Complete (Incomplete) Page 7

  With him watching me, I am only slightly less inclined to repeat them, but I have always been honest, and so I cannot take the words back. I don’t want to. Whoever this person is, he isn’t who I loved. He is a fake.

  The thought puts a crack in my heart and the longer I think about it, the more I feel it is true, and the crack turns into a fissure that continues to widen the longer I look at him and wonder why he changed so much. There are instances, small seconds of time, when I think I can see the boy I fell in love with, and that makes me think maybe he is still inside somewhere, but then again, maybe he really isn’t.

  “I said, I don’t like you. You're different. You're...you're not you.”

  The distance between us disappears and I tense when he stops before me. “What did you think was going to happen? People change. People grow up. And maybe I'm better this way. Maybe this is the way I have to be.”

  I don't answer. He seems to be trying to convince himself of his words anyway, not me.

  His jaw clenches. “What about you?” He whips the sunglasses from his face to better scowl at me, his gaze singeing me.

  I frown. “What about me?”

  “You’re not exactly the girl I remember growing up with. Maybe I don’t like you either.”

  My mouth opens and closes and I cannot think of a comeback. I am too stunned by this revelation. I am the same person I have always been. Nothing about me has changed, sadly.

  “I bet you don’t even eat chocolate anymore,” he sneers, like this is the greatest insult.

  I would laugh if this conversation was taking place between anyone else.

  “I eat chocolate,” I argue. “I eat it every day. I even have that stupid corkboard with all those stupid Dove sayings on them! The one you were supposed to keep. The one you left—abandoned—when you went off to California to get famous.” That hurt—that he could just toss something aside that was supposed to be meaningful to us. He just left it, like it never mattered to him, like that bond we had never existed.

  “How was I supposed to look at that every day?” he blows up, startling nearby birds into enough of a frenzy to fly away from us. “Yes, I left it here. Do you want to know why I left it? Because I couldn’t stand to look at it without wanting to bawl my fucking eyes out! That’s why I left it. And I didn’t go to California to be famous. I went there—” He leans close, so close I can smell spearmint on his breath. “—to get over you.” Grayson straightens, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “So did you?” It was supposed to be a demand, but it comes out sounding pitiful.

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you get over me?”

  “Do you really care either way?”

  His face is hard, unforgiving. Yes, the voice of truth inside me cries, too weighted down by responsibility, regrets, and fears to be heard. I try to breathe, but my throat and chest are tight, making it a feat just to suck air into my lungs. The boy is gone, replaced by this man watching me with inexplicable emotions in his features. I may not like him, but this side of him…this side of him I desire.

  The seconds turn into a minute, then another. Our gazes are locked, emotions indefinable but monumental passing between us. Something hits the blacktop and I look down at the broken sunglasses that were in Grayson’s hand just a moment ago. When I raise my gaze, he is striding away from me, farther into the park, his shoulders stiff. I don’t know why I do it, but I lean down and scoop the twisted metal and plastic up, gazing at it.

  It is an object, but it was his. It is wrecked, but it was only a minute ago whole within his hand. I squeeze my hand around it, bringing it to my forehead, and then I toss it into the garbage and make my way back to my car, forcing thoughts to work and getting there before I’m late.

  THE KNOCK AT THE DOOR comes at seven at night. I am ready for bed, my hair pulled back in a low ponytail, and clad in pink shorts and a yellow tank top that are old and threadbare. All day I've wanted to lounge on the comfy tan couch in my living room and I was finally ready about to. I am so not in the social mood right now.

  I sigh, debating on whether or not I really need to answer the door. I briefly wonder if it’s Grayson and then I scowl. I don’t want to see him. He doesn’t even know what apartment I live in, unless, of course, he talked to my mom. Speaking of my mom, I need to confront her about that. I am not especially happy to know she and Grayson have been communicating without my knowledge. How could she not tell me that?

  “I know you’re in there. Your light’s on. Open up, Lily.”

