Chapter 41
Lark
I stop and look back over my shoulder.
As much as I like New Haven, I still feel the ghost of Harbor following me sometimes. We walked this way after we had signed the lease just to see how far the library was from the apartment. He insisted we live close since we’d be spending a lot of late nights there.
He knew.
He made that walk with me, planning the whole thing.
He was making sure I’d be safe.
I start walking again, but I can’t shake the feeling. Why tonight? Why, after all these years, would he feel closer than he’s ever been?
When I reach the doors, I turn around under the light and search the dark, the faces, the other students as they bustle around me.
The beginning of the new year is always the busiest here.
I prefer summer when so much of the Yale population has gone home.
There are no waiting lists to check out books, and I can always find a table to sprawl my stuff out on.
By how many people are here tonight, I’ll be lucky if I find a seat at all. Lucky . . . Luck was never one of my strengths. Medicine is, thank goodness. I score a seat near an outlet in the historical library, thinking maybe I am lucky. At least for the night.
It’s a silent space, which I like best not only in the library but in life.
I’m here to study, to learn, and to graduate, hopefully at or near the top of my class.
Kids from Beacon proper, like me, rarely get the opportunity to leave.
It’s a great place to visit, but I have no intention of ever living there again.
I bury my head in my notes from class, books I borrowed from the restricted area, and the internet trying to piece this puzzle together.
I have no idea why this isn’t found all in one place.
It’s archaic that I must be physically in this building to find the information I need.
Grumbling about it will get me nowhere, so I put my head down and keep going.
The next time I take a breath, I look up. I didn’t notice the library had cleared out, leaving me with only a few others stuck like I am. I check the time. One hour until I need to move my stuff to the 24/7 room or go home before the library closes.
I twist to stretch my back, but a pain in my lumbar vertebrae has me pushing off the table to stand.
I leave my area and wander the library. There’s a fireplace at one end, but it’s too early in the season to have a fire roaring.
Looking up, I decide to look once more for a book I couldn’t find earlier.
Shelves full to the brim with colorful books covering everything a girl could dream of reading.
Especially if she’s into medicine like I am.
Taking the stairs, I climb to the second floor of the reading room and walk the narrow aisle along the volumes until I reach the far end.
Bending down, I turn my head sideways and run my gaze along the lower shelves and then higher, row by row, as my frustration grows.
It has to be here. They showed it in the library at the desk earlier when I checked.
I was sure it would be returned once the crowds left for the night.
Bending down in front of the next column of books, I hold the edge of the shelf for balance and start scanning.
“You look lost.”
My body freezes other than my grip, which tightens its hold on the solid wood shelf. The voice shatters me, but I keep the broken pieces inside. I won’t show weakness. I won’t show I care. I won’t—I look up to see Harbor watching over me.
The words have two meanings, but I’m not sure which one he’s doing. I know because he’s been watching over me since the day he left.
Paying my rent, not a day late, for two years.
A Visa gift card showing up like clockwork each month fully loaded with a thousand dollars.
Maybe I was being greedy to expect his love as well.
Despite how many times I told myself that I didn’t need him, that I didn’t love him anymore, I feel a beat inside my chest the second I see him again for the first time in years. Damn duplicitous heart.
I reply, “Aren’t we all sometimes?” He offers me a hand, but I pull myself up, gripping a higher shelf just in case my knees weaken and become traitors as well.
There’s no chuckle although I thought I was quite clever.
Just that damn smile that always used to do me in, lying on his face.
His face . . . God, I missed seeing it. I removed the photos from my phone the summer after he left.
I packed away any reminders when I moved out.
How can a face be so familiar that it’s like I see it every day?
I guess I do. Even if I’m buried in books, papers, and tests, a memory of Harbor joins me at some point. Sometimes I spend time with him, and sometimes the visit is too short. It hurts all over again as if the wound is still fresh every time, though.
“I was,” he says, his smile fading under the cover of sincerity.
Searching his features for the man I can hate again, I struggle to find him when he looks so much the same as when I loved him. Sure, he looks older, twenty-five versus twenty-three when he left. But only in that way that men age to become even more beautiful than they were.
