23. Nate
Ishould be scared, seeing Addy with her books. All eight of them.
The eight I knew she considered her favourites, her best work.
I wait for the moment my heart gets the green light to speed off into the distance, thevibrations shaking every part of my body. I wait for the shivers, the numbness, and anticipate the breathlessness that’ll make me all the more grateful for the big, airy windows to my right, as I watch the girl who rewinds all those feelings, cleaning the slate in my mind.
Breath
Hold
The girl I never stopped loving.
Out.
But admiring her for the few seconds I did before she spotted me, the prettiest smile I’dever seen glowing on her face; it was like I’d never known that routine, never needed it. Something about the way her delicate stare is holding mine, the way it used to, melts away everything I’m so used to feeling.
Like the day I met her—the first time in my life I was talking to a stranger who didn’tmake me want to run and hide away.My accidental cure.
It’s like we’ve paused time. Static silence solidifies in the distance between our bodies,preventing us from closing it. Her eyes are rolling up and down my body, decked out in the grey sweatpants and white t-shirt that I’d worn to bed after leaving her last night. I do the same with her.
I knew she wouldn’t have worn the t-shirt I’d left her, she was always craving cosiness,so I knew she’d find a sweatshirt somewhere in the depths of the closet. It doesn’t help that she picked my old college sweatshirt. Her eyes catch that mine are fading across the faded letters, her head dipping, before she bonds our stare again.
“It was cold.” she barely whispered, books still in hand, her auburn waves just as curly asthey were last night, although less glitter crowded those eyes that matched.
“It’s okay,” I shuffled where I stood, my feet catching the sun in the odd shapes it castover the floor. “Did you… sleep okay?”
Her eyes didn’t move an inch from mine. “Yeah… I guess.”
Two moments of quiet grace us before she asks, “What happened last night?” At the sametime, I rush out, “You called me from a bar at three in the morning.”
Her brows pull in. “What?”
“You called me, I eventually got the street name out of you, and I got there as quick as Icould. I found you sat on the sidewalk, slightly hammered, and I brought you back here.” My head fell forward. “At first I thought Asher had left you, but you told me he left a few hours before that, and you told him you were leaving too, but…”
Embarrassment paints her face, “Jesus, Nate, I’m so—”
“Please don’t apologise. I’m… happy that you called. God knows what would’vehappened—”
“Thank you, for saving me.” Her curls framed her face as she shook her head. “Youdidn’t have to.”
I shrug, too casually. “It was nothing.”I watch the way her colour fades from her face as my words reach her, clearly goingdeeper than they were meant to. “I didn’t mean that, I just meant that—”
“No, I get it. You would’ve done the same for Florence had she called you, or Jacob,or—”
“I meant that I’d never not answer the phone when you called, Addy. It’s not somethingI’d ever think twice about.” I take a step towards her, the space between us pressurising, pushing against my chest. “Call me at three in the morning, any time you want, I don’t care—”
“And why would I want to do that?” She shuffles, the movement not subtle enoughthat the books don’t wobble as she does, making her remember that they’re even in her hands. That they exist.
She doesn’t have to say anything to me to get across what she wants to ask; her eyes dothat just fine. The way they widen as she shakes her head as if to say ‘well…‘.
I stagger out a sigh, daring a few steps closer to her. “I made them.”
Shock brightens her face, her eyes dipping to the book she was holding like a rediscoveredjewel. “But… how?”
“I learned how to. With some help, but…” The corners of my mouth tug, remembering thenight I spent with glue smeared up my forearms, the clock ticking past four in the morning, her books finally set and bound. “You weren’t meant to see them yet.”
Her head drops to her books, then back to me. “Yet?”
I nod. “It was supposed to be this whole thing, to try and see if we could work thingsout.”
“A peace offering?”
“If you want to call it that.”
Sadness clouds her eyes, dulling the fire that constantly lives in them. Then her head fallsforward, her body slumping too. But, as if something flickered across her mind, she straightens up, her hand frantically dropping her books on the couch beside her, sliding them out and plucking one from the pile.
I watch intently as she peels back the hardcover of the book I had bound in the darkestgreen. Her eyes scan the first page, before turning it over and reading whatever was written on the other. I don’t so much as breathe as I watch her eyes fall down the page, a waterfall of emotions falling onto her face.
She nods when she’s finished, satisfied with whatever it was she was searching for,before making my hair stand on end as she strides over to me, slow and steady, each pad of her bare feet sounding in time with my heart.
I suck in a breath as she nears me, remembering all the ways that I craved this closenesswhen I abandoned her. I look down at her hands as she passes me the book, open to the dedication page, before seeing her mouth part in my peripheral.
“Read it,” she instructed, so soft that it was barely audible.
