by Rebel Hart
I can still see the look on his face. The way his eyes burned into me the last time I ever saw him. And I know that he loved me in all the same ways, even if I never put it to the test the same way he did with me. It was a selfless love that devoured and consumed, yet never lost its fuel. Even when I was certain I could not go on with him or was convinced that I hated him, there was still part of me that loved him endlessly. I tried my best to run from that part of myself, but it always caught up to me. And I’m glad.
For all the things I survived and learned along the way, nothing made me grow more than my love for Emmett. And I don’t know that I will ever know another pain like what I feel living without him. I hope not, because I don’t think I could stand. Sometimes I am still surprised when I wake up each morning, still feeling half convinced that my heart should just stop beating without him around.
But as my car flies down the highway, I know I am doing exactly what he wanted. He may not have been able to whisk me away from Jameson the way he dreamed of, but above all else he just wanted me to get out. It was all he asked of me in our final moments together.
The clouds hover across the open roads in the setting sky, and I swear I can still see the silhouette of Jameson haunting me from their shapes. They morph into the outline of WJ Prep. They shift and turn into Emmett’s face. His eyes. His mouth. All the times I wanted so badly just to get away and now I think the only way I am able to keep driving forward is the mirage of him up ahead. I don’t know what life could possibly hold for me beyond him, but I know I have to find out. I have no choice.
And so I keep driving, pushing forward. Pretending that my feet are carrying me away rather than the wheels of my car. I pretend that I am running straight towards him with his embrace waiting for me on just over the horizon.
Chapter Thirty-One
BOOK 3
I step out onto campus, sucking in a deep breath of the fresh California air. The weather here is unbelievably perfect. The temperature reaches a level of heat I never felt in Jameson but is still somehow soothing and refreshing. And at night it gets chilly enough to make you long for a nice, cozy sweater, but never gets cold enough to compare to the bitter winter nights I’ve grown accustomed to.
Everything I became accustomed to over the past year fades more and more each day. The fear and anxiety I came to consider normal is a distant nightmare. A thing in my past that I am glad to forget. I ease back into normal, everyday life. And time passes quickly as I keep myself busy with classes, track, and work.
I smile at the passing students and forget that I ever knew to fear any random person I might come across. When I bump into someone, we say our sorry’s and carry on our way. It’s unbelievably easy and simple. Whenever I hear other students complaining about how stressed they are, I laugh but keep my thoughts to myself.
I am a couple of months into college life and already feel like a brand-new person. It’s a perfect sunny day as I walk along the winding sidewalks towards my favorite coffee shop, planning a weekend run on the beach in my head.
Jojo’s is a small eclectic joint just on the edge of my new school’s property. The small lawn is lined with swaying palm trees, and there’s always some acoustic tune ringing out from the speakers hanging near the patio. I walk inside and relish in the scent of fresh coffee.
As I wait in line, which is always long but fast-moving here, I admire the doughnuts and pastries in the tall glass cases. My stomach growls at the sight of cookies and paper-wrapped muffins. There’s an assortment of Danishes, scones and biscotti. Chocolates, cakes, macaroons, and eclairs. All sprinkled in with bags of coffee on advertisement.
When it’s my turn I walk up to the stainless-steel counter, ignoring the chalkboard menu that hangs behind it because I already know it by heart. I place my order and when I turn to walk away, I swear I see someone I used to know sitting in the corner.
I look away at first, thinking it’s impossible. But I can’t help looking back and taking a closer look at the long, brunette hair draping over the girl’s shoulders. She looks a little different, but I know those features. The longer I stare, the more certain I am.
“Bridgett?” I ask nervously as I step over to her table.
Her eyes meet mine and nearly burst into tears. She jumps up, almost spilling her coffee, and takes me in her arms.
“I can’t believe it’s you!” she exclaims so loudly that the whole joint grows silent for a minute and stares.
“What are you doing here?” I blink, still suspended in disbelief.
“I moved back,” she says, pulling me down to sit across from her.
“I had no idea,” I reply softly, trying to hide my trepidation.
“I wanted to tell you…but…you never said goodbye before you left,” she explains, looking somber. “I didn’t know what happened. I thought maybe you were mad at me for something. Where did you go to that night anyway?”
“What night?” I ask, but I quickly sort my way through the haze of memories enough to realize the last time I saw her was at prom. Thinking back on it all now still feels like trying to dig up pieces of a dream that vanished the moment you woke up. “Oh!” I quickly correct myself. “I…I don’t even know where to start,” I laugh.
An awkward silence falls between us. I don’t know whether to be happy or afraid to see her. If Emmett and Theo agreed on anything, it was that they didn’t like or trust Bridgett. I’m not sure if I should either. After everything was over, I realized I never had any real reason to think she was bad. But Emmett was so convinced she was working with Theo. And Theo was so convinced she was just another Elite through and through. I’m not sure what to believe.
“Actually,” I continue slowly. “I wanted to ask for your help that night. After I stumbled away, I realized I had been drugged. That’s why I got so sick all of a sudden.”
