But I didn’t because we were young, he was unreadable, and I didn’t want to wake up one day, talking about love as if it was the most magical, painful thing I’d ever let slip through my fingers.
Instead, I took the moment we shared together, singing old Nirvana songs through the window, staring into each other’s eyes, and I stored it in my memories.
I stored it as one of the best.
Even if it didn’t last long. Even if the sound of Chris beeping the horn of his brand-new car and calling out my name turned Toby’s face to rage before he quickly stood up, shut his window, and went back to hide in the shadows.
For a brief moment, he’d come back…
Just as he was.
NINE
Toby
I considered texting Chris and telling him what I thought of him. I thought about texting Lilac, too. I ended up pacing the floor of my bedroom for over an hour before I decided to venture out into the hallway and the dining room. I stopped in my tracks when I saw Mum sitting there, her head in her hands and her tears falling hard against the table’s surface.
It wasn’t an unusual sight to see her so lost.
Such a young, beautiful woman being torn down by the demons in her head and other things she wouldn’t talk to me about. She had her usual dressing gown on, rolled up at the sleeves and bunched around her elbows, and her dark hair was scrunched up into a bobble on top of her head.
“Mum,” I whispered. “It’s Toby.” An introduction was always a good start. It gave her time to prepare herself for whatever face she felt fit her best at that particular moment.
Her shoulders shook as her sobbing grew louder and louder. She stayed focused on the grains of wood in the table. They gave her something else to study besides the crippling thoughts in her head.
“Toby?”
“Right here.”
“Closer, please.”
Moving around the table, I fell behind her and wrapped my arms around her shoulder, resting my head against hers. Her sobs came thicker and faster the moment I made contact. She once told me she needed me to do this to her so the fog would clear. She needed me to soak up her pain like a sponge because I could take it and dump it elsewhere, whereas she clung onto every ounce of it and let its weight multiply.
“I love you, Mum.” Over and over again I repeated it into her ear until, eventually, her breathing calmed and her body steadied itself. When her hand came up to rest on my arm, I heard her whispered thank you, filled with shame and exhaustion.
“Tell me something good that happened to you today,” she urged me softly.
I closed my eyes.
“Good. Something good, please, son.”
“I saw Lilac.”
Her fingers dug into my skin with quiet excitement. “And?”
“She’s mad at me still.”
“Girls don’t get mad at boys they like. They get frustrated. Lilac doesn’t know how to be mad at you.”
“Trust me, she does.”
“How do you know that for certain?”
“She was hiding behind the curtain. Lilac never hides from me. It means I’ve made her unsure of who I am.”
“I said tell me something good, Toby. Not something sad.”
“She might be mad at me, Mum, but she sang along to the song I played anyway.”
I felt Mum’s smile rise against my arm. “Of course she did.”
“And then we got interrupted by Chris, who’d come to pick her up and take her out with that mate of his I hate. I think they’ve all gone on some kind of date.” Just saying that out loud fucking hurt.
“Chris?” Mum pulled away and looked over her shoulder at me, all aching skin and bruised eyes. “Your friend, Chris?”
“Yeah.” I nodded, standing upright, pushing my hair back.
A spark came to life in Mum’s eyes. One I didn’t expect to see. There was annoyance there mixed with a mother’s instinct to fight for her child. It lasted a single second. A single moment in time. I clung to it.
She coughed lightly and wiped the back of her hands over her eyes to clear away the tears. Mum straightened up in her seat and readjusted the dressing gown around her chest to make it tighter.
“Well, that won’t do,” she muttered, almost to herself, her eyes scanning the floor manically. “No. Chris knows how you feel about her, doesn’t he?”
I scratched the back of my neck. “I think everyone knows.”
“Then what Chris is doing is wrong.”
“Not if it’s what Lilac wants, too. I’ve hardly been a saint in all of this.”
“You were selfless.”
“But she doesn’t know that. She just thinks I’m a bit of a dick.”
“I’ll allow that word this one time.”
“Sorry.” I smiled.
Mum closed her eyes and took a slow, centred breath before she smiled back at me. “Don’t let her go so easily, Toby. She doesn’t want Chris or his friend. She wants someone to want her the way she wants you. For years, she’s looked at you like you’re ten feet tall, but girls—women, too—like to be loved openly. To be fought for. They have this desire to know for certain what their favourite boy is thinking. Don’t let Chris just take her from you because you’re still hiding away while your ribs get better and your bruises fade. You should tell her everything that happened. Being honest with her is the right thing to do.”
I sighed heavily. “I’ll think about it, Mum. Right now, I just need to know that you’re okay. Why were you crying?”
“Stop trying to change the subject. It’s just a bad day.”
“Any reason?” I dared myself to ask.
“It doesn’t matter why.” She stood up quickly. “What matters is you going to get Lilac back.” Dragging her hands down over my T-shirt, she brushed some invisible pieces of lint away from it before she ran her fingers through my hair and pushed it all back away from my face.
