Weightless (38 page)

Except he didn’t stop.

Rhodes brushed right past me, his body wash leaving an all-too-familiar scent in his wake. For a moment I was stunned, but I quickly shook my daze and jogged after him.

“Rhodes, wait,” I pleaded just as we exited the club. It was one of those dreadful summer days where the heat suffocates you, working in constant measure with the steady beating of the sun. It was already so hard to breathe, the humidity wasn’t helping make it any easier.

He didn’t stop. Slinging his backpack over his shoulders, Rhodes strode purposefully toward his bike. I felt the tears starting to sting the corners of my eyes, but I refused to cry. That’s not what I had come for.

“Listen. I know things are complicated between us. I know the two of us together doesn’t make sense, not to anyone else, anyway.” I was trying to say anything, everything to make him change his mind. I’d never babbled so much in my life. “But you’re all that makes sense to me anymore.” He was still walking. I watched as the muscles moved beneath the soft fabric of his navy blue shirt. “My parents are idiots. I don’t care what they think. I don’t care what anyone in this town thinks.” He climbed onto his bike, but paused, his helmet in his hands. One lone bead of sweat gathered on his neck before slowly trickling down. “And I know you don’t either.”

I waited, and for a moment he just sat there, staring at where his hands held fast to the straps of his helmet. Finally, he lifted his eyes to mine. They were soft, almost apologetic. It made me fear him more than when they were beneath his furrowed brow.

“I’m leaving Poxton Beach.” The words left his lips as if they were easy to say, though his eyes told me otherwise. “Friday.”

I tried to swallow, but not even dry air would go down. I sort of hiccupped, trying to control the emotions I knew were scrolling across my face but failing miserably. “You’re what?” I shook my head. “No. No, oh my God. Is it Dale? Did he get you fired?” Rhodes didn’t answer, but I watched his throat constrict with the same emotion taking over my body and I knew the answer without him saying another word.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t belong in this town and I don’t want to be here anymore. There’s nothing here for me, and I’ve known that for years now. I was stalling. I was holding onto something impossible.”

“What about me?”

He chewed the inside of his cheek, his jaw tense, his eyes looking almost past me rather than at me.

My stomach lurched and I wrapped both of my arms tightly around it. “Oh God,” I whispered. I felt sick. I felt numb. And more than anything, I felt helpless. “Rhodes,” I breathed his name, a shiver breaking through me. “Please. Don’t go. Don’t leave.” I stepped closer, my hand shaking as I untucked it and reached out for Rhodes. He flinched, but didn’t pull away as I slid my index finger down his forearm to press hard on the inside of his wrist. “I feel your heart. It beats the same as mine. And I know you love me, too.”

His nostrils flared, his brows pulled in, and the slightest tremble quaked through his bottom lip. The sight of him almost breaking was all it took to completely shatter the fragile piece of myself I was trying to hold on to. When he shrugged me off, a sob choked through me, and suddenly the desperation I felt was too much. I lunged at him, shoving him hard enough to knock him off balance. He caught the weight of his bike, shutting his eyes but letting me hit him again and again.

“Fine! Leave!” I screamed so loud my throat hurt, my voice like a line of razor blades in my esophagus as my tiny fists pounded against his chest. “This is what you do, right? This is how it goes? I’ve memorized every inch of your back from all the times you’ve walked away from me this summer!”

Rhodes was chewing the corner of his lip, a fresh tear falling in the same line down his cheek. He was hurting, too.
Why was he doing this?

I hit him once more before my hands flew to cover my mouth and I sobbed. Straightening, I sniffed, shaking my head. “You don’t get to be the one who walks away this time.” He still wouldn’t look at me. I was tired of trying to make him.

I took one last longing look at him, my body remembering everything he’d made me feel that summer all at once, and then I turned. I thought he’d spark his bike to life and leave me in the dust again, but he didn’t. He watched me go.

One final penance.

I had always felt like there was this invisible string between Rhodes and me, fastened to his heart and my own. He had pulled me toward him all summer, reeling me in, and as I climbed into the Rover and sped away, I felt the string snap, knocking me backward with the force. I choked, covering my mouth with the hand not glued to the wheel, muffling my cries.

He was leaving me,
really
leaving me, and there was nothing I could do about it. In less than a week, he’d be free of Poxton Beach — of me. But I would never be free of him.

I was getting a crash course in love and loss and I knew in my heart I wouldn’t be able to survive the wreckage without Rhodes to help me find the rest of my missing pieces. But he wasn’t giving me that choice.

I either had to pull myself together on my own or stay broken.

I hated both options.

It was interesting to compare my break-up with Mason to the one I was having with Rhodes. Even though we hadn’t technically been in an official relationship, I felt more for him in two months than I had ever felt with Mason in the two years we’d dated.

Still, it’s like my mind wouldn’t let me pout the way I did with Mason. I could almost hear Rhodes in my head, yelling at me not to wallow, screaming for me to be strong and pick myself up. Move forward. Forget. Leave it behind.

