by Natalie Ward
“Okay, so you came home early, already planned,” she says. “You then got all Mr Tough Guy and got me away from them, meaning you didn’t fail me like you think. So what…” she pauses, lifting her head to look at me. “What did you think about what happened next then…when we…” she trails off, raising her eyebrows suggestively.
I laugh, “When we had sex?” I ask, playing with her a little.
“Yeah,” she says, grinning up at me, her eyes sparkling with amusement.
I burst out laughing as I pull her body up my mine and press a kiss to her lips. “Um, I don’t know. That I was pretty much the luckiest fucking guy in the world. That all my Christmases and birthdays and everything else, had all come at once.”
Evie bursts out laughing. “So is that why you really came home early then?” she asks, smiling. I lean my forehead against hers, my eyes on her. “Ben?” she asks when I haven’t said anything. “Did you come home early just to get laid?”
I laugh, tickling her as I lean in and kiss her. “Yes,” I say. “I did.”
“What?!” she practically yells, pulling back even as my arms tighten around her.
I laugh, pulling her closer for another kiss. “And,” I add, serious now. “I also came home early to check on you. To make sure you really were okay.”
“Really?” she asks, her face softening.
“Really,” I say, my eyes still on hers. “But mostly to get laid,” I can’t resist adding on.
Evie laughs as she shakes her head at me before she lets out a deep breath and says, “I guess we should keep reading?” We both know what’s coming next and we both know neither of us is going to enjoy it.
I nod, slipping my arms from around her and leaning down for the box of letters. I pause and grab the bottle of wine first, emptying it into both of our glasses before handing her a glass and picking up mine.
“I’m probably going to need a drink for this next part,” I say, shuffling around so we are sitting side by side now.
Evie gives me a sad smile. “I get the feeling I will too,” she says as I hand her the next letter.
This is the letter that comes after the worst disappearance of all. This is the time when I felt completely helpless, but at the same time, incredibly angry and frustrated. And even though I can’t remember everything I wrote to her back then, I know some of it won’t be good. It makes me nervous too, and there’s a part of me that just wants to forget this part, skip right over it and move onto a time when everything was good again. But as I watch her hold it, her fingers fidgeting with the edges as she forces herself to open it, I know we have to do this. It’s part of our story.
Evie takes a deep breath and smoothes the paper on her lap and starts reading, neither of us saying anything about the lack of payment this time around.
29 Feb 1996
Dear Evie,
Fuck, fuck, fuck… Shit, Evie, tonight was fucking awful. Really fucking awful.
Where are you, baby? Please.
I need to explain this. I need you to understand what happened tonight. Or what didn’t happen. Because nothing did. I promise you, nothing happened with her. NOTHING.
What you saw, what you walked in on, it wasn’t what you’re thinking. I don’t even like her, and more than that, I’d never do anything to hurt you. Ever. Because I love you…I love you, baby…so fucking much.
Please Evie, where are you?
I’m so drunk right now and none of this is making any sense. The only thing I do know is I miss you, and I love you, and I want you back.
I want you back, Eva.
Please come back… I love you.
Please…
10:59 pm - 29 February 2012
I watch as she reads it quickly, her eyes moving rapidly over the page as though the faster she reads it, the faster this will all be over.
I kinda know how she feels, but I also know there’s still a lot more to come too.
“You okay?” I ask wrapping my arm around her shoulder and pulling her against me.
“Can we just keep going?” Evie asks, her voice quiet as she stares at the paper in her hands, not looking at me. “I just want to get this part over and done with.”
I reach for the box of letters, grabbing several of them as I check to see which one’s next.
“Yeah,” I say, resting my cheek on the top of her head. “I don’t want to hang around this time for too long either.”
Evie lets out a deep breath as she finishes off her wine and unfolds the next letter, which is several pages of barely legible scrawl.
None of this is going to be good.
29 Feb 1996
Dear Evie,
God, I’ve just woken up. I’ve just woken up and found myself stuck in this same fucking nightmare. It hasn’t gone away and you haven’t come back.
And everything has gone to shit. Everything is so fucked up right now.
I just read what I attempted to write last night, or some time this morning anyway. I was drunk and pissed off and hurting. And I know that it makes no sense and it doesn’t explain anything, so I’m going to try and explain it to you, Evie. Because I want you to understand, I want you to know that I didn’t do anything, that I would never do anything to hurt you. I want you to know how much I love you, Evie. How much I miss you right now.
I’d give anything to be able to get another day with you. Just one day so we could fix all of this before you forget me. Because more than anything, I don’t want you to wake up, get your trigger and then remember all of this and know we never fixed it. I can’t have that be your last memory of us, Evie. I mean we never fight and now, the first time we do, it has to happen on this day, on the day you disappear and I have to wait for you to come back to me, not knowing if you’re actually going to. Especially after what you saw last night.
I’ve never hated what happens to you as much as I do right now.
Ok, I have to get this out. I have to tell you what really happened last night. Bear with me, because this might take a bit.
