Chapter 23
Eight Years Later
Ipush the old, frosted glass door open, entering Mill’s Coffee House. The scent of cinnamon and coffee invade my nostrils, and I happily breathe it in. The little bell jingles above me, one of my favorite sounds since every time I hear it means I get to see her face.
Her breathtakingly stunning, freckled face.
But as eager as I am to see her, ’cause I always am, I am also nervous as fuck.
Leo says she has been keeping a secret and I hate that she couldn't…no wouldn't come to me sooner. But it doesn’t matter. We will get through it. Together.
My pretty bird has been fighting me since the day I purposefully put myself in her path. It has been the hardest, most aggravating struggle to get her to open up, to trust me, but it’s worth it. She is worth it, and I will live every day of my life showing her that she is mine. And I am hers.
I expect to find her behind the bar. In her cute little black apron, curls tied atop her head, some particularly wild ones falling into her face.
But I don’t. Nat pulled me aside after school, saying she had an emergency.
I couldn't ignore her but all she wanted was to talk about us.
I got here as soon as I could. I figured Leo would wait for me.
This is important. I know it is. I can feel it.
As if I am part of her, I can always feel when she is upset.
Ski is behind the bar. The quietness in the shop and his demeanor tell me all I need to know. Something is wrong.
“Where is Leo?”
He looks up from a small piece of paper in his hands. His eyes are full of tears that refuse to fall.
“Ski, where is Leora?” I say a little louder now. The darkness I keep buried begins to claw its way up my throat. Infiltrating my voice.
“Gone, Everett. She’s gone.”
I feel my chest tighten. I physically have to think about pulling in air and releasing it.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“Your mother stopped by. I didn’t hear their conversation. But she left this.” He hands me a check written for five hundred dollars, made out to Leora Laney. “She left, and then so did Leora.” He is silent a moment.
I can’t bring myself to move. To speak. To function.
“Everett. She ran. She took her bag and her money.”
“No.”
“Everett, what happened?”
“I…I don’t know. She has been off the last month, but I just thought I needed to give her time and then she would come to me, I didn’t… If I had known she would actually run…I…”
Would I have pushed her, though? No. I wouldn’t have. My pretty bird has always been a flight risk. I just thought she would take me with her.
I fucking love her.
She knows that.
She is just scared.
Something spooked her.
What. The. Fuck. Happened?
“I need to find her, Ski.” But the look in his eyes tells me I never will.
"Her phone. I can trace it." I pull out my phone to call Gage but then Ski holds his hand out.
"This one?"
Fuck!
I’m jolted awake by the nightmare that has haunted this night for eight years. January 22nd.
Happy birthday, Leo.
An arm drapes across my chest. But it’s not hers.
A scent invades my nose. But it’s not hers.
A moan escapes as she rouses awake. But. It’s. Not. Hers.
I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of my bed. The cold of the floors seeps into the soles of my feet, but it doesn’t affect me anymore. Why would it? When you live without your sun, you get used to the cold. Everything in my life is dull, void of any color, absent of her.
“Everett, come back to bed.”
“I have a plane to catch, Nat. You need to leave.”
I run my hands down my face, disgusted with myself. The sickness I feel in my chest is ever present as this day haunts me. My stomach is constantly in knots, never giving me a reprieve from the guilt and disgust I feel for myself.
As much as I despise myself for it, I couldn’t cut Nat out like I had wanted to. Not after Leo ran. Nat is a comfort. Someone who knows me—knew me. Who has been there. Even when I pushed her away. No one knows me now though. I don’t even know me anymore.
Nat came back into my life two years after Leo left.
I guess she thought I needed time. I guess she didn’t understand what I meant when I told her I wanted nothing to do with my parents or anything to do with their life.
She wanted me to come home. But I couldn’t come home.
At least not permanently. I’m sure Nat was expecting the old me, but what she found was a ghost. And as much as I once thought I would marry Nat, I never could.
I couldn’t then, and I sure as fuck can’t now.
A part of me still loves her, a very distant part, but nonetheless, Nat is the person I have known the longest in my life.
She was my best friend since we were three, and then she was my girlfriend till we were seventeen.
And she never left me. Never ran from me. But she isn’t the one.
There is only one.
And I can’t find her.
She ran.
She ran from me.
But I will catch her. I always do.
“Everett, please. I miss you. I hate only seeing you every few months. Come home.”
“Nat, you know what this is. A release. Nothing more. It will never be more.”
“But it can—”
“Natasha. Stop. Just fucking stop.” The anger in my voice startles her.
