by Sarra Cannon
I may not be the person I once was, but that doesn’t make me any less or any more than I should be.
I have always hated the word should, because it has always made me feel like I didn’t deserve to make my own choices. I went out with Preston when he first asked me on a date, because I knew it was what I should do. I went to church every Sunday, because it was what everyone expected of me. I wore the clothes I was supposed to wear and became exactly the kind of girl I was supposed to be.
Growing up, I obeyed every little whim and command of my mother’s because that’s what I felt I should do. That’s what good girls do. But at some point, wasn’t I also supposed to become my own person? Wasn’t I supposed to make my own choices?
Choices based on joy and love and want and need, not should.
There have only been a handful of times in my life when I made decisions based on what I truly wanted and felt was right for me, rather than choosing what others expected or even wanted from me. Going to Boston. Speaking up against Burke Redfield. Falling in love with Knox. These are choices that I made for me, and they were some of the most satisfying, joyful choices of my life.
I realize now that I have been living a half-life since I came home to Fairhope. Half here and half stuck in some dream of the past that was simply never meant to be. I’ve been living as if my life was put on hold or detoured in some terrible way that meant that even though I may find some happiness, I would never truly be completely whole or happy again.
But that’s simply not true. It’s simply another choice I’ve made for myself.
I have chosen to be sad and angry. I have chosen to carry this event like a rope around my throat, tying me to the past.
And if that’s true, then it also means I can choose something different for myself.
I can choose to create a life that makes me happy. I can choose to release the past and move forward without feeling as if I’m a victim who has lost something she can never get back.
It’s true that I can never go back to that life or that person I once was, but I can choose to see that as either a gift or a curse.
I think about the life I could have here with Knox, running a business of our own together and building something that makes a difference in this town. I think about how it would feel to hear the sound of our children’s laughter as they grab hold of the rope swing and splash into the lake.
I think of how none of that would have been possible if it hadn’t been for Burke. Yes, I lost something that day that I will never get back, but I also gained a future that is full of joy and love and meaning.
I have found a life worth fighting for, and I’m not going to let someone take that from me again. Not even my own mother.
I stand up and head back toward the house, practically running through the grass in my bare feet. There’s something I need to do right now, and I don’t want to wait another moment.
I quickly change my clothes, grab a few things from the house, and get into my car. On the way into town, I call Penny.
“I know it’s early,” I say. “But I need your help.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“A little early to be drinking, don’t you think?” Jo asks as she walks into the restaurant. “What are you doing here?”
I sigh and shake my head. I haven’t slept a wink all night.
“Oh my gosh, Knox, what’s wrong?” she says when I look up. “Did something happen? How long have you been sitting here?”
“Since about three this morning,” I say. “Leigh Anne and I got into a fight. I drove around for a while, went out to the beach to think, and ended up here.”
“Have you slept at all?”
“No,” I say. “And I don’t know if I can without patching things up with her. Jo, I really messed up last night.”
There have only been a handful of times in my life when I felt close to tears, but this is one of them. I can’t believe all those things I said to her last night, and I’m terrified I won’t be able to make things right.
I’ve almost gotten up several times to drive back home to her, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
“Tell me everything,” she says. “I’m going to make some coffee.”
“Thanks,” I say, pushing the bourbon away.
I tell her about Johnny Pruett’s offer and the way he treated me. Then I tell her about the things I said to Leigh Anne in anger.
“I’m not sure she’ll be able to forgive me,” I say. “But I don’t know that I can live a life based on her parents’ expectations. I certainly can’t accept some corporate job just to make them happy.”
“Of course you can’t,” Jo says. “Leigh Anne wouldn’t expect that of you, either. You know that.”
“I don’t know what I know anymore,” I say. “When it’s just the two of us, we’re so happy. We know exactly what we want for our future, and it’s like a dream come true to have her by my side. But every single time we make a decision, her parents start putting those doubts in her head and it gets her all turned around. Every time, we’re expected to make some kind of compromise. I’m tired of sacrificing what we want just to make them happy, and I’m terrified I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life just to hold things together.”
Jo shakes her head. “You can’t think that,” she says. “You guys need to just sit down with them and tell them how it is.”
I look up at her. “You know I can’t do that alone,” I say. “It’s not my family. Not my parents. Leigh Anne has to be the one to tell them how she feels, and if she can’t do that, I’m not sure where that leaves us.”
She sighs and hands me a cup of hot coffee. I drink it black, burning my tongue.
“The thing that makes me angry is that when that Pruett guy started telling me I wasn’t good enough, there was a part of me that believed him,” I say. “I’ve felt this way the whole time Leigh Anne and I have been together, I just didn’t want to admit it.”
“You can’t mean that,” she says.
“I do mean it,” I say. “I mean, she’s this beautiful, intelligent woman who comes from a good family. She’s got so much potential to really make something of her life, and who am I? Just some punk who spent time in juvie, has nothing but a GED, and works at a bar?”
