeah.” He takes the next exit, pulls into the parking lot of the beach park, and shuts the truck off. Looks over at me like he’s waiting for a cue to follow.

  As soon as I reach for my door handle, he does the same. We get out, and he lets me lead, which I do, to a bench at the edge of the sand. I’m not quite sure what I want to ask him first, but I can feel myself working up the nerve to start. I think he must be able to feel it too, because when we sit, he swallows hard and then looks at me.

  “Is everything okay with you? You seem . . .”

  “I haven’t really seemed like myself to you, have I?”

  “That’s not what I meant, I just . . .”

  “I know.” I look out at the ocean, and the whitecaps coming in with the wind. “I guess I’m not. But I’m okay. I think.”

  I honestly don’t know, and trying to explain it isn’t going to be easy. I take a deep breath, then force myself to look at him. “There are some things that have been . . . that I’ve been thinking about . . .” I look down at my hands. “There’s just a lot that I don’t understand, or that doesn’t make sense to me right now.”

  Matt looks nervous when he nods. “Me too.”

  “This is gonna seem strange, but I need to ask you something,” I say. I take the picture of me out of my purse and hand it to him. “Did you take this picture of me?” I ask. I try to ignore the feeling that I already know the answer.

  He takes it and looks at it. Shakes his head. “Wow, no. I wish I did, though. It’s really pretty.” He hands it back to me. “You really don’t know who took it?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  A wave rises in front of us, and we’re both quiet as we watch it crash on the shore.

  “I need to ask you something else, then.”

  “Okay,” Matt says slowly. His voice matches the sudden seriousness of my own.

  “Were we happy before the accident? You and me?” The words come out before I have a chance to choose them more carefully.

  Matt looks about as ready to answer this as I felt to ask it.

  “I . . . yeah, I mean we . . .” He fumbles. Bites his lip. Looks at me. “What do you mean?”

  He looks a little wounded by the question, and I feel guilty for asking, but there’s something else that I feel. Something that I trust more than my guilt. It makes me brave enough to push it.

  “I mean the two of us, as a couple. Were we still happy?”

  “I don’t understand where this is coming from, Liv. Why are you asking me this?”

  “It’s just . . . I was thinking about what you said last time, about how doing the interview would help with what people were saying.”

  He tenses, and I feel like I’m on the right track. I ease ahead, trying to trust what I feel.

  “And then the other day, I was gonna go see Paige, but your truck was—you two were together.”

  Matt takes a deep breath and lets it out in a long, slow exhale. I expect him to reach for my hand and explain it away, or at least to look at me. But he does neither. He keeps his eyes on the water in front of us.

  The knot in my stomach tightens, but I ask another question. “What was going on with us before the accident? What are you not telling me?”

  Matt runs his hands through his hair, a gesture I now recognize as nervous. “I swear, nothing’s happening with Paige, if that’s what you think.”

  “Okay,” I say slowly. “So what were you doing with her yesterday?”

  “Just . . . talking. About what to do.”

  “About me?”

  “Yeah,” he says. And now he turns and looks at me. Runs his eyes over my face, and I see sadness in his. He looks down at his hands.

  “What?” I ask, more nervous than ever now. I’m afraid of what he’s going to say. I’m afraid that the reason he looks so sad is going to be my fault because there really was someone else, and maybe that’s why we were drifting, like I told Sam. But I can’t handle not knowing. Not anymore. I need to know what I did. “Matt. What is it?”

  He looks up at me again, and now his eyes are watery. He presses his lips together and swallows hard.

  “We broke up the day before the accident.”

  “What? Why?” I ask, even though I’m sure now of the answer, and I’m ready to hate myself for it.

  “I . . .” He takes in another deep breath and rubs his forehead. “I broke it off. With you.”

  “You did? Why?” My voice is just barely above a whisper. Matt can’t even look at me.

