Loved - A Novel (5 page)

So, Spanish sucks.  I’m never going to Spain, so why am I learning this stuff, ya know?  I’m thinking about you.  How I just can’t seem to get enough of you.  I could drink a case of you and still be on my feet.  I can’t get you out of my head, and I think you shine when you smile.  I haven’t felt this way about someone in a long time. All I can say is I’m looking forward to being with you as long as I can.  I’m pretending I’m a pirate and you’re my treasure. Now, to enjoy the spoils of this find. Think about it.  It makes sense.  Seriously, it does.

“Can I keep you?”

Chase

He had a hunger too, which he let show without fear.  He wasn’t needy or whiny; rather, it came across more like he was in awe of me, felt lucky to have me and didn’t believe he deserved me. It was nice to be so treasured but I didn’t see it the way he did. I felt lucky to have him.

I told Paul about Chase, of course. I wasn’t worried that he would be upset about it. I knew we were friends more than anything and that he wasn’t trying to create a commitment out of our relationship. He was just as understanding as I thought he’d be, happy for me even. We still talked on the phone once or twice a week about what he was up to in his work, about my upcoming move to Nashville or my final months of high school life.

              The girls and I had planned to go to Prom together, sans dates and I couldn’t think of a better way to enjoy one of my last high school milestones than to be with my best friends. I wore a pale blue Cinderella gown that laced up the back and a tiara, which sparkled atop a pile of curls.

              Chase joined me for the after party at Meredith’s house. All the girls changed into pajamas and all the boys seemed anxious. Chase got along with everyone but we kept mostly to ourselves, setting up camp on the floor in the den.  It was the first time I had spent the night next to a guy but that didn’t occur to me. There was nothing outside of that room at that moment. We curled up together in my navy blue sleeping bag from the summer camp that I had outgrown and whispered late into the night. We had so much to learn about each other.

              “There are some things I want to tell you, Kitten but I’m nervous because I don’t want to scare you away. I already have no idea what you see in me. I have had a lot of turmoil in my life and the person that I am is the end result of everything I’ve done.”

              “You can tell me anything,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.” I put my hand on his chest.             

              “I just, I wish there was a way for you to see inside me. I’ve never felt this way about anyone or anything. I’m happier right now in my life than I thought was humanly possible,” he said, his tone serious.

              He told me that his dad and his mom had split up when he was really young and that he had chosen not to speak to his dad anymore at an age too young for such a decision; he was now in the process of starting to cultivate a relationship with this man who was his father but who he hardly knew. He told me everything.

              “I used to play sports,” he continued. “I was actually really good. But in seventh grade…depression hit me really hard. It was hard for me to watch my friends change. In eighth grade, I lost a friend that was the only thing I still enjoyed in my life. We were inseparable for eight years then one day he...quit. The summer between eighth and ninth grade I barely left the house except to go to therapy, and when I hit rock bottom I tried to kill myself twice.”

              I brushed his hair from his eyes. He had just added red streaks to the front of it, where the blonde had been. He went on.

              “Looking back I don’t regret it but my life has never been the same. They put me on these pills to help me open up to people again. Then I didn’t have the energy to kill myself so I just kept marching on in my one-man army. Then I fell really hard for you. I was so happy that day. That was the day I found the gun. I remember being happier than I felt was possible and I didn’t want to lose that feeling so I thought about ending my life again. But I couldn’t do it. You were the reason I didn’t. You saved my life.”

              I just shook my head and then I kissed him. Truly, none of that scared me. I was girly and friendly and my family life was happy but many days I felt like I was on the inside what Chase was on the outside. I always believed I was a happy person with a sad soul. I felt like I had had tragedy in my life when I hadn’t. Somehow, without having experienced what he had, his scars resonated with me.

              “You wanted to know my story, now you do. I hope I haven’t scared you away,” he said.

              “You haven’t. You couldn’t. Nothing you do could keep me away,” I reassured him.

We marveled at each other. I could see him. I knew who was behind those big blue eyes.

              It was an incredible feeling to be so important to someone, to be treasured. I needed him for different reasons than he needed me but just as much. He helped me to see ways in which I could express myself artistically. He showed me not to be so afraid to be different or to be misunderstood.  We each wanted to see the world how the other did.

              From a very young age, I found myself to be completely preoccupied with love. Not fairy-tale love but passionate, devastating, haunting love. Now it seemed I had found someone who felt the same way.

              One day in school, I saw Chase in the hall on my way to third period Algebra and he gave me a note that he had probably written in Spanish class. I slid into my seat next to Meredith and held up my calculator proudly. She had a sheet of gold star stickers in her textbook. Any day that I remembered to bring my calculator she gave me a gold star. “Yay, Ims!” she said, using her special nickname for me, before she passed me my brand new star. I added it to the three others on the cover of my notebook and we laughed.

              As the teacher began to go over our homework, I opened the note.  It was blank.  I turned it over but still nothing. Then I saw it at the bottom of the page in very light pencil, a line from
Playing By Heart
: “Is it too late to say I love you?”

              Finally I remembered to bring my calculator to class but then I forgot how to use it. The teacher was speaking in gibberish and everyone around me disappeared. I may as well have been lazing in the field at home, under a dancing willow tree and dreaming.

