by Stahl, Shey
You want to hurt them, simple, tell them a lie.
Believing that it could be, in fact, be real, I ignored it. I let the lie go and saw what I wanted, a love like no other.
You never want to make a mistake, but, they fucking happen.
Sometimes, I think I’ll never be normal again. I like to hope Bailey was the same but I’m not sure.
I’m just a guy. Deep down, I’m still a boy. A boy with a broken fucking heart who misses cold toes, freckles and tangled ginger locks.
That’s my deal.
25. On my own – Bailey Gray
I could tell you a story about love but you’ll never fully understand what we felt that summer because you weren’t there experiencing our moments and living it with us. Maybe you see it now. Maybe you don’t. Maybe I lost you in the middle, I lost myself a few times.
But it was a story and it wasn’t finished.
I believed that if there was someone out there for me, my soul mate, I would find a way back to them.
On my own now and I’m constantly met with silence. A lot of it. It’s something I’ve missed and something I hated.
Sometimes I think I’m the strongest when I have something to prove. It’s like a fire gets lit and I say, “I’ll show those fuckers.”
I became driven to show everyone, myself included, that me, Bailey Gray, with the perfectly planned disaster, could be on her own.
I wanted to know that I could make it.
I had been wondering for eighteen years on what my life would be. Now look at it. I’d like to say it was what I imagined but it wasn’t.
After that day with Dylan, Drew bought me a plane tick home. I went back to Washington but I didn’t go home. Instead, I drove up to Seattle with my $750 that I had left.
I was sitting in a small coffee shop ready to pick out a corner again, only this time to live on when I met Avery Weber, a photographer of all people.
She gave me a place to stay and helped me sell some photos. It seemed too good to be true but Avery was what I needed to get over that summer. I never went to Dartmouth, I gave that life up. I never talked to my parents but I did see Jeb. I couldn’t not see him. He didn’t blame me for leaving the sweet boy, he tried to give me money. We kept in touch now and then he snuck up here to see me with friends. My parents never knew. As far as they were concerned, I was no longer their daughter. It’s a shame but they made it that way.
I thought about that summer all the time.
It was a summer of tears, laughter, colors that bled lies, denying the truth, it was the kind of love that knew no bounds, tangled emotions that were strong.
I saw colors that summer I had never seen before, ones that gave me hope where others were dark enough to give me chills and frighten my soul with their storm.
I have a phone now but I have very few contacts in it. One number appears frequently and I know how he got it. Megan. We kept in touch. It was now December and he called twice, both times I didn’t answer. He never left a message and I didn’t expect him to. Dylan wasn’t the type of guy to leave a message.
Sitting in a local Starbucks in downtown Seattle near the pier, I contemplated a few places to take some shots this weekend. Avery and I traveled up the coast a few times this month and got some really good sunsets, my specialty in photography, but they never had the same effect on me anymore.
“Bailey? Is that you?” I recognized the voice, my eyes shifted through the line to Kasey. Shocked I stared at him for a moment before his smiled broke through and brought me back.
Removing himself from the line, he came over to the table I was at near the window. “It’s really great to see you, Bailey.”
“You too Kasey.” I stood and wrapped my arms around his broad shoulders. It was the first time I’d hugged another guy since I left Dylan.
Kasey got back in line to get some coffee and then came over to sit with me. We talked about that summer and why I left. I told him about my dad and what he had done to Dylan’s mom. He said he assumed something along those lines with how quickly the accident had been covered up. We may have only been ten at the time but it was obvious that something wasn’t quite right with it.
“Eric was pretty torn up after you left,” Kasey said with a grin. “Punched through a glass window and ended up with thirty some stitches in his throwing hand.”
“Are you shitting me?” I nearly spit out my coffee.
“Nope.” His grin got wider. Kasey couldn’t keep a straight face and started laughing.
“Damn you Kasey,” I said wiping the corners of my lips with a napkin.
“I’m sorry,” he said through giggles, “but your face was priceless.”
“What did he do?” Tracing the coffee cup with the tips of my fingers, I tried to hide my curiosity.
“What do you think he did?”
“Honestly?” I contemplated my response because, believe it or not, I had thought about this a lot lately. I thought about Eric’s reaction when I left but I thought about Dylan’s even more. Something told me their reactions were entirely different. “Nothing.”
“You’re right. He did nothing for about a week. We still went to Lake Washington that night, he got drunk and that was about it. Then, after a while when he realized you weren’t coming back, he got drunk every night.” Kasey gave me an expression that spoke more about the past than I thought he knew. Deep down, Kasey knew. He was a smart guy. “He showed up at my house, drunk and got in a fight with my brother.”
“Did you know about―?”
Kasey nodded before I finished my question. “I more or less ignored it. I never thought Mer and I would last but I loved her. I did. She broke my fucking heart bad but I knew. I wasn’t stupid.”
“I’m sorry Kasey, I am.” And I was sorry. I knew exactly what he must have felt.
“I’m sorry too.”
We talked for probably another half an hour about football and that he was dating a girl now, Payton, and he was really enjoying having a two-sided relationship with someone who didn’t just think about themselves.
