Everyone We've Been (31 page)

It's the night after Thanksgiving, eight days after I found Zach and Lindsay in her car, and my chest still hurts from the thought of it. From how stupid and blind I was.

But I miss him.

I miss his full, joyful laugh. I miss his hair between my fingers. His breath, even cigarette-y, against my cheek, against my mouth. I miss being in his arms, the feeling of his body next to mine.

For the first couple of days, I turned my phone off. I wouldn't listen to his messages or read his texts, and I asked my mom and brother to send him away when he came over.

But allowing myself to listen to one, just one, message was like falling into a vortex. Soon I was listening to all of them. Some three or four times.

He kept saying the same things.

I'm sorry, Addie.

I screwed up.

If you would just let me explain.

It wasn't supposed to happen. I swear it was the only time.

Sometimes I played them for Katy and we thought of the worst names we could for him. She called him Zach-or-Mac-or-Jack, trying to make me laugh. I did, but it felt hollow and false.

The last message is from Tuesday, three days ago—the longest he's gone without trying to reach me—and I wonder if he's given up. Has he accepted that it's over? Have I?

Do I
want
it to be over?

Foolishly, I call him now while I'm lying awake in bed. He picks up after four rings, sounding out of breath, like he raced for his phone.

“Hello?” he says. I breathe into the phone, don't answer. My heart fluttering in my chest.

“Addie,” he says seconds later. I know it's caller ID but I want to believe he recognizes the sound of my silence, the shaky intake of my breaths as I fight back tears. “Addie, hey.”

“I really hate you right now,” I whisper into my phone.

“I'm sorry. I never wanted to hurt you,” and it sounds like he's near tears as he says it.

“It was one time? A mistake?” I ask, paraphrasing the messages he's left for me.

“One time,” Zach promises. He doesn't repeat the second half of my statement.

“I think you were never over her. Deny it.”

Our voices are gentle on the phone, like we're exchanging secrets in the dark.

“I think because we were together so long I just…It's not that easy to cut her out of my life. I thought it would be, but it wasn't. She's still my friend and I thought maybe that would be okay and I guess, I don't know, it wasn't.”

I feel my blood warming as he speaks. “So what do you want, Zach?” I hiss the question. Who
do you want?
I don't want it to be his choice, I hate that, but my heart is betraying me, sitting firmly in his pocket, the one I slid my hand into and promised to unstick him.

“I want you to not hate me,” he says. “I want us to meet face to face and talk and—”

“What do you
want
?” We are both silent, and then I say, angrily, “Figure it out,” and hang up.

Another two days pass.

I keep trying not to think about him or the phone call or the fact that he couldn't answer when I asked him what he wanted, who he wanted.

He hasn't called since I hung up.

Today, on my drive back from seeing my dad—he was away on Thanksgiving, so Caleb and I went over there this morning—there is a force against my chest, relentless and sharp, like I've broken a rib or something. It's been there for the past ten days, but I realize now that as angry as I am at Zach, I'm not close to being over him. Maybe seeing him face to face like he wanted would help. Maybe, just maybe, there's somehow still hope for us.

He doesn't know I'm coming because I didn't plan to. As soon as I pull into the parking lot of the movie store, my mind is already filling with uninvited questions: Will he be behind the counter? What does his hair look like today? Will he grin at me when he sees me, that bright, disarming smile? Or will he be contrite, apologetic, nervous?

Then, as I get closer, climb out of my car: What if he's not even here? Today is Sunday. What if he's working at the Cineplex instead?

But as I step on the concrete, before I even reach the all-glass front of the store, I have the answer to my questions. He is working today. And he's not behind the counter; he's on a stepladder on the far end of the store, draping tinsel over the shelves, decorating for the Christmas season.

She's standing next to the ladder, in a pair of jeans tucked into brown riding boots, and she's holding it steady with one hand, gesturing with the other.

I can't move.

I can't do anything but watch them through the glass.

He climbs down and hands her a bunch of tinsel, and she flings one piece back at him. Wraps the other piece around his head.