  “Because I . . . we . . .” He shakes his head. Shrugs. “We were just drifting. For a long time. I mean. We’d been together for so long, but it wasn’t the same anymore. We weren’t the same. And that day, for whatever reason, I just knew that was it. I told you I thought we should break up.”

  He looks at me now, his eyes wet.

  “You cried. But you didn’t argue. Because you knew it too.” He rubs his lips together. “So I guess it was both of us, but . . .” He shakes his head again. “I don’t know if it would’ve happened if I hadn’t said it, you know? Because it didn’t feel good. I wasn’t happy after. Or relieved. I was just empty and sad and lonely.”

  He looks at me now.

  “That’s why I went out to that party on the island the next night. Just to try and shake it off. But then when I started drinking, all I could think of was you, and so I called you, and you said you’d come get me.”

  He pauses again, shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have let you. If I didn’t call you that night, we wouldn’t have been on that bridge. And this wouldn’t have happened to you. You have no idea how many times I’ve wished I could take that back, Liv. All of it.”

  He looks at me now, gives me the space to say something. Anything. But I can’t. And so he keeps going.

  “I just wanted to see you again. I knew I’d made this huge mistake, and I wanted to take it back, and I thought if I could just see you again, we could act like it didn’t happen, and go back to how we were before.”

  I force myself to keep my eyes on his, but I feel far away, like I’m watching us from a distance. Like this isn’t really happening.

  “You came all the way out there to pick me up, and I tried to take it back. I told you that, and I tried to kiss you—because I couldn’t remember the last time we’d even kissed. But you just pushed me away, you were so mad.”

  He pauses again, and I try to picture it.

  “You put me in your car anyway. And then . . . you know the rest.”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t. I don’t know any of this.”

  He looks down and takes another deep breath. “You told me we really were done. And that you’d known it too.”

  We both stare out at the water. He shakes his head, helpless.

  “And then the accident happened, and I couldn’t get you out—” He puts his head in his hands. “You would’ve died if Walker hadn’t shown up—because of me. You would’ve died. And when he pulled you out of that water, I saw how much I would’ve lost, and how much I loved you.” He pauses. Corrects himself. “How much I love you.”

  We’re both qui
et. Another wave crashes on the beach in front of us, and the water rushes back down the sand to the ocean. I wish I could go with it.

  “I’m sorry, Liv. I know should’ve told you. I just . . .” He looks at me. “I just thought maybe this was our second chance, that this could be—”

  “Did Paige know?” My voice sounds small. “That we broke up?”

  Matt looks down at his hands, and I know the answer before he says it. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I asked her if she’d help me try again with you—to make it right—because I’d screwed it up so bad.”

  I laugh, and it startles both of us. “To make it right? How is anything about this right?”

  “I made a mistake, Liv. I realized that at the party, and then out there on that boat, and when you were in the hospital, and then again when you woke up. We belong together, and—”

  “Do we?” I wipe at my eyes. “Or do you just feel guilty?”

  Matt goes silent.

  “Because that’s worse. That’s worse than growing apart, or falling out of love, or even lying. Being with someone because you feel guilty is worse.” As I say the words, I realize they’re not just for him. They’re for me too. I need to hear them for myself.

  “That’s not it,” Matt says. “That’s not how it is.” But there’s no conviction in his voice. Nothing behind those words. He sounds the same way I would if I tried to say what he’s saying.

  “Yes,” I say. “That is it.”

  Matt shakes his head. “What do we do if it is?”

  It’s quiet for a long moment.

  “We let each other go,” I say finally. “Again.”

  I don’t expect to, but I start crying when I say it. Because it’s not just letting each other go, it’s letting something bigger go. It’s the idea of us, and of who I was with him, and in all those pictures of us together.

  I turn and look at Matt, who began as a stranger to me. Who loved me once. And who I loved back. And in that moment, I regret not ever knowing the feeling of that. I regret not having those memories—the days and nights we spent together, the moments only the two of us knew about—all our firsts. And now, our lasts.