Checking my phone, I have less than an hour before I need to leave for the airport. Time for her to go. “When I come out of the bathroom, you need to be gone.”
With that, I slam the door and try to wash away my sorrow, my anger, but it's painted to my skin like glue.
The click of the door tells me that Nat has come into the bathroom. I can feel her looming, wanting to say something. “Everett?”
“What, Natasha?” I couldn’t keep the irritation from my voice if I tried, but I don’t try. Because I don’t care.
“Is this all because of her? Because of Leora?” Her voice is no longer thick with envy, but pity.
I don’t know why, for the life of me, I continue to fuck her.
Every time, I feel fucking sick, like I am cheating on Leo.
I’m still hers. But I’m a man, a man who has needs, and ever since Leo carved my beating heart out of my fucking chest and ran with it, I haven't been able to move forward.
So, I moved backwards, back to what and who was comfortable.
Nat meets my needs, so fucking desperate for me she will do just about anything.
The old me may have felt bad about using her, but now, fuck it.
“Drop it, Nat.”
“Everett, you need to move on. She is gone, and I’m here. I never left you. Why can’t you see that?”
My body reaches its boiling point, and I slam my hand into the black tile of my shower. “I said fucking drop it!”
It’s the same conversation over and over.
I’ve heard this all before, from Nat, from Gage.
Everyone wants me to forget her and move on.
But I can’t. Don’t they know I would if I could?
But she has all of me. I can’t find myself without her.
I fucking need her to breathe. I hate the life I’m living, but what am I supposed to do?
“Natasha.” That's all I can say. That's all I need to say.
“Fine. I’ll be back in a few months. And we will continue to pretend like there is nothing between us except sex.” With that, she slams the door. She will never see that I’m not pretending. All she and I have together is sex. I’m not capable of anything more. Not anymore.
Eleven hours later I open the familiar frosted glass door of Mill’s Coffee House. The bell rings over my head. Images of her behind the bar flash through my mind.
Of her smiling at me with those bright eyes and constellation of freckles.
I can still see her so clearly. But now everything is dull.
Even Ski isn’t the same after her departure from our lives. We are broken men.
“Everett, I thought you weren’t going to come this year.”
“I missed my flight last night. Emergency came in that I couldn’t leave. Had to reschedule to this morning, and well, it’s a long trip.”
“I was just about to close up. Have a seat.”
So I do. At the same table I sat in eight years ago, doing homework with Gage, when my only care in the world was making Leo happy.
I used to have an abundance of worries. Worries of college, football, my parents.
Then she shined her light on me, changed me, and my whole world became Leora Laney.
If she was happy, so was I. She was all I ever needed.
She was my dream, now she haunts my nightmares.
Ski comes over and sets down two Leos. The perfectly frothed cream topped with cinnamon reminds me of her. Every fucking thing reminds me of her. A Leo is the only way I can taste her anymore.
“Still nothing, Ev.”
“How could she not even contact you? I don’t know what the fuck happened between the two of us, but you?”
“I don’t take offense. Leora has her reasons, and I trust her. When she is ready, she will let me know. She has always known where to find me. But Everett, I think it’s time you stop coming. I can’t stand to see you this way. I love ya, boy, but you need to move on. Let her go.”
I cup my hands around the warm mug and shake my head. “Fuck. Not you too. I told her I would never let her go, Ski.”
“She doesn’t want to be found, son.”
“I don’t give a shit!” I slam my fist down on the table.
I feel my chest burn with my rage. I don’t mean to take it out on Ski, but I am so fucking livid that she left me. She should have known she could trust me, come to me with anything.
She didn’t fight for us. She bolted.
Ski just lays his hand over mine. Nothing but understanding is reflected in his eyes.
“I hear ya. I want to find her too. But it seems that she doesn’t want to be found. She’s protecting something. Her heart, her mind. I don’t know.”
The old man shakes his head then sips his own coffee.
I stay and chat for a while, and like every year before, he lets me stay in his back office.
I’m five miles from the home I grew up in, but it’s not home. Home is with Leo. Home is between her perfect, thick thighs. Home is wherever Leo took my heart and ran to.
The next morning, I catch my early flight back to Boston. I’m scheduled to work the next sixteen hours starting tonight at seven, and I’m fucking exhausted. But that’s how I have managed to live these last eight years.
I work myself to utter oblivion, and then it’s easier to sleep. Easier to keep my brain distracted.
I leave Aurora, Oregon, empty fucking handed. Again.
Where are you, pretty bird?