Could it have been true, that through all these years, he was feeling exactly what I had been feeling? All those nights I spent in a heap of tears, picturing him living blissfully without me, had he been doing the same? Because of a letter I never responded to that I never received?
“I’m sorry I didn’t get your letter. If you felt anything close to what I felt, then… thatsucks.That really, really sucks.” I heave a laugh in place of tears. “Truthfully, I should have reached out again but I—I was being… passive. I waited on you to come to me like I was waiting for my dad to show up all over again. I was, I don’t know, testing you, I guess.” The admission barely makes its way out. “But I hope you realize, Declan, I never held anything against you. I thought you were holding something against me.”
He looks down, shakes his head. “I don’t know if I should laugh or cry right now.” A laugh so weak it could pass as a cough escapes him, and then he looks back at me. “I wasn’t holding anything against you either, Blair. Not at all.Man—” He grips the back of his neck, pressing his lips together. “I’m so sorry for all the time we lost.” His voice is filled with regret so deep it sounds like anger. Both of his eyes fill as they look at me, and mine follow. I wonder if I’ve become a blurry mess in his vision, too.
We both let quiet tears stream down our faces in the weak neon glow. Declan reaches his hand through the space betweenus and wipes my jaw free of a tear. The dimple in my chin presses in to prevent more from spilling.
“So, what do we do?” I ask, helpless.
I want everything from him and don’t have the slightest clue how to begin getting it. Every year. Every lost year. I want it back. I want us to spend every foreseeable second together until the memory foam of our bodies returns to their forgotten positions. I want to comehome.
“Let’s try to be friends again,” he offers gently.
The corner of his mouth flickers into the suggestion of a smile before faltering, waiting for my reaction.
Friends.Right.
The thickness in my throat turns to cement, but I try to swallow past it and smile.
“Yeah,” I sniffle. “Friends. Let’s…” I nod and I don’t stop.
He dips his head to try and catch my darting eyes. I still. I try to offer him my best smile. He laughs a little, and I pocket the sound to unfold tonight. He turns his head sharply to look at the dash. I follow his eyes: 9:59 p.m.
In the cold silence, I can hear “Drive” by the Cars playing faintly through the speakers.
“I didn’t hear the music this whole time,” I say quietly, almost to myself.
His eyes flit up to the dash. “Me neither,” he replies.
Declan looks at me again, and this time, it’s different from how he looked at me when we first got in the car. It’s unhurried, lingering.
“I’m going to drive you home now, Blair,” he says softly before putting his seat belt on and putting my car in reverse. “You’ve had a long day.”
My mind berates itself as I buckle myself in and face forward.
Friends. That horrible feeling of free-falling in my stomach was precisely why hope was so dangerous. You couldn’t allow it in. Not even a little bit. Because I’d spent four and a half years getting rid of hope, trying to make the reality of his rejection sting less, only for one conversation to let hope seep in through the cracks and tear everything wide open again.
Chapter 18
My fictional characters are seconds away from leaning in for their first kiss when my mom comes scurrying into the back room of the convenience store. I’m sitting on an upside-down crate, laptop open to the manuscript I’ve been writing since the funeral, with zero sense of how long I’ve been lost in my fictional world. Long enough to feel my butt bones tingle with numbness from digging into the plastic-waffle gridding of the crate.
“Honey.” She shuffles toward me with a smile on her face, and I slam my laptop shut. “Look what I just found.” Shestretches out her hand, revealing a film photo small enough to fit in your back pocket.
I hold it up for inspection. It’s a grainy image of Lottie, twenty years younger, and a small girl standing by her side in front of a house. My mom circles behind me, peeking over my shoulder at the photo.
“Recognize anything?” she questions, with the obvious implication that I should.
“Is it…” I bring the photo up for closer investigation. “Oh, that’s me! And… is that the cottage?” I point to the terra-cotta pot that’s taller than I am in the photo.
“Yep! You have been to the house. Even if you don’t remember it,” my mom practically squeals.
The cream-colored arched doorway was difficult to recognize in its pristine condition. Now, it was almost completely overtaken by the lavender bushes that seemed larger than the house itself.
It didn’t seem possible, but perhaps the wave of déjà vu I felt entering the house for what I thought was the first time, was my body’s memory of it.
“Well, anyways,” my mom sings, “just thought you’d like to have that. What a full-circle moment now that it’s yours, huh?”
“Yeah, no, definitely, that’s… that’s wild.” I try to sound cheerful despite the agonizing swirl of “should I live there, should I not” stirring in my stomach. “So full circle.”
