by Jessica Roe
Who am I kidding? Nothing will ever be the same again.
Ivy loves me. Ivy's in love with me.
Robotically, I glance down at Bambi. “Why did you say that?” I demand quietly.
She frowns, her bottom lip sticking out at the darkness in my eyes. “Why did I say what?”
“You know what.” Pulling myself from her grasp, I back into the apartment away from her. I need to be away from her. “Why did you tell Ivy we were back together? Why the hell would you say that when it isn't true?”
She pushes the door closed and leans against it, folding her arms petulantly across her chest. “Because it's almost true. She was making moves on you when you're practically taken. Besides, did you see the look on her face? Classic.”
“For fuck's sake, Bambi!” I roar, and she flinches. I immediately regret my volume, because even though I'm starting to realize what a gigantic bitch she is, I don't ever want any woman to fear me.
“Well what am I even doing here if we're not getting back together?!” she cries.
“I don't know!” I throw my hands up in the air, moving into the kitchen to find something to drink. Preferably something that will burn my throat. Yanking the fridge open so hard that a couple of magnets fall off and clatter to the ground, I curse when all I find is beer. That will not fucking do. “You're the one who just showed up here an hour ago, remember? I never asked you to come by.”
She pads over to the sofa and perches on the back of it. “What's wrong with you? I thought you wanted us to get back together?”
“So did I!” I close the fridge, resting my forehead against it as I finally face the shit I've been avoiding for too long. Back when Bambi broke up with me all I wanted was to get her back because I'd thought I'd been in love with her. But. . .it had never been love between us. She'd been my first adult relationship, and I guess in a way I'd kind of idolized her, but that's because I'd refused to see the real her. The one that Nathan had seen, right from the beginning. And then things between Ivy and I began to get scary, and I'd used Bambi as an excuse to avoid them. She was just an excuse. These past few weeks with Bambi, I've finally been seeing the real her. And the real her is a bitch. I'm not blind when it comes to her anymore. “So did I.”
Bambi sniffles, and when I turn back to face her I see actual tears in her eyes. I feel bad, because she might not be a nice person but she doesn't deserve to be messed around. No one does. Just because she did it to me, doesn't mean I have to return the favor “What are you saying?”
“I did want to get back together, Bambi,” I tell her honestly. “After you broke up with me I'd have done anything if I'd thought it would win you back.”
“And now?”
Ivy loves me. Ivy's in love with me.
“Now I know this isn't what I want.”
Her tears dry up, replaced by angry red blotches on her cheeks. “So why spend all this time with me over the last few weeks? What was the point?”
“I just. . .” I shake my head. Honesty. She deserves my honesty. “I think I wanted to feel that way about you again, because subconsciously I knew it would be easier.”
“Easier how?”
“I don't know.” But I do, deep down. Being with Bambi would be easier because I wouldn't be risking so much. I wouldn't be risking my fucking heart so much. “But I do know that I don't want to be with you. I'm sorry I didn't see that sooner.”
Telling her that, it's a weight off my shoulders I hadn't even realized I'd been carrying.
“Because of Ivy?” she wants to know.
“Yes,” I accidentally reply, but that answer freaks me out way too much so I immediately backtrack. “I mean, no. Yes. No. I don't know!”
“You don't seem to know a lot of things,” she says, sneering.
“Yeah.” I heave a sigh.
“See you around, Nash. Don't come sniffing after me when you realize what a mistake you've made,” she snaps, snatching up her jacket and keys and storming out of the door.
+++
I'm wired. Completely, unbearably wired.
I don't know what to do. I don't know what to fucking do and I think I'm going nuts.
Sleep evades me that night. I try for a while, but after tossing and turning for a couple of hours I give up. Even killing zombies doesn't make me feel better, because all I can think about is that day in the park when I kissed Ivy. I should tell her that. What woman doesn't want to hear that blowing zombies apart makes a guy think about kissing her?
