by Alex Rosa
He pauses a beat, his eyes glowing with confusion as he dissects me. “Let me help you. Please Hailey, talk to me. I feel like I’m losing you, and I don’t know how to keep a grip on us.”
A sob unleashes itself from my mouth, and Caiden is at my side in a second. I must look crazy. I throw myself willingly into his encompassing arms that hold me close.
“You have no idea how much I wish you could fix this,” I reply.
He presses a kiss to the top of my head. “Talk to me, Hails. I love you. Let me love you, for fuck’s sake. You always think you have to deal with things alone, but you don’t have to this time,” he pleads.
I bury my nose into his chest, pulling in a deep breath as I squeeze at a fistful of his flannel shirt. “Take me home first, Caid.”
Treating me like a delicate china doll, he doesn’t argue, as if words might break me. He wouldn’t be wrong, either. He simply slides his hand into the front of my jeans to grab my keys and takes the lead.
The ease with which he takes care of me is wonderful. I clutch his hand tightly as he walks me to my rental. He opens the door for me and helps me inside. He even presses a sweet kiss against my damp cheek before saying, “It’s going to be okay,” and closes the door.
He’s bliss wrapped in tattoos and scruff, no matter how wrong his words are.
I try not to cry on the drive home, and he doesn’t try to get me to speak. Good, because I’m trying to find the words to say to him when I have to reveal the truth, and I’ve got nothing.
I’m a writer. I should be able to find the best way to frame our own romantic tragedy for him to understand, but every time I try to, it never seems to make sense, and I doubt saying it out loud will help.
He’s going to hate me by the end of the night. It’s inevitable.
We pull into my driveway, and the clear summer night is ominous with the full moon hanging over the pines.
Does the full moon appear to signal the end, or is it supposed to signal a fresh start?
I want to write the question down in my notebook as I enter through the squeaky wooden door into my living room.
The permanent smell of apple and cinnamon makes me nauseous as I try for a deep breath. I can’t help but think how disappointed my mom would be with me today, and it’s such an awful thought that a sniffle escapes.
My steps stop in the doorway of the kitchen. I hear the front door shut behind me and can feel Caiden’s presence fill the living room.
I turn around sharply to catch him staring. He’s absentmindedly playing with his perfect bottom lip as he cautiously takes in the situation, and I don’t have it in me any longer now that we’re alone. I break.
“I’m leaving,” I blurt out, and although a pins-and-needles feeling appears in my shoulders, a heavy weight is also lifted.
He releases his lip, his hands falling to his sides.
“What?” he asks, as if I didn’t just shout it out into the silence.
“I’m leaving back to LA, Caiden.”
“When?” he asks, stunned.
“In two days.”
“What? And you’re telling me now?”
“I just found out today.” I withhold the fact that Janet offered to give me another week. At the time of the phone call, I just wanted to disappear and not be such a nuisance to this town, but now with Caiden standing in front of me, I wish I had accepted. Doesn’t matter now. The plane ticket has already been booked, to my agent’s excitement.
He pauses a beat, as if trying to delicately calculate the situation. Maybe now he can see why I said I was so fucked up earlier.
“Okay…” he exhales. “So, you’re gone for a bit. So what? When do you come back?” he questions.
“I don’t know.” Can hearts tremble? Because mine is. I can feel all those tiny fractures that marked my heart from years ago reappearing with each second that passes between us as he puts the pieces of the situation together.
“You don’t know?” he repeats, and I can sense his anger surfacing. I think I’d prefer his anger over everything else. Anger is easier to handle, and also easier to get over. “What does that mean?”
“It means, I don’t know if I’m ever coming back. I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you—”
“Well fuck, Hailey, you’ve barely given us forty-eight hours to figure it out.”
I bite back a sob. “There’s nothing to figure out.”
His face falls with the realization of what I’m doing. “Are you saying it’s over between us? After everything?”
I shrug, my face puckering with the sadness it’s trying to fight. “I don’t know.”
“That’s not an acceptable answer. I’m not going to let you go this easy this time. You can’t make this decision without me.” His voice rises an octave, and it sends a shiver down my spine.
Where are my words when I need them?
He continues as he takes a step toward me. “Don’t be so rash about this.”
“Come with me?” I whisper desperately, even though I already know the answer.
He shakes his head, befuddled with the request. “Hailey… I can’t. Not permanently. I want to be there for you. You know I’m your biggest fan, but don’t do this. Don’t drop this life you fit into so perfectly.”
I shake my head, hating the way he’s worded it. “Nothing is perfect, Caiden. The decision’s been made. My work is in LA. I can’t guarantee when I’ll be back, and I’d hate myself if I allowed you to hold yourself back because of me.”
“You holding me back?” he guffaws. “It sounds more like I’d be holding you back, and you’re just cutting your losses. If that’s the real reason, then say the truth!”
“That’s not the reason,” I gasp. “I want you, Caiden. I want you with me all the time. You make me better, but the fact of the matter is, I have obligations in California that I can’t get out of. There’s a high probability with the book and the movie I won’t be able to leave for months, maybe even a year. A weekend here or there might be all I can offer, and I don’t think that’s enough, and those are things I can’t even guarantee. I’ve signed contracts and made promises to a lot of important people—”
“More important than me?”