“So, so handsome, Toby.”
“Thanks, Mum.”
“Do you have any idea how much I love you.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad you can look through my dark clouds and still see the way my heart beats for you.”
“Always.”
She kissed me on the cheek before disappearing down the hallway. I was left standing there, unsure of my next move. The anger was still simmering away beneath my skin, but somehow Mum had calmed me down, despite her suffering. I’d always found it funny how humans could do that: handle another’s pain much better than their own.
I turned to look back at Lilac’s house. We were always so close, yet so damn far away. It was time for me to close that gap.
The term stalker sprang to mind when I saw the car pull up at the end of the driveway. Lilac climbed out, her smile forced as she turned back to wave at Chris, Cheryl, and the older dude who was in the passenger’s seat. Cheryl yelled something at Lilac, and they all erupted into laughter. I didn’t hear the joke. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. If I didn’t understand it, I’d feel even farther away from Lilac. I didn’t want that.
Young love, it seemed, made a fool out of me.
When the car drove off, I watched Lilac turn and look at my house. Her head tilted to one side, and she worried her little purse between her hands before she dropped her chin to her chest and looked down at the ground.
I remained on the grass, my legs kicked out while I leaned back on my arms and waited for her to spot me.
At one point, I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. Lilac refused to look up as she made her way to the front door looking more deflated than someone who’d just been on a date should. Maybe she felt the same tingling sensation running through her as I did whenever we were close by because just as she was about to go to her front door and disappear, she looked up sharply and her eyes met mine.
I smiled.
So did she—hers a little sadder than mine.
I smirked and raised my brows, waiting for her to join me. Her steps were slow and measured as she dr
ew closer, and I was in awe of the way the moonlight made her look more beautiful than ever before.
“Good night?” I asked, looking up at her through my glasses as she came to stand over me. I knew she loved it when I wore them. I was playing all my cards.
“Not the best I’ve ever had.” She glanced over her shoulder before she looked back down at me and shrugged. “But it was nice to be around people who wanted to be around me.”
“Ouch.”
She glanced at my house one last time before she came to sit down beside me, the two of us staring up at her bedroom window instead of at each other.
“Sorry,” she said softly.
“Me, too.”
“That’s overdue.”
“I know.”
It took her a minute to speak again, her voice quiet when she did. “What are you doing out here?”
“Sometimes I sit out here so that I don’t feel so far away from you.”
“Why have you been so far away from me?”
“I’ve had some things going on. Things I didn’t want to put on your shoulders.”
“Things at home?”
“Yeah,” I half-lied. “Things at home.” I met her gaze as she turned to look at me.
God, she was beautiful. I was young and so was she, but she was fucking beautiful, and saying it with a swear word beforehand seemed to give it that extra oomph I needed it to have to remind myself just how perfect she was. Perfect. Fucking perfect.
Too good for screwed up Toby Hunter with his weird temper, downtrodden mum, and father who barely spoke to him.
“And you couldn’t just tell me that?”
“I could have.” I paused, smirking coyly. “Should have. Hindsight and all that jazz.”
“You know, I make an excellent listener.” Her shoulder bumped mine, her smile lighting up her face like a gift from the sky.
“Have you ever had a secret bottled up inside of you that you want to share, but it’s not yours to share with the world?” I asked her, my eyes falling to her lips. The lips I’d kissed not so long ago. Too long ago.
“No.” She shook her head.
“Lucky you. I guess that explains the constant ray of sunshine vibe you give off to the world.”
“Is your secret bad?”
“It is for me.”
“Is it about your mum?” She bit down on her lip, and I narrowed my eyes, wondering how the hell she could know anything about my mum who kept herself locked away on her worst days, yet always managed to convince the whole world she was happy on her good days—even me.
“My mum?”
Lilac nodded, brushing her hair around to her opposite shoulder, exposing her neck to me like I was a vampire and she was mine for the taking. My eyes lingered on the curve of her neck, all the teenage boy fantasies I’d had coming to life all at once like a hurricane of lust for her.
“Your mum always seems so sad.”
“Lilac…”
“It’s okay, you know. I don’t need the details. I just… I need to know it’s not me who made you hide away all summer. Because one minute I was having the best night of my life, and the next…”
“I know.” I swallowed sharply.
“Was it me, Toby?” she whispered like she was speaking around shattered glass.
“Not you.”
“I’ve missed you.”
My chest ached from her admission. “I’ve missed you.”
The silence stretched on then, neither awkward nor comfortable, just a barrier between us both that seemed to dry up all our conversation and make us scramble for something to say. Although sometimes saying something just for the sake of it ruined the moment more than any amount of silence ever could.
I looked back at her bedroom window, wishing I could climb through it with her and spend the night.
Her hands fell into the grass, and she leaned back on her arms before I felt her fingertips dance over mine. When I looked at her, she was staring straight ahead at her room. I wondered if her thoughts and desires matched my own.
