CHAPTER EIGHT #2
He shoots me a look, letting me know just how obnoxious he finds it when I resort to acting like I’m fourteen and he’s my nosy big brother still trying to boss me around.
“It’s not like I’m going to go tell on you,” he grumbles, pushing himself up into a semi-seated position.
“It’s also not like I can’t guess for myself where you’ve been.
Or more specifically, who you were with.
” He reaches for the oversized chair near him and yanks a blanket from it, tossing it at me.
“I swear I’m having flashbacks or something. ”
I grin. “I forgot you were the one who caught me sneaking in that night too.”
He rolls his eyes. “You’re not a teenager anymore. You’re an adult now. I didn’t catch you doing anything because you weren’t sneaking. You were just being quiet in a house full of sleeping people.”
“If I’m not fourteen, why do I feel like you were waiting up for me?” I counter, draping the blanket over my head and wrapping it around me like a cloak. Now that I’m standing inside the air conditioning, I’m getting chilly.
“Because you’re paranoid,” he mutters dryly.
“I’m up because Anna woke me when she came wandering in after your late-night chick fest in the kitchen and I got just enough of a nap in before that to take the edge off and leave me feeling wide awake.
So, I came out here, where I could occupy myself until I got sleepy again without bothering her.
” He wags his finger up and down my soaked and blanketed situation.
“Being around for this was just a bonus.” He smirks.
“You know, right time, right place. That sort of thing.”
“You would put that kind of a spin on it.”
He nods, chuckling. “I would.” He points to the bench across from the coffee table. “Now go sit. Tell me what you’ve been up to. Make it all worth it.”
I sigh, but I do as requested and traipse my way over to the only piece of furniture in the room able to withstand my level of wetness without sustaining water damage, and plop down. “I really just went to get some air.”
He arches a skeptical brow. “But then?”
“But then, Matti showed up.”
“Of course, he did.” He almost laughs out loud, stifling it at the last minute to keep from waking the others. “Then what happened?”
I shrug. “We talked.”
“Uh-huh.” He’s not buying it. He doesn’t even have to say the words. They were more than clear in that ‘uh-huh’.
“Okay, you want it all? I’ll let you have it all.
” I take a deep breath, preparing to rattle it all off before I have time to think about any of it.
I can’t think about it yet. Even walking home, I spent the whole time forcing myself to remember lyrics to songs I haven’t heard in a while, just to keep my mind from wandering back to everything that transpired between Matti and me.
“When he showed up out of nowhere, I thought maybe it was a sign. Kismet, if you will. Maybe I don’t entirely believe he wound up here on a vacation with the band by coincidence, but I don’t believe the man has taken to stalking me, so what were the odds, we’d both end up outside, trying to clear our minds, not once, but twice in the same day? ”
“We’re talking about you and Matti?” Vale half frowns. “Probably fairly good. That’s pretty much all you two have ever done when you needed to think. Grab sneakers and go. Outside. To clear your minds. Usually together. Like you share the same brain or some shit.”
“Whatever.” I brush off his efforts to poke holes in my signs from the universe.
Clearly, some greater force is at play here.
And even Vale will see that by the time I get to the end of my story.
“The point is, I didn’t want to just keep guessing if I was seeing signs or if it was real.
If this truly is some cosmically arranged second chance for us. ”
Now he’s frowning for real. “You hear yourself too, right?”
“Do you want to hear my story or not?”
The threat is enough for him lay off the mockery a bit. “My apologies. Please, do continue.”
“So, there we were.”
“That much has been established.”
I glare at him before I go on, “When I remembered the firepits in the little park area at the center of the pastures.”
“Ah,” he nods, slowly grinning, “I’m starting to see where this is going.”
“I told him I wanted to try something out, and I asked him if he was game.”
Vale almost rolls his eyes again. Just almost. “Of course, he was game.”
“Of course.” I smile. Matti’s willingness to go on adventures has always been one of his best traits. “So, I dragged him through the pasture – “
“A pasture with horses?”
I grin. “Yep.”
“Damn.” He looks like he’s about to say more, but he stops himself. Instead, he turns it back over to me, “Go on. You were saying. Through the pasture. Past the horses.”
