Loving Mr. Daniels (39 page)

“Mom?” I said as I turned the doorknob, entering the apartment. It was exactly the same. The living room still had the large, ugly floral print frame traveling around the ivory-colored walls. The television was still on crappy reality television. The couch was still the same brown mundane color.

Yet it all felt different.

Daniel walked in behind me, closing the door. “I don’t think she’s here,” I whispered, but I didn’t know why. It felt as if I were trespassing, and if I were to get caught, the world would crash around me.

I stared down the hallway toward what used to be Gabby’s and my bedroom. Every hair on my body stood up. Goose bumps covered my skin. I hadn’t known I would feel so scared yet so angry just by standing in the apartment, but I did. I wanted to scream, but my throat was tight. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come.

Walking to my bedroom, I found that the door was closed. My fingers wrapped around the doorknob and I pushed it opened.

Just like the rest of the apartment, everything was the same but somehow different. I hated that.

My side of the bed still had a few of the books I’d left behind sitting on my dresser. The closet was filled with both my clothes and Gabby’s.

I moved to my bed, which was perfectly made, and sat down on the edge of it. Patting the spot beside me, I invited Daniel to sit with me.

“It smells like you,” he noticed. “I know that sounds weird, but it does.”

My eyes moved to my pillow and I picked it up, breathing it in. It had recently been sprayed with my favorite perfume.

“I’m going to tell her how much trouble she caused,” I stated, staring up at Gabby’s side of the room. Her Beatles posters were still hanging up. Leaned up against her bed frame was her acoustic guitar. Pictures of her and Bentley were still taped all over the wall. Photos of her and me… “She abandoned me when I needed her the most.”

I looked to Daniel, who was giving me pained eyes, yet he didn’t speak.

“She—she told me to go away!” I stood up, feeling my blood start to boil. Being back here was stirring up my emotions; being back here was pissing me off. “I could have helped her! I could have taken care of her!” I screamed, pacing back and forth.

He kept staring. I kept breaking.

“And then she has the nerve to spray my pillow?! As if she misses me?!” I huffed and puffed, my face heating up. I pounded my hand against my chest. “Gabby was my twin! If anyone should have fallen apart, it should’ve been me!”

I was both furious and nervous. Furious because Mom had turned to alcohol when she could have turned to me. And nervous because I was afraid to see her broken.

Moving over to Gabby’s bed, I started ripping her comforter off, tossing her pillows to the side, tossing her sheets to the ground. “She’s not coming home, Mom!” I cried into the air.

Next, I hit Gabby’s posters, tearing them down. I reached for the photos and started tearing those to the ground, too. Daniel wrapped his arms around me and pulled me off of the bed.

“Ashlyn, stop,” he ordered.

I couldn’t. My mind had been taken away from me by the sadness, by the memories.
How dare
Mom order me to leave.
How dare
Henry take care of me.
How dare
Gabrielle get cancer.
How dare
Ryan kill himself!

“I gave Ryan a place to stay. We were supposed to sleep it off and figure things out in the morning. Rebecca calmed down. She wanted him to come home. Hailey needed him… What an asshole. He’s an asshole for dying!”

It wasn’t fair. They’d all left me when I would have done anything to stay with them. I would have given them all the love they needed.

Why wasn’t I enough?

He was holding me around my waist, yet I kept kicking and screaming. “
Let me go
!” He held on tighter. I started kicking my legs around, clawing my fingernails into his arms, trying to rip his hold of me away. My howls grew deeper and the pain only intensified. “Let me go!”

“No.” He held on and placed me against a wall to control my kicks. My body landed against the cold wall and I cried. “I’m never letting you go, Ashlyn. I’m never letting you go.”

“You will! You will let me go.”

My stomach twisted and I felt like I was going to vomit. He wasn’t trying to, but he was lying to me.

Because everyone always let go.

My vision began to blur over and I felt lightheaded.

“You’re having a panic attack,” Daniel whispered against me as my breathing started to increase. My insides tightened. “Calm down for me, sweets. Steady your breathing.” He turned me around so I was facing him. I yanked on his shirt, pulling him closer to me.

I lost it.

Completely lost it.

But he was still there.

We sat on the couch, facing toward the front door. When I heard keys jingling, my heart pounded against my ribcage. The door opened slowly and I saw Mom walking in with Jeremy behind her.

