Vanished: A Bad Boy Second Chance Romance (4 page)

              I realize my mom is probably waiting at school for me to pick me up.

              “Oh, sorry, Mom. I’m at Joey’s house.”

              “What? Joey’s? How did you get there?”

              “I walked,” I say. “Well, actually I ran. But yeah.”

              “Honey! You know I don’t like you walking down that busy street!”

              I sigh, pacing back and forth, my eyes on Joey’s house. “I know, Mom. I’m sorry, but I have to go okay? I’ll text you in a bit.”

              I hang up and stride across the street, feeling my heart racing in my chest, the cold wind against my cheeks. An old rickety pickup screeches by, music blasting. One of the guys shouts something at me, but I ignore it as I step up to Joey’s house, a small, run down cape, faded blue paint, chipped and worn. I take the steps two at a time and knock on the door.

              “Joey? Joey!”

              No response. I knock again, step back and try to see through the windows. The house is dark. I step up to knock again when the door swings open, revealing Joey’s mom, Cindy.

              “Hello…Mia,” she says, obviously not expecting me here. Joey must not have told her about us yet. She looks concerned, which makes sense after what happened today.

              “Hey, is Joey here?” I ask her.

              “No,” she says. “He isn’t home yet.”

              What? What is she talking about? He left before school even started, he has to be home by now. I frown, my face twisting with confusion, and she obviously notices.

              “Why? What’s wrong?”

              I don’t know if I should say anything. Joey’s probably just ditching, and will end up coming home later. There’s no point in getting her all worried over nothing.

              “No, nothing. It’s nothing. Could you just tell him to call me when he gets in?”

              “Sure,” she says with a smile.

              “Thanks,” I say, turning away. I head back down the stairs and text my mom. She picks me up and I explain the whole thing to her.

              “Ugh, what a mess!” she says, shaking her head. “High school romance. I don’t envy you, sweetie.”

              We get home and I head upstairs to my room. I can’t even begin to concentrate on my homework, and my eyes just constantly flick back and forth to my phone, waiting for it to ring, begging for a message from him. I just want to talk to him. I want to apologize for what happened. I want to hear his voice, and have him tell me he’s not mad at me, that everything will be okay, and that we’ll be together.

              But the call never comes.

              I manage to get a couple hours of sleep before school the next day. I show up early and wait outside for him. But he never shows. And the next day, and the next day.

              It doesn’t feel real. This has to be a practical joke or something. His mom reports him missing to the police, and they send men out to search the woods around town. But they don’t find anything. No sign of him. Nothing. It’s as though he just vanished.

             
He left me
, I think as I cry into my pillow.

              I’m alone in the dark room, huddled under my sheets, thinking about him.

              My hand clutches his gift, the Eiffel Tower statue. I grip it so tight it hurts.

              The only boy I ever loved, that ever will love.

              And he left me.

Present day…

              “He’s a good guy,” Cassidy says, sipping nervously at her frozen peanut butter mocha. We’re sitting in the kitchen of my apartment. It feels hotter and stuffier than normal, but I know that’s just because I’m nervously waiting for Ian to arrive. He’s going to propose to me today, and I’m not sure I want him to.

              I found the ring last week when I was looking for a shirt to change into after we came home from dinner at the new Italian place in town. He’d offered to just let me move in with him several times, but I wasn’t ready for that. I have my place just how I like it, and I’m used to living on my own. I’ve even convinced myself that I prefer it.

              I’d picked through his drawer and found the box. He hadn’t gone out of his way to hide it, but I guess he just never thought I’d never go looking for it. Seeing it had sent me into a tailspin for the last few days. Our relationship was going fine, but that’s all it was: fine. That little box with a ring in it had made me realize the reality of our situation, and I started to really think about just how much I cared for him.

              It’s been a long time coming. We’ve been dating for about a year now, but I’m having reservations.

              “I know,” I say begrudgingly. “He’s just not…”

              My voice trails off, and I twist my lips and look up at her.

              “Not Joey?” she asks, already knowing the answer. I can’t even respond. I feel stupid for carrying a torch all this time for a guy who doesn’t even want me. I mean, how could he? He left without so much as a word, a text, a note, a phone call, never to be seen again. Six years. Six long years I waited after he left me. Broken and alone. Unable to
really
ever love someone, stuck in this middle ground between a romance that had never had time to flourish, and the rest of my life.

              The first few weeks hadn’t even seemed real. Everyone assured his mother that he’d just taken off like most high school kids do and that he’d be back. Then a few weeks turned into a few months, and after half a year went by, people started to lose hope. The police officially declared him a missing person. Signs went up, ads in the newspaper, but nothing ever came of it. He was just…gone.

