“I don’t need fixing.” My eyes narrowed as I frantically tried to grab on to anger or hatred or pretty much any emotion other than the bone-deep heartache lingering beneath the surface.
He had walked to the window across the room, and with his head bent he grabbed the back of his neck. “If I couldn’t help my mother or my sister who had actual problems, how the hell am I going to be able to help you when there isn’t even anything wrong?” he asked softly, almost like he was talking to himself more than me. But it didn’t matter. I’d heard it. We’d all heard it.
And there was the real problem. All the fears I’d ever had, fears I thought he’d put to rest, came back to life. I thought back to the fair and how hopeful everything had seemed, but as with all perfect moments, they end. And this one ended when Gabe opened his mouth and revealed a painful truth that I had foolishly let everyone convince me didn’t exist. Everything in my mind was turning over at a rapid pace, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the large hole forming in my chest.
“Gabe…” Naomi’s soft voice trailed off as her water-filled eyes landed on me. I didn’t know what my face looked like, but it couldn’t have been good.
Gabe finally seemed to come out of his head, and when he whipped around and his eyes collided with mine, the shift in his expression made it clear that he had, at least partially, forgotten about his audience. As his eyes widened I could only imagine that he was replaying every word he had just said.
“No, no, no… I didn’t mean—” He started toward me like he was approaching a wounded animal, but he tripped halfway there and cursed before he landed on his knees.
“It’s okay. I’m fine.” I looked down at the floor. And just like that I was back at the beginning. Back to running. Back to hiding. Back to pretending. That realization, more than anything, felt like a blow to my stomach and was a trigger to the tears I was trying to hold back. I was so tired of pretending. Tired of feeling so alone and misunderstood. Only this time it was worse, because now I knew what it felt like not to hide or pretend or be alone.
“Alara.”
“All this crap with your father and Miranda never really mattered, did it?” I whispered, my voice breaking in the middle as I continued to stare at the ground.
“Alara…” he repeated, still on his knees in the middle of the living room.
“No,” I said resolutely as I stepped back and looked up. “You…” I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t even begin to explain how much it all hurt. Logically I understood that there was more to this and that he wasn’t really thinking about what he was saying. I knew that he didn’t say any of those things with the intention of hurting me. But that almost made everything worse. He said what he thought, without thinking of the consequences or what the people around him thought. He wasn’t worried about hurting my feelings, he was just telling the truth. And the truth was, he thought what everyone else had, that my pain was different, exaggerated and less important.
“I… I didn’t mean it like that,” he stuttered. “Please.” His panic was almost enough to make me believe him. Almost. But neither his words, nor his remorseful expression, did anything to shrink the hole in my chest or stop the tears slowly streaming down my face. But I had to pretend they did, because I couldn’t stand there a minute more. I was already feeling too much.
“It’s okay that you feel that way,” I replied numbly. “But you—you made me believe it was okay,” I said, uncaring that I was finally voicing all my fears. “I always felt guilty for being as sad as I was. There was never any trauma in my life. I have a loving and supportive family. Great friends. I—I couldn’t explain it. But I learned to live with it, as hard as it was. I learned to ignore it or just suffer through it, never really believing anything I was telling myself. But you… you finally got through.” I looked around to see to my friends looking at me like a wounded puppy before refocusing on Gabe. “You made me feel important and… understood. No one had ever made me feel that way before. But you don’t understand, do you? So, why did you even b-bother? Why go through so much when you never believed any of it?”
He shook his head before getting to his feet and taking an unsteady step forward. “I didn’t—”
“I was always worried you would hate me once you found out,” I continued, taking a step back to counter his move. “That you would think about how much your Mom suffered and how much you and your sister suffered when your mother died, and you’d be disgusted by how I could want to die when others like her were taken so prematurely.” I paused and watched his eyes frantically dart between mine. Maybe someday I would understand or forgive him. But right now I couldn’t, because the only thing I had was my pain, a kind of pain that overshadowed everything else. And right now I had to tell him the truth, even if it would break him too.
“I never thought I’d be the one hating you.” He looked like I’d struck him as he staggered backwards for reasons that had nothing to do with alcohol. “I didn’t know what it was like to feel so whole, to feel forgiven for this disease that I don’t understand and can’t control. You gave me that. Things weren’t perfect, but I felt better than I ever had… and you just took that all away,” I said, gesturing to the gap between us. “And I think I kind of hate you for that.”
He closed his eyes as if he was in pain. “God, please don’t say—” Gabe tried again.
I shook my head and began retreating. “I’m s-sorry. I-I have to go,” I choked out, seconds away from completely losing my composure and crumbling. Honestly I was surprised I made it as long as I did. I had already given too much of myself to let them see any more. With one last look at his destroyed face that most likely mirrored my own, I grabbed my bag and fled.
I was still staring at the door in shock when Naomi ran toward it and practically tore it off its hinges. Shaking my head, I stepped forward to follow but Derek wrapped his hand around my arm, halting me.
“Derek, I didn’t—”
“I know.”
“What?”
