Chapter 8
Christian
The summer storm comes and I realize I’ve missed it. But living in your car when the heavy rain drops sound like they’re about to crack your windshield is terrifying, and I’m shivering.
I wrap myself tighter in a blanket I bought earlier this afternoon, but it’s doing nothing. I knew these storms could be violent, but I experienced them indoors. I’m in my car, it’s not the same.
My seat is as far back as it can go, the way it is every night, but no matter what I do, I can’t find a comfortable position. I’ll never be able to find a comfortable position in here. I’ve never had a comfortable position in life either.
Only when I was with Lana.
I remember the day I first really met her outside of a party.
I was so early because my father was angry and drunk, and my mother was off somewhere doing who knows what.
I walked there because Peter’s house was only two blocks away from mine and the guys were driving.
I’d had a drink before I left my house, about two glasses of my dad’s most expensive whiskey just because I felt like it. I needed it.
Then I got to Peter’s house and there was this girl I’d only ever seen in passing at school, and she was sitting at the edge of the sidewalk.
She had this medium length hair, much shorter than it is now, and it looked like she curled it.
I could only see her profile from where I was, but her nose seemed small and her lips were full and a deep pink.
Then she smiled to herself, looking up at the sky, and I saw a dimple.
I sat next to her. I already knew her name and she knew mine, but I wished I didn’t so I could ask her and hear it from her first. It was Luca who told me her name because she was Isabelle’s friend first before she was all of ours.
I wished she could be the one to tell me, in her voice, so I could fall in love with her two syllable name right then, all over again.
Then she started asking me these questions and I wanted to give her every answer.
I’d find the answers to the universe for her if she asked, even now.
She told me about wanting to go to business school and having these visions about a bookstore cafe.
She rambled and rambled, and I only smiled, taking in every word.
I cut in and asked her some of my own questions eventually.
She asked me my favorite color and then said, “Don’t say blue. Why is it always blue? You guys are so unoriginal!”
I laughed and told her, “It’s not blue. I really like orange right now, I don’t know why. I’d never wear orange though.”
That made her laugh, and that was it.
I wanted her.
And I needed her to want me too.
I used to dream about that night a lot in New York.
Some nights, when I was too high to be aware of my own existence, I disappeared in the memory and re-lived it.
I don’t remember what I took that allowed me to do that, but I remember waking up from my memories with Lana and having to get high again and again until I was with her again.
I was killing myself trying to live in that dimension, whatever it was, and I didn’t realize it.
Or maybe I did, but I didn’t care because she looked so real, so beautiful.
Her voice sounded like she was right there with me and when she bumped her shoulder into mine after I told her a terrible dad joke, I felt it. For real.
That’s what I use to help me get comfortable in this position. I tune out the rain and replay it in my mind, hearing her voice in my head as I doze off.
It’s the banging on my window that pulls me out of that dimension this time, making me jump and my heart pound. I open the window.
“Lana, it’s raining, go inside!” I shout over the downpour and take her in. “And you’re wearing shorts and a t-shirt and…flip-flops? Go inside!”
She ignores me and glares. “Just grab your stuff and get your ass inside!”
Lana runs back to her house under her umbrella. I grab the closest duffle bag as I open the driver's side door to follow. As soon as I get out of the car, I’m drenched and blinded. I run, squinting and hoping I’m going in the right direction.
Her porch light shines through the violent rain and I follow it up the steps to her front door.
I push my hair back and scrub my face, and Lana is shaking out her umbrella before she steps inside, leaving the door open behind her.
Inside, she looks at me through her lashes with her hip cocked and arms crossed. Fucking beautiful.
“You’d think the rain would be enough to get you to give up.”
“Rain is nothing.”
“Then I’m praying for a blizzard.”
“I’ll keep sleeping in your driveway.”
“And I’ll keep calling the police.”
“Lana, just tell me what you—”
“Nothing,” she interrupts. “I don’t want anything and I don’t need anything. Not from you.” Her breath comes out shaky, sounding almost pained. “You can sleep on the couch, if you want. I’m sleeping in my bed with my taser and my door locked.”
Lana leads the way toward the kitchen and seating room with a large, cream colored L-shape couch and a TV hung above the stoned fireplace. She stops and points down a small hall with two doors.