              Ian is great. I mean, he really is. He’s handsome, sweet, and caring, and has a great job as a consultant at a technology firm that opened in Portsmouth. I didn’t know why I was attracted to him in the beginning, but as time went on and I got to know him more, I realized why. He’s the opposite of Joey. He’s humble, not arrogant. He’s calm, predictable, stable, no surprises. I needed that after Joey. He was the only thing that could keep me from thinking of him. Not that it really worked, but it made things bearable.

              Ian is a catch. That’s what all the girls are always telling me. I’m always happy around him, and we haven’t had a single fight throughout our entire relationship. All my friends think he’s great, my mom loves him, but it feels like Brad all over again. I’m dating him for all the wrong reasons. He’s perfect on paper, but he’s not perfect for me. He loves me, and I know he’d do anything for me. The only problem is, I don’t know if I’d do anything for him.

              And it’s because I’m in love with someone else, and I have been for the last six years. Ian is very happy with our relationship, and I know that, but if I say yes to him, while part of my heart is owned by someone else, I will feel terrible. You can’t love one man and marry another. It’s just wrong.

              And a tiny part of me still hopes that Joey will come back. It’s stupid, I know. He might have moved across the country, or ended up in jail, or worse. I mean he could be dead, for all I know. I’d searched his name on social media every Tuesday for the last six years, hoping to find him somewhere, but I never did. Three weeks ago, I forced myself to give up.

              After two years, his mom withdrew from the world. No one ever saw her around town anymore. She went from full time at her receptionist job at the physical therapy center in town, to part time, then finally left. She’d gone on welfare and let their house fall even further into disarray. She refused to move, though.

              “What if Joey comes home? How will he know where to find me?” she told us. I’m the opposite. I haven’t been by Joey’s house in four years. Even if it means driving way out of my way to get where I’m going, I just can’t do it. Every time I see it, it takes me back to that day after school, and all the feelings come flooding back.

              I love him, and I hate him. He’d given me such hope, given me feelings I’d never felt before, then snatched them away when he left, breaking me forever, crippling my ability to love, or even feel the tiniest amount of happiness I’d known when I was with him. And we hadn’t even gotten started. I never even had a chance to be with him. I was given a taste and that was it. I guess this was my fate, first my dad and now Joey.

              “You’ve got to move on, Mia,” Cassidy says, interrupting my daydreaming. “He’s not coming back. You never even really dated him anyway.”

              She’s right. Of course she’s right. Everything she says makes complete rational sense; I should move on from Joey, I should love Ian, and I should marry him. And I’m trying. But it’s hard. Too hard.

              “Easy for you to say,” I finally say, looking up at her.

              “Don’t give me that look,” she says, eyeing me with something like sympathy.

“You know I’m right.”

              “Yeah, yeah…” I say, taking a sip of my coffee, which has gone cold from how long we’ve been sitting here.

              My phone vibrates, and I pick it up and check it. A text from Ian.

              “Well, he’s on his way over,” I say, standing up and pouring my drink down the sink. I watch the brown liquid swirl down the drain, feeling my heart sink at the thought of what’s to come. This isn’t how you should feel when your boyfriend is going to propose to you.

              “All right, well I’ll leave you to it,” Cassidy says, coming up behind me. She pats me caringly on the shoulder. She’s always been there for me, and I know that will never change. “Call me if you need anything.”

              She leaves, and I stand by the sink for a long time, thinking. She is right. I shouldn’t be holding out for a man who is never coming back. After all this time, why would he? Six years might as well be sixty. He didn’t just leave me, he left all of us, he left his own mother. To think that he’ll come walking through that door one day is just me living in a fantasy world. What am I supposed to do, just keep going through my life being alone? Waiting for someone who’s never going to come?

              I stand there waiting until Ian’s car pulls up out front. He sits there a moment, preparing himself, no doubt, and as he steps out of the car and I see him, I realize how much I really do care for him, and how silly I’m being holding out hope for Joey. This is my life now. There’s no point in looking back at a version of my life that will never happen. As I watch him walk up the lawn to my door I feel all my nerves subside, and I race over to the door and open it before he has a chance to knock.

              I can see by his face that he’s nervous. His blonde curls blow gently in the warm breeze as he smiles. He’s wearing his blue plaid button up shirt that he knows I like. Even if I didn’t know about the ring, I’d be able to tell what was on his mind just by looking.

              “Hey,” he says. “How are you?”

              “Good. You look nice,” I say, letting him in. I shut the door behind and he turns to me and just looks at me. He doesn’t say anything, and just when I’m about to break the silence, he leans in and kisses me on the lips.