When morning draws around I call in sick to work, and eight am has me banging the shit out of Nathan's front door. The lazy fucker is still in bed, and he's grumbling when he finally appears.
“This had better be life or-” His eyebrows disappear into his hairline when he sees my disheveled state. “Whoa. What the fuck is wrong with you? You look like you're on crack.”
“Ivy.”
“What about her?”
A muscle ticks in my jaw. “I'm fucking fucked.”
“Ah.” He nods, as if that makes all the sense in the world. “Right then.”
+++
After quickly deciding that he wasn't fully equipped to deal with my shit by himself, Nathan gets changed and drives us down to the city – declaring me too unstable to drive myself – where we grab up Reid and stop by Silver's place.
“So I was forced to call in sick to work today because?” Silver asks casually as I throw myself down on his sofa.
“Yeah, what's the deal?” Reid wants to know, grinning. “Not that I don't love being forcibly escorted from my place of work or anything, 'cause why the hell not.”
“He's just realized he's crazy in love with Ivy,” Nathan informs the two of them cheerfully, nosily sorting through the post stacked on the coffee table.
I scowl at him. “I never fucking said that.”
He shrugs. “You didn't have to.”
“I never fucking said that,” I repeat. “You got any alcohol, Silver?”
“Really, dude? At twelve thirty in the afternoon?” He must get a sense of my mood then, because he says, “No, and Blair's gonna be home from class soon anyway. There's a bar a block away. Let's move this there.”
+++
“So, you're in love with your friend Ivy,” Reid summarizes thirty minutes later. The bar is pretty dark and grubby, but it fits with how I'm feeling so I'm not complaining.
Holding my beer tightly in my fist, I grunt. Every time someone says the words love and Ivy in the same sentence it makes me want to lose my head. “You got any cigarettes? I could use a cigarette right about now.”
“No, man. I quit for Jemma.”
“She ask you to?”
“Nope. So that's why I did.”
Nathan laughs. “Dude, whipped much?”
Reid just smirks and tips his beer bottle in salute. If I wasn't dealing with so much shit right now, I'd probably respect him. “So what the hell happened, anyway?”
“Ivy came by my place last night-”
“I thought she had a date?” Silver asks.
“You knew about that?” I shake my head. Of course he did. Everyone else seems to know everything but me. “Never mind. She came by last night and told me she was in love with me.” I wait, expecting them to be at least a little surprised, but nothing.
“And?” Silver encourages.
“And Bambi was there. She heard the whole thing and told her we back together so Ivy left.” I leave out the part about how broken Ivy had seemed, about the tears in her eyes and the crestfallen look on her face. I can't even. . .I can't even think about that. It makes me want to break shit.
“Fucking hell, Nash!” Nathan protests. “You're really serious with this? Bambi is an obnoxious, cold hearted-”
“Bitch,” I finish for him. “Yeah, I figured that out. We're not getting back together, she was. . .well, she wasn't lying exactly. We'd been talking about it, sure. But it's not happening. I'm done with her for good.”
“Oh.” He loses all his steam.
“Well thank fuck for that.”
“So,” Silver muses. “Ivy's really in love with you. Blair suspected as much.”
“Jemma too,” Reid puts in. “It's all she's gone on about for months. She thinks you're a dumb ass for not noticing.”
“Ain't that the truth,” I mumble, burying my face in my hands. How did everyone know about this but me?
“And. . .” Nathan hints.
Lifting my face, I frown his way. “And what?”
“And you're crazy in love with her too,” he states, exasperated.
“Nathan-”
“Dude, you might as well admit it. To us and yourself. Hell, I'm not the sharpest knife on the rack and even I can see it, clear as day.”
I falter, my grip tightening on the bottle until my hand aches and I'm forced to let it go before it cracks. “I'm. . .crazy in love with her too.”
Fucking fuck. I'm crazy in love with Ivy too.
