“She's in here a few times a week, you know she writes letters?” I flip the journal pages and see a few entries marked “Dear Lily” and a whole lot of my name is mentioned throughout. “And you know this how?”
“I saw them when she first started coming in. She liked Bernie better though, so I don't wait on her anymore.”
“Because you were nosey and always trying to read what she was writing, and asking questions,” Bernadette supplied helpfully.
“You knew?” Anger seeped from my pours then. “That's my baby isn't it?” I yelled. Bernadette's hand flew to her mouth as she looked from me to Jenn, and then where Sasha had retreated into a cab. “All the times I talked to you about wishing I knew what happened to Sasha, and you knew where she was the whole time? You knew she was pregnant? With my baby?”
“You don't understand, I wasn't sure. I didn't think…” Jenn was reaching out for me then, but I backed away slowly.
“Don't fucking come near me.” I screamed the words out before turning to Bernadette. “Do you know where she lives? I have to find her.”
“No, I'm so sorry honey, if I had known…” her words trail off. “Now, I wish I had been nosey and looked at those journals too. That poor, poor girl. I can only imagine.” Bernadette turned to go back into the diner with her shoulders slumped. It was obvious she felt bad for Sasha. I can only imagine what they're talks had been like.
I pulled out my phone then, dialing the one person I needed to come help me. “Hey man, what's up? I was just leaving practice.”
“I need you. I'm at the diner, and if I drive right now I'll probably kill someone.”
“I'm on my way,” my brother said into the phone before hanging up.
“Please, let me explain…” Jenn was pleading with me.
“GET. THE. FUCK. AWAY.” I yelled out. She flinched back again.
“Kade,” tears were free falling down her face.
“No! Nothing. I have nothing to fucking say to you.” I couldn't wait for Brad. I would catch up with him later. I crawled into my Jeep and took off for home.
BRAD - Where are you? I'm at the diner and you're not here. All Jenn will say is that you left. Worried man, call me.
I ignored the text until I was home. Once I was parked I responded before heading into the house.
ME - Sorry. Couldn't stand there listening to her bullshit anymore. Will explain shortly. I need to read something first.
I decided on the way here that I needed to at least read the part of Sasha's journal that was addressed to me. So, I ignored my mom's looks as I walked through the kitchen and moved into my bedroom slamming the door and locking it behind me. I crashed into my bed, let out a breath, and then opened the damn journal. My one last connection to the girl I had loved since forever.
Dear Kade,
I can't believe I've gone through one whole journal of letters to the baby, and this is the first time I've been able to write a letter to you. It took a while to write it, because in doing so I realized I'd never actually hear from you again, and that was a hard pill to swallow.
I fell in love with you so long ago that I'm not sure how to live a life where I don't love you anymore, or at least where you're not here for me to love. When I punched Johnny Lincoln in the nose and turned around to have you hug me, kiss my cheek, and look at me the way you did… Gah! I think I fell for you that day. I didn't even like boys back then. That look in your eyes when I first turned around… I don't know what you were thinking then. Well, you told me I was your hero, but whatever it was it mesmerized me. I don't think I could have let you go then if my life depended on it. My heart skipped in that moment when your lips brushed so softly across my cheek and I swear to you my heart has never beat the same since that day. I'd gotten used to the new rhythm of my heart. The one you put there. It became normal, and from that day forward not a minute ticked by that my heart didn't beat its new rhythm out just for you.
Then you disappeared and took my heart with you. It's missing more beats because a piece of me is gone and I don't know where it went or why, or if I can even ever get it back. You changed your number. Jason told me it was all my fault that you weren't coming back. I still don't know what I did to make you leave, because you left Jason behind too.
Well, not the way you left me though. I heard him talking to you on the phone one day at school. He didn't realize I was there, but my heart missed a few more beats when I heard him say your name and I knew then that I was the only one you actually left behind.
Only, as it turns out, I'm not the only one you left. I didn't get to tell you about her because you were gone all ready when I found out. You were gone from my life for two days when I realized something wasn't right with me. I always thought we would have a baby one day, that we'd be a family, but in my dreams we were supposed to be together and happy.
I took the test alone. I waited alone. I kept wishing you were there with me. I craved your arms around me, your voice reassuring me that it would be all right. That we were in this together. Then I thought it would all turn out, you'd cool down from whatever made you so mad at me and you would come back to me - to us.
You didn't though. I don't even know how to get a hold of you so I'm stuck writing to a fictional version of you, one who might actually be around to read this one-day. I have to write it in this letter, the news I found out today, that we're having a daughter. This baby girl that I will one day have to tell you about, I have to write about her in a letter. One I can't send, and I wonder if I will ever be able to tell you about her in reality. I sit here wondering what the hell I'm going to tell her about you too. I don't even know what to say to her. I want to be angry and tell her you're the boy who decimated my heart, but I hurt so much more when I think those things.
I don't know if I can even do this alone. I just know I can't fathom the idea of giving her to strangers to raise. She's a part of both of us. Me. You. I hope that one day you will know about her. Maybe you can find your way back to her, even if you want to forever remain lost to me.
