Beverly

Chapter 56

56

BEVERLY, 2001

19 years old

I woke to the feeling of someone’s hand cradling my head. Not harsh. Not invasive. Gentle—like the person touching me thought I might crack in their palm if they weren’t careful. Then Blake’s voice, low and coaxing, cut through the fog of sleep. “C’mon, B. Time to wake up. Got your favorite—burnt toast and pancakes.”

My eyes fluttered open, and for a moment, I wasn’t sure what century I was in. The sun filtered through the curtains like warm honey, and the scent of toast and butter hung in the air. Blake was leaning over me. His face was annoyingly gorgeous in the morning light. His thumb was brushing slow circles at the base of my skull, his other hand balancing a tray with, pancakes, toast, and a small bowl of strawberries. His shirt was rumpled. His hair was a mess, his were eyes soft, and he looked like a hallucination I’d once begged to forget.

“Morning,” he whispered. “You drool a little. It’s cute.”

I jerked upright, nearly whacking my forehead against his. “How the hell did you get in here?”

Blake grinned—the kind of grin that made me want to punch him and kiss him at the same time. “Your aunt let me in. Said if I made noise before eight, she’d call the cops again.”

I groaned and pressed my face into the pillow. “Traitor.”

“When I told her I was bringing you breakfast before we hit the road, she said, and I quote, ‘Good. But if you hurt her again, I’ll break your knees with a cinnamon broom.’”

I sat up, the blanket tumbling down my chest, my tank top suddenly feeling very tank-toppy. “She said that ?”

“Word for word.” He shrugged, balancing the tray on my lap. “Minus the expletives I’m pretty sure she mumbled in French.”

I stared down at the buttered toast. “You made this?”

“I did.” He beamed with the pride. “Do I get a gold star?”

“No.” I took a bite of the toast, chewing slowly as I watched him. “Do you even know where the toaster is in this house?”

“I know a lot of things,” he replied, mock-offended, reaching over to steal a strawberry.

“You know how to break and enter.”

“I know how to grovel.”

I looked up at him. “Oh? And you’re gonna do that now?”

He dropped to his knees beside the bed.

I blinked, caught off guard by his sudden move. “Bla?—”

“No, no.” Blake held up a hand dramatically. “Please, my lady, I am but a man, unworthy of your grace. Please take pity on a soul ruined by longing?—”

“Shut up,” I laughed. “You’re an idiot.”

“But I’m your idiot,” he said, looking up at me from the floor. “If you’ll have me.”

I rolled my eyes, trying to swallow whatever weird feeling was climbing up my throat. I wasn’t used to tenderness at 8 a.m.

“Stop being sweet,” I grumbled. “It’s disorienting.”

Blake talked nonsense while I ate—telling me about Diane, his therapist’s favorite houseplant, the barista at his local café who allegedly had a vendetta against correct spelling, and Jamal, who threatened to unfriend him if he didn’t ‘grow a pair and apologize with actual tears.’”

“You can slap me once a day for a year,” he offered solemnly. “Right across the face. Open palm. And I’ll even let you pick the worst Spice Girl and call me that for the rest of my life.”

“Posh,” I muttered, mouth full. He made a face.

“You can get up now,” I said, taking pity on him.

He blinked up at me. “Are you sure? I was kind of hoping to stay down here and wallow in my shame for a bit longer. And I was kind of settling in down here. Thinking of making it my new home. Ifeel like this is where I belong.”

“Blake,” I said flatly, popping a strawberry into my mouth.

He sighed but pushed himself up, brushing imaginary dust off his jeans. “Fine, fine,” he muttered. “You’re too kind.”

“I think you’ve suffered enough. For now.”

“You ready?” he asked after a few minutes of shared silence, brushing crumbs off the blanket. “We should head out soon.”

I nodded, setting the tray aside. When I’d finally gotten dressed and grabbed my bag, he tossed me the car keys.

I caught them mid-air, brows raised. “You’re letting me drive?”

“If I drive, I have to focus on the road,” he said, his voice quieter now. “And if I’m focused on the road, I can’t watch you.”

God help me, I blushed.

