It Was Never Going to Be Real
EASTON
The gate takes eleven seconds to open. I’ve never once counted before.
I count tonight because I’m nervous, which is ridiculous.
I’ve played in front of eighteen thousand people. I’ve been checked into the boards by men who weigh two hundred and thirty pounds.
And I’m standing in my own driveway at nine at night with my palms damp and buried in my pants pocket because I’m about to tell Riley Brooks the truth.
All of it. Maya, the party, the six months of payments, the phone call with her brother that I lied about at six-fifteen in the morning with her standing right in front of me.
And then the last part, the part I’ve been rehearsing since the night in Chicago.
I'm in love with you, and I don't want us pretending anymore. I want this to be real.
The car is in the turnaround. She’s home.
My heart skips.
The house is quiet when I walk in.
That’s how I know she’s asleep. I’m later than I said I’d be. I know she’s upstairs, in my bed. And the thought… it does something to me.
I’m smiling at nothing, like an idiot, as I take the stairs, two at a time, with my bag.
I’ve got something for her. Something she’s been wanting for weeks. She’d give me hell for spending that much on her, but I’ll take it.
I know she’ll love it, and that’s all that matters.
It's a camera. Brand new. The exact model she'd been looking at on my laptop back in the spring, never realizing I'd caught her browsing it.
The room is dark when I push the door open. As quietly as I can, I place my bag on the floor and walk towards the bed.
I pull the covers off, but it’s empty.
“Riley, sweetheart…” I move to the light switch and flick it on. The room is immediately illuminated with the bright light, and that’s when I see it.
The bed is empty. She’s not on the bed. She’s not home.
If she were home, she’d be in bed. Or in the living room. But the car is in the driveway.
What the fuck is going on?
“Riley…” I call out like she’ll miraculously appear, but my voice only echoes off the walls.
I check the guest room.
Everything is where it’s always been. Her books stacked on the nightstand, the sweater she wore last week folded over the chair, the drugstore frame on the dresser.
Nothing’s missing.
That should make me feel better. It doesn’t, and I don’t stop long enough to ask myself why.
I go back downstairs.
“Riley?”
The kitchen light is off. Her notebook is on the island where she usually leaves it. There’s a mug in the drainer.
She’s out. That’s all. She got a call about a gig, and she’s running late. That’s what I tell myself to ease the fear.
The one that’s nagging at the pit of my stomach.
I pull out my phone and call her. Except I see the camera.
It’s on the counter, next to the coffee maker.
The call goes through. It rings four times, and then her voice, bright and slightly embarrassed, the outgoing message she recorded in my car three weeks ago while I laughed at her:
Hi, it’s Riley, leave a message and I’ll call you back, probably.
I move closer to the camera, and something else catches my eye.
It’s squared up—a folded paper. There’s a pen laid beside it. I grab it and unfold it. Her writing is sprawled across it.
Easton,
I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore. The fake thing, the hiding, all of it. It was never going to be real, and we both knew it. You gave me my life back, and now I have to go live it. Please don’t come after me. This is what I want.
Thank you. For everything.
R.
I read it again.
I read it four times, looking for a second sentence hiding inside the first, because this isn't her. This isn't the woman who got on a plane to Chicago because she wanted to see my face. This isn't the woman who said ‘I’m yours, I’ll stay, I promise’ three nights ago with my mouth on her throat.
But it’s her handwriting. It’s her name at the bottom. One letter, R, the way she signs the backs of the prints.
I look around the kitchen.
Her notebook. Her mug. Her camera. Upstairs, her books, her sweater, the clothes.
She didn’t take one thing.
She walked out of this house and left every single piece of the life she built in it, and somehow that’s worse than an empty closet. The words from the note echo in my head again.
It was never going to be real, and we both knew it.
My heart sinks. A sudden pain hits my chest that sends me almost doubling over.
It’s like my life is crashing before my eyes, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Riley is gone.
Just like she told Mason. It’s fake.
It was never meant to be real.
And she’s right. I’m the one who agreed to that on a couch. I’m the one who said it doesn’t have to mean anything.