  A grin takes over my lips and I swing the door open, leaning against the door frame. “Hey, stud.”

  Garrett Adams rolls his brown eyes and enters my apartment, his cologne enveloping me as he hugs me. “Please. Stop with the flirting. You know I’m weak. I’ll give in to your wicked ways eventually and then I’ll feel dirty in the morning.”

  I laugh, messing up his perfectly styled light brown hair. “When’d you get back?”

  “Literally six minutes ago.”

  “Ah, and you missed me so much you came right over. How was your trip?”

  “Enlightening.”

  “Did you get the girl?”

  “Said girl is putty in my hands.” He pauses. “And also now my fiancée.”

  I clap my hands, my smile widening. “Yay! You finally fooled a girl into agreeing to marry you!”

  “All it takes is one. Anyway, you said no. It was hard, but I had to move on.” He sniffs the air, then leans over to smell my neck as I shut the door. I swat at him, but he just grins. “You made cookies. Did you eat them all?”

  “I made four dozen. Of course I didn’t eat them all. There’s at least…half…of them left.”

  “Lily,” he chides, making his way to the small kitchen area.

  “It was my supper.” I try to defend my actions with this statement, but he just gives me a look from over one broad shoulder.

  “It’s a good thing you exercise,” he says, shoving a whole cookie into his mouth.

  “It’s a good thing you’re my friend,” I counter, snatching a chocolate chip cookie out of his hand. “So why are you really here?”

  Garrett leans against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest. The brown polo shirt and khaki pants he is wearing is a customary Garrett Adams outfit. He is the perfect example of squeaky clean and wholesome, contributing to that persona even more by going to college to be a police officer. He and Grayson had a strange animosity during school, a competitive-

  ness that could never be explained or resolved. Some might have said it was because of me, but I don’t believe that. I think it went deeper than that.

  “I heard your boyfriend’s back.”

  I shrug, grabbing a glass from the cupboard and getting cold water from the faucet. I am not really thirsty, but I need an excuse to collect myself. I drain half of the glass before noisily setting the cup on the counter. “He’s not my boyfriend,” I mutter, swiping hair from my cheek as I face him, looking at the neutral-toned walls instead of him.

  Garrett purposely moves into my line of vision. “First time he’s showed up since he left, right? Have you seen him? Of course you have,” he says slowly, taking in my expression. I have never been able to hide my feelings from my face, an extremely annoying fact.

  “News travels fast around here, doesn’t it?”

  “My roommate was talking about it before I even fully got into the house. He’s big news around here. Our first famous local.” He watches me for a moment, his lips turned down. “Ah, Lily, come here,” he finally murmurs, hooking an arm around me and pulling me to his chest.

  I blink my stinging eyes, refusing to cry. I let myself enjoy the security and warmth of his embrace for a moment and then I pat his defined chest. “I'm okay, Garrett. Really.”

  He releases me, grabbing the green container of cookies off the counter. “Come on. Let’s watch television and you can tell me your problems.”

  I follow him into the living room. “Maybe
I don’t want to tell you my problems.”

  “Why not? They are so much more interesting than mine.” He flashes white teeth at me and plops onto the couch, putting his sandaled feet on the coffee table.

  I shove his legs off the table as I sit on the other end of the couch. “Did Emily pick a date yet?”

  “We just got engaged. What do you think?” He sighs. “Yeah. Next June. Not even a year away.”

  Grabbing the remote from the coffee table, I find reruns of ‘Roseanne’. “Everyone’s getting married.”

  “Everyone? Who? Your brother and me? And you’re going to be an aunt? That’s kind of scary. You know you can’t feed infants chocolate, right?”

  I glance at him, wondering how he found out Cindy is pregnant when he just got back to town.

  “Roommate,” he says with a shrug.

  “You’re so young,” I muse.

  “I’ll be twenty-one in four months. Not so young. And anyway, say you and Grayson were still together and in love and he asked you to marry him. What would you say?”

  I purposely don't answer that. Of course I would say yes. “Why did you guys hate each other so much?”