* * *

I slid behind the wheel and adjusted the seat like I owned the car. Blake didn’t even complain when I moved the mirrors or played with the radio. He leaned back and watched me like I was made of magic and he was trying not to blink.

We drove out of San Francisco with the windows down, the sun already warming the dashboard, and music humming low on the radio. Blake rested one hand on the edge of the open window, the other occasionally brushing mine as I shifted.

He brought mixtapes, labeled in his handwriting with titles like “Songs for Punching the Dashboard” and “If You Don’t Cry By Track Four, You’re Broken.”

I remembered how much I missed this. Not just Blake—though, yes, obviously, that was part of it—but this…feeling.

“You’re a decent driver,” he said after ten minutes, watching me from the corner of his eye. “Bit aggressive on the turns?—”

“And you’re a terrible passenger,” I lied.

“I’m the best passenger. I’m calm. Chill. I bring snacks.”

“You bring terrible snacks.”

“Take that back. Cheddar popcorn is top-tier.”

I glanced over at him. “You’ve changed,” I blurted out.

He didn’t respond right away.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter, almost like he was hesitant to let the words leave his mouth. “You haven’t.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

The road stretched on for hours. We passed rolling hills and sleepy towns. I had the window down and one hand out. We kept talking like old times. Light things. Dumb things. He made fun of my parking once. I told him he still drove like a grandpa. He told me I still hummed when I was thinking. I told him to shut up and eat his popcorn. It was easy. Effortless.

Until it wasn’t. Until somewhere along the 101, as we passed a diner that reminded me of the one we used to sneak off to after dances, the ache crept in again. One moment we were laughing, the next I was staring at the road too hard, my throat suddenly tight. I drove a little faster, my jaw clenched a little tighter.

Blake noticed, of course.

“You okay?” he asked, sitting up a little.

I couldn’t answer. The words were there, stuck somewhere between my throat and my heart, but they wouldn’t come out.

“B? Hey,” he said softly. “Where’d you go just now?”

I kept my eyes on the road. “Nowhere.”

“You sure?”

I blinked fast. “I just—” I swallowed. “I can’t believe you were just gone.”

Blake’s face changed instantly. Softened, then pulled taut with guilt. He turned in his seat slightly, as if trying to close the distance between us, even though he hadn’t moved an inch. “Bev?—”

“I get it,” I said quickly. “I know. I know I told Tiffany not to tell you where I was. But I still…” My voice cracked. “I needed you to find me. Even if I didn’t make it easy.And when you didn’t, when it was just silence for so long—” My voice cracked. Again. “I just wanted you to try.”

Beside me, Blake said nothing.

I blinked quickly, my eyes stinging. “I used to stare at the café door,” I whispered. “Every single day. For hours, I’d just sit there, waiting for something to change. And then one day, you came. And I hid. So maybe it’s all on me. Maybe I don’t get to feel this way. But I do.”

He was quiet for a long beat.

The road stretched ahead, the skyline of Los Angeles still a few hours away, and the past sat heavy between us again.

“It’s not fair,” he finally said, his voice low. “Yes, I left you first. But I tried to fix it. But then you were gone. You cut me off, and I respected that. As much as it killed me, I respected it. But I did try, Beverly. I wrote you letters. For a whole goddamn year?—”

That made me look at him. “What letters?”

“The ones I gave Tiffany.”

“No, you didn’t.” I shook my head.

“I did. And when you never responded, I assumed you told her to stop. That you didn’t want them.”

I stared at him. “Tiffany never told me about letters.”

His jaw tensed immediately. “I wrote you every day for a year, B. Some were dumb. Some were just a sentence. Some were pages. I gave them to her and she said she’d send them to you.”

“No, no, no,” I said, my voice sharp. “She never told me, Blake. I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care if you do,” Blake said, voice tight now. “But I did. I wrote you until my hand cramped. Until I ran out of ways to say I’m sorry. Until I thought maybe you were better off never hearing from me again.”

The air inside the car turned thick, suffocating.

My thoughts tumbled over each other, memories colliding.

Tiffany had never mentioned letters. Not once.

I stared at the road, my heart somewhere in my throat.

“Why would I lie about that?”