“Chris’s friend is a bit of an idiot,” she eventually said.
“Was it a date?”
“I think so.” Lilac hummed, then sighed wistfully.
“Who were you meant to be with?”
She swallowed her first words, and I watched the small lump rise and fall in her throat before she was able to form her answer. “Chris.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
The burning started at my toes, and I couldn’t hide the curl of my fingers in the ground, even though I knew she’d feel it with her hand on top of mine.
“Cool,” I whispered.
Her palm pressed harder onto my hand. “Is it cool?”
“If he makes you happy.”
“He’s nice to me.”
“Uh huh.”
“And his friend, Rees, seemed to dig Cheryl.”
“Perfect.” I nodded.
“No, it—”
“You don’t have to pretend for me, Lilac.” I turned to look at her, my jaw ticking hard as I tried to control the nasty feelings that were tearing through me. I didn’t like this side of who I was. The side that could go from zero to sixty in a second flat, moving from love to hate with the flick of a switch. “I’ve not exactly been fair to you these last few weeks.”
“You haven’t.”
“Are you going to see Chris again?”
Her eyes bore into mine searching for something. “Do you think I should?”
No. Like fuck, I do. I think you should be with me.
“You could do worse.”
“Could I do better?”
I huffed out a humourless laugh. “You deserve better.”
“And you, Toby Hunter? Are you better or worse?”
It was my turn to search her eyes this time. “Honestly, Lilac, some days I don’t know what the hell I am.”
“Your honesty is the thing I like about you the most. When you offer it, anyway.” Her hand curled around mine completely, our fingers entwining in the grass as we both gripped on tighter. “That, and your bravery.”
“How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not brave.”
“Right. Okay.” She grinned, unleashing her full smile before she turned and looked back at her house again. “Shut up and just be my friend again.”
“I never stopped being your friend.”
“You stopped something.”
She was right. I had. And now I had no right to make any demands on her. I’d wanted Lilac from the first moment I’d set eyes on her. I’d almost had her, too, and then I’d let her slip away. Drift through the air, farther and farther out of reach as I struggled to keep up and catch her again.
That night, I wasn’t too worried, though. We were young. And you could make mistakes when you were young, right? We had all the time in the world to correct them, and I had forever to become who she needed me to be.
At least that’s what I’d hoped.
It was a shame no one told me what an idiot I was to believe that back then.
It was a shame that that was the last night I would get to hold her hand in mine for another year.
It was a shame it turned out that Chris had more balls than I did, and he wasn’t about to waste time with games on a girl like Lilac. No. He was about to take her, whisk her off her feet, drown her in poetry and love songs, while all I could do was play my guitar in my bedroom every night and hope that she sang back some nights.
She did. She almost always did.
She may have been dating him, but her voice was with me.
TEN
Lilac
Seventeen years old, and I was dating a boy I liked a lot, wishing for a boy I loved more. Time had had a way of pushing me down a path I had no chance of resisting.
Chris was down to earth, charming, and fair. Although, I could see he hadn’t always been fair and true to his old friend Toby who he didn’t speak to anymore. I wasn’t blind to the way that friendship ha
d gone. I didn’t like to think it was because of me, but I knew deep down that it was.
I tried to resist Chris’ charms for a few months after that night lying in the grass with Toby. Most evenings Toby would open his bedroom window, and I’d wait for the gentle strumming of his guitar to begin. Sometimes I’d sit and smile, doing nothing more than listening to the songs he brought to life with his fingertips. Some nights I would stand by the window and join in if I knew the lyrics. Others I would be working at my desk, completing college work, silently mouthing the words back to him and enjoying the feel of his stare on the side of my face as I studied.
In a bizarre move, Toby didn’t end up attending the same college as Chris and me—a fact that had surprised all of us. I couldn’t help but think it was all because of me. I never asked, though. And that might seem foolish from the outside looking in, but when one day rolls into another, a week forms out of nowhere. Those weeks turn into months, and those months create a whole year of should have, would have, could haves. A small drink out with Chris, just to be friendly, had turned into him taking me out three times the following week before he’d leaned in for a kiss.
At the time, I’d wanted to kiss him. I’d wanted to kiss someone and feel that ‘thing’ in my stomach Toby had brought to life. But the feeling Chris left me with after he pressed his lips to mine didn’t seem quite right. I wasn’t full from him. I wasn’t ready to burst. I wasn’t tingling. It was nothing more than pleasant.
Pleasant company wasn’t a bad thing.
It wasn’t a set my soul on fire and be so happy I could die tomorrow thing, either.
Cheryl was officially with Rees, which made getting out of double dates all the more awkward. The more Chris attempted to woo me, treat me right, and show me a good time, the more I felt my resistance weaken. The more I felt like I owed him for something.
A Girl Like Lilac Page 9
