The Girl Who Fell (31 page)

“They're wasted. It's the only way they can stand each other.” He takes my hand, settles me on the edge of the bed. Kneeling before me, he catches my chin so I see his eyes clearly. Wet as tidal sand. Full of sorrow.

The bed beneath me stirs both sadness and longing. “I can't stay.”

His gaze pleads. “I wasn't with that girl, Zephyr. I need you to know that. I'm not saying what I did was right, but I didn't cheat on you. I would never do that.”

“That's not what it looked like.”

He hangs his head. “I know what it looked like. I wanted it to look that way.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm an idiot.” He brushes away a teardrop that creeps along his cheek. His eyes meet mine. “I wanted to show you how you hurt me.”

“When have I hurt you like that? I've never even
looked
at another guy.”

“See? You don't get it. That's why I needed to teach you a lesson.”

My head kicks back, stung. “What lesson?”

“Sorry, no—that came out wrong.” He squeezes my hand. One of us is clammy, but I don't care. “Last night was amazing. The best night of my life. You changing all your plans for me—for
us
, so we could have a future—blew my mind. I was insanely happy.”

“So was I.”

“You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that.”

“So how did we get here?” I pull my hand away, furious we have slipped so far from that perfection.

His fingers pull at his hair. “I was hurt. I wanted to celebrate with you more, be with you. When you blew me off for Lizzie tonight I was so bummed. I went to Waxman's, hoping I'd get to see you.”

“It didn't look like you were trying to find me.”

He holds up his hand. “Let me finish. I saw you in the cafeteria with Slice today. The way he was talking to you.”

“That was about his sister's wedding. And
he
talked to me. I can't control what he does.” I huff, shake out my frustration. “That so doesn't even matter.”

“I know. I figured it was something meaningless and I didn't freak. But then you pulled away from my kiss in the caf. It was like you didn't want anyone to know you were with me but you didn't care who watched you talking to Slice. And then tonight, I saw you and Slice alone together and then he was hugging you. And then I saw
you
hug him, Zephyr.”

“So?”

“I've told you how much it bothers me that you hang out with him and there you were. You two have years together and we'll never have those kinds of memories—so to see laughing, talking—I guess I felt like words weren't going to cut it; I needed to show you how it felt. Make you live it the way I do.

“You have no idea what you do to me. You make me crazy. I lost it. It was all to make you jealous. I thought if you could feel what I feel when I see you with Slice then you'd understand.” His eyes beg mine. “I was selfish, I know, but I want to spend every minute with you and I felt like you didn't feel the same way. I thought”—he knocks his forehead with the heel of his hand—“I guess I thought if I made you feel the same way—second best or something, then you'd understand. You wouldn't choose your friends over me.” He bites his lip, pleads at me with his stare. “I was stupid not to think it would backfire.”

His explanation.

His apology.

His regret.

It's a lot to process.

“You did this because you were hurt?”

“Yes.” Shame licks the word. “And because I love you. Too much. I've never loved anyone before, Zephyr. You make me beyond jealous and I know how much Slice digs you. I'd do anything not to lose you. It sounds totally effed up when I say it out loud, but that's pretty much all I ever think about.”

“Really?”

“Really.” I feel myself tipping forward. “I love you, Zephyr actually. I just never knew love would make me do such insane shit. But it will never happen again. Tonight when you wouldn't answer my calls I thought I'd lost you. It was the scariest feeling. I'll do anything to make it up to you. Anything.”

My resolve softens and he senses it. Alec reaches up, brushes his lips against mine. The tender kiss calms me and excites me all at once. My insides are a jumble, but the kiss, the kiss feels right.

He rises and sits on the bed, pulls me onto his lap. He burrows his face into my neck and I feel the warm wet of his tears. “I swear I will never hurt you again. You'll see. Next year everything will be different. We'll be together always.”

I hear the purity of that promise, that gift. “Alec?” He draws his eyes up to meet mine. “What if I don't get into the University of Michigan?”

