She comes over to me. “That can’t be it. Tell me what’s really going on.” Her arms around my shoulders. She’s hugging me from behind. She kisses my neck, and my hair stands on end. I can’t help but close my eyes.
She comes around me and pushes me back on the bed so she can climb on top of me. She locks eyes with me, but I immediately turn away. But she’s already kissing me. Her soft skin rubs against the stubble on my face as she moves down to kiss my neck.
My shirt is coming off and then hers.
My hands slide up her waist.
If we don’t stop now, I’m not sure I’ll be able to in a minute. I move my hands back down to her hips.
“Naomi,” I say. “I should go.”
But she doesn’t stop.
A few minutes later, we’re under her covers, and there are a million things going through my mind. How amazing her skin feels on mine. How I feel like crap because I need her but, at the same time, I know I’m going too far. I know how this is going to end.
I’m louder this time. “I can’t do this.”
She stops kissing me then. I look down at her and see the hurt in her eyes as she scrambles to get away from me. Now she’s sitting on the edge of her bed using her shirt to cover herself. She grips the edge of her mattress, and I sit next to her.
She looks at me. “What’s wrong? Why won’t you tell me?”
I can’t look at her.
“I don’t understand you. You’re happy one minute and then distanced the next, like you can’t stand to be near me.”
She’s about to cry. I can hear it. And I get it. She should be mad at me. Especially when she finds out what I’m going to tell her.
But I’m too much of a coward. Even now, seeing her like this, knowing she deserves the truth, I can’t bear the idea of her hating me. Not after what just happened between us.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I realize I’m saying it to myself somehow as well. I’m sorry that I can’t be with someone as amazing and good as Naomi. I’m sorry that it’s so hard to tell her the truth.
“I shouldn’t have let it get this far,” I say. I get up and leave.
I start worrying about Naomi when I don’t see her the next few days.
I know she must hate me. She more than has the right to, but I just want to know that she’s okay.
Part of me realizes I’ve always waited for her to come to me, like she did the first night we met. But maybe she’s moving on.
I finally see her one afternoon. I’m in my car after work, having just parked. I don’t feel like going inside yet, so I stay in my car for a few minutes, just with my eyes closed.
I finally jerk myself awake before I start snoring. I need to get up to my bed.
I open the door and run up the stairs, not thinking of anything except the sound of my feet and the jangle of my keys.
Then I’m looking up at her, her own keys in her hand. She’s looking down at me, me up at her, and then she’s passing me. I’m still frozen on the stairs.
I turn back and look at her, but she’s already gone. Except for one glance back.
I recognize what’s in her eyes. It’s the same thing in mine. I miss her.
Thirty minutes later, I’m out of the shower and in my bed. I’m not sleepy anymore, but I wish I was. Then I wouldn’t be thinking about Naomi right now, wondering where she is.
If she’s thinking about me.
I need something to do with my free time. I get the feeling I’m just wasting my life away. I have a decent job, but I’m getting pretty sick of it. I think about the conversation Naomi and me had a couple of weeks ago. That I should go to college and do a two year program at least. Find something I’m good at, that I won’t mind doing every day.
I never really liked school, but she explained how a technical school is different. How all I need is two years, and I’ll be certified in something.
I find the website of our local technical school and start reading about the different degrees and programs. I don’t understand everything, and I have no idea what I would want to study, but it’s a lot cheaper than I expected. I bet I could ask the manager at work to give me one more day off so I could go full time and get this over with. I don’t spend a lot with it just being me so I have a small cushion of savings I could use to get me started on a two year degree.
I scroll through the different degrees. Definitely not plumbing. Maybe electrician or automotive. I already know a little about being a mechanic from when I used to help out my dad at his shop.
I bet he would like that, me following in his footsteps and becoming a mechanic. I think I’d like that too.
I just know that I want to be someone a girl like Naomi deserves. Part of me knows I want to do this for her, so she’ll see that I understand that she deserves a better guy. I want to be that better guy.
Another part of me knows that a degree isn’t going to change my past, but maybe it’ll let me take one step further away from it. The only thing I need is the GED test score I got while I was in prison.
I have that somewhere.
I apply for the fall semester. It takes me less than thirty minutes. Just a lot of questions about high school grades and classes.
I have no idea if I’ll be able to get in. I have to make sure and say that I’ve been in prison before and why. But I don’t care. I need something to get my mind off of how bad I want to be good enough for Naomi. I also want my dad to look down on me and be proud.
Twenty-One
Hey.
I read the message again as I take another bite of dinner. It’s from Naomi. I thought for sure she probably would have deleted my number by now. It’s what I deserve.
But instead, she’s texting me.
I’m not sure if I should reply. At least tell her I can’t talk to her.
I put down my fork and pick up my cell phone off the kitchen table. I open the message and start typing.
Hey
I keep eating, but I can’t help but stare at my phone every few seconds, wondering how long it’ll be before she texts back.