It hits me like a sucker punch to the gut, but it really shouldn't. It should have been obvious already. It's been staring me in the face all this time. Ivy, she. . .she drives me crazier than anyone I've ever known. She's messy and bitchy and her grumpiness rivals mine. She runs when things get deep or frightening and she pretends not to have emotions because she thinks it makes her tougher. She's smart, and she's so damned beautiful I can't even comprehend it. She makes me laugh harder than anyone I've ever met, she isn't afraid to get her hands dirty and I know all of her secrets, and she knows all of mine.
I think about her all the time. Even when she lived so far away I was always thinking of her, thinking of things to message her and hoping that each day would be another day she remembered to message me back. I never admitted it to anyone, but I was constantly terrified that she would keep living her life in San Francisco and one day forget all about me. That time would go by and the messages would stop and I'd never hear from her again. But they didn't, and she came home, and I was just so. . .happy.
Ivy makes me happier than anyone I've ever known.
She's perfect. For me.
“I think I knew,” I say, dazed. “But I was just. . .”
“Scared to admit it?” Silver guesses. There's a knowing expression on his face.
“Scared as fucking shit to admit it.”
“Yeah, been there, bro. Trust me.”
Why have I been scared to admit it? Ivy is awesome. She's incredible. She's mind blowing.
I've been scared to admit it because. . .because being in love with her means being one hundred percent vulnerable for the first time in my life. It means being vulnerable with somebody who has the ability to completely and utterly break me in a way I'd never come back from.
“Fuck,” I hiss, leaning my elbows on the table and grasping my forehead. My head feels like it's about to explode. “I'm in love with her.”
I drain the rest of my beer while Nathan signals the waitress he'd been flirting with earlier for some shots. Yeah, shots are what I need right now. Lots and lots of shots.
“It gets easier,” Reid promises, the corner of his mouth turning up as he watches my meltdown. He seems way too damned amused by this whole thing. “Loving someone is scary as shit – especially when the girl you're in love with is stubborn as hell and refuses to date you for months.” We both share a laugh at that, because Jemma is nothing if not a stubborn ass. “But after a while it stops being the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to you, especially after she admits she loves you too. And hey, you've already sailed by that landmark, so I'd say good on you.”
A dark, uneasy feeling crawls through my veins. “But when she told me she loved me I just stood there, staring at her.”
The three of them wince at that.
“Yeah, that might've been a bad move.”
“Maybe I should just leave the whole thing alone. This. . .this is already too hard. I can't deal with being in love with Ivy.”
Silver punches me in the arm. Hard. “Don't be a pussy. Love is hard. You have to work at it, you have to take risks. Sometimes is pays off, and sometimes it just hurts like hell. But it's better than spending the rest of your life with regrets. And when it does pay off, it's worth it. It's really, really worth it.”
“But she thinks I'm dating Bambi.”
“So grovel,” Nathan tells me, like it should have been obvious. “Grovel your dumb ass off. Ivy's worth it, you know she is.”
“Fuck.” I rub my temple with my fingers, feeling a headache brewing. “How the hell do you guys do this? Being in love is so fucking stressful.”
“Tell me about it,” Nathan grumbles.
I glance up at him then, pushing my own problems aside momentarily. “You talking about Ophelia and her engagement?”
He doesn't meet my eyes, but his shoulders stiffen as he drains the dregs of his beer bottle. “I can't talk about that.”
The waitress arrives with the tray of shots. She places them down, making eyes at Nathan and flashing him an ample amount of cleavage, but for once he doesn't pay attention. He doesn't even seem to notice.
“But once upon a time,” he continues after downing a shot when she flounces back to the bar. “a boy fell madly in love with a girl.” Another shot. “He never got over it.” One more shot.
The poor guy looks tortured. After all these years, just the thought of Ophelia still drives him to this.
It hits me then, that I don't want that to me me and Ivy. I don't want to be that guy who never went after his girl, who never got over her even ten years later because she was the love of his life, who lives with regrets and buries himself in too many women just because he can't have the only one he's ever really wanted.