“Of course you'll get in. You're brilliant and athletic. If Boston College wanted you, Michigan will too.”

“But—”

He silences me with a finger to my lips.

“No matter what happens, we'll figure it out, just like we're doing now. That's what love is.”

I see my parents then, fumbling through love even after twenty years. My dad, acting in the extreme. My mom finding space to forgive him.

“We'll get through it together. Just promise you'll forgive me for being a complete ass.”

And when he kisses me I let my mind wash of everything but his lips. His tongue so familiar.

It's not until I get in the car that anger rises. It is the same kind of anger I felt after learning of Dad's note. Why couldn't my father or Alec talk to me about the way they were feeling? Why was their instinct to hurt me?

“You okay?” Lizzie says when I pull on my seat belt. “Did you forgive him?”

“Not totally.”

“So you forgave him a little?”

“It'll never happen again.”

Lizzie hangs her gaze on me too long.

“What?” I snap.

She lifts her fingers from the steering wheel in surrender. “Nothing. You're a smart girl. I'm sure you did what you thought was best.”

“What would you have done?” I explain how Alec was hurt and wanted me to know what that felt like. How he was acting out of love. How he didn't actually do anything with that girl.

Lizzie is quiet for a long moment. “I don't know what I would have done, Zee. I've never had to deal with this with Jason.”

They are the last words Lizzie and I exchange as she drives me home, and the stillness leaves enough room for uncertainty to creep in. Because I don't see the dark shadows of Ashland Drive as we drive down my road, I see Alec hovered over Katie, too intimate, too easy.

An endless haunting.

When I'm inside, I go to my bedroom and watch the clock tick numbers until long after midnight because it's easier to watch time pass than to replay that twisted scene on a constant loop. The image is tortuous and cruel and I wish my memory could forgive Alec the way my heart has. The way my body has.

I look to my collage, to Alec's cards. Proof of his love. He is the Alec who leaves me flowers, trusts me to know his quiet dream of becoming a chef. He is the person I can talk to about Dad and my future. That person would never hurt me. Not intentionally. It is this thought that carries me into a welcoming darkness and the reprieve of sleep.

And when I hear a knock, my brain mistakes it for the sound of a field hockey stick connecting with a hard white ball. My arm reverberates at contact but then the sound echoes and the lush green field fades from view. I am pulled to my bed, to reality. I look around my room, my closed door. Daylight sneaks in through the sliver between window and shade. The knock sounds again.

“Come in.” I burrow under my down comforter. A warm chocolate fog enters the room and someone's weight depresses the end corner of my bed. Too tentative to be Mom. Lizzie? Gregg?

“Hungry?”

I pop from my covers and see Alec. “Alec? How?”

“Your mom let me in.”

My hands fly to my hair in a taming attempt.

“I needed to see you, Zephyr.” He places a mug on the table. “Last night sucked so bad.”

“It did.”

“I want today to be so much better.” He holds up a brown paper bag. “Would breakfast in bed be a good start?” The scent of hot cinnamon bread fills my head. “Next year I'll make you eggs in our kitchen. Next year I won't be a complete idiot.”

I want to believe that. But, “Smells delicious” is all I can say.

He opens the bag, flattens a napkin across my comforter and sets out two thick pieces of cinnamon nut bread.

“Did you make this?”

“Special for you.”

A skip, a flutter. My heart can't help it. Alec leans over and plants an apologetic kiss on my cheek. When he pulls back I see the circles under his eyes, his drawn expression. “You look tired.”

“I didn't sleep. I screwed up so badly. After we talked I kept imagining Lizzie telling you what an ass I was, trying to turn you against me.”

“She's not like that.”

“I'm glad. Because this is between us.”

I raise my hand to his jaw, the angry raw line of purple I've just noticed. “What happened here?”

“Gregg.” Just the one word, no details, no explanation. He bends toward me and our foreheads press together. “Say you forgive me.”

