The Fragile Line: The Complete Series Box Set: Parts One, Two, & Three

by Kobishop, Alicia

  She shook her head, blinking hard and clearing her throat as she gathered the chips and dip and started tidying up. Normally, I would have objected since I made the mess in the first place, but I could tell she appreciated being busy.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “I think I’m finally at a point where I’ve found some peace and I’m so grateful for the short time I got to spend with him. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, even if I’d known how it would all end.” She pressed her lips together, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “I know he’s watching over us. It still hurts like hell, I won’t lie. But I’m determined to be happy because I know that’s what he’d want for me and for Piper. Just like it’s what your parents would want for you.”

  I nodded in full understanding and agreement.

  “Goodnight, Chloe,” she said, patting my shoulder as she passed by.

  “’Night, Care.”

  As she headed down the hall to her bedroom, I tidied up a little more, doing a double-take at the envelope at the top of the shallow stack of today’s mail. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before. Without taking my eyes off the hand-written envelope, I cautiously sat back down.

  When I moved in with Carrie, I had updated my address with everyone I could think of, mostly bill collectors, to make sure my monthly statements would come to the right place. I frequently received mail forwarded from my old apartment, so it didn’t surprise me that this envelope had a yellow forwarding sticker placed on it by the post office. What did surprise me, however, was the return address in the upper left corner.

  It was the address of the house I grew up in. The place I called home for eighteen years. And printed above the street address was the name Brynn McCarthy.

  My sister.

  My hands seemed to move in slow motion as I picked up the envelope and opened it. I took the folded paper out, vaguely noticing something solid and hard still in the envelope, but too preoccupied with the letter to be think much of it. I unfolded the multiple pages and immediately recognized my sister’s handwriting. A barely restrained sob rolled through me at the first sentence.

  Dear Chloe,

  I don’t know how to start this letter except to say that I’m sorry. I know that’s not enough. It will never be enough. Because I did something that can’t be forgiven. My only hope is that you’ll read this letter to understand why it happened.

  Let me start by saying it’s over with Ryan. When I saw you at the restaurant, the guilt I had been carrying, trying desperately to smother, finally became too much to bear.

  In the beginning, I foolishly thought the love between Ryan and me would guide me through the shame and set me free of it. I even told myself that my actions were justified. ‘Love conquers all’ and all that. I told myself that I deserved happiness, too, and that the only way I would get it was with Ryan. But I was wrong. The guilt ate away at me every day until I had nothing left to give him or our relationship, let alone myself. But despite my guilt, I still tried like hell to make it work.

  Just like I tried to be a good mother to you.

  What I have come to understand is that, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, the concrete reality of a situation can never truly be concealed. Nor can it be denied.

  The reality is…you truly had Ryan first, in every way that mattered. You had a real, honest relationship with him first. He may have even been your first love.

  I hope you will let me tell you about my first love. Please keep reading, Chloe, even when you think you can’t bear it. You are completely justified in not wanting to hear from me, and I would understand if you throw this letter away, or burn it without reading another line of it. But even though I am in no way making excuses, the history behind my actions may shed some light on why everything with Ryan happened the way it did.

  You may think my first love was Spencer, the boy I met in college. And, at the time, I thought he was. We had a lot in common. We studied the same subjects. We had interesting, thought provoking conversations. I lost my virginity to him. We had mutual respect and I’d even go so far as to say he was one of my best friends. Breaking up with him absolutely devastated me. Yet, even though we were so-called “perfect” for each other, and even though I didn’t know it at the time, there was always something missing between us…

  You never knew this, but when you were sixteen, I had a little bit of a breakdown (to put it mildly). I had been trying to fill Mom’s shoes by acting as your mother figure for four years by that point. After breaking up with Spencer, three years earlier, I made a conscious decision that I owed it to you, and to Mom and Dad, to make you my number one priority.

  I wanted to be there for you when they couldn’t. I love you, Chlo, and wanted you to have everything I had growing up with supportive parents. It deeply hurt my heart to know that you wouldn’t get to experience their love and guidance during your most formative years like I did. You know—those dreaded teenage years.

  I felt a deep-seated responsibility to you. And at the time, I thought that meant giving up my own life, my own needs and dreams. After Spencer, I decided that there would be no room for love. No room for friends. No dreams. No goals. At least not for a while. Not until you were older because those things would distract me from my life’s highest purpose, which was to give you the upbringing you deserved. You became it for me, Chloe. You were the only driving force in my life.

  Please trust me when I say that’s the way I wanted it and I have absolutely no regrets. Because I gained so much not only from the closeness we shared (after all, you are MY only family, too!), but also from seeing you thrive in an otherwise hopeless situation that would absolutely have crushed most people, and knowing that I may have had a small part in making that possible.

  Remember when you went on that weekend trip with Clarissa and her parents for her sixteenth birthday? It was the first time since Mom and Dad died that you and I had been away from each other overnight. It was rough on me, Chloe. The realization that without you, I had nothing, hit me so hard. I hated being alone in that house. I had to get out.