I didn’t try reaching out to Rhodes again. Instead, I threw all of my focus into myself. For two days, I just thought. I would run to think, take an ice bath to think, sit outside by our pool to think, call Willow to think out loud, dream with what little sleep I was getting. I was asking myself all the tough questions I had let myself ignore all summer. What did I want to do next? Where did I want to go? What mattered to me?

In a way, I was avoiding making any moves because Rhodes was here — in Poxton Beach — and so, that’s where I wanted to be. And before I met him, before he was the anchor, I just hadn’t thought about what I truly wanted aside from the fact that I
didn’t
want to go to Appalachian State and be like everyone else in my class.

So, after swallowing back all the fear and self-doubt, I put in my application to the Savannah College of Art and Design. I didn’t tell Mom or Dale, not that I was talking to them at all anyway, but I did tell Willow, who screamed over video chat for a solid sixty seconds. She was half-screaming because she was excited for me and half-screaming because I wasn’t going to be anywhere near her if I got in. All I could think while we talked was that I really wanted to tell Rhodes. I wanted to see the wide grin spread across his face and watch as his eyes sparkled with pride. I wanted him to pull me in for a long kiss. I wanted him to be there.

But he just wasn’t.

Still, I felt him all around me. A part of me wondered if maybe I would always have that sensation. It was strangely comforting just as much as it was terribly agonizing.

My mom always told me that before I could love anyone else, I’d have to learn to love myself. But I didn’t believe that anymore. I was beginning to realize it takes a special heart — one stronger than our own — loving us for us to realize that maybe there’s something there worth loving, after all. Maybe it was about finding love in the one person who loved you before you had the chance to love yourself.

For me, that someone was William Rhodes.

And I was forever changed by his love, regardless of the fact that I wouldn’t get to keep it.

I couldn’t sit still the night before Rhodes was supposed to leave town.

I had woken up that morning with a sickening weight in my stomach. Looking back, it’s like I could feel what was coming — almost as if I knew that day, July twenty-third, was going to be the last day I would ever be the person I was. Something was brewing, but I didn’t know what.

In my desperate attempt to keep myself busy and not thinking about Rhodes and the fact that he was leaving in less than twenty-four hours, I had decided to watch the last three episodes of
Lost
. But when the final episode ended, I simply clicked off the television and stared at the dark screen, thinking back to the beginning of the summer.

Dale was right. I shouldn’t have watched it.

Feeling even more lost than before, I strapped on my running sneakers and watch. Mom popped her head into my room just as I was piling my hair into a messy bun on top of my head.

“Going for a run?”

I nodded, pulling my hair tight and checking my watch battery.

“I’m not feeling very well, so I think I’m just going to go to bed.” She waited for me to acknowledge her words. Maybe she wanted me to wish her better. Maybe she just wanted me to understand her “wise” view of the world. I didn’t do either.

She sighed.

“I love you, baby girl. I know you hate me right now, and I wish I could tell you how much that breaks my heart.” Her eyes welled with tears and I felt that familiar sting and tingle in my nose. Mom and I had always been close, and we’d never fought like this before. Still, I couldn’t find it in myself to forgive her without an apology, first. “Just know I’m always here for you. No matter what. And I really do care about your best interest.”

At that last line, I rolled my eyes. “Okay. Well I’m just going to run a couple of miles. I’ll be back soon.”

One single tear dropped straight from her high cheek bone to my floor and she hastily wiped at the trail it left behind. “Goodnight, sweetie.”

I ducked out of my room right behind her. She went left toward the master bedroom and I went right, jogging quickly down the stairs and out into the warm evening air. The sun was beginning to set, streaking the sky with bright, fiery oranges and pinks. Thumbing through my phone for the right playlist, I strapped it to my arm and tapped a few settings on my watch. Then, I ran.

Each step struck every nerve in my body. I felt myself tearing at the seams and being reborn all at once. I was in such an unfamiliar place mentally, the only way I knew how to get out of my head was to get into my body.

So, I focused on each foot hitting the pavement. I tried counting the steps as my watch counted the calories, but when I clicked over to voice mode, every word that left my lips was about Rhodes. Some of what I spoke into my watch made sense, some of it was just a string of broken sentences about memories and feelings I would never understand nor forget. I ran and ran until my chest ached and sweat leaked into my eyes to replace the salt lost in the tears I’d shed. It wasn’t that I was sad, but it wasn’t that I was okay, either. I was stuck in a confusing limbo, a sort of healing purgatory.

When I couldn’t run anymore, I walked. When I could barely walk, I hobbled. Blisters were forming on my heels and my legs burned fiercely, but I kept going. I spilled my thoughts to the watch and my sweat to the road. Finally, at just past eleven, I limped up the drive, into the house, and up the stairs to my room. Sprawling out on the floor, I stared up at the ceiling, but my eyes quickly lost focus.

I don’t know how much time passed. Maybe it was an hour, maybe it was only a minute, but sometime in the future my daze was broken by the soft buzzing of my cell phone on the carpet. I blindly felt for it, answering it without looking at the screen and holding it to my ear.