Falling into Summer

Epilogue

Two years and two months later

Haley

Being the middle of October and the weather is starting to change, I decide to wear a pair of jeans and a sweater to the UCF football game Sarah invited us to with her, Mark, and Jesse. After spending the day cleaning, I don't want to fuss with my hair, so I braid it in pigtails and throw on a baseball cap before leaving.

Getting over Carter was the hardest thing I had to do that year. He broke me in ways I didn't know was possible to be broken. But eventually I moved on to someone new, and although I'd never admit it out loud, I did so only to help with the loneliness that engulfed me when Carter left. By having someone around who wanted me, I was able to fend off feelings of rejection, self-doubt, and emptiness that had begun to define me. And because this new person never asked, I didn't have to explain why I was the way I was in our new relationship. Before I knew it, I had become Carter... I was the distant and quiet one, with a wall around my heart for no one to break down.

After graduation, I moved to Los Angeles the following summer, and as I started working at a recording studio, I had convinced myself Carter was a mistake. I threw myself into a new life, with my boyfriend, and was well on my way to making all my dreams come true. But after a couple of months, I started to feel unsatisfied in a life I thought I wanted. I felt like I couldn't recognize myself in the mirror anymore and I didn't like the person I was becoming. So, after seven months, I decided to give it all up and moved back to Florida.

About a week after I moved back in with my mother, I went to lunch with her and Sarah. It was the first time I'd seen Sarah in over a year and although I was happy to see her, I wasn't happy with all the memories that came rushing back when I saw her. We spent the whole lunch catching up and successfully avoiding the subject of Carter. Then at the end, she asked me if I was even remotely interested in how he was doing. Despite the pain in my chest at the mere mention of his name, I asked how he was. She informed me that he and Leah broke up the previous year, and that he actually had just finished seeing someone else. She elaborated that although he still had his house in Virginia, he was actually making friends here and moving this weekend into his own house about an hour away, to be closer to his work. I remember feeling like she brought him up just so she could tell me he was single, and like it was a test for me to reach out to him, but I wasn't interested in chasing him. If he wanted to contact me, then he could figure it out. After all, he left me. I didn't give up on him until he had made it clear he wasn't interested anymore.

By the time it was summer, my mother and I were starting to see Sarah and her family pretty regularly, and it started to feel like old times. I think it helped that Carter lived so far away because I didn't have to worry about running into him. Then as it was nearing the two-year mark since my summer with Carter, I decided to send him an email simply to pave the way for when the day came that we actually would run into each other again. I felt like if we could get the awkwardness out of the way in an email, then maybe when we saw each other it wouldn't be so bad for me and everyone else around us.

So, I sent him a quick email to his work address, which I had gotten from Sarah. I wished him a happy birthday and hoped that he'd have a good time in Virginia. Because he was out of town, a week went by before I got a response from him. He seemed genuinely happy to hear from me, insisting "It's good to hear from you. How have you been? What's new?"

I responded explaining that things were starting to get better now that I was back in Florida, and I asked how things were with him. He responded that he spends all of his time at work, and that he was living with a girl, but that it was a mistake. "It's hard enough to live with someone you do love, and this is infinitely harder." I remember being surprised that he told me this so easily, and then I remembered that that's how things were with us... We could talk and be honest so effortlessly with one another.