  I suddenly wanted to be a regular twenty-two year old, just for one night. I decided to let loose for once, and I convinced myself that when you came home, things would go back to normal.

  I called some old friends to go out and have some fun. Maybe go out for drinks and dancing, or just catch up. But nobody was free. I should’ve known better than to call anyone up at the last minute and expect them to drop everything in their lives for me when I hadn’t invested in their friendships for years. It was ridiculous of me to think I still had any real friends. Facing the fact that I was truly alone brought me to a whole new low.

  I remembered, as a teen, how good it had felt when bored or lonely, to get lost in the alternative realities of a good book. So, I drove to an indie bookstore and picked out a few books. Since the thought of reading them in an empty house unnerved me, to say the least, I headed over to the coffee shop next door to the bookstore.

  The only place to sit was on a loveseat, right next to a gorgeous guy who was surrounded by textbooks and papers. The people in the bustling cafe were college-aged and stressed, and then it dawned on me that it was probably mid-term season, and the bookstore was in the university district.

  Being there reminded me of a time in my life when my only care in the world was getting through mid-terms and that if my world crumbled, Mom and Dad still had my back.

  That world was now forever gone.

  I pondered the irony of how mid-terms, something that had once seemed to be the most important thing for my future, now seemed so trivial. I envied the students in the coffee shop who clearly placed so much meaning on it.

  I didn’t want to settle for just being AROUND them. I wanted to BE them. If Mom and Dad hadn’t died, I would’ve been finishing up my last year of college, probably in that coffee shop studying frantically right along with everyone else.

  I cleared my throat and asked the guy on the loveseat if he would mind mo
ving his things so I could have a place to sit. He did it politely. I took a seat and started reading one of my books.

  About twelve pages into it I started to feel his eyes on me. From the corner of my eye, I noticed him glance from one side of the shop to the other, then land his stare back on me.

  Just when I had started to wonder if he ever would, he spoke to me. I’ll never forget the beautiful tenor of his voice when he said, “It’s a little odd, don’t you think?”

  I had no idea what he was talking about or even if he was talking to me, until I looked up into his striking blue eyes. I had never seen blue eyes like that before. And suddenly, I didn’t care what he said. All I cared about was keeping his attention so he’d keep talking to me. My heart felt like it was going to burst from my chest, and I think I said something brilliant like, “Huh?”

  “You know—how you can be so calm at a time like this. It’s a little odd.”

  “What do you mean? Are you calling me weird?”

  He shrugged, “Well, yeah, I guess I am. Most people in here are stressed out and cramming for mid-terms while you’re,” he flipped my book to see the cover, “reading a romance.”

  My jaw dropped and I quickly tucked my book inside my coat as I replied, “Better to be odd than rude…Don’t YOU think?”

  Thoroughly embarrassed, but not wanting to let him know it, I gave him an eye roll and stood to leave. But he grabbed my wrist and asked me to wait, apologized. Said that it had sounded so charming in his head but came out sounding so conceited. Then he told me I was beautiful and that he’d hate himself if he hadn’t tried to talk to me.

  I looked down at where he was still gripping my wrist and he let go, probably thinking he’d hurt me somehow. But that wasn’t it at all. The thing was, it had been years since a man had touched me. And I loved how it felt.

  “Please. Stay,” he said, and started packing his books, offering to leave so I could be alone. But, that was the last thing I wanted. I convinced him to stay. And then I said something so uncharacteristically flirtatious that I still don’t know where it even came from. “I’ll forgive you. But only if you promise to make it up to me.”

  We were a couple of grinning fools, not saying a word for a while, just smiling at each other. Finally, he extended his hand and told me his name. And what did I do? Without hesitation, I introduced myself using the name of a bold, fearless character in the book I was reading. Erica.

  I guess I threw caution to the wind, as they say. I knew nothing would come of it because I had promised myself that when you came home, there would be no time for other relationships. But I didn’t want to be ME that night. I wanted to escape my life for a single night. Not that my life was bad. Overwhelming, yes. Bad, no. So, yeah, I lied about my name.

  But then we got to talking. And the more we talked, the more we connected. I didn’t tell him about you, or Mom and Dad, but we talked about everything else under the sun. I even helped him study.

  I loved that he got my sense of humor. I loved the way he looked at me like I was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. I loved the adorable way he inched himself closer to me until finally, we were so close that our bodies touched.

  And when he kissed me for the first time, well, I had never been kissed like that before. It was like he was claiming me. The reaction my body had to him scared me so much, Chlo. Because even though I had only just met him, he was making me feel things I had never felt before. I knew that whatever our connection was would be over practically before it even began, so I held onto it, held onto him, as long as I could.

  Hours later, when the coffee shop closed, he invited me back to his dorm. We both knew why. And I went. His roommate was gone for the weekend. The thought of being alone with him captivated me to a point where I couldn’t think clearly. I didn’t WANT to think clearly. I just wanted to FEEL something other than stress and worry. Other than responsibility. He made me feel free. He made me feel alive.

