Twenty-Seven
Elle
I tell Lucy that Oliver wasn’t feeling well and that he went home. I go to the bathroom and wipe my eyes and fix my makeup, because the show must go on. Tonight is not about me. It’s about Lucy. That’s who I’m here for.
Even so, the rest of the evening is a blur. Anne makes a speech that doesn’t totally make sense. Liam makes a speech about the “love of his life” and tears fall down my cheeks as he speaks. I’m sure people think that it’s because I’m happy for my friend. And I let them think that.
When I get home, I collapse into bed, but I barely sleep, thinking about Oliver sleeping above me. First thing in the morning, I’m standing at his door, with bleary eyes and knotty hair, demanding an explanation.
When he opens the door, I can see that he must feel the same way I do.
His hair is disheveled and his eyes are dark.
He’s wearing a threadbare t-shirt that I recognize as one of the ones he always wears to bed, and long shorts.
I’m sure he didn’t sleep either, and I just don’t understand.
If we both feel this way, then why are we doing this? Where did the disconnect happen?
“Can I come in?” I ask, my voice quiet. Oliver takes one hand off of the doorframe and lets me walk past him. Thor greets me and I smile for the first time in what feels like forever. Oliver takes a seat at his bar top and I stand awkwardly in the hallway, waiting for the silence to break.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he finally says, his voice gravelly. The stubble on his cheeks is darker than I’ve ever seen it, and he looks weary, more so than usual.
“What happened?”
“I panicked. I’ve been panicking ever since the night we…” He looks down and I feel something twist in my stomach.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why couldn’t we talk about it?”
“Because that’s not going to make a difference right now, Elle. I need to figure some stuff out, and I need to do it by myself.”
He might as well have run me over with his car. Because that’s what the blow of his words feel like. I feel squished, like the gravity in the room just got a thousand times stronger.
“I don’t understand,” I finally say, swallowing the sob in my throat.
He finally picks his head up and I see his lower lashes are wet. I have to resist the urge to reach for him, because I can’t comfort him right now. Not about this.
“I know you don’t. And I don’t know how to explain it to you,” he says.
How did we get here? I could have sworn I despised this man—with his loud music and aloof approach to dog ownership.
I thought he was a jerk, a guy with an ego who didn’t care what other people thought of him.
But then the weeks went by, and I found out this rugged exterior hid a man who is afraid of bugs buzzing by his ear and can’t stomach a gummy worm.
I realized he cares deeply for the people he loves, and even though he appears grumpy, he wants to help people.
He’s experienced the weight of expectation and the fear of failure, and maybe doesn’t think he’s worthy of the kind of love I feel for him.
Because I do. I love him.
Somewhere in the midst of all of our wagers, our back and forth shenanigans, I fell in love with Oliver Cole.
I fell in love with the person I became when I was with him.
I finally found the man who could give me happily ever after—the thing I’ve been searching for since I read my first romance novel.
But he doesn’t feel the same.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this, Oliver,” I admit, shaking my head. I hate to look like I’m disappointed in him, but I am. I look at him like he’s tearing out pieces of my heart, because that is what it feels like.
“I can,” he mumbles.
I pick myself up off of the wall and start to head towards the door, but stop myself.
I can feel my disappointment turning to anger, and I know I should walk out the door.
I shouldn’t turn around and say what I’m about to say.
But part of me wants him to see. I want him to witness the impact of his sabotage.
“You know how hard it is for me to trust people.” He watches me intently, surprised that I have more to say.
“As much as I like to help people, I also isolate myself, which isn’t necessarily a good thing, but I do.
Because I realized that most people are never as good as books make them out to be.
I always find myself disappointed.” He winces at the last word.
“Things in my world can be so heavy, and I thought you felt the same way. I thought maybe when we were together, it was like there wasn’t this fog around me that I couldn’t shake.” I scoff. “I guess I must have been imagining it.”
I pause, waiting for him to interrupt me, to say he feels it too.