He shook his head before letting go of my arm and walking into the kitchen. Seconds later he returned with two waters; he handed one off to me before running a hand through his already disheveled hair. “Look, obviously I don’t know everything. But I know what it’s like not to understand. I love Alara. She’s as much of a sister to me as Naomi is. But I don’t understand this thing either. I don’t understand how the little girl who sat alone in the living room, laughing and playing pretend with her stuffed animals, grew up into a woman who sits alone in her bedroom crying at three a.m. I don’t understand what it’s like to be afraid of my own mind. And I can’t even begin to understand how hard it is to experience something this horrible while everyone around me tells me I’m overreacting or imagining it.” He paused and began peeling the label off his bottle. When he looked up there were tears in his eyes. “But… I don’t think she understands it either, and I don’t think she expects you to understand. I think she’s just looking for acceptance and is confusing the two.”
I nodded. “I didn’t mean any of it like that, I just—”
“I know. I’ve seen the way you look at her. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Not to get all cheesy but, you… you look at her like she’s saving you or something.”
“That’s because she is. Every single fucking day she saves me. And all I want is to do the same.”
“You do.” Naomi’s voice sounded from the open doorway as she walked back through it. She softly closed the door before coming to a stop in the middle of the living room.
“Did you catch up to her?” Sherry asked quietly.
“I did. She—” Naomi paused and blew out a heavy breath. “She just begged me to leave her alone.” She shrugged and began picking at her nails.
“So you just let her go?” I asked.
“No,” she spat. “I didn’t just let her go.”
“But what if…” I trailed off, not wanting to voice my fears and not wanting to think that something like this coul
d trigger something.
Naomi must have known what I was thinking because her expression softened, and when she spoke her voice was sympathetic. “I think she’s fine. She, and I’m not saying this to hurt you, Gabe… but she didn’t seem more distraught than anyone else who just had her heart broken.”
“GODDAMMIT!” I shouted before launching my beer bottle from earlier at the wall. It shattered into dozens of pieces as the amber liquid slowly dribbled to the wreckage below. I fell against the wall behind me and when I finally made it to the ground, I buried my head in hands.
“Gabe, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean… she just needs some time,” Naomi whispered, and I’d have bet anything that if I looked up I’d find her crying.
I said nothing in response, and neither did anyone else. We all just stood (or pathetically cowered on the floor in my case) there not doing anything, all of us lost in our own thoughts.
I was exhausted by the time I pulled into my complex a little before midnight that night. I slowly ascended the stairs to our apartment as I thought about what might await me on the other side. When I opened the door I was greeted with silence and for a second I was relieved Naomi hadn’t come home. But that relief was short-lived when I looked toward my bedroom and found Naomi sitting directly in front of my door. She sat cross-legged with a half-knitted scarf dangling over her bouncing knee.
“Took you long enough. Where the hell have you been? I just started this damn thing tonight, and look how far I’ve gotten,” Naomi said as she lifted her knitting needles.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said as I approached her.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to.”
I slid down next to her until my butt hit the floor.
“So where have you been?”
“Just driving around.”
She nodded before replying, “And?”
“And what?”
“Aaanddd… are you going to go over and talk to Gabe?”
I exhaled loudly. “It’s almost midnight.”
She snorted and gave me a look that clearly said, Are you stupid? “I doubt he’s sleeping, and even if he were he’d gladly wake up to talk to you.”
“What’s there even to talk about? I think we said everything that needed to be said.”
“No, you said a lot—which, by the way, was awesome considering how timid you usually are about confronting people—but you didn’t really give him a chance to explain.”
Naomi shot me a brief glance before her attention returned to knitting. She always knew talking was easier for me when we didn’t make constant eye contact. My own eyes also fell to her hands and the rapid progression of her work.
“I know he didn’t mean to hurt me. I know he was just caught up in it all and wasn’t thinking. But…” I cleared my throat before voicing everything I thought earlier. “Isn’t that just all the more telling? Obviously, I want to know what he thinks without him censoring himself because he’s worried about me, and I thought he genuinely believed all those things he told me. I mean… this is a big deal. It’s not like he told me he hated caramel when he actually loves it just to appease me. I wouldn’t want him to wake up one day realizing how fed up he is with dealing with this shit.”
“I really wouldn’t blame him, not liking caramel is insane.” She smirked before carefully placing her needles on the ground in front of her and shifting to face me. “Look, I was there and yes, it didn’t sound great, but… I really don’t think he meant any of it like that. You have this blind eye where yourself is concerned. But I see the way he looks at you. And so do Derek and Sherry. We are so unbelievably happy for you, Alara.” She paused and looked behind me before giving me her eyes again. “When you left he looked destroyed.”
I grimaced and looked down at the ground between us. “I didn’t want to hurt him, but…”
“You needed to be honest too,” she finished for me. “And he knows that, Alara. That is why he was destroyed. Because he knows he made you feel that way. Just promise you’ll talk to him, okay?”
“I wasn’t planning on ignoring him. I just had to get out of there and get some space,” I said as I looked back up.