I just don't understand…
Why?
Yours Always,
Sasha
“FUCK!!!!!” I yelled out as I tossed the journal aside.
“Kade?” My mom called out, coming to stand on the other side of my locked bedroom door. “Are you okay?”
“No, I'm fucking not okay, mom!” I unlocked the door and let her in, because she may as well hear about this cluster fuck now. So, I tell her everything that happened today and about the words I just read in Sasha's letter to me - a letter that was nothing more than a journal entry, because she never thought she'd see me again to let me read it.
“No!” My mom was crying now too. “Oh God no! All that time, you were stuck there taking care of me, and she thought…” Giant heaving sobs wracked through my mom's body and I couldn't even bring myself to move to offer her comfort. I was sort of playing the blame game in my own head too. I wasn't putting it all on my mom, but her stupidity where my dad was concerned certainly had been the catalyst in all of this.
“But you said… Jason told you…” her words were coming out disjointed between her sobbing.
I threw my alarm clock across the room and watched with zero satisfaction as it imbedded itself into the wall. “Jason is going to answer for his part in all of this. He fucked us both with his petty bullshit. Because of him I lost touch with Sasha, and never knew she was pregnant.”
“Have you read all of this?” My mom asked as her fingers traced over the journal I left sitting on my bed.
“Just the first entry that was addressed to me.”
“Maybe you should read further before you do anything else? No use going into everything else blind.” My mom hesitated as she got up and stood behind me, resting a hand gently on my back. “What about Jenn though?”
“Mom, she knew. Sasha is the sad little pregnant girl Jenn makes fun of at the diner. She knew. She read my name over Sasha's shoulder and never told me.”
> My mom sucked in a horrified breath. “What a mess!” She managed to get out before patting me on the back and leaving me to the journal. “I'm calling Mick. Let's see if we can find out where she lives, or at least find her mom.”
I nodded and went back to the journal. I spent the rest of the day reading through all the entries. Sasha's descriptions of feeling the baby move, of her hopes and dreams, the stories she told of us from before. Each fucking entry broke my heart into pieces. She never said anything bad, at least nothing that wasn't the absolute truth. She told stories to our daughter about how we loved one another, whether it was as friends or more. She was painting a picture of how much love went into making our baby girl. If I ever doubted the person Sasha was she just reminded me over again why I had always loved her. I also didn't miss the stark reminder that I would probably never be good enough to have a person like her in my life. She was pure gold.
Finally, though, someone Sasha had talked about often in the journal hit me hard with yet another stark realization. Brad. She kept mentioning Brad being there, putting the crib together, going to an appointment that Kristin couldn't make it to. Lights started flicking on in my own dark brain then. My brother was hung up on a girl he referred to always as Prego. Fuck My Life.
ME (to Brad) - Meet me at my place, ASAP, man. It's an emergency.
I re-read through some of the journals trying to gage how Sasha felt about Brad. There really wasn't anything in there directly stating that she loved him or was in love with him, but what she did write made it obvious that she cared. I wondered what Brad was going to say when I told him I was the dickwad he'd been railing about for months. I am the jerk that left that perfect woman here alone and pregnant. FUCK!
My phone buzzed and I picked it up thinking it might be Brad telling me he was delayed for some reason. “Please,” Jenn's pleading voice came through the phone.
“I'm expecting a call,” I said.
“I just need to see you and make everything right.”
“I'm about to be a father and never knew. You knew for months and didn't tell me. How can you make that right?”
“She wrote that you had to know by now. I thought maybe you just didn't care.”
“You thought I didn't care? You watched me in torment over that girl, and you stuck around anyway. You thought I wouldn't care about my own baby, and you wanted to be with me? I'm having a really hard time believing that shit.”
“People give babies up for adoption all the time,” she offered as a weak argument.
“You listened to me tell you about Sasha. There's no way you can honestly sit there and say I wouldn't have cared about a baby considering how much I care about her.” Silence came from the other end of the line. “Jenn?” I called her name softly.
“Yeah, baby?” The hopeful sound in her voice made me want to punch something.
“Don't ever call me again!” I hung up without waiting on a response. I didn't need one.
I still hadn't heard back from Brad, so I tucked in to my bed and tried to memorize every damn word she'd written in the journal. I even re-read the letter I had written to her that she had tucked in the pages. The one I wrote when I was finally ready to pull my head out of my ass and give us a real try.
She didn't make it easy on me either. After I gave it to her, she made me sweat it out for two weeks before she responded to me. In that time, I had to watch her go on a damn date with Mason too. I seriously didn't think I would make it through that. More importantly, I didn't think Mason was going to make it through. I was ready to kill him. The night they went out on their date, towards the end of November last year I had waited at her apartment for them to return like the stalker I was.
I was in the parking lot, in my little Honda, when I watched them pull up. He was a complete gentleman, got out, opened her door for her, and helped her out of the car. Meanwhile I wanted to punch him in the face for doing all those things, but only because I wished it was me doing them.
