Chapter 24
I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE hell I’m doing. I can’t think of a single safe place for this box of secrets and I don’t have much of a plan, but I deserve to know the truth and there’s only one person who can give that to me.
There has to be another explanation, because if there’s one thing I am sure about, it’s that I’m not… gay. I can’t be.
As I speed toward the countryside, I try to ignore the way that photo made me feel in the deepest parts of me. I try to ignore how it all makes so much sense.
It could be the reason I stopped hanging out with Savannah and Rory.
It could be the reason I was in the woods that day, and why Nora acts so strange sometimes.
Is this why I shut Mom out? Did Nora make me hide this from her? How could I ever choose her over my own mom?
I could never. I would never.
A stop sign comes out of nowhere and I slam my foot down on the brake.
My backpack flies off the passenger seat and into the dash.
I can hear the contents of the shoe box inside shuffle around as it hits the floor.
I force my eyes back onto the road, my hand wrenching around the steering wheel so tight that my knuckles turn white, and instantly I’m reminded of Nora in the meat shop, her hands clamped down on the counter.
That fucking story…
She was talking about me right to my face knowing I’d never know.
When I arrive at the farm, I sling my backpack up onto my shoulder and step out of my car. The thick white clouds provide some cover from the late-July sun as I start across the field to the spot where we worked on the fence together last week, but I still feel hot all over.
I spend the entire walk trying to stop crying, but the tears just won’t stop leaking out of my eyes, because every time the shoe box thumps against my back, I’m reminded of all the lies Nora has told me these past couple of weeks. All the secrets she’s been keeping from me.
The one person I thought was a clean slate…
and she knew everything the whole time. It’s everything I was afraid of.
The reason I decided to stop looking and turn over a new leaf for a second chance.
I should never have changed my mind. I just never imagined that what I might uncover would be something this big.
By the time I spot her four-wheeler, I’m crying even harder, my breath a little ragged.
“Stevie?” she asks, surprised, as she tugs on the cord of her earbuds and they dangle from around her neck.
“What are—” She stops. I can see that she registers that something is wrong.
Every time it felt like she was somehow reading me, every time she would say exactly the thing I needed to hear. It makes sense now.
“What was I doing in the woods that day?” My voice shakes as I speak, but I enunciate every word, giving her one more opportunity to tell me the truth this time.
“Stevie, what are you talking about? I—I don’t—”
“What, are you just gonna tell me the same bullshit story again?” I cut her off, trying to swallow my tears long enough to get this out. “You don’t know? Huh? You don’t know anything?” I swing my backpack around in front of me, unzipping it to reveal the orange shoe box.
With a shaking hand, I slip it out and let my backpack fall to the ground at my feet.
I lock eyes with her and then throw the box onto the grass between us, and the contents go spilling out at her feet.
The camera and photographs and a random lottery ticket and a ton of other things that don’t mean anything to me.
But I can see it in her eyes as they shift frantically from item to item.
I can see that she knows exactly what all this stuff is.
And that it means something to her
I watch her chest rise and fall, sweat beading on her tan skin and pooling at her collarbone. She looks up at me, slowly, her mouth hanging open like she’s going to say something, but she never does.
“This whole time…” I keep my voice low, because it’s the only thing I can muster right now. “This whole fucking time…”
Nora lets her head fall backward, looking up at the sky. When she finally looks back at me again, tears are falling from her eyes just like that day in the butcher shop, and that’s how I know for sure it’s all true.
“You… forgot me,” she says, her voice so small that I can barely hear her over the soft sound of the wind blowing through the grass.
“But you didn’t forget! You knew and you didn’t tell me.” I shake my head and she presses her hand over her heart like she’s in physical pain. “All those times I was going on and on like an idiot about how nice it was to talk to someone new. Someone who didn’t know me before.”
“I wanted to tell you. But how could I?” She throws her hands up.
“I know you don’t remember, but you told me that you never gave one thought to your sexuality before we met junior year.
So how would you have reacted to me telling you something like that?
I didn’t know what to do. Then you kept coming by and we started hanging out and I thought maybe that meant something, that if I waited, it would all come back to you.
Or that maybe we could just fall back into…
and then our plan could still work.” She takes a step toward me but I take a step back.
“What plan? What are you talking about?” I ask.
She bends down, her hands shuffling desperately through the mess I’ve made in the grass until she pulls out a thick piece of linen paper folded in thirds and tucked inside the popcorn bag. She holds it out to me, but I don’t move to take it.
So she starts reading.
“Dear Ms. Green, Congratulations! It is our great pleasure to offer you admission to UCLA…”
“What the hell?” I grab the paper and run my hand over it, my thumb dipping into the imprint of the school crest at the top.
California.
I was never going to go to Bower.
I was never going to stay here.
But why would I hide getting into UCLA? Why didn’t anyone know?
“We were going to get out of Wyatt, Stevie. You and me, we were going to a place we could actually be together. We were so close,” Nora says.
I remember the California travel guide on her side table that she didn’t want me to see.
It wasn’t hers, it was ours. Just like the mess lying in the grass in front of me, proof of a secret life that I don’t remember.
