Chapter 38
BEFORE
February, Seven Years Ago
It had been almost three years since I got in my car and didn’t stop until I hit the Atlantic Ocean. Three years since I left Tostela without looking back.
I woke up reminiscing on that first week I spent here in Wilmington; sleeping in my car every night, and going to different coffee shops and restaurants every day to fill out job applications.
I never filled out the address portion—I didn’t have one back then.
I almost gave up and drove back up to Michigan after so many rejections.
I had bought myself a new phone the day I got here. My very first iPhone—a huge upgrade from the prepaid phone the Delvecchios bought me that first Christmas I spent with them. It had been an entire week without them, and I wondered what they were doing right that second.
I was eating a chocolate croissant in a cafe, contemplating my entire existence now that the Delvecchios weren’t a part of it, when the little girl at the table next to me giggled.
I looked over at her and found those big blue eyes staring at me, examining the chocolate I had managed to smear everywhere.
I stuck my tongue out at her before grabbing a napkin and cleaning myself up.
She covered her mouth with her hand and laughed beneath it.
Her mom looked up from her laptop to smile at me.
I made eye contact with the little girl again, and this time she waved.
We played this game back and forth; I’d pretend I was invested in my phone, she’d stare at me, I’d look up like I was surprised to see her, then I’d wave.
When she and her mom got up to leave, the little girl waddled right over to my table.
“You come play with me?” Her little voice was even cuter than the freckles splayed across her cheeks. She couldn’t have been older than two.
“Mia . . .” the mom said with a laugh as she grabbed her daughter’s hand before turning to me. “She really wants to be your friend, apparently.”
I smiled back at the mom before turning to Mia. “I could really use a friend right now, too.”
The mom looked me up and down, and I self consciously fixed my hair. I’d only given it a half-assed wash in a library bathroom that morning. I probably looked strung-out and greasy.
“I’m a teacher, and I’m about to go back to work for the first time since Mia was born. My husband and I are looking for a nanny. Would you be interested? Do you have a résumé?”
I couldn’t stand up fast enough to introduce myself.
“I’m Addison. Yes, I definitely have a résumé. Um, I can go to the library really quickly and print it for you.”
I, in fact, did not have a résumé. Delvecchios’ Restaurant was the only job I had ever had—was that enough experience to be a nanny?
“No need, I’ll give you my email and you can send it over. I’m Wren Wilson by the way.” She shook my hand, and I grimaced when I realized how sweaty mine was.
“Okay, great, I’ll get that over to you shortly,” I said a bit too eagerly.
Mia and Wren said their goodbyes to me, and I ran straight to the library to write up a résumé.
I was following a template I found on Google, but I didn’t know who to write for references. Was she actually going to check them? I panicked and wrote Julie’s name and number. She was still in California anyways, and she never answered random numbers.
I emailed the résumé to Wren before the day was over. I got a call from her the next day, asking me to come over to chat. She gave me the job, and I’ve been living with them ever since.
I was sitting with Wren and Mia now, on the morning of my twenty-first birthday.
They’d surprised me with sprinkle pancakes, and a mountain of whipped cream.
They were both singing to me, and I blew out the single candle, which was leaning over in my lopsided stack of pancakes.
I was thankful my birthday fell on a Saturday this year, because Wren would be the one to clean the sticky syrup out of Mia’s hair after our breakfast.
Who was I kidding? I’d help anyways. I loved the kid.
After breakfast, I dug through my closet for my old duffel bag so I could start packing for my upcoming spring break trip with the Wilsons. Now that Mia was almost five, Wren and George had decided she was old enough to enjoy Disney World.
When I finally spotted the purple bag, I let out an aha! I hadn’t used it since I moved in, and it was sandwiched between an old pair of jeans and some bedding I had stuffed in the bottom of my closet.
When I finally wrestled the bag out, it wasn’t empty. I unzipped it to clean it out, and found my old pair of high-top Converse.
The tongue was ripped, the laces were frayed, and the sole was detached from the bottom. Some of the threads in the embroidered pizza slice had come undone, but I couldn’t bear to get rid of them. I hugged them to my chest, grieving the loss of the people I had left behind.
I hadn’t heard from them since the day I left, and I pretended they were out of sight, out of mind. But it was a lie. Every morning when I opened my eyes, I thought about the Delvecchio family.
I rubbed my thumb over the embroidered detail on the side of the shoe.
I had drawn a shittier version of this piece of pizza in Jackson’s yearbook on the night of graduation.
Had he seen it? Did he know it was because of these shoes he had given me five years ago?
I hadn’t been with anyone since that night after graduation, and I realized then that I didn’t want to be. I just wanted him.
I had to do something. I had to feel something other than the pain that was radiating from beneath my rib cage.
I drove to a tattoo shop—the first one I could find that accepted walk-ins—and took the first artist that was available.
As the needle pierced my skin and traveled over my rib cage, I remembered the time I went with Jackson for his tattoo. He was right; it wasn’t so much pain that you felt, but more of an annoying sting.
Over and over again, the sting followed by the rub of paper towel. I embraced it; I gladly took this feeling over what had been burning inside my heart.
After I paid for my tattoo, I was feeling lighter.
I started thinking, what if Jackson did try to find me?
I threw away my phone, and I didn’t have social media.
I worked as a live-in nanny—it’s not like I had a LinkedIn account or anything.
Could he have googled me and seen me listed under Wren’s address?
What if he actually had looked for me, and I didn’t know?
I got in my car, using anxious fingers to type *67 before dialing Jackson’s number, which I’d had memorized since I was fourteen years old.
With each ring, my heart rate accelerated. What did his voice sound like now? Would he hear me and know right away how much I missed him? Did he miss me too? Did he have some explanation for why he ghosted me that night? Could we get back together? Did he remember that it was my birthday today?
The call connected, and I heard him say, “Hey?” He said it as if it was a question, and I knew right away that he was drunk.
I could hear muffled voices in the background, the sound of music being played, and then static on the phone as if Jackson was trying to cover the receiver while he walked to a quieter room.
Someone called out his name in the background: “Jackson, come here!” It was a girl’s voice, and my breath caught in my throat.
Jackson laughed, and my eyes filled with tears. I missed that laugh, and all the times we had laughed together. “One sec, I gotta see who this is.” He sounded happy; like he was having a good time.
“Hello?” he said again into the phone.
I gripped my cellphone tighter. Jackson didn’t need me. He never had. He was partying, having the time of his life, probably about to do a line of coke in the kitchen. He was fine without me. Even from eight hundred and seventeen miles away, he still had the power to hurt me.
I was glad I called, and I was glad when I hung up the phone and tossed it onto the passenger seat.
I could get him out of my system now, because nothing was going to change. I could finally close this chapter. I was officially done with Jackson.
***
I drove to the mall immediately after, jamming to the song “I Hope This Comes Back To Haunt You” by Neck Deep.
I bought myself a new black skirt, a sparkly mesh top, and a brand-new pair of high-top black Converse that weren’t embroidered on the sides.
I went out to a club that night, kissed someone whose name I couldn’t remember, and let them sleep with me in the bathroom in the back.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t have hair so dark it was almost black, or that his collarbone didn’t have a freckle, or that he wasn’t my best friend who once said that he loved me. I couldn’t let Jackson Delvecchio be the last person who touched me. I had to let him go.
Even as I thought it, I knew it was a lie. I could never let him go, because I would never love anyone else like I love—present tense love—Jackson Delvecchio. Even if he didn’t love me back.