“Hey, this happens to be an amazing bar,” Jo says with a smile. “And you’re so much more than that, Knox. You can’t judge a person by looking at some list of accomplishments on a resume.”
I nod. “I know that, but when people start treating me like that, I feel like I’m thirteen again, living in my father’s house and being told that I’m worthless,” I say. “I don’t want to feel that way for the rest of my life, and if that’s the way her family feels about me, how in the hell are we going to make this work?”
“You’re going to love each other,” she says. “You’re going to talk through it and figure this out, okay? Just give her some time. It’s not easy to do what you’re asking her to do. Look at how much you’re still upset about how your father treated you, and he’s been dead for years. She has to deal with her parents every day of her life. Imagine if you were still expected to be a part of your father’s life.”
“Damn, I guess I never thought of it that way,” I say.
It hits me now how much I’ve just asked Leigh Anne to do. I’ve asked her to be strong enough to let go of her past. I’ve asked her to stop living life according to the expectations of others. And yet, here I am, still battling ghosts of my own.
“Sober up,” Jo says. “And once you feel better, you go home and tell her how you feel about her. I promise you everything is going to work out fine.”
I hope with all my heart she’s right, because as hard as it is to let go of the past, I simply couldn’t survive without Leigh Anne as a part of my future.
Chapter Twenty-Six
By the time I get to the boardwalk, Penny and Jenna are already there waiting for me. It’s only seven in the morning, and they probably think I’m crazy for waking them up a
nd getting them out here like this, but I’m so happy to see them, I nearly start to cry again.
“Thank you guys so much for coming out here,” I say.
“You know we’d do anything for you,” Jenna says. She wraps her arms around me and hugs me tight. “What’s going on? No offense but you look like you got run over by a truck.”
“I kind of feel like I did,” I say. “Knox and I got into a fight, and you know us, we never fight.”
“Oh no, what happened?” Penny asks.
“He left,” I say. I explain about Johnny Pruett, the application to Stanford, everything. “And the thing is, he’s right. I’ve been holding onto the past like a security blanket, or maybe more like an excuse.”
“You’ve been through a lot,” Jenna says. “It’s understandable that it’s taking some time to come to terms with that.”
“Yes and no,” I say. “At first I was really angry that he would say those things to me and accuse me of not being one hundred percent committed to this engagement, but as I lay there on the floor of that kitchen, I realized he was right. There are still days when I can barely get out of bed, because I’m thinking about all the things I’d wanted to do with my life and feeling like such a failure. There are days when I sit out on the dock for hours just replaying that night as if there was some way I could change it, you know? Make another choice and have it never happen in the first place.”
Penny grabs my hand. “You’re allowed to have days like that, Leigh Anne. You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” she says.
“The thing is, I’ve been incredibly hard on myself since I came home,” I say. “But for all the wrong reasons. I know this sounds insane, but I’ve been beating myself up inside because I feel like I let everyone down. Like I was supposed to be this perfect person who went away and proved to everyone that I’d made the right choice by leaving my billionaire boyfriend and going off to an Ivy League school. I’ve felt like I failed somehow and that no matter how hard I try, I will never get out from under that. I’ll never be anything more than the girl who lost everything.”
My friends don’t respond to that, they just seem to understand that I need to talk it out, so they listen.
“But that’s bullshit,” I say through fresh tears. “The only person who sees me as a failure right now is my own mother, which is not an easy thing to come to terms with, believe me.”
“Here, here,” Penny says, and I know she understands exactly what I’m talking about.
“When Knox walked out that door, and I started to realize that I could lose him, it really hit me,” I say. “If I don’t let go of the past and really start living again for this moment right now, I’m never going to truly be happy. That’s why I had to come out here this morning. I want to do something, and I needed my best friends out here with me.”
I grab a box from my car and lead them down to the beach near the water. The sun is just barely up, and its light sparkles against the water.
The three of us sit down in the sand, and I place the box between us. “I brought some things I’ve been holding onto for far too long,” I say. “It’s time to let go for real.”
I take the lid off the box. Inside, I’ve placed my old scrapbook, a picture of me on my first day at Harvard, an old Prom picture of me and Preston, the application to Stanford, and a magazine with Burke’s picture on the front cover.
“I brought something from each part of my life I’d like to move forward from,” I say. “If you’ll help me build a fire, I’d like to burn these.”
“Oh, you cannot burn this,” Jenna says, laughing as she holds up the picture of Preston and me. “You guys look adorable. Look at Preston’s hair.”
“Sexy, huh?” I ask. I take the picture from her. “I’m burning it. I’m sure if you want one, Preston’s mom probably has a copy.”
“Dozens,” Penny says.
