Chapter 21 #3
I was ready and packed, willing to toss my carefully crafted future out the window and start a new and reckless one with Stone.
Anything for him. I had fantasies of us living in one of those open apartments with a courtyard in the center, exactly like Melrose Place , where we’d meet our neighbors of a similar age and they’d become our F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
, just like the show. Our baby would be celebrated.
Loved. She’d grow up with both of us, whether Stone made it to fame or not.
Until my mother walked into my bedroom.
“No what?” Stone presses. “I was a kid who couldn’t think beyond a one-way ticket to the city, I can admit that, but I deserve more than a no .”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “I’d packed my bags. I was ready to go with you.”
Stone’s silence is palpable. A thrum of tension seems to emit from us and into the atmosphere, sobering the lunch rush of the cafe. Conversation resumes, and attention is less on our table, but it’s muted and concerned.
“I can’t do this here,” I manage to get out.
Stone pushes to his feet, helping me to mine by tucking his hand behind my arm. He leads me past the tables and the encouraging, “stay strong, hun,” from Luanne Smith and “what does he see in some old people nurse?” from the fan girls.
I resist tucking my head into his chest because his wide shoulders and strong build are the perfect protection from the storm of judgment coming from either side.
I’m stronger than this. I’ve endured so much worse than public opinion, yet I allow him to place his big hand on the small of my back and shadow me all the way out of the Merc.
He points at his car. I climb into the passenger seat, out of the nip of cold as wintry clouds encroach over the sun. Stone shuts my door and slides into the front seat, turning on the heat but remaining in park.
Stone’s jaw juts out from grinding his teeth. He looks straight ahead. “You were going to come with me?”
At that moment, he sounds like the boy he was. Unsure, suspicious, never accepting of genuine care. He was so used to being cast aside, so committed to being kicked. I’m sure my standing him up confirmed his perception of himself: that he wasn’t wanted. He was no good.
And I contributed to the emotionless robot he is today.
I nod, also staring through the windshield.
Thanksgiving decorations are up, although the more enthusiastic shop owners have decided on Christmas lights and evergreen wreaths to decorate the street.
Across from us, Beak’s Hardware Store has flashing holiday lights, and a blow-up snowman battles for space against Feather’s Flowers, who steadfastly commits to a turkey in a Pilgrim hat, straw, and at least twenty different shades of pumpkins.
It’s a years-long war of enthusiasm the owners are known for, and I risk a glance at Stone, wondering how ours has remained so passionate for so long, too. Shouldn’t time have healed our wounds? Why do we have to rehash the pain to where I bleed?
“I had my bag ready,” I say. “I can’t believe I thought my hair dryer more important than a flashlight or any other form of utility that we’d probably need, considering we had nothing but the clothing on our backs.”
Stone responds with a gruff laugh. It’s hollow. “We were young.”
“Old enough to understand our lives would be forever rewritten.” Sighing, I lean back, moving my focus to the side window where the Merc’s mahogany golden glow cascades out the window. Comforting. Always warm.
“My mom caught me trying to sneak out.”
“Oh.” Stone draws out the word.
“With one leg out of my window. Complete cliché. I thought she’d found out about me, us, and the baby—the pregnancy. Her face sure looked like she did. I’ve never seen her so solemn, so straight-backed.”
“Yes, that would be a dead giveaway,” Stone agrees. “Lynn was always the life of the party. Remembering everyone’s names, chatting to everyone at all social events. She’s so good at it, so genuine. I admired it every time I saw her. I modeled my red-carpet behavior after her.”
“You did?” A lightness lifts my heart, a feeling that hasn’t occurred inside me in so long.
“Absolutely. Your mom’s loved by everyone, and I could only hope to emulate it for the cameras.”
“You did,” I whisper. “When she saw you on TV as one of the most influential of the year, she was proud of you for making it. She pointed out one interview in particular and how eloquent and charismatic you sounded. Nothing like the boy she’d shoo out the window with a hot curling iron.”
Stone laughs. “I like to think I’ve grown out of escaping through windows.”
I decide to absorb this moment of lightness, of feeling good, and use it to give me the courage to tell him the worst part. “She was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer. She didn’t make it.”
Stone’s shock turns the air into a suffocating blanket around us. A quiet “What?”follows.
The parallels of our lives, first our fathers, now our mothers, swirl in his eyes.
I never mention her death because it’s too difficult to relive.
She’s the reason I went into palliative care.