“Why would I go anywhere with you? Why would I leave my whole family, my friends behind without even telling them? I don’t even know what you’re talking about… I’m not… I’m not gay.” Just saying the word feels wrong, it makes me feel scared, makes me check over my shoulder to be sure we’re alone.
“You chose me, Stevie. You chose me over everyone else in your life who would never understand. Doesn’t that tell you something?” she asks.
I crumple the acceptance letter in the fist at my side and look her dead in the eyes as she stands back up, just a couple of feet away from me now.
“Well, whoever that was, it wasn’t me. You don’t know me.
I would never. And I… I like Ryan,” I tell her.
The truth. It’s the truth, no matter how much it doesn’t feel like it in this moment.
“You don’t like Ryan,” Nora scoffs, confident, almost amused. “That’s bullshit and you know it.” She takes a step forward until she’s one foot away, and my skin starts tingling.
“No. What’s bullshit is being lied to by someone who you thought was your friend,” I cut back.
“I’m not your friend, Stevie! I was never just your friend.
” She takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry that I lied to you.
Okay? I’m so sorry.” She gives it room to breathe between us.
“But this has been impossible for me. You don’t understand…
we had everything. I mean, our relationship is something that shouldn’t have survived this town.
We could never share a milkshake at the Dinor.
We could never hold hands at the mall or go to prom or even risk being seen together as friends because we were terrified of letting something slip and someone taking it all away.
We spent all of our time tucked back in those woods together, and somehow, we didn’t just survive there, we thrived.
Our relationship blossomed all alone in the dark.
And finally, finally, we were about to step into the light when in an instant, it was all taken away anyway.
” She pauses, her glassy eyes tracing every inch of my face.
“Do you know what it’s like? To have the only person you love standing right in front of you, but she has no idea who you are?
No idea that she’s your entire fucking heart. ”
My ribs ache as I watch fresh tears roll down her cheeks.
“I know you, Stevie Green. I know you hate grocery stores, because they’re always too cold.
I know you love when people scratch your back, but no one does it quite like your grandma used to.
I know you don’t like the feeling of your bare feet in the wet shower after the water is turned off.
I know you won’t talk to someone who raises their voice at you until they’ve calmed down.
” She moves still closer to me, her face inches from mine as my legs quiver underneath me.
“I know you don’t remember, but I do. And I know you feel it. Even now.”
Her hand brushes against mine, but this time I don’t pull away, because as much as I know I should…
I physically can’t. I stand there, frozen in place by the truth in all her words as her fingers slip into mine, lacing between each one until our palms are flush against each other.
A warmth ignites up my arm and burns all through my body.
Suddenly, I understand how it could have happened, how holding hands in the middle of the gym during a football game could lead to all of this.
But I can’t do this. I can’t be this.
“Please just let me go,” I whisper across the shrinking gap of space between us, which I find myself wishing wasn’t there.
“I can’t,” Nora replies, leaning toward me until finally I give in to the magnetic pull between us, wrapping my arm around the back of her waist and pulling her up against me, her lips crashing into mine.
Our heads twist and tilt and readjust clumsily.
I breathe in hard against her salty skin as she drags her fingers down my jaw and off the end of my chin over and over again, trying to pull me impossibly closer.
What does it feel like to kiss her?
It feels like we’ve both been swallowed by flames.
It feels like my insides are so light that I wonder if we’re actually floating.
It feels so right that it couldn’t possibly be wrong.
I mean, it shouldn’t be.
But whatever this is, it made a mess of all the other areas of my life.
So even if it’s all I want, I know that this time I’m the one who can’t. I can’t do this with her.
I push her shoulders away from me and then force my legs to stumble backward a few steps, putting some distance between us.
“This was a mistake,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, even though everything in my body is begging her to ignore me, begging her to kiss me again. “Please just leave me alone.”
“Stevie…”
I can’t bring myself to look at her, because I’m afraid that I won’t be able to leave if I do.
Instead, I close my eyes and see both of my parents’ faces if they ever found out what I just did with a girl.
I might’ve chosen Nora over them before, but that was another life. I couldn’t possibly do it now.
“I can’t do this. My parents would… I never should’ve come here.” I bend down to scoop my backpack off the ground, but instead I toss it onto the pile of stuff. “Just… keep it. All of it.”
“Wait, there’s more. Just… just give me a second. I have to tell you—”
“I don’t want to know, Nora,” I reply, even though I want to know more than just about anything right now.
The problem is, if I do, I’m scared I won’t be able to walk away.
And if I don’t walk away, everyone is going to find out about me and I’ll lose them all over again, just like these last two years. And I’ve already lost too much.
“Just wait,” Nora says, reaching out to grab my arm as I stalk past her. “Stevie, wait! Just talk to me.” I shake her off and keep moving. “Stevie, I’m sorry! Please don’t leave!” she calls from behind me, her voice breaking.
It takes everything in me but I don’t stop until I’m back to the safety of my car.
I don’t need her. I don’t need her. I don’t need her.
I say it over and over again in my head until I convince myself that it’s true.
Until I realize how I can prove it.