Chapter Forty-Three #2
August followed my gaze, before flashing deliberately at my own left hand. The diamond there glistened beneath the gym lights. “You got married.” He echoed the words back to me like a private joke I couldn’t remember the story behind.
“Yeah. I guess I did.” I flexed my fingers unconsciously.
August nodded. “I told you, you’d find somebody who would make you happy.”
I willed my hands to remain put at my sides, but I ached to raise them to my chest. My voice came out hoarse as I said, “Yeah, you did.”
August studied me like he could see the machinery turning beneath the skin. Then quietly asked, “Are you not happy?”
“Yes. Of course, I’m happy.” I said with practiced ease. It wasn’t a lie. I loved my husband and our son. I was grateful for them, and wouldn’t give them up for anything. But there was always a part of me that wondered if I could have them both—I stopped the thought immediately.
August tilted his head with that same skeptical look he had worn so often when we were just eighteen. The same look that had always made me feel transparent.
“Then what’s wrong?” The gym seemed impossibly quiet. I could hear my own breathing. Could feel my pulse in my fingertips. When I finally answered, my voice barely existed.
“You haunt me still.” I admitted. Something flickered across his face. I pressed forward before I lost my nerve. “I pray for your ghost nightly.”
August barked out a laugh. Loud enough to startle people around us. The sound echoed through the gym. Several people turned. His face bloomed coral with an almost tired kind of amusement.
“I know,” he laughed.
I stared at him. “What?”
“I know.” His smile widened—sad and knowing and strangely affectionate. “You keep me here in these damn pages like it’ll make a difference.”
My blood turned cold. Around us, conversations seemed to stop. The gym lights felt too bright. The floor shifted beneath me.
“What are you talking about?” I asked with a shaky voice.
August laughed again, softer. “It’s been ten years, Lola. And you still can’t be honest.”
A pulse of fear moved through me, ancient and heavy. The way thunder rolled through cornfields before a storm. August gestured vaguely around us to the gym full of people. To the wall of memories propped up like a barrier against the world beyond it.
“You’re sitting in your room typing this scene out like we’re all just dolls in your playhouse, Lola.” The room tilted.
I heard someone inhale sharply. Or maybe it was me.
August continued gently. Like he was explaining something to a child. “You move us around.” His green eyes held mine. “You pose us in your memories like accessories.” His smile softened. “But I will say, I think this has been my favorite version you’ve written yet.”
Suddenly the fluorescent lights above the gym became the glow of a computer screen. The music became the hum of an air conditioner.
The crowd became silence. My silence. The silence of an empty room.
I looked around wildly. The reunion blurred, faces smearing together. Lindsey, Wyatt, my husband. All of them watching, waiting on me to say the perfect thing.
My breath shortened. “What are you doing?” The question came out sounding desperate. August’s expression finally lost its softness, morphing into something tired. So incredibly tired.
“Why can’t you ever just let me have absolution?” The words escaped me before I could stop them.
“Because I am not the one you feel guilty for hurting.” He took a step closer.
My pulse hammered. I shook my head immediately, but even I didn’t believe it. After everything, after all the versions I’d built. All the endings I’d rewritten, and all the sinners I’d polished into saints. I couldn’t change the truth.
He looked directly at me and said, “Am I, Lola?”
I couldn’t answer. Because we both knew.
His voice softened. “After everything, it still isn’t me who gets all of you.”
The gym vanished completely, until only he remained. Soft curls framing his young face. Coral fading from his expression as he said quietly, “So for once, even if it’s only in your imagination, be honest.”
His green eyes never left mine as I swallowed hard, fighting back tears. When I couldn’t bring myself to say the words, he pushed, “We’re alone in my room. It’s just us. No one can hear you but me. Who did you hurt, Lola?”
The room around me shifted. I became vaguely aware of another presence, another voice.
My husband was standing in the doorway of my office, the light spilling from the lamp over the oven outlining his silhouette in silver, an old composition book covered in clovers in his hand. His voice echoed August’s.
“Who did you hurt?” The question hung in the air. Heavy like an accusation. Heavy like a rain slicked stone.
I felt every eye in the room on me. Every version of myself stuck between so many lies and memories I couldn’t tell which of them were true anymore.
Every lie. Every omission. Every page. Every revision. Every prayer begging for forgiveness. Every attempt to make the story hurt somewhere else.
I was standing in my high school’s library, my forehead pressed to the spine of encyclopedias.
Rain beat against the window as I sobbed, tears hitting the copy of Wuthering Heights in my hand.
Mumbling incoherently about not knowing I’d hurt him.
Emily’s hand warm across my shoulder blades as she whispered, “Who did you hurt?”
“Shannon O’Kinzy.” I finally said aloud. Then, or now, I couldn’t tell.
Silence.
The weight of a decade, finally set down. And the terrible truth that no matter how many times I rewrote the ending—I could never get this part right.
I highlighted it all and hit delete.