Chapter 17 Our Last Christmas
A bite of nervous energy clenched my stomach as my phone vibrated next to me.
When I woke up this morning, Peter was the first thing on my mind.
He said he’d call today, but so many annoying voices in my head told me he might not, that he might stand me up before we ever even went out on a date.
Every time my phone buzzed that morning, I experienced the same nervous clench that I was now.
With anxious fingers, I flipped my phone over to see the name on the screen.
My hand snatched away from the phone like it had bitten me as I made out the last name I wanted to see lighting up my phone.
Even seeing his name brought my body to a full-stop aside from my heart.
Yes, Jonah still made my heart race away in my chest, except that now that racing was fueled by stress and a blazing fury.
I hated being reminded of him. I hated being forced to think of him and hear his voice. I hated that he knew I would pick up.
“Why are you calling me?” I asked first thing.
“You know these conversations don’t always have to start off so hostile, right?”
His voice . God, it slinked through me and up my spine, reaching its hands around my skull and crushed down with all its might. Only a few seconds of talking to him and I already had a headache.
“Because you only call me if you need something. So what do you need, Jonah?”
A sigh cut through the phone. “You know I still care about you, right? Sometimes I think about you and want to make sure you’re okay and maybe, just maybe that’s why I’m calling now.”
Alone in my bedroom, I dropped my face into my free hand and pulled the phone away from my mouth.
I didn’t want Jonah to be able to hear the onset of staggered breathing he’d just caused with those words.
My eyes closed, I focused on deleting them from my memory.
I didn’t want them. They would stain my brain and seep through to my heart, rotting it from the inside out if I believed them.
“I don’t want you to care about me,” I said slowly. “I don’t need you to care about me.”
Jonah’s voice lowered to one I was all too familiar with, and I gasped for breath like his voice was a hand, shoving me underwater.
“You’ve always needed me to care about you, Alice.”
His simple words knocked the wind right out of me, caving my breastbone back to meet my spine. My lungs searched for air as silently as they could, but my brain wasn’t exactly helping. It was busy fighting off his words and the terrifying truth that came with them.
In a rush, I mumbled, “I’m hanging up.”
“Don’t do that,” Jonah’s voice hit. “Come on, can we just have one normal conversation, please?”
“ Why would I want to do that?”
“So that we can not hate each other? So that we can act like adults instead of stupid teenagers?”
I found my breath again as the word hate struck me. “You don’t have any reason to hate me. I didn’t do anything to you.”
Jonah tried to muffle his groan on the other side of the phone, but I still heard it.
“It’s not about who did what to whom. It’s about getting over it and moving on with our lives, Alice, and I want that for you.”
Whom . I hated when he did stuff like that, just to remind whoever he was talking to that he thought he was smarter than them.
“I am moving on and I don’t need your blessing to do it, so can we end this call now?”
I was two seconds away from hanging up when he said one of the few things he could have to stop me.
“Do you remember our first dance together?”
A wash of melancholy poured through me from head to feet, leaving my toes pin pricks of numbness and my heart cold. My head sank back until it was parallel to the ceiling and I just stared up at it. Of course I remembered our first dance.
I was so excited when Mrs. Maria paired us together.
We’d been flirting on and off throughout the beginning of that year, and I was dying for Jonah to make a move.
During our rehearsals where we were alone, he finally made that move.
Along the way of our bodies falling in-sync to the music and dance, our hearts fell the same, too.
Or at least—mine did.
I fell in love with Jonah during our first dance together, and that was a memory I never thought I’d want to forget.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Do you remember what we did with the video we took of it?”
“Uh, yeah? I have it on my laptop.”
A beat of silence hung between us. “That’s what I thought.”
“Why?” Jonah took in a big breath that I could hear from the other side of the phone, and the sound of it was a knife, carving worry in my chest.
“Would you mind sending it to me?”
“What for?”
“I just want to see it. I miss watching it. Some of the choreography we—” I “—came up with is still my favorite of any piece I’ve done since.”
Funny, because I remember back when we first started dating, I asked him if he was going to use the video I had taken of our dance in his portfolio and he said no. So why the change of opinion now?
“It was good, yeah. I just still don’t understand why after our break up is when you want to see it.”