I want to forgive him. I remember Lizzie telling me how love makes people do stupid things. And I see my mom, forgiving my dad. If his huge mistake wasn't enough to destroy their marriage, don't I owe it to Alec—and me—to try to find forgiveness? But I can't quite make the words
I forgive you
form. Instead, I say, “I do.”

They are enough. Alec lets out a relieved sigh, nuzzles his head onto my chest. We stay like this for a long time, him listening to my heart, me combing my fingers through his soft hair.

But then I tell him, “You can't stay.” He shifts off me, his heat a stain on my skin.

He questions me with sad eyes.

“I need to write my essays for Michigan.”

He smiles, kisses me hard on the mouth before standing. “Call me when you're done?”

I nod. He kisses me again before slipping out of my room with a high step, almost a skip.

I go to my computer and log on to the University of Michigan's website. I research student life and academics and their field hockey team. And I can imagine myself there. With Alec. The version of Alec that has promised never to hurt me again. The version of him that made me choose to be with him next year.

The university accepts the common app, which I give them permission to view, and I enter in my references, same as I'd done for Boston College months ago. I spend the rest of the morning trying to focus on my essay. Trying to crowd out doubt. It's a relief to hear a knock at my door.

“Feel like decorating the tree?” Mom asks.

And it is the exact thing I want to do. Something simple and mindless and wrapped in the comfort of years.

I follow her to the living room, where Frank Sinatra croons the words to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” from Mom's favorite 1950s holiday CD. Hearing the lyrics makes me feel like a kid again. I'm suddenly grateful for the small things that will never change. Like the blue spruce tucked into the same corner as every year. This one is smaller than usual and Mom didn't drag out all the boxes of decorations, but these tiny changes don't make me sad now that I'm facing huge changes. Like starting an unexpected life with Alec.

Mom's untangling a string of tiny white lights but doesn't miss how preoccupied I am. “I didn't know teenage boys brought their girlfriends breakfast. Alec seems very considerate.”

“He is.”

“You're lucky.”

“I am.” I just wish last night didn't taint how lucky I feel.

“And that shiner on his jaw?”

Leave it to Mom to notice all the evidence. I pull at the corner of my lashes and the lie races off my tongue. “Hockey.” I pray Gregg doesn't tell his mom the truth about any part of last night. So Mrs. Slicer won't tell Mom. The need to get farther away from all things Sudbury burns deeper than ever.

“Lizzie called the house earlier, said you left your phone in her car. She offered to drive it over if you wanted.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I wanted you all to myself to decorate the tree. And that I think you can live without your phone for a day.”

“I can try.” I don't tell her a quiet day at home feels exactly right.

Mom grabs a new mound of lights, tackles the untangling anew. “I thought we'd get a small ham since it's just the two of us this year. And Rachel asked me over for drinks Christmas Eve. You want to come? See Gregg?”

Oh god. I hadn't even thought about facing Gregg. “I'm good, but you should definitely go.”

“Rachel says she misses you coming around.”

“I'll see her at the wedding.”

“True.” Mom considers. “But no plans on Christmas Eve sounds lonely.”

It was the same thought I'd had about my father. How he's not here sharing any of our traditions new or old. “I was thinking of calling Dad.” If I can forgive Alec for the way his love made him act, I can try to forgive my father. At least take the first step.

Mom smiles a soft grin. “That's the best Christmas gift I could ask for.”

We wrap the lights around the girth of the blue spruce and when I plug in the cord I have to stand back. The display is beautiful. So much light on the darkest day of the year.

I use the house phone to call Dad while Mom's out last-minute Christmas shopping. It's not that she'd eavesdrop, but I need to be alone when I make the call. My nerves are untethered explosives, squealing in every direction. I pace the house, trying to give my whirling anxieties somewhere to go.

“Olivia?” When I hear my father's question, the world stops.

I summon my voice. “It's Zephyr, actually.” This inadvertent string of words makes me aware of how much of my life my dad has missed.