“And to the fire pits.” I let the blanket slide down from my head and let it drape over my shoulders. It did a surprisingly superb job soaking up some of the excess water. “Matti lit a fire. And then I asked him to sing to me.” I wait. Knowing Vale, he will have some comment to make here.
“Sing to you. As in, the song he wrote for you. The one he sang to you on your first date. And then again at your wedding. And probably at a million other intimate milestones between you two along the way. That’s what you asked him to sing to you.”
“Yes.”
He nods, making a face like he’s still holding back. “Just checking.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me, Vale. It’s rude. Especially when people can tell you’re doing it.”
“Fine,” he groans. “I just think it’s a little shitty, you are asking him to sing that song to you. That’s all.”
“Why?”
“ Why? Ness, you wanted to hear that song because you’re confused about how you feel, and you wanted a piece of something familiar to bring you comfort. But he’s not confused. So, what do you suppose singing that song to you felt like for him?”
“How do you know he’s not confused?” And not confused in which way? As in he knows he still wants me? Or he knows the relationship we had is dead and gone?
“He’s not confused,” Vale just reiterates sternly. “Trust me on this. The dude has never wavered in his feelings for you.”
“My feelings haven’t ever wavered either, Vale,” I remind him.
“Then I don’t get it. If you still love the man, why aren’t you with him?”
I used to have an answer to this question. One that made sense to me, even if I knew no one else would understand. But after tonight, after what I now know - “Because...”
“What?” Vale looks at me, a sad, but expectant look in his eyes, like he already knows the answer but wants to hear that I know it too.
“Me.” I feel as if I collapse a little inside myself. “I got screwed up, and then I screwed us up.”
“No.” Vale shakes his head, a softness returning to his expression. “Wrong answer.”
“You don’t know, you weren’t there.”
He leans forward, locking his eyes on mine. “I know you. And if it were as simple as having made a mistake, you’d have owned it and gone back and fixed things.”
“Maybe it wasn’t the sort of thing I could go back and fix.
” Even if I thought I could have back then, I didn’t want to.
And now that I think I might want to, I’m not so sure I could.
“Maybe breaking someone’s heart, the heart of the one person who has loved you more thoroughly, more profoundly, more patiently than any one person could dare hope to be loved, you don’t get to go back and try and fix it.
You show them mercy. Allow them their healing in peace. ”
“God, you’re a martyr,” he groans. “You can’t really believe all that shit.”
“It’s not shit!” It takes everything I have not to scream.
It suddenly feels like my heart is a hornet’s nest and Vale just accidentally bumped into it.
All the stingers were sleeping and now – “I ruined us, Vale. I ruined us on a whim. Because I felt forgotten. And I wasn’t.
” The truth of this revelation washes over me in waves so heavy, I find it hard to catch my breath.
“I turned down that yoga job when they offered it to me. I turned it down. Until Matti missed his call with me. And something inside me flipped, convinced I didn’t matter.
And I needed to find ways to matter to myself again.
” I bite down on my lip until it hurts. “Only he didn’t forget.
He was planning a trip for us. A trip to be with me.
A special, romantic trip for the two of us. That’s why he missed the call with me.”
“What difference does it make?” Vale reaches out in an attempt to comfort me, but I pull away before he can wrap me into a hug.
“Don’t you see? If I hadn’t overreacted, I never would have gone.
I wouldn’t have taken that job. I would have stayed home.
Matti would have surprised me with that trip, and I would have loved it.
We would have felt like us again. We never would have split.
I never would have put us through all of that, never would have put him through it. Or the kids.” God, who haven’t I hurt?
“You had to go.” He says it just as calmly as Matti did. Just as matter of fact. “You had to go so you could become who you are now.”
“Maybe I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did,” he insists. “And if you weren’t so set on believing your own damn story just so you can be right about everything all the damn time, you could see that everything you ever wanted is still possible.
That the only thing keeping you from being happy now, from being with the love of your life, is your own stubborn-ass reasoning. ”
I stand up with a jolt, feeling a sudden impulse to stomp off like a teenager. “This has nothing to do with me being stubborn.”
My brother sighs. “Did he tell you he’s not with Kenley?”
My shoulders drop off a bit from their high of indignation. “Yeah.”
“Then it has everything to do with you being stubborn, Ness.”