I choke back another sob. “That’s not fair.”
“Don’t you dare tell me what’s fair.”
“I don’t want to have to do this. Please know this is literally the worst decision I’ve had to make. I don’t have a choice.”
“Yes, you do. You can’t just leave. Stay here in PineCrest with me where you belong,” he says, his words shaking with more and more confusion.
“I was never going to stay,” I reply, and I wish I didn’t say it with such a nonchalant shrug, because it only sparks Caiden’s temper.
His boot stomps on the worn area rug of the living room, the hollow thump echoing in the silence. I wince.
“Then why did you come back? I mean, really, Hailey. What was the point? That’s it for us, then? You get to make this decision without talking to me? You didn’t even give us a chance. I think I deserve that much. You can’t just spring this on me.” He’s pleading now, and it makes my body ache to hear his desperation.
“I shouldn’t have let us get this far. I’m so sorry, Caiden, I—”
“Are you kidding me right now? You can’t honestly ask me to believe that you’re just sorry you let it get this far. Let’s talk about accountability now. You knew what you were walking into. Hell, even I knew what the possibilities were when I found out you’d be heading back into town. Can’t say I didn’t want it, even if I knew it was wrong. We’re all curious about the what-ifs, but I refuse to believe that you thought you could come back here to take care of your mom’s stuff and not be pulled back into what we have. You’re not stupid. We both know that you came back because you wanted it, even if you were scared.”
He’s out of breath, heaving in a long inhale of oxygen as his grimace softens into a disappointed frown while his hands run through
his messy hair. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other. We’re not nineteen anymore. There’s got to be a gray area. Why can’t you just stay here and write? I’ve seen your notes and journals hanging around. You’ve been pecking away at it. You could be perfectly happy here.”
How is it that in the last five years I’ve felt misunderstood? That no one got who I was when it came to the inner workings of my melodramatic heart and irrational musings of impossible happily ever afters? I would be desperate for a connection, to look someone in the eyes who said they got who I was.
I never imagined that the moment I’d get it would be now, here, and from piercing green depths that are finding the truths that I don’t want people to see. It’s horribly ironic, and annoyingly refreshing.
My mouth bobs, seeking out a word to get a proverbial grip on, but I can’t keep it together, not when Caiden gets it only too well.
“I’m sorry. I wish it was that simple,” I cry. I rub my face, pressing my fingers into my eyes until I see stars, blocking out the view of Caiden, whose frown feels like a flesh-eating bacteria burning into my heart. “I love you, you know? I love you so much it hurts. But the facts are, I worked too hard to lose my momentum with the book thing. You have to know that. Look at how much I’ve sacrificed to get where I am. I have to stick it out in Los Angeles. I don’t want to hurt you. And you just implied you’d never leave PineCrest. Your life is here, right? Tell me where this gray area is? Because right now, I’m seeing a lot of black and white. Can’t you see how much I’m suffering? I don’t want it to be this way. Maybe you’re right. I was curious, but this is the exact danger that I knew could ensue. This is my fault. Just like before. I knew falling for you again was a possibility, and I also knew if it happened that I’d destroy the both of us in one stupidly beautiful firework. Ya know, when the chaos is so pretty, you can’t help but just watch it burn before it dissolves with the stars into oblivion? That’s us, on the brink of oblivion. It’s addicting.”
I pull my hands away from my face, my fingertips damp, confirming that I can’t stop the tears. I let them stream down my cheeks. I give in. I accept them. I show them to Caiden. I allow him to see me.
Caiden’s endless eyes absorb me. They twitch infinitesimally as he takes three steps toward me, closing the distance between us. He grabs for my face with both hands, holding me at my jaw, lifting my watering eyes to his. Leaning down, he places sweet kisses against the wet streams rolling over my cheeks over and over again until they slow, and his mouth finally moves to mine.
He’s like a life mask. His lips on mine breathe life into me, as if I’ve been spending too much time at high elevation or in the depths of the ocean.
My arms reach for him, wrapping around his perfect hips, my hands dipping into the back pockets of his jeans.
He pulls away, speaking inches away from my lips. “Don’t we get to try for the sequel, Hails? Even if it was just pretend in your first book, we still kind of made it. What about book two?”
I’m crying and I can’t stop. “Not all books have happy endings.”
It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever admitted.
He sighs, his eyes darting all over my face. We’ve finally reached an impasse. This sad, solemn understanding that sometimes love isn’t enough. He’s not going to move, and I’m not going to stay. Regardless of everything we’ve talked about since I got here. It’s the same problem from five years ago. We expected too much from each other. Hindsight is 20/20. We should have known better.
“Caiden, kiss me more.”
He pouts, his brows pulling together as he says, “But it won’t change anything.”
“I know, but it doesn’t mean I still don’t need you. It’s selfish and stupid, but I do, and I’m sorry.”
His thumbs smooth over my cheeks, wiping away the stream of tears. “I hate you,” he says out loud. The sad crook to the corner of his mouth is a confirmation that it’s a flat out lie.
