41. Chapter 40
Chapter 40
James
I made a mistake.
I’m not too sure what else I’m meant to say.
The numb feeling that’s been eating away at my insides for the last five days is a constant reminder for that very fact.
I don’t know how to make it right or to make it work.
This place should make me feel better but it doesn’t; the beach just seems to remind me of her now and it’s awful, quite frankly. I stare out to the ocean from where I’m sitting on the sand, the waves crashing do their best to try and drown out the sound of her voice in my head but she’s still there.
She managed to get into every corner of my life and there was a moment in time when I hated that and now I know it's the only way I’ll get to see her again; only in my head and when I walk around this town and remember every place she’s been.
You’re just like her.
My own voice rings through the noise. I can’t believe I said that to her.
I think you just made up my mind for me. You should go.
The pain in her voice gets me every time I relive it. I shouldn’t have left. I shouldn’t have let go of her. I should have said more, said something but I couldn’t, I didn’t .
I now have to live with the fact that the rest of my life is known as After Katherine. I will never know what it's like to not know her, to not of had her in my hands, to not of had her, even if just for a little while. I’ll never be able to go back to what I was like before her but I don’t know how to be after her. I don’t know who I am now.
The sound of footsteps travelling towards me brings me back to the real world and for a second, half a second, I think, I hope, it’s her. I don’t dare look, I don’t want to know; it’ll only break my heart more when it’s not.
“Hey,” Maddie says sitting down next to me. I can’t even look at her, I can just picture the look in her eyes, pity, anger. I’ve been avoiding her just the same as I have everyone else. God knows how I’ve managed to teach classes this week.
“Hey.” My voice sounds hoarse, a dead give away that the night it happened was not the last time I cried.
She throws an arm around my shoulder and has to practically pull me to get me to fall onto her shoulder. “Will you just let me comfort you for like two seconds please?” A small laugh slips from my lips and I think it’s the first time since that night. “How are you?”
I can’t even begin to try and explain how I am. Angry. Sad. Happy that the universe thought I was the perfect fit for someone like Katherine. Someone so kind and loving, someone who made me better without really trying.
But I don’t really care about how I am to think about it enough, I’m worried about how Kat is. “That’s not important, I’m more worried about her.” I can’t deny that I’m pretty sure I’m the villain in this. She should be with her, she should be plotting ways to make me feel worse, if that was at all possible.
I hurt, but Kat feels everything so much more, so I want her to be okay. And it hurts more that I’m not the one to make her feel better, that I’m not the one with her, holding her. Making her feel strong enough to get through it.
“Well I happen to know from a reliable source that one, you’re my best friend and even when I think maybe you’ve fucked up, I still love you and will always be by your side, and two, Kat’s mum is here so I think she has that side covered.” Have I said I love Maddie? No, I don’t think I’ve said it enough. I’m so unbelievably lucky to have her in my life.
“I love you too, Mads.” I don’t miss the way she looks at me like maybe I’ve never actually said that out loud to her before, maybe it wasn’t just romantic love I’d been hiding away from this whole time. “Her mum is here?”
“Yeah, she—she’s here to help Kat go back to New York.” Maddie's voice goes small, like she knows how much my heart is breaking right now.
“So, she’s really going?” I’m not sure what else could be worse but she can’t miss out on this opportunity, it’s everything she wants in a career. She deserves it, I guess I just thought maybe I’d be part of that conversation and from the sounds of it maybe I would have been if it wasn’t for that stone.
“She came to see me earlier to say goodbye and stuff, they’re going in a few days.” She falls silent and I feel her body shift her eyes darting in a million directions but not my face.
“What is it? What aren’t you saying?”
“You could stop her if you wanted to, if you talked to her.”
Maybe I could, I could talk to her and stop her. I want to. But I can’t.
“I can’t, she deserves this job and I belong here.” I lift my head up so I can look at her properly. “Maddie, some things are just too hard to get past.”
“Respectfully, bull-fucking-shit. ”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, bullshit.” A fire lights in her eyes and I brace myself for the burn I’m eventually going to get from her. “James, I get it and I’ve never pushed you as much as I wanted to because I love you and I didn’t want to hurt you, but this shit has gone too far.” I can literally feel my palms start to sweat from the tone of her voice. “The stuff with your mum can’t control the rest of your life. Kat is not her, and you are not your dad… that last bit is important. You have literally never had a drink because you think somehow it’ll make you him. You love her, and you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life if you let her go, for the love of god you should be shouting from the hills because she’s actually your soulmate.”
I blink are her because I’m scared to say anything. Maddie’s tough, she’s pushed me to do things and be things when everyone else was happy to let a sixteen year old depressed boy fall apart. But truthfully I had a feeling she was always holding back a little. There was always more she wanted to say but she always just said enough to get me back on my feet every time.
“Wow.”
“Well, someone had to say it.”
“I’m just glad it was you.” She smiles at me but it’s sad, and I try to give her one back but I know it doesn’t come out how I want it too but it’s the best I’ve got right now. “She’s like the light in the darkness, all consuming and kinda life changing and I don’t feel like—”
“Like you deserve it?”
I run a shaky hand through my hair. “She deserves the best of everything and I don’t think that’s me, I’m the dark cloud rolling in, ruining a perfect surf.”
“You think that’s how she sees it? You think she spent all that time with you because that’s how she saw you? Ever thought maybe she sees you the way you see her? ”
“She only wanted her soulmate. You really think if that thing hadn’t glowed it would have been hard for her to leave?”
She pauses for a minute and I know it’s because she knows I’m right, but she looks at me like I’m the one that’s grown an extra head. “Yes.”