Her face melts with concern and sadness all at once. “Oh my god!” she gasps. “What…what happened? Are you okay? How did you…”
“Emmett found me,” I tell her. My heart shatters, knowing this is the first time in months I’ve actually said his name out loud.
“How come you never told me!?” she scolds. “You just disappeared and I didn’t know what to think.”
“You never tried to find me,” I shoot back, surprised by how angry I feel.
“I did!” she insists. “When you didn’t come back, I looked all over for you. I told Coach and he was looking for you too.”
“No, I mean…You never tried to find me after prom,” I clarify. My suspicions of her grow as I remember that with each passing day when I didn’t hear from her, I became more convinced that Theo and Emmett were right about her. “You never called or came by my house. You never tried…”
“Ophelia, you never know what’s going on in Jameson,” she defends. “I’m sorry I hurt you, but things are so rough there…If someone vanishes and you don’t hear news of them being dead or hurt, it’s usually because they want to be left alone. How come you never called or visited me? That’s all I was waiting for.”
I shake my head in confusion, rapidly losing sight of what I think is right or true. It’s funny how one reminder of Jameson can do that to a person. “They had me convinced…I thought maybe…”
“What?” she asks. “You thought what?”
“That you were the one who drugged me,” I confess.
I expect her to be mortified by the accusation, but she tilts her head with sympathy and a knowing frown. Suddenly she seems to understand everything, and like a true Jameson survivor, nothing shocks her. She does what I need her to do the most, what I’m secretly hoping and praying she will do, and simply reaches her hand across the table for mine.
“I didn’t drug you,” she states. “I promise. I know it’s hard to know who to trust there, but I’m your friend. I would never hurt you.”
I instantly know she’s telling the truth. We sit there for hours and talk about everything that happened after prom.
“I knew I sh
ould have told someone what I saw,” she says after a while with a haunted look in her eyes.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“As we were walking into the school that night, I saw two guys lurking at the edge of the building,” she tells me, shaking her head. “One was a student. The other was Theo. I knew you were trying to make amends with him, so I didn’t think it was anything to worry about. But something always nagged at me, telling me it was off.”
I think back on Theo and Emmett’s stories. Theo claimed he went to the school after he heard Emmett was released from jail and got there just as he was driving off, with me in the backseat. But according to Bridgett, he was out front hours before that. Was he getting that guy to drop something in my drink? The absence of my former tour guide’s outburst had nothing to do with prom or the change in hierarchy. It was all on purpose to distract me from what he slipped in my cup, and it was from Theo’s direct orders.
I tell Bridgett every last little thing. She confirms what I always hoped was true. Emmett was telling the truth. She listens in horror as I describe the flood in the junkyard and how I was forced to choose between them.
“How did you know to choose him?” she asks, taking another sip of her coffee.
“It was something that Coach Granger said at Malcolm’s funeral,” I reply. “He thought it was a shame for any young person to die because no matter how bad they are, they stand more of a chance at changing their ways before it’s too late. No one would ever know if they would find some way to turn their lives around and become a decent person.” I pause as my heart swells. I realize just how much I miss Coach and wonder if I would be sitting here now without everything he did for me along the way. “I figured if he could bring himself to feel that way about Malcolm, after what he did to his son, I could feel the same sympathy and hope for Emmett.”
“So your dad is...?” she asks.
“Yep,” I answer coldly. “I decided regardless of who was telling the truth, my dad had spent his life doing terrible things, and for all I knew, he’d never stop. But Emmett could walk away from it all…and maybe change. Live a decent life.”
“You made the right choice,” she assures me.
It’s something I always hoped I would hear. I’ve done my best not to let it haunt me, considering I could have just as easily tried to run away again and let them both die there. Choosing between two evils is never easy.
Our conversation eventually drifts off into normal things. She tells me all about her classes and where she’s living now. We exchange numbers before we part ways, because of course the first thing we both did when we got here was change our numbers. It was just another way to reduce the likelihood of someone from Jameson coming back to haunt us. We promise to stay in touch and hang out soon, letting the tension that grew between us become a thing of the past.
She turns to me with a big smile on her face just before she walks away. “Do you think you’ll go to the ten-year reunion?”
I gawk at her like she’s out of her fucking mind, but then she laughs and I realize she was only kidding. I think we both agree that someone would have to drag us kicking and screaming before we’d ever step foot back in that town.
As I walk home, I wonder how I would feel right now if the opposite had happened when I ran into Bridgett. What if she knew something that indicated Theo was telling the truth instead? Sure, I felt justified in my choice at the time, but how would it feel right now to walk away knowing I let my own father die when he was telling the truth all along? Or what if Bridgett didn’t know anything that confirmed things one way or the other, and I had to spend the rest of my life never really knowing who had lied and who hadn’t.
Now that I have the relief of knowing Emmett was telling the truth, it’s hard to imagine it being any other way. I don’t know how I would have handled another outcome.
Later that night, I lay in my bed, unable to sleep. I stare up at the ceiling, squirming with the awareness that the memory of how Emmett’s body once felt curled up next to mine is still so vivid. I swear I can hear him, smell him on my sheets even though this is a new world he’s never had any part in. My heart still aches for him the way it has since we first met.
