Finding Him

Chapter Twenty Three

~Will~

So maybe I never would get to fight Dex over Nikki. I had planned too, but I wasn't so sure it was worth it anymore. School had long since ended; making me and my friends the next junior class of Washington High. Go Warriors!

Next year I would go back to that shabby, thirty-year-old building and see Nikki and Dex laughing through the hallway and kissing each other like they did for those last three weeks of our sophomore year.

I find it interesting how life works out sometimes. Nikki; the girl I knew that meant the world to me, yet the one girl I couldn't keep. Grace was still here. In fact, the brightly light screen of my phone proves to me that I probably have at least four text messages from her- all moving apologies for something she thinks she did to make me mad at her. She always thought I was ignoring her. OK, so maybe I didn't always respond to her texts or remember to call and tell her goodnight, but my mind is always preoccupied now.

It's always racing with ideas and visions for what my life could be. I never used to be one of those people who pondered endless, "What if. . .", scenarios, but lately I just haven't been able to help it. My old mantra, "You can't change the past," has rendered itself useless these past few months. I'm starting to think I'm like the living Jay Gatsby with all the time I've put into wanting to change what my past has brought me in the present.

What if I was at the beach when Nikki had drown? What if I saved her?

What if Dex never came here? (Well, that one is kind of obvious. None of this would've happened, of course)!

Or would it? Would some creepy, messed-up voodoo shit have happened? Would the stars have collided, causing them to explode? Would it have transported Nikki right into Dex's arms while everyone else was too busy staring at the sky?

With all this effort put into thinking about what things between Nikki and me would be like if Dex never came along, you would think I would actually be motivated to going out and doing something about it. Such as reverting to my old method and just straight punching him onto his ass until he hands Nikki over, which is clearly ineffective based upon what happened last time (aka me bleeding just as hard as him).

If you could see the way he looked at her though, and the way she looked at him; you would know there was no point in trying to separate them.

When Nikki first moved here, she told me about Dex. I remember the way her huge green eyes threatened to spill over with tears, and the way she would look out the window, towards the sky, as if knowing that somewhere out in the world Dex was looking at the same sky comforted her.

We were so young, though. (Hell, we still are young)! I didn't think it would last over such distance. One of my firm beliefs is that you shouldn't try to make a relationship work long distance because it almost never does.

Now I can see that love will do what it wants. I mean, that's why we all want to love and be loved, right? Because it's a emotion we have no control or understanding of?

Love doesn't care if you live 5,000 miles part. It isn't bothered by cheating or lies or fights. Love isn't a people-pleaser. It frankly doesn't care if you're unhappy because it chose to have you love somebody who loves someone else.

That's why we have to let go. We have to let go of the things we can't control because in the end we're only hurting ourselves, and dooming our hearts and lives to an unquenchable lifetime of thirst for things we can't have.

I guess that's why I made the ultimate decision to stop talking to my whole group of friends. When I walked past our table that first day after my decision had been made, my stomach was full of wasps. My feet were weighted by liquid led. I nearly turned around and ran back to them.

Those people I had known for years stared holes into the back of my neck. I felt like a traitor; just turning my back on them with no explanation.

What kept my feet moving was the feeling of Dex and Nikki's eyes resting upon my back among those of my friends.

If I continued to talk to them, then I would be exposing myself to an inevitable stream of information about Nikki and Dex all the time. It would be impossible to let go.

It's funny, isn't it? How some people's happiness is the worst sadness for someone else?

I guess that's why life isn't fair. If it was, everything we could possibly want would be ours. Unfortunately, that's not possible because Dex would want Nikki and I would want Nikki and Nikki would want Dex and we would live in an inescapable limbo of want.

My eyes are drawn up from the sight of my sneakered, size 12 feet hitting the black, uneven pavement to the looming wooden beach house of Dexter himself.

Wiping the sweat that has formed along my hairline, I squint up at the wooden deck that expands over the sandy ground from Dex's back door.

Afternoon runs had become my daily thinking time. All I needed was my phone (aka my source of thought-provoking as well as high energy running songs) and my ratty red football shorts, and I could go for miles or until the sky grew dark.

Today I had chosen to take the road that runs along the beach verses my usual loop around my neighborhood's one mile bike trail. Clearly, a stupid decision. Damn, there really hasn't been a positive change made in my life recently.

The house is brightly lit as well as the patio despite the fact that it has only just begun to get dark. Through the windows I can see (OK, maybe I am a bit of a stalker) people laughing and holding hot pink party cups. On the patio, there is what looks like a pretty serious poker game going on among several men and a heavy duty array of food and fireworks all set up for later in the day.

I only get a glimpse. A fraction of a second stands between the time my eyes hit them and the time in which they disappear. It's all I need.

My breath is sucked out of my chest like a vacuum has been jammed down my throat. It felt like I was looking into the future through a small window pane.

There she was. Her face was lit up in a smile. She was holding a light-haired baby in one arm while her other arm rested on Dex's shoulder. When he spun her, her eyes were moved to face the window.

Nikki's eyes locked onto me. It felt like the spin stopped, and the chips in the poker player's hands had frozen mid-bet, and the music from the speakers had caught in the singer's throat because I couldn't bring myself to believe what was happening.

She smiled at me. A mischievous twinkle glazed her eyes. Then she was gone. She had been spun away from memory lane.

In that fleeting glance, I saw her goodbye.

I had made her happy, and she would always hold me in her heart. We were best described as a secret created at the intersection of two crossing paths; we met once before parting forever.

My fight was never with Dex, I realized. It was with her. Her heart never belonged to me, and mine did not belong to her, but we were stuck on each other.

She was the damsal in distress. The innocent girl who stumbed into a classroom with a young, frail heart, and I was the boy wonder with a sick need to be the savior, the role model, to everyone I met.

I had helped her cope in her time of sadness, but she did not need me anymore, and I did not need her.

She was loved, and she respected me for my efforts to help her. Both of our jobs were done.

So, I smiled back, at the empty window, and then I ran away with a feeling of weightlessness.