29 Every Action Causes a Reaction
29
Every Action Causes a Reaction
The new year began, and with it I got a gift. I’d worked hard to learn my job well, and my father gave me a promotion with more responsibility. He moved me to public relations. That meant I no longer had to work for Dustin.
I was excited. I thought that meant I was free of him and that constant harassment he thought was love. And it was true that I no longer saw him during work hours. But I still had to put up with him elsewhere. He spent more time at my house than his. My father invited him to everything. He even celebrated Christmas and the new year with us.
Hoyt liked to joke that Dustin was my father’s secret love child, and he accused me of having an incestuous relationship with him. I didn’t think it was funny at all. In fact I hated it—the very idea disgusted me.
“He just makes my skin crawl,” I said to Hayley in the bathroom of a restaurant one day, strutting around the way Dustin did and imitating his voice: “‘Of course, Mr. Weston. You’re absolutely right, Mr. Weston. Brilliant, Mr. Weston.’ He’s the biggest ass-kisser I’ve ever seen. Does he not know there’s a thing called pride, dignity?”
Hayley cracked up laughing as she washed her hands.
“Yeah, honestly, I don’t get it.”
“What?” I asked.
“Judging by the way he treats him, Dad doesn’t like him much more than we do. But he still takes him everywhere. For some reason I can’t figure out, he’s obsessed with the idea that Dustin’s the right guy for you and he can’t stop waving it in your face.”
“I know! Well, he can keep waiting. I’ve spent months and months trying to make him happy, but I’ve got my limits, and one of them is Dustin. I can’t even stand him looking at me.”
Hayley looked up at me in the mirror. “I know you gave up your dreams because you think you owe Dad something.”
“I told you…” I began to reply nervously. But she interrupted me.
“Harper, I’m not dumb. I may have let it slide, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t notice. I’ve spent my entire life watching you strive to get his attention. And here you go doing it again. But, honey, he’s not worth it. So why do you keep killing yourself over him? You never wanted this. You wanted to write.”
I looked away and forced a blithe smile to lighten the heavy atmosphere. Hayley hugged me. I needed that contact, that human affection, and it made me let down my guard. I closed my eyes and leaned into her.
“I hope you’ll tell me the truth someday,” she whispered into my ear.
“But what if what I have to say changes everything between us?” I struggled to make it through that sentence, remembering it was my fault Mom had left her an orphan when she was just ten years old.
“Harper, if you told me right now you were the witch from ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and you’d just eaten them both, I’d figure out how to help you hide the bones.”
Hearing that was bittersweet, and it moved me beyond words. I turned around to hug her back, so tight that she shrieked that I was breaking her ribs.
We went back out to find Dad, Scott, Hoyt, Megan, and of course Dustin, my nightmare, at the table.
And there was someone else there. Not that it should have surprised me. Everyone knew my father, and whenever we went out, someone came over to greet him. I don’t know how, but even before I saw him, I could feel who it was. There was just something in the air. And maybe in my heart, too.
It was him.
I froze. All at once, I could hear nothing. I was terrified. I wasn’t ready for this. I never would be.
“Trey!” my sister shouted.
He turned around with an enormous smile that vanished when our eyes met. He went pale, and I must have, too. I was sure we looked like two ghosts there in the crowd. My whole face felt dead.
“My God, it’s been forever since I’ve seen you. I didn’t even get the chance to thank you for your help with the house on Petit Prince. It’s looking gorgeous.”
They hugged.
“I just did my little part. It was really your husband’s idea.”
Trey . Hearing that name made me dizzy, like I was tumbling over a cliff. He wouldn’t stop looking at me, and I couldn’t, because everything that wasn’t him had disappeared. I took a step forward. Then another. I felt like I was walking over a bottomless ravine and could only breathe easily if I reached the table.
“Harper, aren’t you going to say hi to Trey,” my sister said, giving me a slight shove that had the force of an atomic bomb.