But he doesn’t. So I continue. “Sometimes, it feels like the stars are pressing down on my shoulders. Billions of them dragging the darkness down onto me.” Oliver’s gaze drops to the tattoo on my wrist. “These last few months, I felt lighter. When I was with you, the stars didn’t crush me so much.
I trusted you. You were my friend. And I can’t believe that things are ending this way. ”
“I’m so sorry, Elle,” he whispers, a tear falling down his cheek, but it’s too late. I open the handle and turn around to look once more at the broken man sitting there.
“You should be.”
“Wellie, your couch is uncomfortable,” Nick says, his voice stumbling over the word. I reach over and ruffle his hair, and he lets out an adorable “Hey!” as he tries to fix it.
My brother is twenty-two, but the boyish smile on his face makes him look much younger.
He’s the only one in our family with red hair, and it looks like it has been freshly cut.
He is wearing the new glasses that I took him to buy over Christmas, simple black rims that he thought made him look like Clark Kent.
I even drew an “S” on his forehead in eyeliner when we got home from the store. I almost smile at the memory. Almost.
He and Mom surprised me by coming into the city for dinner and a sleepover.
Even I can admit that when I video-called my mother yesterday, I looked and sounded like death.
My eyes were swollen and my voice was hoarse.
She tried to get me to explain what happened with Oliver, but I said I didn’t want to talk about it.
Nick lays down on the couch, forming himself into the question mark shape that he sleeps in.
“Goodnight, Wellie,” Nick says, pulling a blanket over him.
“Goodnight, Nicky,” I say, kissing his cheek. When he closes his eyes, I stay on the couch for a moment and watch him, a knot forming in my throat.
When my brother was born, my life changed in so many ways.
My parents divorced soon after, and my mom was so consumed by Nick’s medical concerns that I’m not sure she ever got the chance to mourn her marriage.
I don’t think I did either. I was only six at the time, but I learned very quickly that my family can bounce back from challenging times, and when we bounce back, we bounce back hard.
We jumped into Nick-mode. When I got home from school, I was whisked away to one doctor’s appointment after another.
I’d do my homework in waiting rooms and help my mom make grocery lists before I was even old enough to help with the cooking.
I think at some point, I must have resented my brother for all the attention he took, but all he had to do was smile at me, or throw his head back with a loud giggle, and the feeling would dissipate.
Because I loved my brother more than I thought I could ever love anything.
“Stop staring, Wellie. It’s creepy,” Nick mutters, his eyes closed.
I tickle his side before getting up from the couch and joining my mom in my bed.
She’s a small woman, with burnt blonde hair that is always pulled back into a clip at the top of her head.
The lines on her face show the strain she’s been through in her life, but she tries not to complain.
She’s scrolling through her phone, but she stops when she feels me climb in next to her and opens her arms for a hug.
I move over and place my head on her chest, tapping into the reassuring feeling of feeling her breath beneath me.
“Are we going to talk about it yet?” she asks, her voice reverberating in my ear.
“I don’t know what to say,” I admit, the lump in my throat getting bigger.
“Where did he come from?”
“It feels like he came from out of nowhere, and suddenly everything was different.”
“Good different?”
“I guess I wasn’t sure at first. He drove me crazy. But now—”
“Now you’re sure,” she finishes for me.
I nod against her chest. “But it’s not the right time,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. I can’t say my mother and I have conversations like this very frequently. Our heart-to-hearts are a little rusty.
“And why is that?” She squeezes her arms around me a little tighter.
“I thought we were on the same page, but I guess I was wrong. I’m not sure how things could move forward after this,” I explain, tears welling up in my eyes for what feels like the hundredth time this week.
“I know everything seems confusing right now,” she says. “But if this is something you really want, and any part of your heart tells you it’s right, then don’t give up on it. Maybe give it some time, but don’t let it fade away. You have to chase—”
“The stars,” Nick finishes from the couch.
“Go to sleep you weirdo,” I say, throwing a pillow at him. He giggles from under his blanket. When I lay back down next to my mom, I look down at the tattoo on my wrist. “Do you know why I got this?” I ask her.