  There was no awkwardness between us. No uncomfortable moments. That night was the most magical night of my entire life. And it wasn’t just the sex. We connected on such an intimate level both physically and emotionally that it made me question choices I had made in my life up until that point. Should I have dropped out of college? Should I have given up my friends? Should I have kept pretending to be a mother-figure to you when I knew absolutely nothing about how to be one?

  But hours later, when I lay curled up next to him as the sun came up, I watched him sleep and fought back tears. I savored those last, agonizing moments, tried to commit his face to memory, and mourned another devastating loss: the inevitable loss of him, the loss of the possibility of ever being his—the loss of the final, fading remnants of my former self.

  But even as I grieved, I knew I could never have lived with myself if you had been sent to live with strangers, with no guarantee that they would have been good to you, or that you would have been safe. And it was too much to expect someone else to understand and accept my responsibilities. Especially not him.

  Besides, he was four years younger than me, a college freshman, experiencing independence for the first time ever. He needed freedom. And I was a twenty-two-year-old woman, responsible for raising a teenager, an experience others my age couldn’t relate to. My life was all about parent-teacher conferences and being a responsible adult. Our priorities could not have been more opposite. If I had stayed with him, it would’ve tied him down. He would have resented me.

  So I snuck out before he woke up. I kissed him gently on the corner of his lips, trying not to wake him but secretly hoping I would, hoping he’d try to stop me from leaving. I forced myself to leave his bed and his arms, pulling myself together enough to get dressed and leave the dorm. The entire way home I tried to convince myself that it had all been a dream, that chemistry that good, that overwhelming, couldn’t possibly have been real.

  I convinced myself it would’ve never worked.

  But that didn’t stop me from loving him. Or mourning him. And even though I put on a happy face when you came home from your trip, I thought about him all the time. All. The. Time. I had fallen in love in the few hours I spent with him and I missed him terribly. And almost two years later when you said you had met someone named Ryan at a concert, and that he was perfect, it put me on edge. Because the way you described him sounded just like…my Ryan.

  I didn’t want to hear about him, not because I didn’t want you to be happy, but because I think I knew on some level that it had to be HIM. I didn’t want you to have what was MINE, even though he had never been truly mine and I had no right to feel that way. I completely avoided it at first and became agitated any time you tried to bring him up. But eventually I had to know. I had to know for sure if it was really him, so I told you to invite him to your birthday dinner.

  Seeing him walk through the front door with his arm around you…I can’t explain what it did to me except that it CHANGED me. Devastated me. Made me angry. Jealous. Sad. But not once did it ever make me regret my decision to take care of you. I will NEVER regret that, Chloe.

  I know how cliché it sounds for me to say that I never meant for you to get hurt, but it’s true. I hated him for breaking it off with you after your birthday, but at the same time I wanted him to, was relieved that he had, because I couldn’t bear the thought of him being present in my life in that way. As your boyfriend. Your fiancé. Maybe even as your husband. The father of your children. He could have ended up being my brother-in-law. It was just too horrifying.

  But even after Ryan broke it off with you, I tried like hell to eradicate my feelings for him. And when I couldn’t do that, I tried to keep them hidden. But it all spiraled out of control because he knew who I was, knew where I lived, knew details about my life that I had deliberately kept to myself when I met him. Looking back, there was an inevitability to it all. He refused to let me avoid him and eventually made it clear that he still had deep feelings for me. He wasn’t going to let me go this time and, in hindsight, I could
n’t bear the thought of losing him twice.

  You may not want to hear this, but I’ll never deny the love Ryan and I have for each other. It’s the kind of love I never thought existed in real life. It’s the once-in-a-lifetime kind of love you only see in the movies or romance novels. And I honestly thought that love was all we would need to be happy. But I know now that it takes more than love to make a relationship last. It takes a strong, sturdy foundation. Right from the start, the foundation that Ryan and I had was shit. I lied to him when we first met. And when we saw each other again years later and recognized each other, we silently agreed to lie to you. We made you think we were strangers to each other when we were anything but.

  The cold, hard reality is that you can have love, friendship, trust, laughter, compromise, commitment, and all the other wonderful things that make relationships worth having, but a foundation of lies—and guilt—is like acid. It destroys everything good.

  Ryan and I tried to recapture the connection that began that first night. We tried for years and we came close so many times. We desperately wanted to hold on to it. And it took me a while to face reality and realize that we’d never truly reach it again. I know now that too much has happened for us to ever be able to be together.

  I also know how angry you are at me, Chloe, and you have every right to feel that way. Let’s face it, not only do you not need me anymore, you want nothing to do with me. I understand, I do. I accept it and I deserve it. But I will never give up hope that, someday, we reconnect at some level. Maybe I’m just stubborn, who knows. But if you ever want to reach out to me, I promise you that I’ll take your call, I’ll answer your letter, I will be there for you. But I know you probably never will and I think I can finally accept that.