The fact I’ve still driven here under current circumstances can only tell me I have truly lost my mind. As I look up at the house my feet plant themselves very firmly into the driveway.
My mum's house looks back at me, feeling much more like a haunted house than it should.
“I can do this,” I tell myself but when I made these plans, I thought Kat would be by my side when the time came.
I didn’t think I’d come. Kat got me to make these plans with Mum the day after our lighthouse trip. Without her, it feels like I’m falling. Falling into a darkness that I have no way of getting out of and torturing myself with a trip to my mum’s seemed fitting.
The door flies open and a black Labrador comes running out at top speed flying at me. If I wasn’t the height I am, or had the muscles I have, I’d definitely be on my ass right now.
“Harvey, no!” Lee shouts as he comes running after him, but the dog’s sat at my feet now looking up at me like I’m his new best friend as I scratch behind his ear. “Sorry, James he’s, well, a little crazy.” Lee looks at me like I might very well punch him in the face and maybe a few months ago I would have, but honestly I don’t have the emotional energy to hate him right now .
“Harvey, in!” My mum shouts from the doorway and he gets up and legs it back into the house. “Are you coming in?” she asks, walking a little closer slowly like I’m some wild animal that might bolt at any second.
“Yeah.” I follow her and Lee into the house slowly. The house is, well it’s a house. It doesn’t conjure up any kind of emotion from me. It’s not like our old one, it’s not like the one she talked about owning, it’s just a house. Living room to the right, kitchen to the left, with stairs even further than that. It’s nice, not like her but also just like her. Like I said, it’s just a house.
We walk out to the back patio, Harvey weaving though my legs as we do. Mum and I sit on two garden chairs facing out into her garden which in fact does look like our old one. The ocean is in view and that makes my shoulders drop at least three inches.
“I’ll be in the office,” Lee says, excusing himself, kissing my mum before going inside. Harvey nestles himself at my feet, guess I won’t be making a quick getaway at any point then.
“I won’t lie, I didn't think you’d come,” she says not quite looking at me but in my direction. It’s good to know this is awkward for her, too.
“I said I would.” It comes out angrier than I would have liked but it’s my default with her.
This would be easier with Katherine.
She softens all my jagged edges and smoothing out my wrinkles. I’ve tried to stop thinking about it but after my conversation with Maddie yesterday I didn’t sleep much and my comfort place is somewhere between Kat’s kisses and her smile. Maddie’s words haven’t stopped spinning yet either.
“When your dad called to say what happened, I just thought— ”
“Dad called?” I interrupt her as my brain clicks back into the present. This is clearly a week of bat-shit crazy stuff happening because what?
“Yeah, the other day. Sometimes loving someone will make you do crazy things and your dad loves you like nothing else.” She says it like there’s something more she wants to say but doesn’t. I’m not even sure what we’re meant to say or talk about but I guess this breaks the ice.
“So he called?” I’m still kinda stuck on that really, the man hasn’t uttered her name in ten years and lost his shit when he found her wedding invitation.
“Yep, but I want to ask if you’re okay?” she asks, and then I realise we’re looking at each other, like really looking at each other. In the kind of way we used to, in a way that truly makes me feel comforted by her.
Just be honest with her, talk to her. Remember no what ifs.
So, honesty… Let’s try it. “No.”
“I know I’m maybe the last person you want to talk to about this, but if we’re here anyway, maybe you might want to?” Her voice is hopeful and light, the look in her eyes reminds me of when I was younger. “I will stay quiet and you can just vent all your feelings at me if that helps. Sometimes it helps to talk it out loud rather than in your head.” This won’t fix everything but I guess what have I got to lose.
So I go from the start, the moment I met Katherine until the moment I walked away from her. She doesn’t say a thing and lets me get everything out. I don’t think I realised how much I was holding on to until I finish and look back over to the sea and the sun is lower in the sky.
“Do you want my opinion? Or are you just happy to have got it out?” she asks, treading so carefully with her words.
I just nod at her as I think about everything I’ve just told her, it’s not like it can get any worse .
“I think you should tell her you love her and then let her make up her mind about what to do with that information.”
“I didn’t say I was in love.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I’ve barely known her four months, and half of that time we spent arguing,” I remind her. I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time telling myself I hated her.
She smiles at me. “Yeah, that’s kinda not how it works, love isn’t about time, you can know someone for five minutes and know you’re going to love them. I think the moment you met her, you knew you’d love her and that scared you.” I guess honesty is working both ways today, will anyone just tell me I’m right and let me be?
“Can you blame me?” I retort back because let's face it, who made me afraid of love? Who set me on this path?
“No, it’s my fault.” I’m a little thrown off by her just saying it. “I made you think that love was the enemy, that love was the thing that ruined things. That’s on me and I’m so sorry James. But my point is, loving her isn’t going to ruin you and it won’t fix you either, but god, will it help you find the pieces again. It’ll help you realise the life you haven’t been living because you’ve been closed off to such a big part for so long. James, being loved and loving someone else is like holding real magic, whether that’s a soulmate or not.”
She’s right. When I was with Katherine, it was the most whole I’ve felt in so long, like the missing piece of me was there again, she made me feel alive even if it was because I was angry at her. But when we were on the other side, when she let me hold her, that’s what living was meant to feel like. I could breathe when she was around.
Fuck, I love her.
I love her.
“Are you staying for dinner?” Lee asks, sticking his head though the sliding door, he looks hesitant, I don’t blame him. I haven’t exactly given him any reason to think I like him, I don’t know him, maybe I should.
Harvey gets up wagging his tail at me, before running though Lee's legs back inside.
“Yeah, that would be great.”