Sometime around eleven is when I think this whole shit storm started. You were talking to Lily, and I was in the kitchen trying to rescue the bottle of Jack from Rachel. She shouldn’t have been drinking and even though Mum and Dad weren’t around, there was no way I was letting my baby sister get blind drunk like I could see she was trying to do. At least if I could help it anyway. Paul was in there with me, but he was getting more drinks for us and wasn’t paying attention. And that’s when she came in.
I swear, I don’t even know her name. Kate, Katie, something? I don’t know, Evie, because I don’t fucking care. I don’t care about her or her name or anything about her, at all.
What I do remember is that I was pulling the bottle from Rach’s hands at the same time she was trying to pull it from mine. We were standing by the back door and this girl, Katie or whoever the fuck she is, walks over and slides an arm around my waist and puts her other hand on the bottle. She looks right at me and says, “Come on, one more won’t hurt.”
And you know what I did? I freaked out. Then I yanked the bottle out of their hands, spilling half of it all over me, and I stepped away. I didn’t want this girl’s arm around my waist and I didn’t want her touching me. I was drunk, baby, I know that, but I wasn’t drunk enough that I didn’t realise how wrong it felt to have this girl put her arms around me. No one puts their arms around me, except you. It’s only you, Evie. You’re the only one I belong to.
So you know what I did then, I walked away. I grabbed my drink off the kitchen table and walked out of the room. I went upstairs to change my shirt. Well, I went upstairs looking for you too, hoping you could take it off me instead.
Only it turns out, it wasn’t my drink. It was Rachel’s. And Rachel had been drinking a lot more than I realised. The girl’s an idiot when it comes to mixing drinks. Either that or she was trying to sneak as much alcohol in as she possibly could. Because I’ll tell you something, her drink was lethal. I’m gonna estimate it was about 90%
Jack and 10% Coke.
Now I know what you’re thinking. So what, it’s only one drink, right? And it was. But it was one drink on top of all the ones I’d already had. You know what it was like, we were all drunk last night. We were having a good time, weren’t we? Even though neither of us wanted to be at that party, with everything that we knew was going to happen at midnight, we did the right thing and we stayed. We stayed and we hung out with our friends, and we celebrated your birthday like any normal couple does. We had fun, Evie, and god knows, you and I are allowed to have fun sometimes, especially with all the shit we have to put up with.
But the problem was, Rachel’s drink pushed me that little bit further into really drunk. Not so much, that I didn’t know what I was doing, but enough that I was too slow to react, too slow to realise how fucked up a situation was getting.
Anyway, the point is, after all this went down, but before I actually realised I was moving into seriously drunk territory, I went looking for you. And I did this because even though I was drunk, I knew it wasn’t long till midnight. I knew we only had an hour left before you’d possibly disappear - did disappear - and I wanted to spend every second of that hour with you.
I remember looking around the living room. I remember looking out the front of the house, even though it was freezing. I’d just come from the kitchen, so I knew you weren’t there. You weren’t anywhere I could see you. And then in my drunken state, I had an epiphany.
I told myself that you were upstairs. That you were upstairs, waiting for me to find you, because it was that last hour together, right? We’d talked about it, about spending the last hour together after we’d agreed to stay at the party. And you know what, if Rachel hadn’t thrown this fucking surprise party because Mum and Dad were away in the first place, we’d have spent the whole night together in bed. You know that, don’t you? It would’ve been just you and me. And Eva, what you don’t know, what I should have insisted last night, is how much I wish we did do that. How much I wish we didn’t just say, screw the party and all these people, let’s just spend tonight together. But we both knew we couldn’t and we didn’t. We joined the party and we had a good time. Up until that last hour. That last hour when I wish I couldn’t just stop time, but reverse it too. Reverse it back to the start of the night and do everything so fucking different.
But I couldn’t. And I can’t.
So I did the only thing I could do, I climbed the stairs. Well, staggered up them was probably a more accurate description. But the point is, I went up there to find you, Evie. Only you.
I went into our room. The room you’ve been living with me in for the last 2 years. I knew you’d want this last hour with just the two of us. So I walked into my room, expecting to find you. I was pulling my shirt off at the same time, knowing we didn’t have much time. I wanted to be with you, Evie, one more time before you went. Maybe that sounds shallow, I don’t know, I don’t think so. I just wanted to be with you, show you how much I love you. I wanted you to remember me. I wanted to make last night so fucking amazing that there wasn’t a chance in hell you could ever wake up and forget me.
So, I started getting undressed, I knew you’d come in and find me, and when a pair of hands wrapped around me, I remember smiling because you had. But almost as soon as I thought that, I knew I was wrong. Because then, nails dug into me, lips that didn’t belong to you were at my ear and hot breath that wasn’t yours was whispering words that never would have come from your mouth. It was revolting, Evie, so fucking disgusting, that I instantly felt sick. But then when I heard your voice, when I heard you at the door, then I felt destroyed.
You screamed at me, you screamed, “I can’t believe you could do this to me.” And you know what, you were right. How the fuck could I do this? Not just let her touch me, but how could I let tonight happen at all. How could I let us, on our final night together, on your birthday, go to a stupid fucking party thrown by my sister that neither of us wanted to be at in the first place?