He laughs and says something to her. He touches her back, her waist. It's only for a second, and then he drags the ladder over a few feet and climbs on again to add some more tinsel.

It doesn't mean that they are together, or that they are almost together or not together.

It doesn't matter and I can't tell and I don't want to.

I told him to figure out what he wanted.

And he did.

He did.

As I stand there watching them, that pain in my chest stretches and expands until it's a tidal wave of sadness, of anger.

It hurts to draw in my breath, to stay standing, to turn back and head to my car. And all I can think is,
It was always her.

Why did I let myself love him, let myself be with him? Everything I felt with him, felt for him—all the things I told him that I'd never told anyone else—in spite of all that, I wasn't and would never be enough for him. He woke me up, he made me come alive, but Lindsay did that for him.

Did everything that happened between us mean anything? Was our whole relationship a lie?

I fall into my car and the world roars with too much silence, and it ends right outside where it began. In Zach's father's movie store.

Because he still loves her.

It was always her.

I don't remember when anything has hurt so much.

I pretend to busy myself with something in my car until Zach disappears back into Raj's mother's restaurant. And then I sink lower in my seat and close my eyes.

“Zach,” I whisper, and wait for the sound of his voice.

“Zach,” I say again, more loudly. Open my eyes and he's still not anywhere around. I think of “Air on the G String.” Our song.

I hum it, and there is still nothing.

“Zach!” I yell into my car.

“
My
Zach,” I say. “Memory Zach?”

Nothing.

He doesn't appear in my passenger seat out of thin air. He doesn't appear across the street and walk toward me.

Not his flapping red puff of hair, not his crazy bright smile, not even his cigarette. Nothing.

And suddenly I'm remembering what he asked me in the diner on Saturday night:
What do you think happens when you find him?

And what he said that morning we drove to school together.

Don't forget about me.

How nervous he was that he wouldn't exist anymore if I found the real Zach.

But I didn't forget. I didn't. Just because I talked to the real Zach, I…

I never meant to make him go.

We didn't even say goodbye.

He didn't know it would be the last time he existed.

Zach, Zach, Zach.

“Where are you?” I say out loud, feeling a surge of panic begin to build in my chest. “Come back.”

The noise of my car's heater whirs a warm silence back at me.

“Come back,” I whisper to it. To no one.

To myself.

The tears hit me with force when they come. I wrap my arms around myself and lean my hand against the headrest, and all I can do is heave and sob because I can't stop thinking about all the things I've lost without knowing.

I'm still parked outside the restaurant, but I can't stop thinking about what it might have felt like to have a younger brother. A pink-toed baby brother who maybe cooed at the sight of my face and danced around in a high chair and smelled like baby powder and new life.

I can't stop thinking about the day we put him in that tiny grave and how it's been there all these years and how I never went back. How I should have gone back.

I can't stop wondering about the first time I met Zach, and whether I liked him from the moment I laid eyes on him. And why don't I remember what it felt like to kiss him the first time? To lock my fingers in between his?

I lost my virginity to him and it's supposed to make you different, and all this time I didn't know. And even now I'll never really know.

What did his hair feel like in my hands, and what are all the truths I told him,
gave
him, about myself that I'll never get back?

Who was I when I loved him? Did being in love make the air feel light and musical? Did I have more good hair days and better playing days, and was I any surer of who I am? Were my eyes wider, my lips different, from having been kissed? Was I that girl who couldn't stop grinning, couldn't stop telling strangers about this boy I liked, or was I quiet and cool and coy like I always hoped I'd be?

I don't remember anything about being with him, or not being with him. Did it really make me different, did our relationship really mean anything, if he's still with her?

I would take the sting of brokenheartedness, of being betrayed, if I could somehow get back the knowing, the feeling, of all those days. The weight of them, certain and clear in my mind. I would give anything to have them back. I'd even take his invisible replica, the boy who wasn't Zach but who led me to him. And to a version of myself I might never have known existed.

The impact of everything I've lost, all the things I've lost forever, hits me again and again until I can't breathe.