I sit up straight, a bolt of urgency suddenly striking me. “I need to call her.”
“Ophelia?”
“No, dick for brains. Ivy.”
“Well it's about damned time,” Reid drawls, bumping fists with me.
Scrambling for my phone, I have a moment of sheer panic when I can't find it, only to find it a second later in my. . .uh. . .other pocket. I ignore the guys when they start laughing at me.
“She's not picking up,” I tell them a after a minute. After three more attempts, I slam the phone down on the water marked table.
“She probably thinks you're only calling her to apologize because you feel sorry for her,” Silver suggests.
Getting an idea, I fiddle around with the phone until the camera comes on and I hit record. “Ivy, I'm a fucking idiot,” I start. “But I-”
“What the hell are you doing?” Nathan demands. “You can't tell her this over the phone.”
“Why not?” I glare over, pissed at him for interrupting.
Reid reaches over and snatches the phone out of my hands, ending the video and sending it on my behalf. “You can tell her you're sorry, but you can't tell her you love her via video message. Especially not when you've already fucked up as bad as you have.”
“Well what am I supposed to do?”
Silver looks at me like I'm an idiot. I'm starting to feel like one. “Go tell her in person.”
I nod my head up and down. “Yeah,” I say slowly. “Yeah! Nathan, get your ass up and drive me home. This shit needs to happen right now.”
“Drank too many shots. I'm over the limit, bud.”
“Then give me your keys. I've only had one beer, I'm fine.”
“No way, that car is my baby. You're not driving her-”
“GIVE ME YOUR FUCKING KEYS!”
“Yep, okay. Giving you my keys.” He stands, tapping an invisible cap to Silver and Reid. “Guess we'll see you fuckbags later.”
Silver raises an eyebrow. “Hey, you made me call in sick to work today. I'm coming too.”
“And me,” Reid adds, shrugging. “Gotta love a good road trip.”
+++
I drive back to Fortune like the hounds of hell are chasing me. Nathan bitches at me about taking care of his car the entire time, and after a while I just tune him out because I need to concentrat
e on what I'm going to say when I see Ivy. I need a speech or something. Girls like speeches, right? But by the time I'm home and banging on Ivy's door, I literally have no fucking words in my head. Guess I'm winging it.
I pound relentlessly on her door for ten minutes straight, sure that she's in there and just ignoring me, before an irate neighbor pops her head out and tells me that she's not even home.
“Saw her carrying an overnight bag out of here first thing this morning,” the old woman tells me before she slams the door in my face.
I mean, she could have let me in on that ten minutes ago, but whatever.
“Where else could she be?” Reid asks when I get back down to the car.
“Her mom and dad's place?” Silver suggests.
I nod. “Or Heather's.”
With it being the closest, we try her parents' house first, but Deb insists that she hasn't seen Ivy in a few days. Deb can't lie for shit, so I know she's telling the truth. I'm practically yanking my hair out of my head by the time we pull up on Heather's street.
Heather was kind of like a big sister to me when we were kids. She always went out of her way to be nice during our family dinners. And though Nathan, Ivy, Silver and I were happy to prank my siblings and Silver's brother and sister, there was always an unspoken agreement that Heather was just off limits. She was too sweet to torture.
I take a calming breath before I knock on her front door, remembering there's a baby in the house and not wanting to come across like a maniac – even if that's how I feel inside.
Heather blinks when she opens the door, seeming surprised to see me. My heart sinks. “Nathan, hey!”
“Hey, Heather. I don't suppose Ivy's here, is she?”
Her eyes are the same shape as Ivy's, though they're a shade or two lighter than the stormy ocean blue of her sister's. “No. Is she okay? Did the two of you have a fight?”
I shrug, suddenly getting the urge to tell her all my problems. That's the kind of warm, open person Heather has always been. I suppress it. “I. . .I messed up. If you speak to her will you tell her to answer my calls? Please?” I'm resorting to begging now, but I don't care.
