First There Was Forever (26 page)

Nate nodded his head a tiny bit, thinking something I couldn’t read.

I reached across the table and placed my hand on his hand.

“Nate,” I said. My heart was pounding.

He looked at me, his head tilting to one side inquisitively. “Yeah?”

Suddenly, I wanted to tell him that I loved him. I could feel the words forming in my mouth like a bubble, but something stopped me.

“So many people are mad at me,” I said instead. I could feel his hand pulsing beneath mine. I wrapped my fingers around his.

“I just never want to ruin this,” I said. “I never want you to be mad at me.”

He didn’t say anything for a second. “I don’t think you’ll ruin this. I don’t want to either.”

I guess that’s the truest thing you can give another person, the simple agreement that you will do your best to protect the fragile thing that you have.

“Thanks for hanging out with me. I don’t want to be alone.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Of course.”

Everything had moved so fast all year and I needed us to slow down. We had already done so much together, and I kind of wished we could rewind and do it again more slowly. I could save telling him I loved him for another time. I didn’t want all of our firsts to already be in the past.

Our eyes clicked into each other, doing a magnetic thing that made me feel as if we were the only people in the room.
And besides
, I thought.
He already knows how I feel
.

T
he next day I slept until three. When I woke up, my room was full of orange and red afternoon light. The house was quiet. I stood up and peeled the clothes from Hailey’s party off my floor and tossed them into the hamper, and then I crawled back into bed.

A hole was widening in my chest, and everything bad that had happened all year was falling into it. My own actions looked so ugly and mean. I had betrayed Hailey. She was right. I was spoiled. I was sneaky. I was manipulative. How had I become this person? Everything I assumed about myself—that I was a good friend and good person—had turned out to be untrue.

I was crying again. I had cried so much in the last twenty-four hours my face felt chapped.

I thought there’d be some relief from having everything out in the open, but what I felt was the opposite of relief. All of my secrets looked dirtier in the daylight. Like how sometimes when you put on a sweater and it looks okay in your closet mirror, but then when you stand in the sun you realize it was stained all along.

I got up and walked over to the window. Mom and Dad were walking on the beach directly behind our house. I couldn’t hear their voices, but I could see that they were talking. At one point Mom looked up at Dad and laughed, and then he pulled her into his side so his arm was around her shoulders. They walked like that for maybe three or four seconds before she slid out of his grip.

I wondered if I could ever be like that with a guy. So close and so comfortable. Mom and Dad had spent so much time together, dating, falling in love, being married. It was unimaginable. I had only hooked up with Nate a few times, and it was so intense and consuming. What would it be like to have an actual boyfriend? To be with someone for years? To sleep in the same bed together night after night?

I stood there in a daze, my forehead pressed to the cool glass, watching them as they headed back toward the house. On the porch, Mom scooped up a blanket that she’d left to dry in the sun.

S
chool the next week was torture. Luckily, we had less than a month left.

I avoided the parking lots and the patios and the hallways. I only allowed myself to use the bathroom in the old gym because I knew I wouldn’t run into Hailey there. At lunch, I buried myself in books in the library.

Emily sat down across from me on Wednesday.

“I’m so excited we both got into AP Bio,” Emily said. Patty had posted the list earlier that day, but I was too preoccupied to feel anything about the good news. Nothing seemed important to me except making up with Hailey. “I can’t believe Maria didn’t get in. She seemed so pissed.”

“I didn’t notice,” I said, staring at my computer screen.

“Are you okay?” Emily asked after a minute.

“Not really,” I said. “I’m having a bad week.”

“Want to go get a snack or something?” she suggested. “I’ll buy you a cookiewich. The swim team is having a bake sale. I just had one, but I could eat another. It might make you feel better.”

“I can’t go outside,” I said.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I can’t deal with seeing people. All this stuff with me and Hailey has gotten really bad,” I said.

“What stuff?”

“You didn’t hear about it?” I asked. “I thought everyone knew.”

She shook her head no.

“All this bad drama happened at her party on Friday. And now we are fighting, I guess,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

“It’s a really long story,” I said. What would Emily think if she knew what I had done?

“Oh sorry,” Emily replied, too quickly. “I don’t know why I’m being so nosy.”

“No, I’ll tell you,” I said. “But I’m too tired to get into it right now.”

Emily nodded in agreement, but she was looking at me really intensely, like she was doing an equation.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s just weird,” she said thoughtfully. “I always thought you, like, never had any problems. Like with social stuff or whatever.”

“Me?” I was so surprised, I almost laughed.

“Yeah,” she continued. “You hang out with Meredith Hayes, and Hailey, like, worships the ground you walk on. You’re, like, the coolest girl in school.”