She’s also the reason I want to do everything I can to soothe others’ suffering—because I’ve seen the worst. I lived it through my mother’s eyes.
“Noa. Lavender, I’m so sorry.”
It means something coming from him. Stone’s genuine sentiment brings tears to my eyes. “That night she came into my room, when I was going to sneak out to meet you, she told me she had cancer.”
Stone takes my hands into his lap and squeezes. I’m boneless. My heart is pumping blood into nothing but a sack of skin. Its beats amplify.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks.
“I couldn’t. I could barely process what she was saying.
And then it all came out. I told her about my pregnancy, sobbing that I needed her, that she couldn’t go, she couldn’t die, she couldn’t leave me.
” I swipe my sleeve across my eyes. It comes back darkened and damp.
“You say you’re selfish and shitty. What does that make me? ”
“A child ,” he says vehemently. Stone palms my cheek, pulling me to face him. His thumb strokes my bottom lip. “A scared child who found herself in serious trouble and had no idea what to do. One who needed her mom.”
“I did need her,” I sob. “I needed her so much. I still do.”
“I know.” Stone shushes me, pulling me into his arms and keeping me there. I bury my face in his shoulder, inhaling the man he is while trying to remind myself of the boy he was.
“I thought of a thousand ways to tell you that night, but I was terrified of what your answer would be.”
Stone’s neck moves against my head as he tries to look down at me. “What do you mean?”
“If I told you about my mom and that I had to stay and that I…” I take a deep breath “… that I needed you to stay with me, you’d say no. You’d get on the train, anyway.”
Stone grips my shoulders and pulls us apart. He keeps his hands where they are—gentle, firm—but his eyes boil. “You’re serious? You think I would do that?”
“I know you would.” To lessen the sting, I graze his stubbled cheek with my palm. “You did.”
“I did not. I didn’t know what you were going through or what you needed from me, so I got on that goddamned train. Had you given me a clue, I would’ve?—”
“Would’ve what?”
Stone’s expression washes out as my eyes fill with fresh tears.
“I texted you when I lost my mom,” I say. “I called you and got no answer. I told you I’d…” An audible crack sounds in my ears as my heart breaks open wider. “But that was a few years after you left. What about when I sent news about the miscarriage? I never heard from you then, either.”
Stone shakes his head, disbelieving. “You didn’t talk to me for months. I wasn’t just going to pick up the phone when I saw your number. I was mad at you, Noa. Angry, so angry, because you’d left me on that platform without so much as a goodbye.”
“You ignored me,” I repeat, my voice a tremulous hiss.
“Noa—” He tries to stop my arms from reeling toward him, but then seems to give up, allowing the punches and slaps to hit his chest, shoulders, and face.
When I rise onto the seat, when I rear over him with tears and snot and a pounding, blood-filled face, he lets his arms go slack and opens himself up to my physical rage.
“No!” I scream. “You don’t get to do that!
Just accept my anger like this. I want emotion from you, Stone!
I want you to be upset! I lost her. I lost my mother.
Lost you. Everyone left. Fucking everyone I cared about left me.
And I had nothing. No one. You’re a dick.
An asshole. I hate you. I fucking hate you for doing this to me. ”
His eyes sheen over. No tears fall. He wouldn’t let them. But he won’t break my stare. My nose touches his as I turn feral in his lap, releasing the pent-up horror and agony that’s laced my veins since the moment I was told my little girl didn’t have a heartbeat anymore.
“I’m sorry,” he rasps through my sobs.
I hear him, but I don’t. I’m so wrapped up in the turmoil I’ve unleashed that I’m blind and deaf to reason.
“I just want it to stop,” I sob. “The pain, it’s…”
Stone pulls me into him, curling me against his chest, my knees bumping up against my chest as he cradles my body. He holds on so tight it hurts to breathe, but I have trouble breathing, anyway.
The weight of his arms, the strength of him as he rocks me back and forth, somehow grounds me enough to swallow the keening coming out of my throat and stem the flow of tears. Not completely, but enough that I can hear my stuttering breaths and notice the pounding of his heart against my arm.
“You’re right,” he says above my head, his voice barely above a decibel.
“I convinced myself you didn’t think I was good enough.
It never occurred to me you’d be going through something worse than figuring out how to be eighteen and a parent.
And I promise to do better. I promise not to leave.
” He moves until his lips are against my hair.
“I promise to stay this time, Lavender.”
I close my eyes against the pain of his vow, pulling my lips in to stop myself from uttering the truth.
I don’t believe you.