“Keep in touch Bailey, please,” Kasey said before he left.
“I will. Good luck on Saturday.”
He smiled and tugged me into a hug. “Thanks.”
I met up with Avery after that. She wanted to see a concert at the Showbox SoDo downtown. I tried to tell her music wasn’t my thing but she knew I was lying. Avery wasn’t letting up and we eventually went.
Avery didn’t let me get away with shit. She was a say-it-like-it-is type of girl with short sassy red spiked hair, wore leggings with leg warmers everywhere and I was sure she didn’t shave her legs. Ever. But I loved her.
She’d say things to me like: “Girl, if you don’t like your life, change it. Don’t cry to me when you’re the only one with the power to change it.”
I needed shit like that. I did. She told me the truth whether I wanted to hear it or not.
And then, when I got sad around his nineteenth birthday, she asked what my deal was.
What was my deal?
My deal?
My deal, as Avery would put it, I was just a girl with a broken heart.
That’s my deal.
I loved Avery for the simple fact that if she didn’t want to see you, she’d slam the door in your face, and had a time or two. She was my kind of friend.
I was doing well. I was making my own money, selling my photographs and living a life that was mine.
It wasn’t like I didn’t think about Dylan. I couldn’t look at the blue sky and not think of him. Good thing Seattle was mostly grey or I might have gone insane.
Being with him opened my eyes to a lot of things. Not just my family but life in general. It opened my eyes to a world I never knew. A world I could be myself in.
For the first time in my life I knew who I was, but I knew that because of Dylan, what he showed me. It took months to realize that, distance myself from that to know it.
Dylan and I weren’t anything anyone els
e could ever see or hear, or know. For the longest time we were a fraction of a touch in the halls, for just a second. We were unspoken words to leave home. A head nod. We’re the only ones that know what that dent in his door meant or the cracked windshield while making memories.
We weren’t anything we could have been, should have be, or actually were.
We were a sunset of rich colors that blend that knew no lines.
We were waiting
Who was I?
Well I was dark ginger beauty with speckled cheeks from sun kissed rays. I had my dad’s eyes and my mom’s nose. I shared a birthday with my little brother. I had chocolate brown eyes that Dylan would say he wanted to swim in and bath himself in their chocolate syrup and would tell me, as the moon lit the bedroom and all I heard was the beating of our hearts, that the chocolate made my soul sweet and my heart sing to him.
I could dance my ass off to just about any song and Dylan would say I do it well.
I enjoyed beer now, but it’s not my favorite and I’m not twenty-one so it’s few and far between.
My favorite color is ice blue.
I have tattoos now, my favorite is the guitar wrapped in a chain on my wrist. My sun tattoo on my hip means a lot to me as it reminds me of a boy who holds my heart.
I could speak two words in Spanish and three in Italian. I could make an apple pie that will put your grandmother’s recipe to shame.
I was scared of the dark and couldn’t watch scary movies. I owned every Kings of Leon song ever made, including their questionable earlier years. I wear jean shorts even in the winter. I collect flannel shirts, I have a bottle of whiskey I will never open and a guitar I will never play.
But that’s just my deal.
Maybe I’ll never have my sunset.
Maybe I don’t need it.
Maybe perfectly planned is okay for some people. Perfectly planned is not my deal.
I believe that people come into your life and then some go. I also think there’s a purpose as to why they were in your life at all. Each one takes a piece of you when they go. Some leave pieces of themselves with you. Sometimes it’s wisdom, or maybe, it’s a lesson.
Dylan left a huge part of himself with me
When I close my eyes, I think about Dylan kissing me awake in the barely illuminated morning, and the way his blues eyes look when he first opened them. I think about what it felt like to kiss him in that lake and making out a summer bucket list. I think about what it felt like to be in his arms, have them wrapped around me and feel his weight on me. I think about the look on his face when I said on was leaving and watching him walk away.
I lost a lot that summer but I gained a lot more.
If you let Dylan, he could be the shadow and the smoke in your eyes.
He gave me a piece of forever that summer. I had a taste of what it was like. To love, to feel, to live, I had it. Maybe it was short but I still had it.
Dylan blamed himself for not telling me but it wasn’t his fault. I knew that. Dylan hadn’t done anything wrong but show me how to be myself and how to live for myself. So many times he’d tried to tell me. Now I understood that.
Even with that, Dylan wasn’t the type of guy that you could fall in love with and then simply fade out if things didn’t work out.
He was the type of guy that you fell hard and like concrete, rooted, you stayed until that barrier cracked and you could start to wiggle loose one wiggle at a time.
He was intense and you couldn’t just forget him as if he had never been there.
Now, this was where the story of two outlaw kids took on another twist. Some would have thought that day in Birmingham would have been the last we saw of each other. Like I said, loving someone like Dylan couldn’t be easily forgotten. Our souls couldn’t forget a love like that. It may have been brief but was enough to last a lifetime.
Avery had convinced me to go to a concert at The Showbox SoDo. I told you that already. That’s when two souls found each other again. Maybe it was fate? Or maybe it was being in the right place at the right time.