“See? I need to burn this, not because I want to remove Preston from my life, but because this symbolizes a time when I wanted the type of life I would have had as Preston’s wife,” I say. “The wife of someone my parents thought was good enough for me or had the right kind of reputation. Someone they could brag about in social situations to make all their friends jealous. That was never what I wanted for myself, and I don’t know why I’ve let them treat Knox the way they have. I’m burning this as a way to say that I’m willing to let go of that expectation and to fight for the man I love, rather than ask him to constantly apologize for who he is.”
Penny digs a small hole in the sand and places a roasting pan in the center. Jenna gives her a look and she shrugs.
“It was the first thing I grabbed from the kitchen,” she says. “She told me to bring a large pot.”
“It’s perfect,” I say.
I set the picture of Preston and me at our Senior prom in the bottom of the pan and take out the long lighter we use for the grill.
“I promise to never again feel obligated to anyone for the wrong reasons,” I say. I thought it would feel silly to make these proclamations when I first had the idea to do this, but I find instead that the words make me feel powerful and more sure of myself than I’ve ever been.
I light the edge of the picture on fire and watch as our smiling faces disintegrate and burn to ash in the pan.
Next, I take the picture of me sitting on the bed with my parents in my dorm room at Harvard and place it on top of the ashes of the first picture.
“I promise to always make the choices that are right for myself, even when they go against the expectations of others,” I say. “And to understand that sometimes, even when things don’t turn out the way we hoped they would, there is always a reason for it. I promise to always be grateful for the opportunity to start again.”
I burn the image of that happy day, knowing that as it burns and I let go of that path, I’ve been led to a new path that is better than anything I could have imagined back then.
The weight on my chest lessens, and I feel like I can breathe for the first time in forever.
I reach inside the box and take out the scrapbook I made when I was younger. I flip through the images of wedding dress and houses and everything I thought I wanted back then. When I’ve taken my time looking through it, I slide the Stanford application into the back and place the book inside the pan.
“I realize that it’s okay to change and to grow,” I say, feeling a new me emerge with each word. “I realize that I’m never obligated to any dreams I used to have, and I’m not obligated to be the person anyone else expects me to be. I promise to always be myself and follow my own heart, even when it disappoints people I care about.”
A tear slides down my cheek as I light the scrapbook on fire and watch it burn. The flames consume the small book of pictures I once spent hours clipping from magazines and staring at while I dreamed about my future. I’m not crying because I’ll miss that life I never got to have. I’m crying because I realize I’m finally free of it.
Free to make a new dream.
When the scrapbook is finally burned down to a smoldering pile in the bottom of the pan, I take the final item out of the box. The magazine with Burke’s face on the cover.
“I bought this magazine right after he first started flirting with me at school,” I say. “I felt like the luckiest girl in the world back then, and I used to stare at his picture, thinking I’d won some kind of jackpot by getting his attention.”
My voice wavers and my friends reach out to touch my arm.
“Afterwards, I couldn’t bring myself to even throw this damn magazine away,” I say. “I think I kept it to punish myself for being so stupid. For letting him do that to me. I think I kept it as a way of saying look at what happens when you think you’re strong enough to go out and follow your dreams.”
I close my eyes and take a moment to still the pounding of my heart. When I’m ready, I place the magazine in the pan and set fire to the image.
“I promise to never again blame myself for what happened that night,
” I say. “I vow to no longer be his victim, allowing the pain and fear I felt that night to hold me back from living the life I want to live. Instead, I will use this experience to remind me of my strength. I will draw from that strength every time I need to find the courage to stand up for myself and to fight for what I want and what I deserve. I let go of the past so that I can fully embrace the future that’s in store for me.”
I expected to be sobbing by the time I got to Burke’s picture, but there are no tears in my eyes. For the first time in a very long time, I can look into his eyes and not feel like he took something away from me that I will never get back.
Instead, I know that I have taken something back for myself that no one can ever take away.
I sit on the beach for a long time with my two best friends. There are no words shared between us as the minutes pass. We simply sit around the ashes with our arms entwined, watching the waves spill onto the shore and then draw back, an eternal rhythm that proves that despite the struggle, life keeps moving.
We endure.
Even when everything around us changes, and when some of the people and dreams we loved and held onto most tightly are gone, we are still here. We are still fighting for our own happiness.
I know it may take some time to fully heal and to truly become the strong person I know I was meant to be, but as I watch the waves move in and out along the beach, I know that I’m headed in the right direction.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It’s just after ten when we make our way back to our cars and say goodbye. On the way back, I stop at the trash can on the boardwalk and dump the ashes inside. I watch them flutter to the bottom, and I feel myself grow just a little bit lighter on the inside.
“Do you want us to help you find Knox?” Penny asks. “Do you think he’s up at the bar?”
“He said he was going to stay at Rob and Jo’s for a few days, so I’m guessing he’s either at the house or at the restaurant,” I say.