I close my eyes and see his staring back at me. I roll over and think I brush up against his skin. I think I see him in the corner of my room or hear him call my name. Knowing the truth has summoned his ghost and it's back stronger than ever.
But maybe he’s not a ghost. Maybe he’s still alive out there somewhere and if he is, I can only hope that he’s okay. I never looked back as I ran out of the junkyard that night. I watched him climb back onto solid ground and left, still not knowing who to believe. If he did make it out, I hope he got out of Jameson for good and found something that is making him happy. I can’t imagine what he would be like without the constant threat of that town. What if he was so unrecognizable that I didn’t know him anymore? What if I didn’t love him anymore?
Part of me is tempted to know what that looks like, but mostly I’m just terrified. I don’t know what I’m scared of anymore. Maybe I’m just clinging to fear out of habit. One glimpse back into that old life at WJ Prep and I almost unravel. I know I have to pull the covers over my head and go to sleep. Tomorrow will be another day in my new life. My life without Emmett. And I will survive it just like I have survived every day here and every day before I came here.
But as I drift off to sleep, I wish more than anything that I knew where he was or if he was alive at all. I think I would have heard if he had died, but if he did, it’s possible no one even found him out there. No one would have thought twice about him disappearing. If anything, people were surprised he stayed for as long as he did after everything was taken from him. I know he stayed for me.
I wish I could tell him I know he was telling the truth and that I forgive him for everything. I toss and turn to the images of him dancing through my mind and even as I wake up the next morning, I swear I see him walking out my bedroom door. Maybe these visions are proof that he didn’t survive. And now I will spend the rest of my life with what remains of him lurking in the corner.
Epilogue
BOOK 3
A few weeks have gone by since my run-in with Bridgett, and while I go through the motions of my new life, nothing has felt quite the same since. Not knowing what to make of the haunted feeling, all I can do is carry on. Bridgett and I have already hung out a couple of times since then, and I’m glad to have her back in my life.
She may be Jameson’s only redeeming quality. For all the people I met there, no one ever ended up really being who they claimed to be. I can’t help but think it’s only because she was only there for such a short amount of time. If she had grown up there, or even just been stuck at WJ Prep for a couple of years instead of a couple of months, she might have been turned into a monster like the rest of them.
For the hundredth time that morning, Emmett’s face flashes through my mind. What is a monster anyway? Just some unknown thing lurking in your closet. But if we turn on the lights and face it, does it lose its power? That doesn’t seem quite right, or if it is, it proves Emmett wasn’t a monster after all. Because nothing ever lessened the power he had over me. Even it faded briefly, it’d soon come crashing back with a fury.
I shake it off as I run, knowing that sooner or later I have to start letting all of my questions go and move on with the rest of my life. I have to move on without him, no matter how much it hurts. I’m thinking all of this over as I sprint down the sunny sidewalks near my apartment just like I do every Sunday morning. But no matter how many times I remind myself I need to move on, it hasn’t happened yet.
Suddenly, I freeze, not even really knowing why at first. The hair on my arms stands up and I feel a nostalgic fluttering in my gut. I haven’t felt it in so long, but only one thing has ever made me feel quite like that. But I know that is not the thing causing it this time. Only he could do that. It can’t be.
Something makes me stop and t
urn to look at the figure I just brushed past. When I do, my stomach drops. A familiar pair of hungry eyes met mine.
It can’t be, I think again. I drink in the sight of him, wondering if it’s real. I know the strain of those muscles and every last mark across that skin as well as I know my own body. The gray eyes burning into me, pulling me in with the magnetic force I know all too well. Then he smiles and I think I would cry if I wasn’t so overwhelmed with a million other feelings, all canceling each other out yet intensifying at the same time.
“Looking good, Lopez,” Emmett says with a wink. His voice shatters through me like a crack in the earth.
I step over to him, still gasping for breath. Beyond my control, my hand reaches for his face. My fingers graze across the curl of his lips and his slightly crooked, charming nose. His thick lashes blink, sucking me into the storm of his gaze. I want to stay there forever.
But something pulls me back, remembering that even though I may be overcome with relief to know he’s alive, I have no idea what he’s doing here. For all I know this could just be his ghost haunting me again. Becoming more vivid to demand my attention, true to his living self. Am I losing my mind? Have I been running from the haunting memory of him for so long now that it’s causing me to hallucinate something more real?
“You stalking me?” I blurt out, trying to sound normal, but I don’t recognize my own voice. I don’t know where else to start but from what I remember of our beginning. And my pitch slips right back to what spilled from my lips all that time ago.
He seems just as speechless as I am and we’re frozen there in silence for the longest time. I swear everything around us moves in slow motion. I gasp as he reaches for my hand suddenly. The touch of his fingers lets me know that he’s real. He draws the back of it up to his lips, kissing it with a smile. The moment my hand drops from his mouth, I’m filled with that old familiar feeling of disappointment that comes from never having enough of him.