I stood to my feet and heard Mom gasp. Tears built up in her eyes and her shoulders slumped.

I was supposed to be mad.

I was supposed to hate her.

But all I could do was hug her, pull her to me, and cry into her. I didn’t know what to think of the exchange between the two of us.

And maybe tomorrow, I would be mad again.

And maybe when I went back to Wisconsin, I would hate her once more.

But right now? On Christmas afternoon?

Right now, we were just two people made to screw up, fuck up, and learn new things. We were made perfectly imperfect.

Snow falls soft.

I love you slowly.

~ Romeo’s Quest

Those few days in Chicago, Mom and I didn’t figure things out. We didn’t work on our issues.

We mourned the first Christmas without Gabby. On New Year’s Eve, we cleaned out the bedroom, too. Mom lifted up Gabby’s guitar and smiled toward Daniel. “You can have it.”

He frowned. “I can’t.”

“Please,” Mom whispered, running her fingers over the guitar strings. “It deserves to be played.”

Daniel looked over to me and I smiled, nodding.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the guitar into his hands. As Mom and I folded up the last of the clothes to send the Goodwill, Daniel played Gabby’s guitar.

“Do you know any Beatles?” I asked him. Mom looked up toward him and smiled, waiting for his answer.

He played
Let It Be
, singing quietly. His voice was smoother than I’d ever heard it before. It gave me the best kinds of chills. Outside the window, snow fell at a tamed speed, falling against the tree branches, falling against every inch of Chicago.

And when the clock struck midnight, everyone cried.

“What do you think?” I asked Daniel as we arrived back at the train station in Edgewood. “Do you think she’ll be able to stop drinking?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “But I hope she does.”

“Me too.” I looked around and smiled at Daniel. We stood in a hidden corner by the payphones in the Amtrak station. “She wants me to come back to live with her…to work on our relationship.”

He nodded slowly. “I know.”

My voice whispered with the next topic. Mom had given me the letter from the college of my dreams on the way out. “I got into the University of Southern California.”

“I know,” he repeated. “Of course you did.” His head lowered to the ground. “No matter what, no matter how hard we try…why do I feel like I’m going to lose you?”

I felt it, too. But I couldn’t voice it. “Okay, well, Henry is going to pick me up soon. I’ll call you later? Otherwise I’ll see you at school this week.” I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him on his lips, trying to give him ease to his doubt. He lightly tugged on my bottom lip and I sighed against his mouth. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

As I watched him walk toward the door, my heart tightened. After our final exams in a few weeks, there was a whole new semester where Daniel and I would have to pretend to not be in love. Only this time, I wouldn’t be in his class. The idea of going through that again was painful. I wanted to be selfish. I wanted him to quit his job. I wanted him to run away with me, but I knew he couldn’t. He loved teaching. He loved his band. His home was here in Edgewood.

And what about college? I’d gotten into the University of Southern California. My dream school. That would be four years away from Daniel
—
four more years of separation.

We had gone one semester with being surrounded by each other and it had almost been the end of me. A raw truth was settling into my head as I studied him outside the building. I’d fallen in love with the right guy at the wrong time. 

“Hey, Ashlyn.”

Jumping out of my skin, I turned around at the sound of my name. “Jake, you scared me. What are you doing here?”

“Just got back from my grandparents’…” He gave me a grimace look. “Were you just kissing Mr. Daniels?”

My mouth dried up and I coughed. “What?”

“You were just kissing Mr. Daniels.” He said it as a fact, but it hit my ears as a question.

I studied him intensely as he rotated his body toward the exit, pointing to Daniel, who was standing outside waiting for a taxi. I could feel the vomit climbing up my throat.

Laughing nervously, I yanked up my suitcase handle and started to roll it away from him. My legs felt like Jell-O. My mind felt like mush. “I gotta meet Henry…” I muttered.

We messed up.

We’d gotten too comfortable. We’d touched too much. We’d slipped.

Footsteps were following me, and I frowned at the sound of them. “Ashlyn! Listen, you’re a smart girl. But hooking up with your teach—” Jake’s mouth was yapping and yapping.

My hand flew to his lips, shutting him up. “Shut up, Jake!
Shut up!
” I was going to cry. No, correction
—
I was crying.