Chapter 2 #2
She’s here to stay. Que merda, that’s heavy. I feel like I’m standing next to myself. The living room is just a fuzzy screen. I think I’m vibrating, and that’s kind of mad. I mean, what kind of person starts vibrating when they hear that their ex-girlfriend is back in town?
“But she’s studying at Brown,” I say, as I can’t believe that all this is really happening. I need confirmation. “Aria… Aria can’t simply stay here.”
“She changed schools.” Camila stretches, and her hand knocks into the plant pot when she stands. “I’m hitting the sack. Just wanted you to know before you run into her somewhere.”
I nod, completely in a trance. Holy shit.
My sister runs a hand across my shoulder as she walks past and gives me a wan smile. “Don’t expect anything from her, Wyatt. Things between you two are over. Okay?”
“Sure. It’s all good. Clean your room.”
“Hmm. Another hopeless case.”
I throw the paper bag with the chicken bones after her. She avoids it, laughing, leaving the bag simply lying on the floor. Then she disappears upstairs.
With a sigh, I sink back against the cushions and run my right hand across my face.
My left arm is hanging limply off my side.
Ever since the accident, I’ve hardly been able to use it.
My muscles simply aren’t playing along. Whenever I try to lift it, it only makes it to my chin, or, well, sometimes it does, and that’s already saying something.
But then it sometimes goes up to the start of my neck and a bit farther up my neck, and I flinch in pain.
It happened a little bit after the transfer period, when the Snowdogs bought me.
I think life wanted to take me down a few notches.
Pick me way up and then slam me into the ground for what Aria had to go through thanks to me.
Life simply laughed and said, Happy birthday, Wyatt, buddy, this is your life now; get used to it.
I’m not getting used to it. I hear voices.
Sometimes they sound like Aria laughing and laughing, and then they sound like Aria crying and crying.
That’s my new normal; I know that already.
But ever since that day last summer, it’s been a whole lot more than that.
There are things I can no longer forget.
I can’t sleep, and when I can, I usually wake up every hour, screaming and bathed in sweat. It’s awesome, let me tell you.
And so, no, I’m not getting used to it. Definitely not.
I take another gulp of my Coke and watch our goalie, Samuel, manage to stop the puck with a painful-looking contortion.
The puck smashes against the side and skids off.
The audience goes wild, and the commentator talks about what exceptional talent the Snowdogs have.
But I hardly catch any of it because all I can think is, Aria’s back. Aria’s back. Aria’s back.
“Fuck it.” I put my Coke down onto the table and get myself together.
Just today. Just this one time because she’s back.
It takes a while for me to get the jacket over my useless arm. I can’t drive, so I have to walk.
The path to the start of Buttermilk Mountain and on to downtown seems endless.
It’s dark; all that’s here is the pale glow of the streetlamps with their lonely cones of light.
The winter season hasn’t started yet, so the streets are empty.
The wind is blowing leaves across the street.
At the bell tower I stop and sit down on one of the benches; my heart is beating so quickly I look at my Apple Watch.
My pulse is way over a hundred. Thinking of Aria is the most terrifying and yet most wonderful feeling I know.
It’s always been this way. I love order.
Aria was the only person who could regularly cause me to experience chaos inside.
I’m tense. I bite my lower lip and focus on the massive clock up there in the tower as if it could tell me which way to go. As if it knew how my life would turn out.
“What are you doing here?”
I turn. Knox is standing next to the bench, two paper bags from Kate’s Diner in his hand. Looking into my face, he frowns. “Shit, you look wiped. Everything okay, man?”
“Aria’s back.”
“Yeah.” His face takes on a sympathetic expression. “I ran into her a little while ago. I was going to call you a bit later on.”
“Camila told me.”
Knox looks up at the bell tower, then to the B it electrifies me, makes me feel alive, and I see that it’s the same for Aria.
I can see it in her wide-open eyes, the petrified look on her face. She can’t pretend I’m not here anymore.
But she immediately collects herself. “Leave me alone, Wyatt.” She energetically tosses the last apple into the wooden box, places it on top of the other two, and stands up.
“I wrote you letters,” I say. “Did you ever get them?”