              I was Faith Hill CDs, giggling with my girlfriends and reading books under a big sky.  He was black fingernails, blue hair and Stone Temple Pilots, and I loved him.

              But I was leaving in the fall. Soon! I had to be honest with him about that. We only had a matter of months to be together before I would be starting college six hundred miles away and he would have two years of high school to finish. I didn’t know how we would make it work but we would have to find a way. Chase agreed that somehow we would survive.

Kitten,

May I say that you look absolutely beautiful today?  My jaw fell off and my heart just about stopped beating when I saw you this morning.  I still can’t believe you’re mine.  You don’t need to worry about losing me kitten; this is real.  I’m not going to let any distance between you and I affect love.  We fit perfectly, ya know?  No, really, we do.  I love you, and not just in that nighttime television sort of way. Kitten, you are my hourglass.  I could watch you for eternity.  Just give me that chance.

Zoro

              I didn’t let myself think about being afraid of what would happen. I just couldn’t put the two thoughts—Chase and college—together in my mind.

              We spent that summer in his bed, which isn’t at all how it sounds. We would just lie there and watch movies or talk for hours. We talked about his concern for his mom’s happiness, about music, about movies, about my need to get out of Westville and do something bigger, about his struggles with self-confidence and about the intense passion we felt for each other. We were both Scorpios so the entire relationship was very intense. We weren’t just testing the waters.  We were swimming in an ocean.

              The passion was more physical than I’d had before and while we talked a lot about sex, Chase didn’t pressure me to go farther than I wanted to. I’m not saying we were angels but I drew the line and we left it there.

              One particularly overcast and humid day we were in his room deciding on a movie. 

              “
Muppets Christmas
or
Muppets Take Manhattan
?” he asked. I was quiet for a minute, watching him ponder over the videos stacked on the TV before snuggling further under the brown blanket. It was cold without him next to me.

              “Or we could always watch...”

              “
Return to Oz
!” I finished. 

              “Ok, Ozma, that it is.”

              Chase was the first person I’d ever met who agreed with me that
Return to Oz
was amazing and not a bit creepy.  He called me Ozma and I called him Tick Tock after two characters in the movie.

              He pushed play and crawled over me to his spot on the bed. He put his arms around me and turned me towards him. I didn’t really need to see the movie anyway. I’d seen it five hundred times. 

“You saved me, you know. I never thought I’d feel like this about anyone. I love you, Kit,” he said. 

His gigantic blue eyes burned into mine and I knew he meant it. It was scary and exhilarating. I wanted nothing more than to stay in that moment forever, swimming in his eyes and covered in his hands.

“I love you, too,” I said and he kissed me.

“Look, Billina,” said Dorothy on the TV, “these ones have lost their heads.”

August, 2000.

              We had lost our heads. We had also lost all sense of time and reality and an eagerness to imagine the future. I saw Chase. That was all. I saw him and I saw us and nothing else mattered. When I spoke of Nashville or of my excitement for college, it felt like I was speaking of someone else’s life.  Not my own. Not mine with him.

              But the truth was that
I did have to leave. I was older than he was and it was my time to go out on my own. The truth was that it didn’t matter that I loved him. I could hope he would follow, that we would find our way to each other but I was leaving and my life was about to be very, very different.

              A week before I was to leave for Nashville, Dad and I began packing everything I could take into the back of his red Ford truck. When Chase got off work that afternoon I drove over to his house and we sat down on the couch. It felt strange to be on the couch because we were so often in the sanctuary of his bedroom. Saffron, one of Chase’s mom’s birds sat on my knee. 

I could hardly get the words out.

              “I don’t want it to be like this,” I said, my hands clasped in my lap. If I squeezed my hands together hard enough, I thought,
maybe I could keep from crying. 

              “Saffron,” said Saffron.

              “But there is so much that I need to experience at school.  I love you and I don’t want to stop talking or say it’s over forever, but I need to be on my own right now.”

              “Saffron.”

              “Yes, you too, Saffron,” said Chase to the bird, trying to show strength in his shaky voice.

              “And you have two years of school left before we could even be in the same place,” I said, “and I don’t know if you would ever want to live in Nashville.”

              Chase was crying, which really upset me. I needed to stop talking. I was quiet for a minute. I reached for him and we held each other. 

              Finally he pulled away and looked in my eyes.

              “I understand,” he said. “I knew this was coming but that doesn’t make it any easier.”

              What else could we have done? I would rather have ended it on a high note and have been able to come back to him later than try to make it work, disastrously, and do irreparable damage to something so amazing. I told him what time we were leaving for Nashville and it was up to him whether or not he wanted to come see me off. Then I left.

              I cried on the drive home, warm tears leaving spots on the front of my blue tank top. I hoped he would come to see me before I left. I didn’t want him to be angry. To feel sad that we were broken up was inevitable for both of us but nothing would be worse than if this kept us from a future we were meant to have. I wondered if he would show up to see me off, if this was really the end or just the end for now, if we could still love each other even if we weren’t together.

              Saying goodbye to my friends was much more pleasant. Meredith and some of the other girls met me out for ice cream. We all shared the
Dream Boat
, which is a giant bowl filled with 24 scoops of various kinds of ice cream and every topping imaginable. We dug in with long silver spoons and ate until we were silly from the sugar. Then we stuck in straws and drank the melted ice-cream puddle left at the bottom of the huge bowl until we were sick.