“The guest room is there and the bathroom is right across,” she says. “There are towels and stuff already there so…”
“Thank you, Lana.”
“Don’t.”
I sigh. Sometimes she lets me through the gates of her heart and I think I’m in, until I reach another wall and another gate. She’s right to block me out again and again. I would do the same, maybe worse.
Setting down my bag, I sigh. “Lana, I can just…take a hot shower and go back to the car.”
“Don’t,” she says and opens the fridge for a bottle of water. She slams the plastic bottle onto the granite. “Just stay here and go to a chiropractor.”
My lips twitch. “Right.”
“God, don’t do that.”
“What?”
“That,” she waves her finger at my face. “You do that thing with your face!”
I smile as I say, “This is my face!”
“And it’s stupid and it’s gorgeous and I hate it!”
I try not to, but I smirk. “Gorgeous?”
“You are incorrigible, oh my god!”
I grab the bottle for a sip. “Lana, I’m just…trying to make light of the situation.”
“Don’t do that then,” she rasps quietly. Frowning. “Can’t you just fight with me?”
I twist the cap back on and set the bottle down to rake my fingers through my wet hair. “You want me to fight with you?”
“Yes.” She crosses her arms, nose in the air.
“Why, Lana? I don’t want to fight.”
“We should,” she says. “It’s healthy. Couples fight.”
I force an amused smirk. “So we’re a couple?”
“God, you’re so annoying!” Lana groans loudly, throwing her hands up and then curling them into fists as she turns away from me.
“I don’t know who you are, Christian. That is the point—That is why I want to fight.
You have all this money, all this privilege all of a sudden and I don’t recognize you in that car and in those stupid suits. Who are you, Christian?”
“I’m me.” My voice cracks.
She shakes her head. “You have a four hundred thousand dollar car.”
“I’ll sell it. I’ll get us a more realistic car. A family car for when—”
Lana scoffs. “A family car?”
“Yes,” I say, she should obviously know why—I’ve been thinking about it since before I got here. “We are going to have a family, Lana.”
She cocks her hips, her brows pinching, and her light brown eyes have rage swirling around in them—I can see it even in the moonlight coming in through the back doors. “A family?”
“Yes, Lana. You and I are going to have a family. Three kids, maybe. Two if we get lucky with twins like we always said because it’s a two for one special.” I chuckle. Those were her exact words. “You don’t remember saying that?”
She huffs and rolls her eyes, her arms dropping to her sides and flying around. She spins, reacting and thinking until she leans against the back of the couch. “Why are you thinking about that right now?”
“Because of the car. I know it isn’t realistic for car seats,” I tell her. “We need better airbags and one of those cars that detect collisions and—”
“Are you hearing yourself right now? You’re thinking about our kids and we haven’t even figured ourselves out!
You just got back a month ago and you’re talking about our kids, Christian!
What if… What if…” She swallows, her face contorting uncomfortably.
“What if… What if we don’t work now? What if it isn’t us in the end?
What if you go one way and I go the other?
” Her voice cracks. “What if it isn’t you and me? ”
I shake my head, eyes burning. Heart breaking. “It’s not happening that way.”
“You don’t know that, though. What if… God, what if… you find someone else? What if I—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence, Lana,” I growl through gritted teeth. “That isn’t happening. It’s you and me. None of that is going to happen. You’re mine and I’m yours, you know that.
“Except I don’t,” she croaks. “You left once.”
“And I’m here,” I say, taking small steps toward her. “And we are going to get a family car, fill it up with car seats and kid vomit and it’ll smell like shit from their diapers and maybe have some dog hair—”
“Do you even know how to pick up dog shit?”
My face pinches, confused. “I don’t have a dog but—”
“That wasn’t the point!”
“Then why ask that question!”
“Because you left me!” she shouts, and the room is filled with her pained, heavy breathing.
“Lana—”
“You have all of these I would and will never have, and you’re here. I don’t get it. That is your life now, is it not? New York life and all that, right?”
I shake my head. “That isn’t my life.”
“Then what is? Because you left. You. Left.”
“I had to!” I shout back.
“No, your parents made you! You didn’t even want to! I know how your parents felt about me and my mother. I won’t allow you back because I know… Now, you think of me the same way they did. Look at you, Christian. Your fucking shoes!”
“Not everything is about my money.”