She looked at me for a long moment before nodding and turning back around to pick up her needles. We sat side by side for a few minutes before I remembered she was supposed to be having a date night with Caleb. “Hey, what’re you doing here? You normally sleep at his place on date night.”
“You really think I’d be able to go to dinner and stay somewhere else with everything going on?”
“Naomi, you can’t keep putting everything in your life on hold because I’m a mess.”
She sighed before dropping her needles again. “Caleb said the same thing.” She fidgeted for a moment before glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. “Right before we broke up.”
“What?” I shrieked. “When did this happen?”
“A few hours ago.” She was still facing forward, so I quickly got up until I was seated in front of her. My eyes roamed over her face looking for signs of fallen tears, but she looked exactly the same as earlier.
“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked.
She shot me a sad look before pointing to my purse. “You turned your phone off, remember?”
“Oh shit, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think about—”
“Hey,” she interrupted as she reached over to squeeze my hand. “Don’t apologize. I would have done the same thing. You couldn’t have known. But I… I really should have seen this coming.” My eyebrows furrowed at her tone; she almost seemed… relieved?
“What happened?”
“Well that’s a loaded question, but the CliffNotes version is that I didn’t spend enough time with him. He said I spent too much time with my brother and friends and that I basically just kept him around because he was familiar.” I opened my mouth to speak but she raised her hand, effectively cutting me off. “Oh, I’m not done. That’s only half of the story. It seems that my lack of devotion led Caleb straight into the arms, or more accurately between the legs, of his lab partner.”
My jaw dropped and my eyebrows rose as I processed this. And out of everything I was thinking, the first thing I said was, “Oh shit, Derek is going to kill him.”
She laughed, and we both smiled for the first time since this shit storm of a day started. But she quickly turned serious when our laughter faded and whispered, “He wasn’t wrong.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Not about the cheating… that... well, that sucks. But about the neglecting him part? Yeah, he was pretty dead on. I mean even you just said so.”
“Yeah, but…” I trailed off, unsure of what to say because a part of me agreed. Naomi was an awesome friend and a dedicated sister to Derek, but Caleb was almost always a lower priority. I watched Naomi’s face fall further as she deduced my thoughts and immediately felt horrible for not being able to comfort her as she’d been comforting me.
“I know it’s true, you don’t need to say otherwise. I don’t want to be comforted with a lie.”
I nodded solemnly before comforting her with a truth. “Well it’s not like you ignored him out of spite.”
“I don’t think that really matters, and I don’t think he cheated on me out of spite either. He said part of him didn’t even think I would care, that I’d be relieved to have a reason to break up with him.”
I frowned as I heard her repeat the words I had been thinking only moments before. “How do you feel about it?”
“I feel… sad, angry, betrayed, guilty, and yeah, a little relieved. You name it and I probably feel it.” She shook her head and let out a sad laugh. “I can’t believe I’m single. I haven’t been single… ever.”
“You don’t think he’ll grovel and try to get you back?”
“Alara, I didn’t break up with him, he broke up with me. He doesn’t want to work through it, he wants to be with her.”
“What?”
&nb
sp; “Yeah. He told me he’s been having these feelings for a while and that she’s been in love with him since the first day of class. He said he didn’t want things to go any further until he talked to me.”
“So he’s been seeing her? Like full-on cheating on you?”
“No. I guess they got drunk the other night and slept together, but that’s all that’s ever happened. He said he was trying to figure out how to tell me, and when I blew him off tonight he just kind of lost it and told me everything.”
“I don’t even know what to say besides I’m sorry. And that just sounds lame but I am, I’m so sorry, Naomi.”
She nodded and continued looking forward. “I guess that’s what no one tells you about happy endings.” At my confused frown, she elaborated. “Technically this is a happy ending for Caleb and Amber. But happy endings aren’t really happy for everyone. Sometimes a happy ending is someone else’s nightmare, someone else’s tragedy.”
I moved a strand of hair behind her ear before shuffling back to sit beside her. “Yeah, I suppose that’s how it is sometimes. But someday you’ll get your own happy ending, and it won’t become anybody’s tragedy because you’re not the kind of person who goes after taken guys.”
She smiled briefly and rested her head on my shoulder. “I’ve met her, she’s pretty nice and we both know Caleb isn’t a bad guy. I’m not excusing this and it’s not okay, but I don’t believe they meant to hurt me. It’s not really black and white.”
I pulled back and looked her dead in the eye. “You might be right, but as your best friend it’s my job to trash talk both of them, so for the foreseeable future he’s an asshole and she’s a slut.”
Naomi burst out laughing and I quickly joined. “That’s ridiculous.”
I shrugged. “Just because it’s ridiculous doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be done. There’s a process to being cheated on and this is part of it.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
She was quiet for a few minutes before turning to me. “You know I don’t think you’re broken, right? I don’t think you’re exaggerating anything.” I frowned because I did know all those things. Naomi had always been in my corner, always ready to talk. Whether I needed someone on my side or needed someone to tell me things I couldn’t see. She was the kind of friend everyone deserved. “Of course I know that.”
Unveiling The Sky Page 28