“I don’t know? Because of any of the reasons I just listed?” That defensive bite was back in Jonah’s tone after only disappearing for a few moments. Something was definitely up. “I don’t understand why you won’t send it to me.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t send it. I’m just confused?”
Pointedly and with audible caution, he said, “I still think the dance has a lot of potential.”
Potential? Wha-
“Oh my God…” My voice dipped away as the realization hit and sunk through my body. “You want to do the dance with her.”
“Alice—”
“You want to do our dance with her .”
Astonishment vibrated through my tone as the reality of what he was proposing took hold.
He had already ripped me out of my old life in every way and replaced my empty silhouette with her.
Now, he wanted to do the exact same thing with the one memory of our relationship that wasn’t completely ruined.
“It’s not that big of a deal. You knew Hannah and I were competing.”
“Yes, but not with our dance! Do you really think that you’ll be able to do that piece with her and not think of me?”
“Yes, because I can separate my art from my personal life like a goddamn professional, Alice. You should try it.” The degree of condescension in his tone was appalling and ripped the bandaid holding my anger back off so fast that it stung—and the pain felt good .
“And you should try to come up with your own material for once in your life and stop depending on everyone around you to do the hard work for you! Did you ever think of that before you called up your ex that you cheated on for a favor ?”
A cruel sounding chuckle came from his end of the phone.
“This is my fault. I should have known that there wasn’t a shot in hell that you could be an adult about this. God forbid I ask you to put someone else’s needs ahead of your own. This is so fucking typical of you, Alice.”
“Oh, I’m sorry that I find you competing against me with my own dance a bit tasteless, even for you.”
“You know what, just keep the fucking tape. We’ll figure it out on our own.”
“Oh, what a concept!” I said with a surprising amount of sarcasm for such a highly emotional argument.
“Oh, fuck off,” he spat at me.
“ No , fuck you, Jonah!”
I pushed my thumb so hard against the ‘end call’ button that I thought I might push my finger through the screen. Anger was alive and roaring inside of me as I chucked my phone across the room, watching it smash against the wall and fall to my bed beneath.
“Shit,” I cursed, running for it.
Thankfully, it still worked with little visible damage and I heaved out a sigh of relief that was short lived.
The anger reminded me of its presence, sitting inside of me like a ticking bomb waiting to explode.
Feeling the explosion creeping up my throat, I quickly yanked one of my pillows over my face—
And screamed as loudly as I possibly could.
The scream tore through my vocal cords and again, the pain felt good. It felt necessary. My rage became tangible whenever I could feel the pain, and in a way I felt like it validated the feelings if I could physically feel them.
Pulling the pillow away from my face, I huffed and huffed like I’d just run a marathon until I’d filled my bedroom with exasperated carbon dioxide and was beginning to feel light-headed. I needed to get up and move and get some air flowing through my lungs that wasn’t teaming with rage.
I walked out of my room and into the kitchen in a quest for fresh air and also some lunch. Being this angry really worked up an appetite.
I stopped for only a second when I spotted Ethan sitting at the small kitchen table that I’d never actually seen anyone use before now. He had the day off and I knew that. I just forgot in the face of the phone call with Jonah.
He and I had already seen each other this morning but hadn’t said much. He was quiet, and if I didn’t know him better, I’d say he was ignoring me. Now, he appeared to be mostly back to his normal self.
“Everything okay?”
Stupid thin walls.
“Yup.” I yanked open the fridge and froze, but not because of the cold air washing across my fevered body.
Closing the refrigerator, I turned to Ethan. “You said you liked photography, right?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have one of those super fancy cameras?”
“I did, but I had to sell it to afford law books,” he said, a frown finding his mouth.
Without saying anything more, I went back to my bedroom and scavenged through my belongings for a couple minutes until I found what I was looking for. Walking back out, I handed over the camera to Ethan.
“Here. I bought it for Jonah last Christmas and he barely used it. It’s all yours.”
Shock painted across his features as he stared down at the camera, unmoving. “Are you sure? This is a Canon T6i. This is… expensive.”
“I’m aware.”
“He never used it?” Ethan sounded truly baffled as he turned the camera on, inspecting every inch of it he could.