“Yeah,” she replies curtly. Her ponytail whips from her right hip to her left as she makes her way across the street.
Completely on autopilot, my body starts to follow her. “You never answered.”
“Why should I?”
“Did you read them?”
For some wonderful, not entirely discernible reason, Aria stops and turns to face me.
Her cheeks are dotted red, like they always are whenever she’s angry.
“No, Wyatt, I didn’t. I threw them away.
Every single one, because nothing you could have written would’ve changed a thing.
There is nothing in the world you could say to make up for what you did, okay? ”
She didn’t read them. The realization turns me to stone.
Of course I didn’t expect her to write back or call and say, Hey, Wy, it’s all good, dumb shit.
Things didn’t go well. I’m coming back home and will be there tomorrow.
Pick me up. Kisses. See you. But I figured she would’ve at least read what I’d written.
Understood why what happened happened and simply needed time, a lot of time, to work through it all.
But that’s not the way things turned out.
I feel myself starting to panic. For two long years she’s thought I hurt her on purpose.
For two years she’s learned to hate me with a vengeance.
I shut my eyes but quickly open them back up, afraid that Aria won’t be there.
I exhale in a shudder. “Aria, please listen to me. What you saw in that video must have caused you the worst, most nauseating pain—I know that. And I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for you, what strength you needed to handle it.
Because I don’t think I could’ve done it.
I probably would’ve died or something, no idea, and I’m sorry, merda, I am so fucking sorry!
I wish I could feel what you must have felt instead, just to take that pain away from you, but I can’t.
What I can do is tell you why it happened and ask you to please, please listen.
” I quickly gasp for air in order to continue.
“Back at that party, that thing between Gwen and me, I…”
“Stop!” Her face is a mask of pain, as if the tiniest reminder would be too painful to handle. She takes a step back. “Stop. I didn’t want to hear it last year after the Christmas dinner, and I don’t want to hear it now.”
“But Aria…” I sound like I’m begging, every syllable accompanied by panic and doubt. “Please, then you’ll understand why…”
“I will never understand why, Wyatt.” She’s holding onto the edges of the fruit boxes so tightly her knuckles turn white.
“Whatever your reasons were…or maybe I would understand, but, whatever, I would never be able to forgive you because I saw it, okay, I saw you cheat on me, and I can’t suppress those images. ”
“But I didn’t…”
“I came here because Mom needs me and not to start back up where I stopped. It’s taken me two years, seven hundred and forty-two days to be exact, to learn to go on somehow.
And because I’m back here now, I won’t allow this whole struggle to be for nothing; I have no interest in starting all over again.
I don’t want to know your reasons, Wyatt; they won’t change anything, they’ll just drag me back into the past and make me suffer all over again. And I don’t want that. I just can’t.”
“But if you knew what happened, maybe that would change everything; maybe we could even be what we were once, you and me together and…”
“Wyatt.” The corners of Aria’s mouth warp, and her chin begins to tremble.
The solid wall of her face collapses, and all that’s left is a visible pain that I can’t describe.
“You and me, the thing with us, please, let it go, let me go—because if you keep holding on…” She swallows. “I won’t make it.”
My throat closes up. I can’t breathe. Suddenly I see that hell isn’t a place beneath the ground. It’s right here. Dark feelings, hot pain.
“But…” My voice breaks. Here I am standing on the street next to the B&B, in front of me the face of my ex-girlfriend, trying not to cry and at the same time not to suffocate. “But I love you, Aria.”
There, I can see she feels it, too, hell, and it’s grabbed hold of her heart with burning red hands. Her expression reflects my excruciating feelings.
“I love you, too, Wyatt. And always will. It’s just, well, that doesn’t change anything, does it?”
There’s nothing I can say to that. I mean, I can’t because she doesn’t want to hear what I have to say. And I don’t know which pain is bigger: the fact that it’s over or being unsure whether something could change if she’d only let me explain.
I will never find out.
Aria turns and leaves. She disappears behind the door that, in reality, is just a door, two inches of beechwood, nothing more. But it feels like a whole lot more. Like a crevasse without any bridge, with her on the other side and me over here. And between us a nothingness that can’t be overcome.