But I nodded, and let my eyes fall upon the slanted words.
To Nate, my best friend. You left for college this morning, and I think only now do I know what it feels like for a heart to break. You didn’t cry, as you hugged me, which made me cry. You”ve changed, I know you have.
If that’s my fault, if I made you feel anything but happy, I’m so so sorry.
I don’t think you’ll ever read this, so I’m treating it like a confession. I think I’ll love you forever, no matter what happens between us, no matter how far away we are from each other, I know a piece of me will always belong to you.
This is a promise that my heart will be yours.
Unconditionally.
“Two things. I’m gonna need you to explain one thing and answer me another. Okay?” My eyes, dry from the lack of blinking, ache up towards her, towards the voice that wascoated with sadness.
“Anything.”
Her head angled slightly, enough that a beam of sunlight now lit half of her face. “Explain to me, Nate, why you think you needed this grand gesture to win me back?” Herhand flailed its pointed finger at the book in my hands. “Read that once more, and tell me why you thought I’d take you back just because of these.”
My hands fell by my side, the numbness pooling at the tips of my fingers. “It wasn’t justto win you back, Addy.”
“What was it for, then?”
“To prove to you that you’ve always had the talent to walk away from this world,knowing that the one you wanted would be waiting for you when you did.” I dared a step towards her. “And as for winning you back, I thought it would give me better odds of you not walking away from me when I tried to talk to you. I thought it would keep you standing under me for longer than a few seconds. I thought—”
“You thought you needed a peace offering to get my attention.”
Nodding at her, my eyes fall to the ground. “Yeah.”
Emotion floods her eyes, the glisten of tears I never wanted to see fall shining in thesunbeams. One quick blink from her and one of those damned things slips down her rosy cheeks.
“All I’ve ever wanted from you, Nate, is the truth. About what happened, why you left—”I felt the words get caught in her throat, that pain that I felt for the both of us tugging me towards her. “Telling me why I never saw you again would do all of those things just fine. It’s all I’ve wanted since I was eighteen; to know why the boy I loved without a single condition would never want to see me again.”
“And all I wanted to know was why you wanted to share that love with Asher.”
Her face was the picture of confusion. “I never liked him—”
“Addy…” I sighed, a laugh that held not one ounce of humour hanging in the little space between us. A quick scan of the floor made it obvious how I’d been tugged towards her without realising it. “You can’t say that. We both know it’s a lie!”
She looked defeated, her hands raising in defeat. “Alright, maybe there was a time when Ihad a crush on him. Maybe I was curious about him. But the second I realised that the spark I felt for him was nowhere near close to the fire that burned for you, I never thought of him like that again.”
Only inches separated us now. “Addy, I—”
“No… no, you have one more thing to answer me.” I shut my mouth. “How does…” Hereyelids flutter shut, another tear slipping between the cracks. She wiped it before I could. “How does this book exist? If I lost the original after I left home, how does this… how is every word here?”
I couldn’t tell her that without telling her everything.
I couldn’t tell her how I’d gotten a copy without telling her I was there the day I promisedto meet her.
But that didn’t matter. Not anymore. Because I don’t think I could go a second longerknowing I’m killing that love she promised to always have for me.
I couldn’t turn her words into a lie.
I brushed the pad of my thumb across her tear-ridden cheek, gliding over and wipingaway the years of hurt I’d caused her by keeping my mouth shut.
Not anymore.
“I have it because I was there—”
A repetitive ringtone erupts from the side of Addy, in the pocket of her… my… sweats.
Her hand dives in and slips out her phone, and almost like all the sun had vanished fromthe room, her face falters.
“It’s Goldie,” she breathes, panic coating her voice. “I had three missed calls from herthis morning—”
“Addy, answer it, it’s fine,” I reassured her, my hand raising to her shoulder and a softsmile tugging at the corners of my mouth like we weren’t just arguing a second ago.
She nods, more for herself than me, but I nod back, urging her to answer. She does, as sheswipes the screen and lifts the phone to her ear. “Goldie? Hey, what’s up?”
I can vaguely hear Goldie’s muffled voice, although it sounds nothing like the Marigold Ilast saw. Pigtails and a voice as sweet as honey, always in a dress, and always parading around her front yard with a pearly smile, even when she lost her first baby tooth right in the centre that made her ”r”s sounds like ”w”s”.
I knew Goldie had fallen right onto the pedestal her parents made for their daughters thesecond Addy left. Taken the child-star crown made out of gold and ridiculous expectations. I know for a fact Addy feels guilty about it. She told me, one day at the pier, that she’d stay if it meant her parents wouldn’t expose Goldie to the same warped childhood that she’d had. Told me that protecting her sister from meeting the fate that she did meant more to her than claiming her freedom.