              “You’re so beautiful,” he says, looking at me with all the love in the world. I can feel myself blushing, my heart starting to race as he gazes into my eyes. I know I can’t be the first one to speak. This is his moment. He turns around and strides into the living room, summoning up the courage to ask me the question I know he’s going to ask.

              I follow him to the center of the room, the faintest smile of anticipation across my lips. Ian always wears his heart on his sleeve. I never have to worry or wonder what he’s thinking. He doesn’t even realize it though. I bet he still thinks I have no idea what he’s up to tonight.

              “You all right, honey?” I say, unable to take the waiting any longer. He turns around quickly and walks over to me, taking my hands in his. His palms are sweaty. He’s nervous.

              “Yes, I’m okay. Sorry. I’m actually more than okay. I’m…I’m in love with you. Every second of every day, all I can think about is how much I love you.”

              He’s so sweet. I smile as he looks at me, summoning up his courage. He doesn’t realize it, but he’s squeezing my hands so tightly that it hurts, but I don’t say anything. I don’t want to ruin this for him. It’s about to happen. He’s about to ask me to marry him, and I’m going to say yes.

              With a deep breath, he kneels down in front of me, but as he does, his foot knocks into the bookshelf and bumps it against the wall.

              “Oops!” he says, turning around to brace it with his hand. A few of my books tumble out onto the floor. I stifle a giggle, but then something hard and heavy hits the floor. I look down, and on the rug behind him, is Joey’s gift, the Eiffel Tower statue from six years ago.

              I’ve never told Ian its significance. I never even really told him about Joey. The only thing he knows about him is pretty much what everyone else in town knows; he was a boy from our school who went missing. That’s it. He reaches down and picks it up and puts it back on its shelf, and my heart sinks.

              I can’t marry him.

              You can’t love two men and marry one.

              He sets the statue down and turns back to me, but when he sees me, he stops dead. It must be written all over my face.

              “What?” he says. I can’t bring myself to speak. He walks slowly toward me. “Mia, what is it?”

              I wish I could just freeze this moment and take time to think. I don’t want him to speak. I don’t want him to come closer. I don’t want to break his heart.

              “Ian…” I say quietly. “Don’t propose to me.”

              The look of shock that comes over his face almost breaks my heart. If only I was someone else. If only I was stronger.

              “What?” he says slowly. I can hear the confusion in his voice, the vulnerability.

              “I found the ring,” I say, barely able to get the words out. “But I…”

              I look back at the statue on the shelf, and I’m instantly taken back to that day on my porch with Joey. I can almost feel the cold breeze on my cheek, and his scent comes wafting back to me like he’s the man standing before me now.

              “I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

              “But, Mia. What are you talking about? Why? Why not? Don’t you love me?!”

              I look up at him and see the pain in his eyes. I feel terrible, but I know I’ll feel worse if I let this go on any longer. It would be cruel to string him along when my heart belongs to another. It’s better to just end things now and save us both the pain and heartache to come.

              But telling him about Joey would just be cruel. How are you supposed to explain to a man you’ve been with for a year that you’re in love with your high school crush from six years ago? It would kill him.

              “I just…I just can’t, Ian. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

              He opens his mouth to speak, but as I look up to him, he sees the look on my face and stops. He knows me well enough to know when I’ve made up my mind.

              “Can you…can you at least tell me why?”
              “I wish I could, Ian. I just—“ I don’t know what to tell him. Nothing I can say will make any sense to him now. “I’m sorry.”

              I hang my head. I feel terrible for doing this to him, but it’s what’s best for both of us. At least I keep telling myself that. Silence fills the room, neither one of us knowing what to do next. Joey has broken me, making it impossible for me to love anyone else, and I hate him for it. He’s responsible for this, not me.

              “Mia—“ Ian starts, but he stops and looks down at the floor. I just can’t stand this. Finally, after what seems like an eternity, he moves. He walks slowly past me, and I smell the familiar smell of his shampoo. He pauses as he passes, and I know he wants to reach out and touch me, hug me and hold me close to him. I can’t even look at him, and I hear the door open behind me. He steps outside, but stops on the porch.

              “Mia. Just tell me. Is there someone else?”

              I turn around, but my eyes focus on the ground in front of him. I can’t face him.

              “It’s…it’s complicated,” I say. He nods slowly, taking in my words. “I never cheated on you.” He should know that.

              “I know,” he says comfortingly. “You would never do that.” That’s how good of a guy Ian is, and it kills me to do this to him. Even now, when I’m breaking his heart, he cares about me enough to say something like that.