Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Autumn
“I’m not leaving until you tell me the story. I know there’s more to it, Autumn.” Meg crosses her arms, staring at me like I am a misbehaving kindergartener. “Kal will not be happy if I don’t make it home. You don’t want to be on Kal’s bad side, do you?”
“Fine,” I whisper, though it’s just Meg and me sitting at my kitchen table, a half-empty pizza box sitting between us. “Shh. I don’t—” I look behind me as if we’re being watched. “I don’t know if I can tell you this with he-who-must-not-be-named right next door.”
“He can’t hear us.” She bobbles her pretty blonde head at me.
Oh, beautiful, na?ve Meg. What if he can?
“He was that bad?” Her brows furrow in confusion.
“Um—” I swallow. He— no . The situation— yes .
“Autumn, you’ve named him after Voldemort. You’re telling me he’s evil?”
I toss my head back and look at the ceiling. “ No .” I groan—I won’t ever call Ezra evil, even while wishing baldness on the man. “Ezra isn’t bad. At all.” I press my lips together. “That’s just how I like to refer to him in my head. Okay?”
“But why?”
Because it hurts to say his name.
I sigh loudly. Am I really going to open up a door that’s been closed for such a long time? I’m not sure I can.
“Autumn,” she says with my silence, reaching for one of my hands. “I could not have survived Kyle’s cheating and lies had it not been for you. I never would have been ready to find Kal had you not supported and loved me.”
I get what she’s saying. I do. But this is different. Ezra was never anything like super shmuck Kyle Wells.
“Now, let me be here for—”
“This isn’t the same,” I blurt. “We were kids. It’s no big deal.” Lie . It’s a very big deal. “I was just surprised to see him.” Ugh. Another lie, more liked shocked and devastated.
"It is the same," she tells me. "Maybe not the same problem, but the same as in—my best friend is hurting because"—she gives me the side eye—" she clearly is. And I can help. But that requires you to be honest with me and yourself."
She pulls back, crossing her arms over her chest when I reply with… crickets . Absolutely nothing.
“That,” she says, “and Summer has told me plenty. I know some things and I’m assuming a whole lot more.”
My teeth grind. “Summer was fifteen and made up half the things she thought she knew when it came to Ezra and me.”
“Okay then. I’m all ears. What’s the truth?”
I take a deep breath and release a decade's worth of anguish. Then, I tell her everything. Things I've never spoken out loud to another human.
And once I start, I can’t stop. I need to tell her.
I tell her again how I found out Dad was sick. I tell her how I kept my mouth shut and Mom and Dad didn’t actually tell Summer and me until two months after that. I tell her how I couldn’t go to New York knowing my family needed me at home, so the following morning I broke up with Ezra. I tell her how his mom had left when he was little and how his dad was almost always angry and drunk. He could not stay in Love.
And he would have.
If I'd told Ezra that I had to stay behind to help my family, to be with Dad and Mom during this trial, he would have stayed too. He never would have gone. So, I told him I had come to my senses. I told him we were too young and I didn't want him tying me down. I told him we were through and I would never ever go with him. I told him my father didn't approve of him—a low blow. Ezra always looked up to Dad.
I tell her how he called and called and texted and texted, how I never picked up or replied. And finally, how my heart couldn’t take it any longer and I eventually blocked him.
In every possible way, I blocked Ezra Bennett from my life. It killed the best parts of me. But I had no other choice.
I know he was hurt too. But keeping him here would have been so much worse. I loved him. As much as any eighteen-year-old girl can love a boy. I couldn’t be selfish. Not with Ezra. So, I let him go. For him , not for me.
I tell her everything. I give her all my pathetic little details.
Meg is eerily quiet when I finish.
I haven’t shed one tear during my tale. I didn’t the day he left either. I couldn’t. It would only make things worse. So I kept it all inside, blocked away all those feelings like a dam blocking off thundering falls, and I waited for it all to go numb. I haven’t cried since my father died.
I wait for her to say something. Anything.
She scoots her chair out from my small round table and stands. A heavy breath falls from her lips as if her adventurous little hubby just took her skydiving and she's feeling the aftereffects. And then—she is sobbing. Like a teenage girl seeing Harry in concert for the very first time kind of cry.
I stand, tipping over my chair in the process. “Are you okay? Sweetie? ”
“Me?” she cries, a hand to her chest. “Me? Am I okay?”
I mean, she is crying hysterically, so ah… yeah— her .
She backs up into the working part of my little kitchen and snatches a hold of the end of my entire paper towel roll. She trudges back into the little dining space, never bothering to rip the towel off. She brings the whole roll in with her, all stretched out. It's as long as an eight-foot giant. She holds the end to her nose and blows.
“That is the saddest story I’ve ever heard.”
I swallow, my throat throbbing as I hold back my own grief. “It is not. We just watched An Affair to Remember .”
“It is too and it’s so much worse because it happened to you .” She dabs at her eyes and hiccups.
“Calm down,” I hush, as if she’s going to embarrass me in front of my guy Harry.
“He still doesn’t know?” she asks, running her paper towel line beneath her nose.
“I don’t know what Ezra knows.”
“Wait.” She drops her hand, her towel line going with it. “Are you mad at him?”
I shouldn’t be. I have no right to be. I know this. At least the sane part of my brain knows it.
I clear my throat. If anyone in this world won't judge me, it's Meg. "Ezra left. I know I couldn't go with him and I know he needed to go. But he went and did all the things we'd planned to do together.” My eyes sting with unshed tears. I wanted Ezra to do all those things. I’m so very proud of him. But missing it all, missing him, it still hurts. “I stayed home, never changing, not crossing one item off on my adventure list. I even have the same job, Meg. The same job that we did together back in high school." I must look pathetic to him.
“Not exactly the same,” she says. “You’re about to have your own bistro. You manage things now.”
“ Run a bistro. It isn’t mine. Not really.” I shake my head and wander into the living room, where I plop myself onto the couch. “I even heard he got engaged—and I’m assuming married. That’s usually what comes after a proposal. After his engagement announcement, I stopped using Summer’s social media to stalk him.” Yep, when Ezra looks at me, he must feel like he dodged a bullet.
“Oh, Autumn.” Meg sits beside me, rubbing my leg with her palm.
“I know.” I roll my neck, peering up at the ceiling. “It’s so utterly pathetic.”
“How long ago was that? His announcement?”
I sigh and turn my head so that I’m facing her. “Three years.”
“That’s a long time ago.”
“It’s a lot shorter than ten years,” I say.
“I didn’t see a ring.” She tilts her head, trying to make eye contact with me.
Like a child throwing a tantrum, I refuse to give in. I may not sit here and sob, but that doesn’t mean I can’t throw my own kind of fit.
I didn’t see a ring either. But I don’t say that. I say exactly the opposite of how I feel. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does.” Her fingers cup around mine. “He didn’t know about your dad.”
I swallow, sit up, and study Meg. “How do you know that?”
“He asked about your family while you were in the office. When I didn’t mention your dad, he asked about him.”
I lick my lips. So he never found out. I always wondered if he’d put the clues together. Or if someone ever told him.
I don’t know how to describe it. There should be a word for doing your very best to make sure someone never discovers all your secrets only to wish, at the exact same time, that they would have.