I told her to be selfish for once and leave the first chance she got.
And she did.
But I know that guilt’s been eating away at her, probably since the moment she left. Ididn’t have to wait for her to confess that to know it was true. She’d mastered from an early age to hide her emotions from the world, fearful of what eyes were on her, and when. But with me, she knew she didn’t have to keep one of her many masks on.
Not with me.
Over the years, she’s done her best to keep her expressions neutral. Unreadable. But herfacade cracked once or twice, like it’s doing now. Fiery globes were as wide as I’d ever seen them, and the rosiness that lived in her cheeks drained. Something that I couldn’t work out, whether it was from happiness or pure terror, was written across every inch of her face.
“Goldie, honey, slow down. Start from the beginning,” she rushed, as calmly as shecould. She paced over to the couch, where her books were still scattered, perching on the very edge. Her free hand, shaking like a frail branch being caught by a harsh breeze, rose to her face, cupping her cheek like holding it would keep her head upright.
I took a step or two closer to her, taking another when I saw she wasn’t hesitating.
“Are you serious? But they can’t—” She stopped talking, Goldie’s voice interrupting herflow. “Have you told them about college?” She asks, her hand falling from her cheeks and gripping her thigh, her left foot tapping to the same beat I guessed her heart was.
The phone fell from her ear, only for a moment, as she whispered, “Thosemotherfuckers,” under her breath, only for herself to hear.
“No, no, I won’t let them do this to you, Gold’s,” her eyes caught mine as her head lifted;a second long warning look, that whatever Goldie was frantically saying, it was far from good news.
“I’ll be there in two weeks, Goldie. Two weeks, and I’ll come straight over and we’ll sortthis whole thing out!” The sun peaks through the clouds the moment her head falls forward, illuminating the silent tears that had slipped in the moment since she looked at me. My heart breaks as I follow the first one, then latch on to the second, only to lose count as more start to fall.
“If anything else happens, call me. Anytime, you know that.” I hear her say as I make myway to the entry table for some tissues. “I love you, honey. I can’t wait to give you a hug.”
As I round the corner, my eyes dart to her, seeing how she’d slipped from the edge of the couchand onto the rug below it, her knees clutched to her chest, the phone still pressed to her ear.
“Bye,”
The pain that smothered those three little letters was enough for me to mimic her positionand sit beside her, my knees curling to my chest as I handed her a tissue. She dropped the phone from her ear and placed it beside her, her head sinking to her knees, and her shoulders starting to shake.
I curled my arm around her back in a heartbeat, tugging her towards me—a silent signalfor her to cry everything out, onto me.
“It’s okay, Addy,” I whispered to her ear, hoping my words would reach her heart andsettle her.
We spent a minute or two like that, holding her while she cried as quietly as she could, afew aching sobs echoing from her when she remembered to breathe, her hands resembling mine when I panicked. And I could have easily stayed that way all day. Holding her. Protecting her.
Pretending that we weren’t the people we were, just for a moment.
Eventually, she peeled herself off me. I brought the tissues to her face, carefully dryingher sodden cheeks, and peeling back the pieces of hair that had framed them.
The sun did that thing again, where it seemed like it was shining only for her, lighting upthe earth angel that didn’t deserve the hurt that wore her heart like its favourite outfit.
Her teary eyes found mine at last, that eternal blaze doused in water.I don’t know why I nodded at her, but I did, and after another breath, her cherry-red lipsparted. “They’re moving her. To London.”
I felt my soul slip to my toes. “They’re what?”
She shook her head like she was trapped in a nightmare. “Moving her halfway across theworld, for a job. She’s leaving in a few months.”
Speaking into the moment caused a fresh flood of tears to make its way down her face,her eyes scrunching and cheeks swelling. “They’re taking her away, Nate. Why the hell would they do that?”
I hadn’t even realised the sight of her distraught like this was causing me to mirror her, itwas only when her eyes made a beeline for the single tear that slipped down my cheek that I noticed it, too.
“I don’t know, Addy. I don’t,” I whispered, barely. Her lips pursed as she cried, harderand harder, until I felt my heart split right down the centre.
I wish I had the answers she wanted. I wish I had the power to stop any hurt thatsought her out from ever reaching her. I wish that I’d just spoken to her when I found her at the pier the day I promised to meet her. I wish I’d walked down the steps and ran across the sand to find her…
I wish she were mine, at this moment, so we could fight this battle together.
So I could hold her, love her, rock her, kiss her, wipe away her tears and curse anythingthat made them slip from fiery, golden planets that had spelt me from the day I looked into them.
Another sob broke through my thoughts, causing me to tug her closer. “Hey, hey, it’sokay. We’ll fix this.”
As she pulled her head back, she lifted those eyes to me, wet lashes shadowing herface. “Will we?”