She finally does when I’m in the middle of chugging down some water.
Can we talk?
Oh man. That could mean a million and one different things. There’s “I want us to be together.” There’s “do you love me? Because I love you.” There’s “I hate you, and I want the chance to say it properly.”
That’s just a few of the possibilities.
I finish eating, trying to think of what I should say to her.
I take my plate to the sink. I go ahead and wash it. I’m drying my hands and heading to the couch. I grab my phone on the way there and lay down.
I stare at the ceiling. I’m thinking about her. I close my eyes and remember the first time we kissed, when she kissed me. I think of her smile, her laugh. The way her skin feels.
I breathe and reply.
I don’t think it’s a good idea. Sorry.
Before she can reply, I leave my phone on the couch and I head into the shower.
She doesn’t text back, so I assume we’re over for good.
I’m not sure how I feel about that. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget about Naomi since we’re neighbors. It means I’ll see her most days if not every day. And I’ll have to walk past her.
Walk past her and not hug her or kiss her. Not talk to her or hear her laugh.
So I’m completely surprised the next night when I’m heading to the store for some food and I open my door and there she is.
Naomi. Arms crossed across her chest. Staring at me.
The first thing I blurt out is, “How long have you been standing there?”
She walks past me and straight into my living room. I can’t help but look at her tan skin.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks, turning around to face me. “Why do you have to be such an idiot?”
Whoa.
“What are you talking about?” I say. I try to think of the last time I had a fight with a g
irl like this. It was Valerie.
“Why do you keep running away?” She takes a couple of steps towards me as she says this, and she’s right. Already. I automatically take a step back myself.
She notices this and looks down at the ground.
I take a step towards her. “I’m sorry that I did this. I—You have to understand. I’m not the right person for you.”
I don’t know what to say after that. I don’t know how else to let her know that she should move on. Being this close to her is hard enough. Doesn’t she see that?
“Why are you so afraid? What are you so afraid of? Just tell me. Trust me to decide for myself if you’re the right person for me.”
Now it’s my turn to look away. Because I can’t possibly tell her everything I’ve done. I can’t. I’d rather just not see her again.
That’s when she yells again. “Talk to me!”
I look at her.
“Don’t you get what you’re making me go through?” she asks, her eyes pleading me to listen. “You can’t just…You can’t just do everything that we did and then just walk away. It doesn’t work like that.”
I’m aware then of each of my breaths. In and out. And hers. Quicker. In and out, in and out.
Our eyes finally meet. In and out. In and out.
Then I look away. I have to.
“I don’t want to be with you,” I say. “I don’t want a relationship.”
I bring my gaze to her face again, but not her eyes. Not for long anyways. Because I can already see what I’m doing to her. She’s trying so hard to keep herself together, and I can’t watch. I turn away. I have to hold my ground on this.
“You don’t even know me,” I say quietly, thinking for a second I said it to myself.
“I do know you, Carlos,” she replies, taking a step closer. I see a tear run down her cheek. “I may not know everything about you, about what’s happened to you, but I know enough to know that I want to be with you. To see the real you. Enough to love you. Enough to see that you love me back.”
I look her in the eye. “You don’t know the beginning of who I am and what I’ve done.” I take a step closer so we’re in each other’s faces, but only so I can drive my point home. “I’ve been to prison, Naomi. You don’t want to know why.”
Her mouth falls open, but she doesn’t look away. I can see her observing me, trying to guess the reason I was in jail for a year.
“I—“ I finally look away and step back. I can’t bring myself to say the rest. So I say the next thing that comes into my mind.
“You deserve to move on. I’m going to find somewhere else to live.”
I look at her again. I just sounded like a complete jerk. I can see the hurt in her eyes because now I’ve made her feel like crap. Like she’s the one pushing me away when she’s the one who’s never given up on trying to make us work.
I see new resolve come over her face. Resignation. She leaves. The slam of the door echoes in my ears.
I never thought I could feel worse than I did the night on the roof a few months ago.
But I do.
I feel like I’m lost, and I have no idea where I’m supposed to go. Who I’m supposed to be.
I don’t have anybody. I haven’t talked to my mom since that rainy day at my dad’s funeral. She had called once or twice since then, but I had never bothered to answer. As far as I know, I lost both of my parents that day.
I consider calling my brother. But I can’t. He decided not to come to my dad’s funeral. He said his wife had just had their third kid, and he couldn’t leave her. Not to say goodbye to our dad one last time. Not to see me, how I was doing.
I throw my phone at the wall across my bedroom.
I close my eyes because the walls are starting to shrink in on me again.
I try to sleep, to close my eyes, watch TV, or something. But it doesn’t work. I don’t know how I’ll be able to start over again. I should start looking for another apartment like I promised Naomi I would. It’ll be hard not seeing her anymore and finally knowing that there’s not gonna be anything else between us, but it’s for the best.
