I might have been a teenage drama queen, but it felt like my life was ending. That led to a very fucked up version of myself for longer than I care to admit. It’s probably part of the reason why Aidan is here with me now, probably worried it was all going to trigger something.
I’m not that girl. Yes, I’m severely different and incredibly messed up, but I’m in control now. I couldn’t be the wild, careless party girl I became after that painful spring even I wanted to be.
“I came here last night to talk to you,” she says on a sigh.
I relax a little. When I got home, Aidan had just showed up, and I told him I was sick before disappearing into my room. So… Whit spent the night and needed something to sleep in? That’s better than cheating.
“I feel like I should hate you.” Her words are matter-of-fact, not harsh.
I look over at her and frown.
“Why hate me? I’ve already promised I’m not here for Chase. I wouldn’t even be here right now if I’d known he still lived here.”
“You could have called any shop in this town and asked if the James boy still lived here, and they’d have told you yes. You could have asked Chuck about it one of the million times you spoke to him before moving down, and he’d have told you yes. So try again.”
True.
“I try not to ask about him,” I admit honestly. “But I did think he was gone. He always hated this place, and when his mother died and he posted he was moving, I never foresaw him returning.”
She sets her coffee down. “I always wondered why he came back, and now I think it was subconsciously about you.”
“Me? Why me? I didn’t live here. And in case you haven’t noticed, he’s intent on hating me.”
“Which takes me back to my previous statement; I feel like I should hate you. Are you the one who turned him into this? Because I’ve been blaming his parents this entire time. He was volatile when younger, but he’s just cold now.”
Volatile? When was he volatile?
My heart clenches in my chest, and I move my coffee to the counter and sit down across from her at the bar.
“You want all the sordid details?” I ask angrily.
“Yes. I do. I think I deserve to know them.”
She’s right. Even though I feel like it’s none of her business, Chase should have already told her.
“Fine. Let’s start at the beginning.”
That’s what I do. I start from the first time I saw the sweet boy in town. My father asked him if he wanted to come eat with us. He knew the James family. He knew how shitty Chase had it.
I tell Whit about how Chase and I retreated to the roof of this home the second dinner was over because there was a meteor shower. We ended up talking almost all night long. No one came looking for Chase, and my father made him a bed on the couch.
From then on, he was at my summer home almost every day, only leaving in small intervals to go check on his mother and make sure she wasn’t hurt, or choking on her own vomit, or shoving something into her arm that was going to kill her.
I tell her that my mother was annoyed with Chase, but that my father always had a soft spot for him. This was his town. He could have been Chase if he hadn’t had a rich grandfather.
Little by little, I recap every summer, telling her how we grew closer. Telling her how we slowly fell in love. Then I get to the part that almost destroyed us the first time.
“I was fifteen and stupid. Jared was seventeen and popular. I was constantly worried there was another girl all over Chase when I was gone. He was so beautiful, and he always said summers were ours, but we’d take the rest of the year to do our own thing. So I let Jared talk me into having sex. It felt so wrong. I actually felt disgusted afterwards. But I kept having sex, thinking it would eventually get better. It didn’t. Starting to see why the first isn’t so important?” I ask, trying to alleviate her unprecedented fears.
My stomach roils with just the memories. I blamed my mother. I blamed my jealousy and concerns over Chase. I blamed my hormones… It took a long time to blame myself for simply being stupid and own my mistake. I sometimes wonder if that’s what drove Chase into someone else’s arms.
She sits silently instead of answering, imploring me with her eyes to continue.
“Anyway, I broke up with Jared a little after my sixteenth birthday, and then summer rolled around again. I told Chase everything, and he… He slammed the door and left. He didn’t come back for a week. I sobbed like a freaking idiot, making it impossible for anyone to console me. I was always pretty dramatic,” I confess, trying to lighten the mood.
Whit just stares, sipping her coffee in silence and making this all so much more awkward.
“Somehow we moved past it, and by mid-June, we were us again. Then one night on the roof, he asked me to… Well, you know. He also wanted us to be loyal to each other if we took that step. No more doing our own thing during the school year. Summer we’d have each other, and the rest of the time we’d be waiting for summer. That was the promise.”
She nods slowly, still watching.
“He was so sweet, always holding me, touching me, kissing me in a way that made me feel loved. When I had sex with him, it didn’t feel wrong. You probably don’t want to hear this, but it was years ago. I couldn’t get enough of him back then. When summer ended, it felt like my heart stopped beating. It was all I could do to get through the school year, but at least he sent me letters. He didn’t have a phone at that time.”
“He wrote you?” Whit whispers, her eyes wide and mystified.
“I wrote him more than he wrote me. He was saving his money, so buying a lot of stamps was an issue. Sometimes I sent him stamps in the envelopes just so I’d get to have more letters from him. I loved his words in writing, even though most people would consider it cheesy nowadays. He was working in the off season at a restaurant as a busboy—I was saving up most of the money Dad paid me for working odd jobs on the ranch. But during the summer Chase was mine and I was his—no work. We only had just under three months together, so we spent every second making it count.”
She clears her throat. “You said it was intense,” she states in a hushed tone. “Both of you. Sounds more like it was epic. What happened? What really happened?”
A tear rolls down my cheek, and I sigh while wiping it away.
“My parents divorced. Long story short, my mother lost it a little when my dad remarried, and she wouldn’t let me come back the next summer. I knew Chase was hurt or mad because he hadn’t written any letters to respond to mine. I stopped hearing from him just before summer. By spring, I was desperate to see him and explain what had happened. I didn’t care if we had a night or a week to be together before my mother sent police. I honestly even thought about quitting school and talking him into running away with me.”
Tears gather in her own eyes as she listens attentively.
“I drove, managed to make it down here in record time, and I went straight over to his house. There was a party that night, though. And I got to see why I hadn’t heard from him. I got to see why he wasn’t responding to all the letters I sent him about how much I loved him… About how much I missed him… About how much I couldn’t wait to be with him for longer than summer…”
My words get choked on the way out, and Whit tenses.
“What happened?” she prompts.
Swiping away another tear, I take a calming breath.
“He was with another girl. They were all over each other. At one point she even had her hand down his pants. I watched it like I couldn’t look away until… finally I was able to. Then I drove straight back home. The end.”
A tear falls down her cheek, then another. In a moment, she’s sniffling and dabbing at the onslaught of tears.
She didn’t even have to hear the worst part. No one should know the worst part. That part was just teenage drama and heartbreak that I over-exaggerated. It’s what teenagers do. It wasn’t as intense and epic as my mind led me to believe—because that sort of love doesn’t exist.
Dr. Kravitz assured me of that. Even Dr. Stein agrees that I romanticized all my feelings to the nth degree. While losing Chase was painful, it wasn’t nearly as painful as everything I endured after the night that changed my life.
The real nightmare came later. It’s not often something shapes your life and changes the way you have to look at absolutely everything.
“So why come back? Obviously he destroyed you. Why come back?” Whit asks, drawing me out of my reverie.
I shrug, staring down at the bar. It’s a ludicrous explanation to a sane, rational, healthy person. She’d never understand. So I give her the philosophical version instead of the fucked-up truth.
“I’ve spent my life living with a hollowness inside me that I can’t explain. When you find something that feels as intense and real and pure as what we once had, it fucks you up. It’s a deluded, exaggerated version of it, because it couldn’t have been that amazing. Anyway, it’s not worth the good times when you have to endure the hellacious aftermath… but I can’t seem to move forward from this point in my life and have a lasting, healthy existence.”
That sounds so much better than the truth, even if it does make me sound a little pathetic by default.