I sniffle and offer my own sad smile. “I hate you, too. Does that help make this any easier?”
He shakes his head, and I swear I see his eyes water just a bit. “Nope. Not at all.”
So here we are, trying to make our reality bearable. Soothing it with an outright contradiction to our actual feelings is all that we have left, and I’m thankful for it. He could run, kick me to the curb and abandon me, all of which I deserve. But instead, gluttons for punishment, we pretend a little longer even though we both know the truth. We’re pathetic.
Pulling and pushing, he presses me against the wall next to the stairs. I whimper as he crashes his lips to mine, and it only takes seconds before his mouth picks up the pace, frantically searching for a solution we both so desperately want.
He lifts me off the ground, carrying me upstairs to my bedroom, his mouth not once taking a chance on words.
His rushed kisses that meet my lips feel like a little bit of everything in one firecracker of a touch. It’s a punishment, an apology, and worst of all, a goodbye. He knows what I’m going to do because we’ve been here before. There might even be a dash of hope in each possessive stroke, and I savor it, licking over his lips, and whisper his name, wishing things were just... different.
But his kiss tells me this is it. There was a lot less talking than I anticipated. Maybe it’s because we had a similar conversation when we were nineteen. Why rehash the past? Instead, we take advantage of the time we have left, because life isn’t fair, and love is cruel.
He takes me to my bedroom, and we make love over and over again.
In the briefest silences when dawn is approaching, we giggle together like the sunrise isn’t the start to our demise.
Sometimes a lie feels nice, but lies never last long, especially in PineCrest.
Chapter Nineteen
Entering the airport feels more like I’m about to depart on a NASA space mission rather than a flight across the U.S.
I guess PineCrest always managed to feel like the only place that grounded me, and LA more like outer space anyway. Not to mention, the point of no return.
I rub at my tired, swollen eyes, feeling my sanity slipping. I’ve spent more time crying in the past twenty-four hours than I have in my entire life. It’s as if everything I’ve been holding in since the death of my mom and then having to walk away from Caiden again came crashing down on me all in one tidal wave of tears last night as I sat in the living room staring at my mother’s urn, pleading for her to talk to me, to tell me how to be better.
I can’t tell if leaving will ever fix me. Right now, it feels like the opposite, but I tell myself all artists are broken in some way. I just hope I produce beautiful things in this tortured chaos.
The only thing I do know is that I have to leave if I’m choosing to continue with my dream, but it’s feeling less satisfying by the second as I stroll through the hallways of Denver International Airport.
As I make my way to the plane, I realize it’s a staggering possibility that this might be my last trip to PineCrest. It makes my insides ache.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I’ve officially lost the only reasons that would have me coming back. I’d fly CeeCee out if I had to and manage the diner via phone or email if need be. That’s at least how I explained it to her in between my sobs while we chatted on the phone, and all the while she tried to tell me it’d all be okay.
And although I adore CeeCee, my two real reasons for staying are my mom and Caiden. My mom is gone, and Caiden might as well be. He’s not dead to me, far from it, but I wouldn’t be shocked if I was to him. It’s just one of the things we do to keep our hearts safe. We confine our tragedies to something like death because then we can go through its phases like functioning adults. First, it’s anger, then denial, grief, depression, and finally acceptance before moving on.
For me? I tend to like to suffer, and apparently, I also have a problem with letting go.
Everything about what I’m doing feels wrong, but it’s logic that tells me this i
s what I need. However, I’ve never been a fan of rationality. I don’t think that’s what’s gotten me this far. These impossible dreams, like writing, take more risk than logic. I keep trying to figure out why I’m latching onto it now.
Regardless, during the three-hour drive here I dissected my predicament and analyzed the facts. Of course, it’s not like I didn’t want Caiden and me to work; it’s that we can’t. Time didn’t help us, which is a shame. You’d think we’d have it all figured out within five years. Quite the contrary. There’s no room for us to compromise when our lives are rooted in completely different places. At least this was all something I repeated like a mantra on my drive from PineCrest to Denver, replaying the argument Caiden and I had in my living room over and over again and how he gave in. He let me go.
I dropped off my rental car with bizarre satisfaction and disdain. It felt drenched in my three-hour thoughts and memories of a town I’m not sure I should hold onto. It was the only thing I’ve been happy to rid myself of so far.
Even from drop-off to the security gate I toyed with wanting to stay, not able to shake this daunting feeling. Do I run as fast as I can to the west coast just so I can take a hot shower in my own apartment and wash myself of this once and for all? I guess that’s the only thing I can do, or at least it feels like it. I put one foot in front of the other, even if it hurts.
This whole debacle has made one thing clear to me, though: life is entirely unfair.
Losing people you love should not fall under the practicality of life. It doesn’t seem right, whether I’m talking about my mom or Caiden.
Waking up alone yesterday morning felt exceptionally cruel. I haven’t slept since.
My body deflates and my eyes droop with exhaustion as I plop into a seat at Gate 23 waiting for the announcement to board the flight that will help my indecision because it’ll give me a point of no return.