This is supposed to be a clean start. It hurts that I can’t be with her, but I’m just not in the right place. Valerie, my dad, all of it still pulls at me. The guilt, the pain of the past, will always be there. It’s impossible to forget. To move on. I’ve tried.
I roll over and reach towards my night stand. I take out the necklace I hid in there when I first moved here, under some papers, a watch, and some other stuff.
It’s the necklace that used to belong to Valerie.
The one I gave her after our one year. Miranda had given it back to me after the accident. Valerie always had it on, no matter what.
I guess her parents didn’t care that I got it back. I hold it in my hand, the chain roped through my fingers.
It’s a thin silver chain that holds a small angel wing. It’s not much because this was all I could afford, but Valerie had loved it.
I can’t help but think of her as an angel, looking at this.
I still remember being nervous about giving it to her. Looking at her face as I opened the small box it had come in so I could gauge her honest reaction as soon as she saw it.
She had screamed and jumped, and I had looked around because we were in my car in the middle of the night just down the street from her house. I thought for sure somebody had heard her, but no one came. Instead, she hugged me and kissed me and asked me to help her put it on.
I look at it now, trying to imagine it on her again. I force my eyes shut and turn so I can push my face into my pillow. I want to scream and cry. I pound my fist with the necklace into it, wishing I was anybody else. Somebody who could be happy. I realize that’s what keeps pulling me back down.
The fact that I’ll never be able to erase what I did to Valerie. And because of that, I’ll never be completely happy.
A few minutes later, I’m still staring at Valerie’s necklace. I sit up, and I put it on.
Twenty-Two
I don’t want to look for somewhere else to live. I can’t. What’s the point?
But maybe if I don’t leave, Naomi will. She must hate me. Some days are hard. I just want to take the courage she has and go up to her door, push myself into her apartment, and beg her to take me back. To let me start over with her.
But then another part of me knows I’ll never be able to make her completely happy because I don’t know how to do that myself.
This is what I think about as I head home from work. Maybe I should start asking for my overtime again. I’m not sure I’ll get it because of what the manager said a while ago, about needing to cut back hours, but I don’t know what else to do.
I should be hearing about my college application soon. Maybe then I’ll have less time to think.
I pull into a parking space and turn off my car. I grab my keys and head up to my apartment. I can’t help but stare at Naomi’s door as I walk past it. But then I’m inside my apartment. I take off my shirt and throw it in my room, not caring to aim for anything in particular. It’s not much cooler in here than it is outside.
I slip off my shoes and lay down on my bed. I close my eyes, sleep wanting to take over me.
Or maybe I just won’t register for classes after all, even if I get in. I feel Valerie’s necklace against my skin. I don’t know about anything anymore.
My heart stops for a second when my phone vibrates with a message. I immediately think it must be Naomi and maybe she doesn’t hate me. But I still wouldn’t let myself get back with her. I feel for my phone on the bed and turn my head so I can look at the screen.
I’m surprised, though, to see it’s not a text message from Naomi. Instead, it’s a message from Miranda.
This is weird. I open it and read it.
I read it again.
She wants to see me. Soon.
There’s something you should see.
I wonder what it could be.
What is it? I
reply.
It’s something you should see for yourself. When can you meet me? It won’t take long.
I think and then start typing.
Tuesday. I tell her a time and place close to here.
She agrees and signs off, not giving me any other kind of clue as what this is about.
It has to be about Valerie. I can’t imagine any other reason she’d want to talk to me. I just can’t think what it could be. Did she find out something? Or maybe her parents want her to tell me something? To stay away for good, including her grave?
If that’s what it is, I don’t care. They can’t keep me from seeing her.
Eventually, though, my eyes close, and I forget about everything for a few hours.
I try to read the look on Miranda’s face as she approaches my table and sits down. We’re at the same diner Valerie and I came for my birthday that one time when we skipped school. This just seemed like the perfect place.
And it’s bringing that day back because we’re in the exact same booth. Except it’s lunch time, and I’m not in the mood to eat.
Miranda sits down as I take in everything around us.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I reply, looking at her. Somehow I imagine Valerie would have grown up to be like her sister. If she were still alive.
I look to see if she’s brought anything with her, but she hasn’t except for a big handbag.
“How have you been?” she asks. I hate it when people ask me that question. It just makes me think of all kinds of bad shit, and it’s not like you’re supposed to answer honestly.
“Fine, and you?” I ask. A waitress comes over before she can answer.
She gets our drink order, but neither of us look at the menu. I look at Miranda, hoping she’ll see I’m ready to hear whatever she wants to say.
She sighs and looks for something in her bag. She pulls out a notebook. Like a journal.
She places it on the table in between us, giving it a small push towards me.
I just stare at the light purple cover, the gold magnetic button. “This was Valerie’s.”
Letting Go (Changing Hearts Series Book 3) Page 10