He walked her up the three flights of stairs to the landing outside of her apartment as I watched. The building juts out some forming an alcove after you get off the stairs between the door of her apartment and where the rest of the building meets the stairwell. Once they stepped close enough to her door to have the wall in the way I wasn't able to see what went down. I didn't exactly want to torture myself with watching another man kissing her, but I did need to know if he was truly going to be competition, because there was no way I was giving up.
A few minutes later Mason was down the stairs and getting in his car. I hadn't even realized I was out of my car and standing beside him until he spoke. “Wondering how our good night kiss went?” He asked with a hint of laughter in his voice. My fist balled up at my side, and the look on my face must have told him he was about to walk into a huge pile of shit if he continued taunting me. So, to my surprise, he didn't. He let his shoulders fall and then did the one thing I'd never expect from another dude where a girl was concerned. He helped.
“Look, normally, I would say to the victor goes the spoils, but I really like Sasha on a deep personal level.” He saw me twitching again and laughed. “Calm your tits, man. Just listen. I mean that girl is too good for words. She's too good for me, and certainly way too fucking good for the likes of you. But for some reason she seems to like you, and I don't think there's a person alive that can compete with the ghost of you, especially when you're waiting at the end of their dates to beat the shit out of the guy.” He chuckles again. “She's in love with you. It was painfully obvious to see when you were hanging on every damn bitch in school in front of her. You hurt her. I'll be honest I wasn't the only guy two steps away from beating your ass over that shit. I get that you have your reasons and she had hers for how things went down. I don't need to know the details.” He sighed.
“What I am going to tell you is if you want her to take you seriously you need to work for it. Not one day of flowers and a letter delivered in embarrassingly public ways. That girl is all about the personal, which is something you should know about her considering how long you guys have been hanging out. Show her in ways that count that you're serious, and don't fucking give up, because the minute you do is the minute you lose her to some other schmuck like me.” He winked at me then, got in his car, and took off without another word.
There I stood, schooled by my best friend's date on how to win her over. I probably should have been humbled by the fact that he was bowing out of the race before it ever even got started, but then again maybe he had been smart enough to realize the race began a long time ago. I was the idiot who didn't realize I was in it to begin with. I fell asleep at some point thinking back to almost a year ago when all of that shit went down.
Chapter Nineteen
~Sasha~
Oct. 29 - “Sasha? What's wrong?” Kristin asked the minute I walked through the door. I started blubbering out the story of what just happened at the diner, but apparently I was sobbing too hard for her to understand, because she stopped me with hands firmly gripping my shoulders. “Breathe!” She pulled me close. “That's it, just breathe. Give yourself a minute, and then you can tell me all about it, okay?”
I nodded my head against her shoulder, and tried to calm myself as she guided us both over to the couch. “I saw him today,” I choked out.
“You saw who today?” She asked before thinking and then added, “oh. Are you sure? I'm not trying to be funny, but you kept thinking he was Jeep guy.”
“He is Jeep guy, Kris. I saw him at the diner with his arms wrapped around that waitress. They looked…” the emotion literally knocked me over. “Happy.”
“Oh no, I'm so sorry, Sasha.” She pulled me to her again and held on tight. “Wait, the waitress?” I nodded. “The nosey one that use to read over your shoulder and ask you questions like, 'Kade is a really unusual name' that waitress?”
“Yeah, her.”
“Son of a bitch. She knew this whole time, I bet. Do you think she ever told him about you?”
“He looked really shocked to see me right before I ran away,” I admitted.
“Um,” Kristin pulled me back so she could look me in the eye then. “Did you just say you ran away?” I nodded my head. “Why did you run away?”
“They looked happy, Kris. His arms were around her when they walked in and they were laughing and his head was dipped in close to her neck.” Misery was rolling off of me in waves as I recounted everything I'd seen, including the part where the waitress had draped herself across his shoulders when he tried to help me up and gave me a nasty look.”
“A nasty look, huh?” Kristin sat quiet for a minute, thoughtful. “I bet she never told him. I'm going to make you some hot chocolate. You're shaking like a leaf.” Kristin got up and walked to the kitchen, but she returned almost as quickly as she left. Definitely not enough time to heat water up. “Sash?”
“Yeah?” I managed to squeak out with a hiccup.
“You said that waitress from the diner, right?”
“Uh huh.”
“Don't you remember that time Brad asked you out to dinner, a double date that would have been with his brother and the diner waitress?”
“Yeah, I…” It dawned on me then what she was getting at.
“What is his brother's name?”
“He's never even said. I teased him once about it, and asked if he really liked using that word, brother, and he told me it was helping him to get used to the fact that he had one.”
“Do you think there's any way he knew?” She asked the question I was currently mulling over.
“He couldn't have. He gets so angry when I talk about the baby's dad. Like Seriously angry, threatening to kick his ass if they ever met kind of mad.”
“Well, I think you know how to find Kade now.” Kristin said as she moved back into the kitchen again. “I really would love to be there to see the two of them getting together this next time though. That's bound to be explosive. Now that I think about it, they do favor one another in the looks department. Brad's a bit darker of hair, skin tone, and whatnot but their features are really similar.”
Letters to Lily (Letters to... #1) Page 18