“Yeah, uh, of course. Hey, Trey,” I barely managed to say.
“Hi, Harper.”
I tried to close my eyes and trap the sound of him saying my name, so I could hold onto it forever, deep in my heart.
“Why don’t you have a seat with us?” Hoyt said. “We were just about to order drinks.”
“Yeah, man, stay a while. There’s room for both of you,” Scott chimed in.
Both of you. The sight of Trey had so stunned me that I didn’t notice her : a woman with long dark-brown hair. She was incredibly beautiful.
“Harper, sit beside me, babe. That way we can make some space for them,” Dustin said.
Trey’s eyes darted over at him and then back at me. I saw he was tying up loose ends, and I wished the earth would swallow me up. I wanted to scream at Dustin to shut his damn mouth for once. To tell Trey there was nothing between that imbecile and me, that there never would be, and he didn’t need to worry about it.
But I didn’t. What was the point?
Trey wasn’t mine anymore. I had left him five months ago, and he had clearly gotten over it. Probably he was just looking at Dustin out of curiosity. I had assumed he was hurt, but he was probably just struggling to believe I’d gone back with such a loser.
“Thanks, but we’ve got movie tickets and we’re running late,” he said.
“Ah, that’s too bad,” Hoyt replied. “You’ve been a hard man to get ahold of lately.”
“Work, work, work, you know how it is.”
“Cut the excuses. Let’s hang out some time. Actually…” He snapped his fingers as he remembered something. “You know what? I’m taking Megan to Petit Prince next week. Hayley’s leaving us the house. You should come along. Both of you. It’ll be fun.”
It was agonizing, thinking of him taking her to the island. Our island. Our secret. I could tell Trey was looking at me as my brother talked. That he was nervous. The girl sensed something between us, too. I could tell by her face. She seemed to know things about me, and the possibility that Trey had talked about me, about us, made things even more uncomfortable.
“I don’t think I can. Sora and I…”
“Trey, don’t make me beg,” Hoyt insisted.
“I’ll call you.”
It was all I could do not to take off running. I needed to escape that pain that was drilling into my chest—the pain, the insecurity, the anguish, and still worse, the jealousy. I was so jealous it burned.
Seconds later, Trey said his goodbyes and left the restaurant holding hands with the girl. I got away from Dustin, taking the chair across from him and making sure my father noticed. And he did. We stared at each other a long while. I don’t know where I got the courage. Maybe because I wasn’t entirely myself. Something in me was vanishing.
I spent the rest of the night in a fog and was the first one to stand when Dad said he was tired and ready to go back home.
We didn’t exchange a word on the way back to Léry, and even in the hallway on our way to our rooms, all he managed was a curt good night .
I took off my boots and lay in bed, feeling as if someone were torturing me with electric shocks. But the only person torturing me was myself, and I had been that whole evening, replaying every second of my encounter with Trey in my head.
I’d deceived myself with the ridiculous belief that with time my feelings for him would lessen. I was wrong. Five months hadn’t been enough for the wounds to heal. And deep down, I knew five years wouldn’t be, either. Not five years, not five decades.
He was a part of me, and he always would be. Next to him, I’d learned who I was and all the things I was capable of. I’d learned what a strange, beautiful place the world could be. That magic existed and wishes come true. That dreams can become reality.
I had broken up with him to try to forget the beauty of being with him and find meaning in the life I had chosen. And it hadn’t worked. My father mutely tolerated me at best, and a little voice still whispered to me that even with a hundred lifetimes, I could never make up to him what he’d lost.
I had sacrificed everything for a debt I could never repay.
I walked over to the window and opened it. The cold outside was glacial, but in my room it was stifling. I hit the windowsill as hard as I could. From rage. From stupidity. From cowardice. From despair. Because I hadn’t thought about myself.
Because I’d thrown out of my life the one person who gave it meaning.
Because he had turned the page and now he was sharing his world with someone else.
I realized then that errors have consequences and every action causes a reaction.