“I don’t know!” I shot back, my voice rising in frustration. “Maybe because it hurts less than admitting you just gave up on me. That you gave up on us.”

“I never gave up,” he retorted. “I left those letters on her porch, begging her to tell me where you were. I knocked on every single door in San Francisco, tirelessly searching for you. But you— you —were the one who didn’t want to see me.”

Something inside me twisted so hard it hurt.

Blake’s eyes flickered to me, his face flushed with emotion. “So I stopped chasing you, but I didn’t stop thinking about you, Beverly. For God’s sake, I never stopped loving you. I concentrated on Stanford. I went to therapy. I did everything I could to be better—because I wanted to be better for you . I wanted to be better if, somehow, some way, I ever had a chance with you again.”

I felt the heat rise in my chest, the pressure building inside me as the truth of what he was saying started to break through the walls I’d put up. All the months of silence and distance were crashing down around me.

Blake didn’t look angry. Just tired. Wrecked.

“You don’t have to believe me,” he said. “But it’s the truth.”

“Maybe she threw them away,” I whispered, my voice barely audible. “Maybe Tiffany was just trying to protect me. Maybe she thought it was easier to let me believe you had forgotten me. Maybe she thought it would hurt less.”

Blake exhaled a long breath, running a hand through his hair, making it messier than before. “I hated myself for not being there for you,” he said, his voice raw. “And I hate that you thought I had moved on. That you thought that I could.”

I swallowed hard, trying to fight back the knot in my throat that tightened with every mile we drove. “I left because I was trying to heal,” I croaked, my eyes brimming with unshed tears. “But I was running from the one thing I needed most.”

“I know,” he murmured, reaching across the console for my hand. His fingers wrapped around mine with a steadiness I hadn’t felt in a long time. “And I was trying not to bleed on you anymore. That’s why I left. I left because I love you.”

I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. My heart was still in my throat, my mind flipping through every conversation I’d had with Tiffany, every moment she could’ve mention letters and didn’t.

We drove the rest of the way in silence—thick, painful silence—full of everything we’d said and everything we hadn’t.

I wanted to scream, to ask how he could love me and still think I couldn’t handle whatever it was he was carrying.

We didn’t speak until we crossed the city line. And even then, I wasn’t ready to look at him. My brain was a mess of memories, unanswered letters and a pink hair tie looped around his wrist. Part of me wanted to forgive him right there in the quiet hum of the Impala. But forgiveness didn’t come easy when the wound still ached. When the letters never came. When the silence felt like abandonment—even if I had been the one to keep him away.

That was the worst part.

I’d made it impossible for him to find me, and then I’d hated him for not trying harder. For not sending smoke signals into the sky. It was petty, selfish even. But heartbreak doesn’t always make room for logic. Even now, with his hand wrapped around mine, part of me was still that girl crying into a pillow at Aunt Mary’s. Still that girl staring at her phone at 2 a.m., wondering why he hadn’t fought for us. Still that girl who believed that maybe I wasn’t worth chasing.

But another part of me, the part that never stopped loving him, wanted to climb into his lap and tell him I didn’t care anymore. That I just wanted him. That I was tired of hurting.

The war between those two girls was exhausting.

It was too much. Too much for my heart to handle, too much for my mind to sort through in the space of a few breaths.

“I would have read them,” I said finally, the words slipping out in a whisper. “If I’d known there were letters… I would’ve read every single one.”

He didn’t answer. His thumb moved in slow, absent circles over the back of my hand. I could feel the words gathering in his throat, but he didn’t force them out. Maybe he knew that silence was safer than saying the wrong thing. Easier than acknowledging how much had been lost, how many moments had slipped away in the gaps of miscommunication and unspoken fears. Easier than confronting the fact that we had both hurt each other in ways we weren’t sure how to undo.

But I wanted to hear him. I wanted him to beg. Not because I needed him to, but because I needed to know he would. That he cared enough. That I mattered that much.

But when I finally looked at him, there was no optimism. No pride. No stubborn hope lighting up his eyes. Just devastation—the kind that doesn’t scream, but pleads.

And that made it worse.

Because that look said f orgive me and please still love me more than any apology ever could.