And she wouldn’t choose a fake relationship over her brother.
Fuck!
My palms ball into fists. My eyes twitch as I stare at the door, as if she’d walk in any minute and say it’s a prank, but deep down, I know it’s over.
And it hurts. It hurts like hell.
***
The night drags on mercilessly. I lie in bed, with not a wink of sleep coming my way. Whenever I close my eyes, all I see is Riley Brooks.
The woman who waltzed into my life one morning, three months ago, and has now left with my heart, without a goodbye.
I pull the sheets over my head and inhale deeply, greedily breathing in her sweet scent. The one I’ve gotten accustomed to. With each breath, my heart squeezes painfully.
I should have held her a little longer in Chicago. Should have confessed the truth to her, that I loved her. That it was never fake.
Maybe it would've changed something? Maybe she would've believed me, and we could've faced Mason together?
I make my way back to the kitchen, already knowing I won't be getting any sleep in my bed tonight. It won't ever feel the same again.
Not without Riley.
There's a bottle in the cabinet above the fridge, left over from the liquor the guys brought for my birthday.
I pour it into a coffee mug and make it about a third of the way through the bottle, standing alone at the kitchen counter.
It doesn't help.
All it does is leave the kitchen feeling a little warmer and my hands a little less steady.
Still, I keep drinking. I need something to dull the ache.
Something to stop my heart from feeling like it's splitting apart with every breath.
By midnight, I’m on the phone with my mom.
I need to speak to someone, and she’s the only one I could think of. She loved Riley.
Memories from my birthday and the call sweep in.
“Easton?” She’s awake, but her voice is riddled with worry. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
I open my mouth, and nothing comes out. Not one word.
“Honey… is everything okay?”
“She’s gone, Mom.”
I hear a chair. Then her breathing, closer to the phone.
“Riley?”
“She left a note.” My voice cracks. “I never got the chance to tell her how much I loved her.” The words come out in a slur.
Silence greets me. When she speaks again, it’s in a quiet, calm voice that washes over me.
“Easton, are you drinking?”
“A little.” It’s a lie, but I can’t tell her I’ve finished a bottle.
“Then put it down and keep talking to me.”
I listen. I sit on the floor with my back against the dishwasher, and I tell my mother everything.
Maya. The payments. The fact that I never told Riley. Mason. The phone call. The lie about Coach that I told with Riley in my lap and her frowning up at me, trusting me.
The plan I made in Chicago, after she left, dressed in my jersey.
“I couldn't do it,” I say. “The second I saw her, I knew I was never going to be able to let her go. I was going to tell her everything tonight, Mom. That I loved her. That none of it had ever been fake.”
I let out a shaky breath. “I even bought her a new camera. I had the whole night planned.”
My mother is quiet for a moment.
“Easton, honey, have you spoken to Mason?”
And there it is.
I’ve been circling it for two hours without addressing it.
“He got to her,” I say.
“You don’t know that.”
“He told me to end it four days ago.” I press the heel of my hand into my eye. “He’s known me since we were teens. He knows every stupid thing I’ve ever done. If he sat her down and told her what I am—”
“Then call him. Right now. Call him and ask.”
I know I won’t do it. The truth is simpler and worse.
If Mason did this, he did the exact thing I was about to do. He decided what was best for Riley. For his sister. He did it out of love.
So how do I call and be angry at him for protecting her? When the Maya thing blows over, she doesn’t have to suffer it with me anymore. She’s well off without my baggage to hold her down.
The truth hurts more than the note she left.
I was never good enough for her. Not in this lifetime. Not right now.
“Honey…” my mother says. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah.” I exhale.
“Whatever you think you deserve right now, you’re wrong about it.”
I don’t answer that.
We stay on the line for a while without talking. Eventually she makes me promise to take good care of myself before she hangs up.
I sit on my kitchen floor until three in the morning with the note in one hand and the bottle of liquor in the other.
I should’ve told him that morning. Right there, in my own living room, with her in my lap and Mason on the line. I should have told him the truth. All of it. That I was in love with his sister and I wasn’t going anywhere.
I should have told her.