“She was there for me.”
Somehow, the simplicity in that answer hurts even more than if he’d screamed.
“I know I’ve made mistakes.” I glance at the few stars twinkling above and huff. “God, I’ve been drowning in that guilt for years. But I don’t know what to do anymore. How to make it better.”
The night I left, everything happened so fast. I went to Ruth’s place in shock and jumped on a Greyhound with my mind blank. It was only when the bus stopped for gas somewhere in Connecticutthat I realized what I’d done. I’d left my entire family behind without a single goodbye. And the worst part—the one I’ll never say aloud—is that Keira was the last person I thought about when the guilt settled in. She’d left for college two years prior and hadn’t even come home for Christmas that year. When I texted her, it sometimes took days before I heard back. It was like she’d cut me out of her life before I’d even left.
Even so, she never went MIA like I did, and while she might have moved out in a place of her own, she and I were still the only two people who knew what it was like to have grown up in that house, and I’d left her behind. I can see how painful that must have been. I was going through life on survival mode, but doing so alienated all the people I cared about most.
Waves crash somewhere in the darkness, sending tiny splashes of water onto us. I tuck my legs to my chest. “Coming back was a mistake.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’ve missed out on so much, but it’s like it doesn’t matter that I’m here now, because I’ll never be able to catch up.” I rest my head back. “My sister hates me. My mom’s acting like some Raggedy Ann doll who doesn’t blink or stop smiling while she’s lying through her teeth. Evenyou’re being weird with me. And that’s not a reproach. I’m just stating facts.” Being with him used to feel so damneasy. Smiling, laughing… We didn’t have to think about it. And now every one of his smiles feels like a pot of gold.
He lets out a deep exhale that holds eleven years’ worth of feelings. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I just… I guess I don’t know how to act around you anymore.”
“I’m still the same me.”
“No, you’re not.”
That gets me to turn to him. The way he stares at me sends shivers down my legs.
“You left,” he says, and my heart drops into my stomach.
“Eli—”
“Let me finish. You left, and you moved on to a bigger, better life, and I stayed right here. I’m still in my childhood house, for Christ’s sake.” He chuckles dryly, shakes his head. “I’ll never fault you for leaving. A part of me always knew you would. But I also can’t pretend like we’re the same kids we were.”
My chest feels too tight. “That means nothing. I didn’t change by moving away.”
“Then why didn’t you ever call? Write?” he says, still calm, but the bite in his voice is back from that night in his living room. “I looked for you, you know. Even when you ignored my texts and calls. Even when you deleted your social media profiles. I searched your name online. Asked around. But you became invisible for years. I felt like our… like our friendship was nothing to you.”
I let my eyes fall shut against the wave of pain that comes from opening that Eli box again. “That friendship was everything to me.”
“Then why?”
“Because it would’ve only hurt us more, and in the end, it wouldn’t have changed anything.”
While I eventually got back in contact with most of my family and told them where I lived, Eli was the one clean break I needed if I wanted to survive. He would never leave Cape Weston—not with his dad’s health that had started deteriorating in the past years—and I’d never go back, so even if I did call, I’d still never be part of his life the way I’d want to be. I’d always be looking at his life from a bird’s eye view, never quite close enough to find the proximity we’d always had, and that would’ve been more painful than anything else. I’d have heard about him meeting new people, finding a girl, and I wasn’t strong enough for that. But even worse than that, I didn’t want him to keep hanging on to me when he could meet someone else, especially since he was never truly mine to begin with. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I’d kept my favorite person from living the life he deserved.
“I wish I’d had a say.” He pauses. “I would’ve taken anything over nothing.”
“I’m sorry. I really am.” Goosebumps cover my skin at a cold gust of wind. “And even if it sounds messed up, I did what I thought was best at the time.” Even my voice sounds exhausted. There’s nothing I can do now but apologize and live with the shame. “And after a while, I thought you probably wouldn’t want to hear about me anyway.” I knew he’d miss me, just as I knew he’d move on. I might remain in the past forever, but Eli would find a way to thrive. Settle, find the right woman to marry, figure out exactly who he wanted to be. Even as a kid, there was a confidence in him,like no matter where he ended up, it’d be exactly where he always belonged.
“I don’t think I could ever have wanted to stop hearing from you.” He pauses, as if he’s weighing how much to share, then looks behind me. “Sometimes I’d feel myself going crazy, not hearing from you, like maybe I’d imagined you. So, I’d ask Ruth about you.’’
She never told me.
We talked all the time, yet she never once brought Eli up. Maybe because she’d known it’d only hurt me to think about what I’d lost.
“I liked knowing you were out there doing your thing, even if I wasn’t hearing it from you.” For the first time, a hint of a smile touches his lips. “And then sometimes she’d let something slip, like how you’d choked on a piece of donut because you were eating too fast and needed some random guy in the street to help you, and I’d think, yeah, I didn’t imagine her.”
Despite the heaviness of his words, I find myself smiling, too. “I can’t believe she told you that.”
“No one was ever safe from Ruth throwing them under the bus.”
I laugh. “She’d probably want that written on her tombstone.”