I couldn’t imagine anyone thinking that about me. I looked around the library. The tables were packed with people. Some of them I knew from class or elementary school or just from seeing them around, but they all looked anonymous.

“It’s really funny to hear you say that, because I literally don’t have any friends,” I said. “Except you.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Emily said, but I thought I saw her blush a little, anyway.

“Actually, a cookiewich sounds really good,” I said, snapping my laptop closed. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and all of a sudden realized I was starving. “Want to come with me to get one?”

“Um, yeah!” Emily smiled. “I’m dying to get another one. I might be addicted to them.”

Emily and I walked outside together and I felt a little safer being on the patio with her by my side. I just hoped I’d never have to tell her what happened with Hailey. I wasn’t sure she’d still like me after she realized what a backstabber I was.

W
hen I got home from school the next day, Hailey’s mom’s car was parked in front of my house. Hailey was sitting outside the front door wearing a big gray sweatshirt, her hair scooped up into a ponytail.

“Can we talk?” she asked when she saw me.

“Okay,” I said. We walked through the house and out to the beach. When we got outside, Hailey looked at me and I saw that her eyes were swollen and red from crying.

“Hailey, I’m so sorry,” I blurted. “You can’t possibly know how terrible I feel. And how hard and horrible this week has been.”

Hailey paused for a second, thinking. Then she looked right back at me.

“You want me to feel bad for you?” she hissed. “You are the worst person I have ever known.”

I blinked, momentarily stunned.

“You have no idea, Lima!” she practically screamed. She was shaking and crying, angry tears spilling out of her eyes like faucets. “You betrayed me in the most insane way. You are the most horrible, self-involved, spoiled, twisted person in the world. You ruined my life.”

No one had ever yelled me at like that, and I felt paralyzed with shock.

“I’ve been thinking about you and what you did nonstop since you told me,” she said when she had regained control of her voice. “And it just gets worse and worse the more I think about it.”

“I know,” I whispered, my bottom lip beginning to tremble.

“You don’t know,” she fired back. “No one has been lying to you.”

That was true.

“There are so many layers to what you did,” she continued. “I don’t even know where to start.”

As I realized how far this conversation was from being over, I started to really cry. I was going to have to hear everything. Everything I’d been protecting myself against all year was finally coming true.

“First of all,” she said, “I’ve been throwing myself at Nate all year and you never once stopped me. Do you know how psychopathic that is? It’s not normal, Lima. Normal people don’t keep secrets and lie to their friends and encourage them to go for people who they are secretly dating. It’s seriously clinical, Lima. You should see a doctor.”

“I tried to tell you,” I said meekly.

“What does that even mean? You tried to tell me? Either you told me or you didn’t,” she yelled. “There’s no in between.”

“It’s not like that,” I said, feeling frustrated by the way Hailey had of always twisting the truth so my whole version seemed erased. “I just couldn’t figure out how to tell you. It was like, every time I brought up Nate, the conversation always ended up being about you and him.”

“Oh, so it’s my fault?” she snapped, straightening up.

“I didn’t say that,” I protested.

“Whatever, Lima,” she continued. “That’s fine. You can tell yourself that this is partly my fault. But we both know that’s bullshit. This is one hundred percent you.”

“I’m not trying to blame you,” I said exasperatedly. “I’m just saying. I felt like if I tried to tell you that Nate liked me, you wouldn’t have believed me.”

“What?!” She practically laughed, her jaw dropping. “Are you joking? Of course I would have believed you—look at you! You’re beautiful. You’re perfect.”

How was Hailey so good at using compliments as weapons? I struggled for the right thing to say, to make her understand. Her words and feelings were so strong, I felt like they were strangling me.

“And that’s a whole other layer,” Hailey continued, but now her voice was subdued, sad. “It’s just that you’re you. He must fucking love you. And it kills me. I’ve loved Nate my whole life, Lima. You might think it doesn’t count or whatever, because he didn’t, like, love me back. But you’re wrong. It still hurts so much.”

“Hailey. I’m so sorry,” I said gently. I had the impulse to hug her, to tell her that everything was going to be okay. But I fought the urge. All year, I’d tried to deny the truth in order to spare Hailey’s feelings, but now the truth was winning.

Maybe it always does, in the end.

Hailey closed her eyes and tried to steady her breath. “Do you know how many times in my life I just wished I could be you? I used to wish for it on Christmas. I’d literally ask Santa if I could one day wake up and be Lima. Not Lima’s best friend. Or Lima’s sister. Or Lima for a day. But
be
you. Forever.”

Hailey opened her eyes then and looked at me, shame and hurt swarmed in her expression. Her words sank into me, and I felt something inside me break under their weight. Even though we were face-to-face, I was sure that we would never see each other clearly again.