  He doesn’t answer for a long time. He sits up, placing his elbows on his knees, and looks at me sideways. “I don’t really know. I mean, I kind of know. It was a combination of things, at least from my end. I think he didn’t like me mostly because of you.”

  “You guys didn’t like each other in grade school,” I point out.

  “Yeah.” He gives a short laugh. “He was good-looking, good at sports. It was irritating.”

  “So were you and he used to be chubby and terrible at sports.”

  “He didn’t care what anyone thought about him.”

  I straighten, knowing this is the true answer. I don’t say anything, letting Garrett collect his thoughts.

  “I always did. I didn’t know how to not care what people thought of me. I was jealous, I guess. He acted like he was confident with who he was and people could like him or hate him, and it didn’t matter either way to him.”

  “That’s partly true, but…” I rub my face, knowing I cannot tell Garrett what growing up was really like for Grayson. How he always thought he wasn’t good enough, that everything he did was a mistake, how he purposely isolated himself from others so they wouldn’t know about his life at home. How even with me—the person he trusted the most—he was tight-lipped about his mother and father. “We all have our issues,” I finish quietly.

  “And then I started to like you.” He grins, nudging my foot with his sandal.

  I roll my eyes. “Stupid boy.”

  “I know. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.” Garrett gets to his feet, grabbing a handful of cookies. “I have to go. I haven’t even unpacked yet. Are we running tomorrow?”

  “See you at six,” I say.

  He looks down at me, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. His hand falls away. “Let him go, Lily.”

  My eyes lower. “I want to. I can’t.”

  “Then learn to live without him.”

  “I have, Garrett,” I tell him, emotion making my voice hard.

  “Clearly not well enough,” is his wry comeback. He touches my head once and then leaves.

  The brief reprieve his presence allowed is gone. I stare at the television screen, it a blur as my eyes become unfocused. He is right. I need to move on from Grayson. I need to get him out of my heart. Only I don’t know how. Learn how.

  Determination stiffening my jaw, I search the apartment for my cell phone, finding it on the table near the door. I scroll through the list of saved numbers, pausing on the names of men I have gone on dates with. There are not that many, but they all ended amicably, and I am sure most of them wouldn’t mind seeing if we connect better now than we did in the past. It feels wrong to even think such a thing.

  Sam Lorenz’s number stares back at me, tempting me. This is impulsive and rife with misgivings. What am I thinking? I chew on my lip, my hand clutching the phone. Sam is safe. We dated off and on for about a year after Grayson and I broke up. Originally I agreed to go on a date with him just to take my mind off the breakup with Grayson. It turned semi-serious, but I eventually broke things off. My heart could never be his because it was already someone else's.

  He was never cruel, never unkind, but something was off with us, something more than Grayson, although he was always there as well, his remembered words haunting me, telling me not to date the filler guy, telling me to be with someone who accepted me exactly the way I was, outlandish shoes and all. I smile faintly as I remember that conversation we had just before he left.

  I turn my thoughts back to Sam. We enjoyed each other’s company; we were intellectually and physically compatible. I hit his number, putting the phone to my ear, telling myself it could be enough. Why couldn’t it be enough?

  “Hey you,” his low voice answers.

  “Hey.” I smile as I lock the front door, walking through the living room and down the short hallway to my bedroom. “How’ve you been?” I flip the light switch up and lie on my back on the bed, the white ceiling my view. I long for misshapen yellow stars to fill my head instead of the plainness that greets me.

  “Not too bad. Haven’t seen you for a while. How’s the dental office?”

  I rub my face, closing my eyes. Sam encouraged me to work at the dental office while going to school to be an administrative assistant, saying the schooling took less time than it would to become a guidance counselor, which is true. I don’t dislike what I am doing, but I do not feel the sense of satisfaction I think I would have felt had I decided on a different career path. The fact that my mom works there and was in full support of it as well worked in favor of me choosing the field.