The way her eyes held me, as tightly and gently as I was holding her, made me realise that she wasn’t talking about her sister.
In that moment, I felt all the love I’d ever had for her make itself known. It screamed atme. It crowded my thoughts. It overflowed and spilt into every corner of my heart.
I’d been a fool to let this girl go.
I’d been a traitor for abandoning her after making a promise to always be in her life.
I’d been a monster for treating her as though she were invisible.
I’d been a liar, trying to convince myself that I could survive in a world withouther, without her laugh, without her fire that burned through every negative feeling that coursed through me.
I wanted that fire to warm me again, and when I dipped my eyes to her parted mouth,crashing my lips on hers not a second later, I felt the blazing inferno I’d missed so much pour onto me like the sweetest of magma.
Burning me in a way I thought I’d never feel again.
I cupped her cheeks, warm and thankfully, rosy again, as I kissed her. And, to my surprise,she didn’t pull away. She kissed me back.
I was kissing Adaline Moore, in a way we never had before.
Her hands found my shirt, pulling and tugging me deeper into the kiss. It felt like my soulwas alight; glowing from her presence. We shuffled until we were both up on our knees, still beside the couch, but our bodies taller, free to roam each other. I felt the weight of the last seven years fall off me like snow melting off a mountain, rolling down the valleys of my back where her hands were now resting.
One of my hands skated to the back of her neck, angling it so I could glide my tongueover hers, kiss her deeper, and make her feel as special as I hoped she knew she was.Her skin felt so right, pressing against mine. The ends of her hair felt right as they slipped between my fingertips. The way my palm cupped the back of her neck was indescribable.
And when she snuck a breath, breaking apart our lips and darting her eyes up to find me, it felt as though time had stopped. When she looked at me for the moment she did, a billion and one questions weaving through the flames trapped behind her eyes, I wished for the world to stop turning.
I was convinced she was about to pull away for good when her eyes fell between us, her fingertips skimming over the wetness of her lips, like she needed a moment to process what we”d done. But in what felt like a fraction of a heartbeat, her eyes found mine again, her hands wrapped around my neck, and our mouths collided with a force that felt charged.
By what, I couldn”t find the strength to question. I didn”t want to think about anything at this moment.
I didn’t want to think about what this meant. What the clawing at my back meant to her. Ididn’t want the hope of what we were doing to drain and make us snap out of it. I wanted to savour the moment, remembering how her lips fit perfectly around mine.
The sun tanned the sides of our faces, the warmth similar to the one in the pit of mystomach.
With each tug of her hands on my shirt, another year of silence faded away. With eachswipe of her tongue across mine, another memory I’d promised to forget became a movie in my head. I was changing above her, above us, and I had to wonder what had stopped us from healing if a little kiss was all it took to forget.
Anxiety right now was something I’d never once experienced. Nervous was a feeling Ionly had to act out. Overthinking was a legend. Shaky legs were pretended. The silence was a brass band, orchestrating around us. Everything bad between us turned as hopeful as the sun that was shining down on us.
And for a split second, when I kissed her deeper and dropped my hands to her waist, I feltstrong enough, sure enough, to whisper the three words I hadn’t let slip past my lips since I was eighteen years old.
Until the sun flew behind a cloud, greying the moment, and she pulled away.
Her head fell forward, her now shaking hand dragging across her lips. I couldn’t makeout what she mumbled, not even when she repeated herself. As I stared at the crown of her head, a million words marched their way to the tip of my tongue, but for the life of me, I couldn’t bring myself to speak.
Scared of saying the wrong thing to ruin whatever had just changed.
“I’m sorry,”
That was all I had to say to get her eyes back on me, those bleak and teary eyes that hadcompletely lost their sparkle. That didn’t fill me with hope; that my kiss had drained all the life from her. It didn’t make what she said next feel like the hope that only just orbited us.
“Me too,” she whispered, a single tear trailing down to her cheek before I swattedit away.
‘Addy, don’t think that—”
“I’m not reading into this. I promise.” She shook her head, and I mirrored her, a matchingtear to the one that skated halfway down her face leaving my eye, because that’s not what I was going to say at all—
“I have to go.” she rushed, and before I knew it she was on her bare feet and toweringover me.
I got to my feet, too, to urge her to stay. To tell her that I wanted her to read into things. Iwanted her to think this meant something. Because it did. Oh my God, did it mean something. It was proof that, as she said, our love was unconditional.
There was no misunderstanding that the Gods could conjure up that could ever keep usapart.
But she left, picking up one of the eight copies of her book, and strode towards the door.
It slammed not a moment later, leaving me alone again, my heartbeat climbing the hill it had climbed a million times before. Hiking the path it knew so well.