“Life is so unfair,” Hailey whispered.

For the first time since we’d come outside, Hailey turned away from me. She looked out over the ocean, and a gust of wind whipped her ponytail across her face. She spit out a little bit of sand and turned back to me.

“You are so not who you think you are,” she said quietly.

I shook my head, fought back more tears. I looked out at the ocean. White sun. Skinny streaks of clouds like loose threads. I turned and looked at my house, peaceful, quiet, calm. Even though it was only forty feet away, it looked like it was a million miles away, behind glass, inaccessible. I was trapped. This patch of sand Hailey and I were standing on had become a raft, or a lifeboat. If I ever wanted to get off of it, to go home, I was going to have to do better.

It occurred to me that Hailey wasn’t right about everything, but at least she was being honest. She was telling me her version of the truth. And I realized I had to do the same. It was time to stop being afraid. Whether or not she ever understood what this year had been like for me, which she probably wouldn’t, I had to try.

“Hailey,” I said calmly. “I know you’re mad. And I know you’re jealous. Okay? I get it. I understand. I’d be jealous too if Nate liked someone else. I get jealous knowing that he kissed you.”

Hailey’s eyes snapped up toward mine. For the first time since we came outside, she looked like she was actually listening.

“It’s shitty,” I continued. “That we liked the same person. It’s the worst twist of fate that possibly could have happened.”

Hailey didn’t say anything.

“And I know it sounds like I’m trying to blame you for the fact that I kept it a secret,” I said. “But I don’t blame you. Not for a second.”

“Okay,” she said softly.

“I didn’t want to like Nate. I tried not to,” I said. “But once we started talking and being friends, it was really confusing. Because you know me, I’ve never liked anyone. I wasn’t sure what was happening until it had gone on for so long that I just didn’t know how to explain it.”

She flicked away tears.

“I’m not saying it’s okay that I kept it a secret,” I said. “I know that was messed up. I was just so scared to tell you.”

I took a deep breath. I knew I had to tell her the truth. It was the only way off this horrible lifeboat. I had to be brave.

“Hailey,” I said, my voice breaking. “I know you don’t want to hear this. But I think I’m in love with Nate.”

Hailey closed her eyes and two enormous tears streamed down her face. I hadn’t said those words out loud to anyone, and they felt so true and so important, I started to cry more now, too. Soon, we were both sobbing. Without thinking about it, I stepped toward her and hugged her and we stood there, hugging and crying for a minute. But then I felt her stiffen in my arms, backing lightly away.

“I can’t be friends with you anymore,” she said softly.

“Don’t say that,” I whimpered. “I’m so sorry. With every cell in my body, I am so sorry.”

“I know you are,” she said. “And I’m sorry, too. But I just can’t.”

She didn’t look angry anymore. But there was something in her eyes that made me sick with sadness. A distance. A guardedness. It finally hit me that she would never trust me again. I had broken everything.

• • •

I stayed on the beach after Hailey left. I sat down in the sand and thought about the first time Hailey called her feelings for Nate love. It was fifth grade. We were on the playground after school one Friday. The sky was overcast and ominous. Hailey and I lazily swung on the tire swing, just letting it rock us back and forth slowly.

Things always felt magical after school. The way the playground emptied out and the classrooms were cleaned and locked. It felt mysterious and dangerous, as if anything was possible.

Across the concrete playground, we could see the soccer field where a group of boys were practicing. We were close enough to hear their screams, but not to make out the coach’s orders. Even from across the yard, and without seeing his face, you could identify Nate. He wasn’t the tallest or the fastest on the team, but he always had an intensity about him, an alertness. Even when he was standing on the edge of the field, watching the ball, he was so awake it almost seemed as if he was moving.

“Who do you think is the cutest boy in our grade?” Hailey asked, dragging her toes through the sandy pit beneath the swing.

I was embarrassed. I had never been good at talking about boys. “I don’t know.”

“You have to pick one,” Hailey said authoritatively. “You have to rank number one and number two.”

Everyone knew that Ryan was the cutest boy in school, so it would be the most obvious and therefore the least revealing answer.

“Ryan Masterson,” I said.

“I knew you’d say that,” Hailey said. “My number one is Nate Reed.”

“Yeah, Nate is,” I didn’t know what to say about Nate. There was just something about him that made him stand out. “Nate is my number two.”

Hailey halted her swinging. “No. He can’t be you number two. He’s my number one and my number two.”

“Oh,” I said. The rules of this game really seemed to bend themselves in Hailey’s favor. “Why?”

“I am in love with Nate, Lima,” Hailey said, looking me straight in the eye. “You should make Julian your number two. He’s taller than Nate anyway.”

And just like that, the rules were laid out. Nate belonged to Hailey. Forever.

Until now.