I don’t think Dylan knew I was there that night and I never knew it was his band that was playing. I didn’t know he was still playing. I hoped that he was but I didn’t know.
Avery and I were sitting at a table in the back, talking about what she ate for lunch when the band took the stage. Still, I didn’t look up. Avery was also incredibly animated when she spoke about anything, now wasn’t any different.
Then he spoke.
“You hear people say they lost the girl of their dreams, and I did.”
My eyes shot to the stage when I heard that familiar voice that could still send chills down my spine.
It was him.
In Seattle.
Right in front of me.
“And I fucking regret it every day. Here’s to you brown eyes. I hope you got your sunset.” His eyes, ice blue, shifted from the audience to the guitar in his lap.
I spit out my drink, literally spit out my drink all over Avery.
She sighed like a child had just thrown up on her and said, “I’m guessing you are brown eyes?”
“No.” I wiped ice from my lap.
Avery rolled her eyes, long fake black lashes. “Liar.”
When he started to sing, I was completely entranced by him as he sang, it was captivating. When Dylan played music, he had the air of a person in deep almost studious concentration way his voice would lower still did things to me.
The song he played? Tangled Up In You.
Dylan sang that song with such an emotion people felt that song in their bones, the passion was evident in every word. His eyes were closed, he wasn’t fidgeting. He was feeling.
“My god,” Avery said blowing the breath she had apparently been holding in when he sang the very last word. “Who the fuck is that boy?”
I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move.
He must have known I was there. Maybe he felt it too.
I knew it when he was standing behind me. My blood felt it, my heart knew it, and my skin tingled. It was him. Honest and alive, I smiled.
“How are you?” he asked giving Avery a shy sideways smile. His flannel was rolled up to his elbows revealing those same tattoos I studied over the summer. Ripped jeans met a pair of worn Vans and I smiled that we were wearing the same type of shoes. All this time and we still had the same quirks.
“Please tell me you fucked him.” Avery shook her head biting her lip batting her eyes. “Goddamn.”
“Avery!” I gave her a glare and offered an apologetic smile to Dylan. He smirked, sideways, boyish, damn him
“What?” She stood and shook his hand. “Anyone that smiles like that deserves a good fuck.”
I rolled my eyes. “Dylan meet Avery.”
They spoke for all of two seconds and she ran away. Avery knew we had some unresolved issues. “He’s your deal,” she said with a wink.
My deal.
Seeing him now, being in the same room with him made me realize how incredibly stupid I had been. Looking at those ice blue eyes now, that spark I had flamed brighter than ever now. When he smiled, it became a volcano.
“You’re not the girl you used to be,” he said eyeing the tattoos.
“And you’re not the boy you used to be,” I said gesturing with a nod to the stage, with swarming girls around him.
We spoke briefly about his band. Now that I looked closely, Reece was with him as well as Eddy. They were both sidetracked with women on their laps.
“Why did you come to Seattle?”
“My uncle,” he said sitting across from me where Avery had just been.
“Oh.”
He smiled, crooked and just the same as he would over the summer. “It was you. And if there was one thing that kept me going,” His smile faded slightly, one side higher than the other. “It was waiting for you.”
“I need to tell you something,” I murmured.
“Anything,” he said tucking a stray lock of hair behind my
ear.
“I still love you. I never stopped.”
I felt like I couldn’t breathe after the words were spoken, truth and desire turning on me.
“Brown eyes,” he sighed as both of his hands came up to frame my face. I slowly opened my eyes.
I gasped when I realized how close he was.
“Sometimes I thought I imagined everything between us, like maybe it wasn’t real but then I watch a sunset and I remembered the way your touch felt and the way your eyes mixed with the lighting. It was real.”
“Every moment with you was real, brown eyes. I mean that.”
I stared at him.
“I’ll be honest,” he continued. “I told myself to forget you. Imagine it wasn’t real and that I let you walk away, because I did. I was angry. I wanted to follow you, shake some sense into you but you made it seem so easy to walk away, like it was never there to begin with, like you didn’t take every piece of my soul that summer. But you did.” He let out a dark chuckle.
I only nodded as he poured his heart out to me, something Dylan never did.
“Now what?” He knew what I meant by that.
“I’m done pretending you didn’t mean anything to me. That you still don’t. I loved you. I love you now, here. The bone deep shit that you try to capture in a song or a movies or a book, that kind of shit. The type of love that words can’t compare to. I still love you. I never stopped. Time apart never changed that for me.”
I gasped feeling the blood rush to my heart with each word. I couldn’t deny that his words stung something deep inside of me. A love I could never forget and never wanted to. It was a love that put those sunsets to shame.
“Don’t give me some bullshit about us not being meant to be together because we are,” he continued. “You didn’t just randomly show up here. It was fate. You once asked me if I was in the right place at the right time what I would do. This is me, in the right place at the right time.”
And there was the part I couldn’t deny.
“Don’t,” he whispered as he put his palm to my cheek. “I’m here, I want you, and I won’t let you walk away this time.” He looked weary when I cleared my throat, his eyes jerked to mine. “Please, brown eyes.”