“I always thought it was because of all that astrology shit you believe in,” she replies.
I snort. “I guess partly, yes, but it was also for you. To always remind me of how you believed in me. How you told me to chase the stars, like it was the easiest thing I could ever do.”
“I never said it would be easy, but it’s almost always worth it.”
However hard our life was growing up, or however tough things got with Nick and his health conditions, my mother never held me back from doing anything I loved, including moving to New York.
“Chase the stars, Chicken,” she would always tell me. “Your dreams are like the stars. They might be in the distance, but if you can see them, you can reach them.”
Even after my mother has drifted off, I don’t sleep at all.
I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, imagining Oliver above me, and the time I spent sleeping on his couch.
There was a comfort in falling asleep with Thor beside me, knowing when I woke up Oliver would be in his bed, snoring away.
But now that the floor separates us, I feel…
hollow. Unsure. I don’t know what will happen when I wake up tomorrow, but I know I won’t see Oliver.
And those thoughts make me the most empty of all.
*
By Thursday, I admit to myself that I’ve been trapped in a cycle of negative self-talk since my mom and brother left on Tuesday.
I’ve spent every waking hour trying to understand Oliver’s reasoning for doing what he did.
Up until last week, there was no possibility of us as a couple.
I knew I was developing feelings for him—how could I not?
But I know myself. When I meet a guy I like, I get my hopes up, picture the possibility of a future with him, a future of happiness, and then it never happens.
It’s the constant feeling of rejection that dating creates that really causes so much hurt for me.
I try to turn my attention to seeing Lucy next week and being present for her. I’ve thought so much about planning activities for her pre-wedding week just to drown out the reminder that I’m going to this wedding alone.
I sign myself up to teach as many yoga classes as possible, so that I don’t spend my evenings in my apartment wondering if I’ll hear Oliver or Thor upstairs.
When I start the class on Thursday, I see some of the regulars who were at the class that Oliver took, and a wave of sadness rushes over me.
I feel a tightness in my throat, my lower lip quivers, and I have to remind myself that I’m in front of a room full of people, people who are looking to me for guidance.
I almost cackle out loud at the irony of that thought.
I feel more lost inside my mind than I think I’ve ever been, and yet I’m supposed to teach a group of strangers about inner calm.
Well, here goes nothing.
“I want us to start in Hero’s Pose,” I tell the class, taking a seat on my shins.
I look around at the small space, admiring the light from the sunset streaming through the glass windows at the top of the far wall.
There’s an orange hue outside tonight, and it’s lighting up the studio and surrounding us in a heavenly glow.
I smile at the simple things that nature can provide for us—light, peace, a sense of purpose.
“Let your hands lay gently in your lap,” I say, demonstrating.
“And close your eyes, if that feels safe for you today.” I pause, giving everyone a moment to follow the instruction.
“Today, I want to focus our practice on compassion and stillness. I recently reviewed some of the aphorisms from the yoga sutras, and one of them tells us that the aim of yoga is to settle the constant fluctuations of our mind. It encourages us to become a witness to our thoughts, so we can watch them, rather than be controlled by them.”
I pause, looking around the room to make sure everyone is following. Then, I close my own eyes. “Imagine a sky during a storm,” I say, trying to put on my best meditation voice.
“The wind blows the clouds at a rapid pace, maybe the clouds are varying sizes and shapes, some higher than others, some darker. Then, think about what it looks like once that storm has passed. The stillness in the clouds. Those high white clouds that appear in a thin layer in the sky. And then imagine the clear blue sky that finally emerges. Yoga helps us find that blue sky state of mind.” I internally commend myself for that metaphor.
“We know that the storms will always come, but if we can control our reaction to those scary skies, maybe we can weather the storm just a bit better.”
I take a deep breath, encouraging the class to do so as well. I keep us there for a moment, inhaling and exhaling, finding a rhythm in our own bodies. My throat feels dry after my speech, and a knot forms in my throat, thinking about my own reactions to recent storms.
“Slowly flutter your eyes open, friends. Let’s flow.”