I can’t believe I did it either, Evie, and the only thing I can say to you is, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, baby…you have no idea how much I wish I could take this whole night back. How much I wish I’d said “no” to Rachel, or “let’s get out of here” to you.
I wish I’d wrapped myself around you and held you all fucking night, Evie, so you couldn’t possibly leave me.
God, I love you, baby. I love you and I miss you so fucking bad.
I don’t know what to do. I want to find you, because I need to explain this to you.
I just need to find you.
Please…
I love you… I love you.
11:21 pm - 29 February 2012
There are tears streaming down her cheeks as she finishes the letter, her hands dropping into her lap as the paper falls to the floor. Neither of us picks it up, instead I wrap both of my arms around her and pull her close, pull her so she’s sitting in my lap. Evie buries her face in my neck and sobs, her lips pressed in a hard kiss against my skin as she cries and cries. She feels like she’s breaking, like she’s about to fall apart, her whole body shaking as I hold her in my arms and she lets it all out.
I know why she’s so upset.
It’s not so much about what happened that night, but more all the nights that came after it. All the nights we spent apart, so many of them when we didn’t need to. Evie didn’t remember me straightaway. I think it took her nearly two years to get the trigger that time, but even when she eventually did, she didn’t come back to me. She stayed away and didn’t bother to try and find me.
She was punishing me for that night and even though what she did hurt like fucking hell, a part of me could understand it. Well, not at first. I mean at first, I couldn’t understand any of it. Back then I went through every possible emotion; anger, betrayal, hurt, embarrassment, frustration. This lasted for years and turned me into a grumpy fucking prick too. I wasn’t really much fun to be around back then, and to be honest, I didn’t care. I’d lost the only thing that was important to me and I had no idea when I was getting her back, or if I was ever getting her back.
Paul tried to talk to me about it, a lot. But I could never tell him the full story, could never explain to him exactly what had happened that night. I don’t know how many times he used to tell me to just go to her, to find out where she was and just go and explain it all. I wanted to scream at him that I had no fucking idea where she was, much less whether she ever wanted to see me again. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t say anything.
Evie and I have talked about that night since then. Breaking my back in the fall at the warehouse and spending countless months in recovery will do that. And it helped too, being forced to talk to her about it all. Because as much as I was hurting in those four years we spent apart, for all the anger I had for her, now, I actually sort of get it. I get why she was so hurt because if I’d have had to see what she saw that night, I’m not sure how I would have reacted either.
What Evie and I had, what we still have, is more than just us being together, so much more. We have secrets and circumstances that other couples never have to deal with. And of course with this, because it all happened with that girl, and on a night when we knew there would be no tomorrow to fix it, that just made it all so much worse.
Rachel’s friend, whoever she was, had never been shy about her flirting, openly doing it in front of Evie, even knowing we were together. I tried to ignore it as much as I could. Always made sure that it was blatantly obvious that Evie and I were together, whenever this girl was around. But she was relentless and I know it pissed Evie off. And I get that too.
I’d spoken to Rachel about it so many times, but nothing changed. I don’t know if Rach ever said anything to her friend, she says she did, but who really knows, because this girl’s behaviour didn’t change. And it wasn’t until Rachel was on the receiving end of it herself, that she finally wised up and ended the friendship.
“I’m so sorry, Ben,” Evie eventually says, her wo
rds choked on sobs.
“Shhh, baby,” I say, stroking her hair. “It’s okay. We don’t need to go over all of this again, you know.”
Her body shudders in my arms as one last sob leaves her. “I’ve never wanted to forget something as much as I want to forget this,” she says, lifting her head to look at me. Her eyes are filled with tears, the colour of them even sharper, more green because of it. They look beautiful, but it’s not worth the sadness I can see in them. “I’ve never wanted to just not remember something so badly,” she says and it makes my heart break.
“I know, Evie,” I whisper, kissing her softly on the lips. “I know we both just want to forget it,” I say, knowing I’d give anything to forget that night. Forget all the things that came after, including about knowing she dated someone while we were apart.
It isn’t just Evie that has to live with a bad memory, a nightmare of all the things we did wrong in those four years we spent apart. We both made mistakes and we both paid the price for them. We’ve talked about it, but I know for me, I’d give anything to forget some parts.
And even though she’s told me nothing happened between her and this guy she dated, and even though I have no right to be angry given what she saw the night she left and the fact that at the time, she didn’t even remember me, the knowledge that some other guy had his hands on her. That some other guy got to kiss her and hold her, got to be with her, when I couldn’t… Fuck I’d give anything to be able to forget that.
Evie’s tears finally start to slow. I keep stroking her hair, my other hand holding her against me, squeezing her as close as I possibly can. “We’ve gotten through this once,” I tell her, my mouth at her ear. “We can get through it again, you know. It’s happened and there’s nothing we can do to change it. We just need to learn to live with it. We just need to let it stay in the past and live with it as nothing more than a memory.”