  “It’s okay. How’s the internship at the accounting firm?” This is us—polite to the point of boring. I inwardly chide myself, prodding along to the next question after he answers. “I thought maybe we could get together this Friday, catch up? If you don’t have plans.” I almost hope he does. Then I can at least say I tried without really trying.

  “Ah…you see…the thing is—”

  “You’re dating someone,” I guess.

  “Yeah.” Sam laughs. Relief blasts through me. I go limp with the force of it, which is probably a huge clue that I had no right calling him to begin with. “We’ve been dating for a few months. It’s, uh, pretty serious. Actually—and tell me if this is too weird—her brother wanted to hang out this weekend and we were trying to decide what to do as a threesome. Maybe you could go out with us Friday night, make it an even number? We’re supposed to go bowling in Boscobel.”

  “Sure.” I hesitate, and then say, “Maybe don’t tell your girlfriend we used to date.”

  Sam pauses. “She already knows. But she isn’t jealous like that. She knows we’re better friends than we were boyfriend and girlfriend,” he is quick to reassure me.

  “Who is it? Do I know her?”

  “She’s from Boscobel; works at a bank. Angela Pratt. She’s twenty-two, like me. You probably don’t know her.”

  “Nope. Who’s her brother, how old is he, and is he psychotic?”

  “Psychotic? No. Interesting, unique even? Yes. His name is Stone and he’s twenty-one. He works for KB Builders, a construction company out of Boscobel. He’s harmless, nothing to worry about. I think you’ll like him. We’ll pick you up Friday at seven, okay?”

  “Wait. His name is Stone? Like, his for real name is Stone?”

  Sam laughs. “Yeah. Stone Pratt. I don’t know what his parents were thinking, so don’t ask.”

  “Huh. It’s not a bad name. It’s kind of cool, just…different. Anyway, I will see you then.”

  “Sounds good.”

  I turn off my phone and get up, moving toward the closet. I unearth the neglected corkboard full of inspirational quotes from under a blanket. Sitting down on the beige carpet with it in my hands, my back against the footboard of my bed, I peruse the crinkled wrappers
that made up our friendship. That companionship meant everything to me growing up.

  Sometimes I wonder if we would have still found our way to one another had we not lived across the street from each other. Had I not approached him, would he have retreated into the cautious boy he had been prone to be, never to have friends, always keeping to himself? Would he have remained a loner? Or would he have found other friends, more friends, than me?

  Would we have never been each other’s first love? Would he have stayed here, unknown to me, a sad boy existing but not really enjoying life? What would we be like now? Would we be better off, or worse? Was it worth it, is what I really am asking. If Grayson had never met me, he might be a happier person. But there is a chance he wouldn’t be as well.

  I wonder if he shoved the genuine him so far inside that he disappeared. I cannot imagine what it must be like, to be around so many people, to have so many fans shouting your name, and yet feel completely disconnected from it all. Alone.

  The tears come without warning, flowing from my eyes, down my cheeks, and dropping to the collage of sweetness ravaged by reality. I let them fall, adding my sorrow to the childhood naiveté that had Grayson and me thinking we would always be together, in one way or another.

  SOMEHOW MY MOM FINAGLED ME into helping with the lawn care. Her excuse was she didn't feel well, but she felt well enough to come outside and give me specific details on what exactly I was supposed to do. Then she went inside again, saying she was going to lie down. It was all very suspicious.

  So here I am, withering away under the hot sun as I dig holes for flowers. Sweat collects on my body at an embarrassingly fast rate. I have my hair pulled up in a tight ponytail and the light purple tank top and gray cotton shorts are doing nothing to alleviate the sun baking me. A radio on the porch is playing 'Feel Again' by OneRepublic. I glance up as a shadow blocks the sun.

  “Are you angry at the flowers?”

  I am momentarily blinded by Grayson's good looks. The black shirt and jeans he's wearing have got to be hot, yet he looks fresh and cool. It isn't fair. I look away, telling my pulse to calm down. His appearance doesn't mean anything other than neighborly interest, I'm sure.