It’s almost annoying, considering I wouldn’t have worn jeggings, a baggy sweatshirt, and dirty sneakers if I knew I would be seeing him . . . or him see me. My hair is bundled into a mess on top of my head, and I didn’t bother with makeup—Oh my God, snap out of it, Lark!
“Well,” I say, “I hope you found yourself wherever you’ve been.” I walk around him and down the aisle toward the stairs.
“I did,” he replies to my back.
I stop, not giving him a front-row seat to my emotions or even my expression.
I start walking again, this time faster until I’m running down the stairs.
I’m given a look by the librarian, so I slow down and pretend my body isn’t ready to launch from my skin.
Everything inside tells me to run, to get out of here as fast as I can.
Not from fear but from the love that I just realized I still have for him.
Bastard.
I gather the notebooks and shove them in my bag before slamming my laptop closed and tucking it inside. Swinging it onto my shoulder, I collect the books and hurry back to the librarian. “Hi, I need to return these.”
“Just leave them here.”
“Thank you.”
There’s no sign of Harbor, and I don’t know how to feel—do I want to see him again, to talk, to argue, to freaking kiss? Or is it best if he’s gone?
Please let him be gone. I don’t have time to figure out which emotion suits me best in this situation.
I push through the doors to see him waiting outside—hands in his pockets, a shier side of his earlier smile, but unfortunately, no less charming. His shoulders appear broader, but I’d have to be splayed across him to measure, and that’s not going to happen . . . I don’t think.
No.
It’s not.
Why am I like this? What am I doing?
When I start walking in the direction of the apartment, he asks, “May I walk with you, Lark?”
“No.” I keep walking. Despite how tempting it is to turn back and get one last look, his disappearance was child’s play compared to this torture.
“Hey, Lark?”
“Leave me alone.” I keep walking, too unsteady in my frame of mind to think rationally. That’s what I need to think clearly around him, and I’m lacking all capabilities to reason.
The feeling of his presence earlier makes more sense now.
He was freaking following me. I knew it.
I felt him in the fall air, in the rustling of the leaves as a breeze blew through, and inside me, my intuition told me he was near.
The stalker. It was cute back in Beacon.
Here, on the streets of New Haven, it’s not anymore.
As soon as I get into the apartment, I lock the door and the bolts, so basically do what I usually do. Toss my backpack to the table and head straight for the blinds to close them. Once the living room is secured, I close the blinds in both bedrooms as well.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I hold out my shaking hands. Thank God I don’t plan to be a surgeon. I sit on them, hoping that calms them down as I take several deep breaths.
For an organ that refused to cooperate the past two years, my heart is putting on quite the performance after seeing Harbor.
I missed dinner, opting to study instead, and the apple and salad I had for lunch has long worn off. My stomach growls, so I move into the kitchen and make a bowl of cereal. I never liked this cereal until it was around all the time when I lived with Harbor.
Sitting on the couch, I switch on the TV, hoping to switch off my mind. But even Pretty Woman can’t turn my thoughts around when it finally sinks in that Harbor is out there.
He’s here.
Somewhere.
Oh God, what have I done? I set the bowl on the coffee table and hurry for the door.
But I stop and return to put the bowl on a coaster, and then make a run for him.
I don’t care that I’m in my socks or that I have to take the stairs.
I take them anyway. I just need to get to him, to hear his side of the story.
I push through the lobby and rush to the sidewalk.
Left.
Then right.
I look left again and then across the street. But there’s no sign of him. How can that be? I threw two small hurdles his way, and he doesn’t even try to jump them? Not even for me? Why’d he come back to New Haven, then?
Huffing a loud and exhaustive breath, I don’t know if I feel defeated or deflated. Both, actually. When I turn around, I see his car parked down the street, and my feet stay, not willing to move despite my head’s better judgment to do so.
He doesn’t get out, but I see his silhouette in the driver’s seat.
For a second, I smile, and my hand raises slightly from my side as if I’d seen a long-lost friend, before I catch myself and lower it again. I guess I have, his words playing back on a lowlights reel. “You look lost.”
I am.
More than I realized until now.
I turn toward the door and open it. This time, I walk away from him.