CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
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2021
I woke up with a start, plagued by the overwhelming, unmistakable feeling of dread creeping up my spine like something wasn't quite right. Something wrapped tightly around each of my ribs, weaving my bones together into a spider web, and I struggled to pull myself up into a sitting position, with a strange weight on my chest fighting the opposite way.
The empty space on the bed next to me was a clear indicator something had happened. I could pull the covers and the blankets to my side, covered up to my shoulders, and they wouldn't get stuck or be held back by the weight of his body, sound asleep next to me. My heart pounded so hard against my chest that my vision pulsated red when I dared to roll out of bed, slowly setting my feet on the wooden floors, so gelid even while I was wearing two pairs of warm socks.
I'd always been terrified of Chase's grandparents' cabin when the sun set. It was stupid and childish and we'd been coming here for years at that point, yet there I was, dreading the moment I'd be alone in this place.
It looked like a proper horror movie set, once the flames in the fireplace had been put out and the lights had dimmed, with danger lurking around each corner. With Chase around, I wasn't nearly as restless, but being in there all by myself in the dark—the clock on my phone had informed me it was three in the morning—did nothing to ease my fears. His own phone was sitting on his bedside table, where he'd left it just before we went to bed, but he'd taken his wallet, driver's license, and ID. If anything happened to him outside in the frigid weather, he wouldn't be able to call me for help—and I wanted so desperately to believe he knew by number by heart if he ever got access to a phone—and I mentally scolded myself and my brain for instantly jumping to the worst-case scenario.
Going back to sleep when my mind was racing like a freight train wasn't an option, so I could very well return to my laptop and focus on outlining my senior project, which I'd conveniently been neglecting for months. It's what I should have chosen to do, but I knew I would never be able to focus when I didn't know where Chase was or whether or not he was okay and safe, and I wouldn't give into selfishness and put a stupid senior project ahead of him in my list of priorities. I could redo it next year if it came down to that, even though it would be downright humiliating and I was certain my parents would never forgive me for it, but certain things couldn't wait for me to get my life together.
In the living room, my trembling hands poked the fireplace and lit up matches until the fire revived, illuminating and heating that side of the house so he wouldn't come back to a dark, freezing cabin—if he'd even care. I wanted to believe he'd come back, with the only one of his belongings gone being his wallet, but his recent behavior had been worrying me, though I didn't feel the right to even bother him about my concerns. It wasn't like he'd listen, and it wasn't like I'd ever understand what he was going through, so my pathetic attempts at being supportive and comforting would fall flat and make it all worse.
To say his recent behavior had been erratic would be an appropriate way of putting it, in my opinion, even if I never admitted to it aloud.
Ever since my father's critique—he was taking it like criticism—of his script, Chase's mood had worsened considerably, and being around him was like waiting for a bomb to explode.
Though he still showed up for lectures and no one was missing out on new Film Theory content, it wasn't the same; he was unfocused and impatient, unforgiving of any mistakes or anything that wasn't close to perfection, snapping at people, and even his appearance had taken a nosedive. He was disheveled most times and not in the effortlessly attractive way he'd pull off the look ever since I first met him; he'd throw on the first pieces of clothing he'd find and call it a day, though he was still showering. He hadn't bothered to shave his stubble, leading him to grow quite an impressive beard, and most people complimented him on it, saying he was embracing his age—not that he was that old—and that it made him look more professional and mature. I regularly shied away from making any comments about that, not wanting to deepen the chasm between the two of us any further, especially when the age difference between us was such a sore spot at times that I didn't dare to touch the subject when his emotions were so volatile.
Now, during Christmas break, I'd forced him to leave town and come to the cabin, away from everything that stressed him out. I was still there, however, and constantly obsessed over being a triggering aspect of his life considering everything he'd told me that night—it was my fault, he suspected my father had some vague knowledge regarding the true nature of our relationship, I couldn't do anything right—and tried to keep my distance as much as it was humanly possible without tipping him off, but I struggled with letting him suffer by himself.
With him snapping at everyone and my overwhelming desire to be perfect, to please people I didn't even know existed, I'd felt it was safer for both of us if we interacted as little as possible before the break. It was torture to sit there and watch him while knowing I was to blame for this spiral of self-destruction, at least in part, and I'd spent so much time convincing myself I'd made the right call by giving him space, convincing myself I'd done it for him, but, deep down, I knew it was to serve my own agenda. I didn't find myself capable of surviving another argument like that, especially now that he had every reason to be justifiably angry at me, so I forced myself to be on my best behavior. If I truly acted like we meant nothing to each other, then my father's suspicions, if they even existed, would never be warranted, and we would be okay.
Stepping away also served as a breather around Savannah and Ingrid, now that they were convinced they'd talked me out of moving out, even though things were still far from okay between the three of us. They would never admit to it, but I knew they spoke of me behind my back, vehemently denying it whenever I confronted them, so I decided to give it a rest so as to not raise any red flags. Sarah, too, saw that as an opportunity to hang out with us, knowing me and Sav from film school, and Ingrid by name, so she was yet another pawn in a larger chess game Chase and I had been playing with everyone. I felt disgusting for having to lie to yet another person, but those feelings were quickly stashed away and disregarded whenever I remembered the nasty things she'd said to me about him—without even knowing him. She'd never know him like I did, and I took great comfort in that fact.
In a way, a trip upstate and stay at the cabin was my getaway, too. I was desperate for some fresh air, away from Ingrid and Savannah's suffocating stares and presence, and they hadn't raised any questions when I told them I needed to unwind. Savannah had been particularly supportive—maybe a little bit too much, which I attributed to remorse over our falling out—and her comment about me looking overwhelmed with coursework and my senior project hadn't even sounded that patronizing, which I'd counted as a win.
The present version of me was regretting everything about that decision, now that I was alone in a cold, dark cabin with no hints of Chase's whereabouts. It wasn't snowing, even though it was freezing outside, but it was pouring, raindrops pelting the windows like a barrage of bullets, and that went without mentioning the violent gusts of wind. No one should be wandering outside in that weather, even while driving.
I wasn't sure how long I stayed there in the living room, warming up by the fire, eyes glued to the door. I only left to pour myself a glass of wine—not my smartest decision; it was three in the morning, after all—to have something to keep my hands busy instead of fidgeting or picking at my nail polish, a nasty habit I'd never managed to shake off. I was wide awake then, the wine utterly powerless against my desire to stay alert, but I suspected it was more thanks to anxiety than to a genuine burst of nightly energy.
I paced around the living room like an animal in a pen, pondering my next move. Under normal circumstances, I would have gone back to sleep, as Chase could have gone out for a drive for plenty of innocent reasons, but considering his current state of mind I wasn't too sure where his head had been the minute he left. The reasonable thing to do would probably be to call the police, especially since we'd been drinking earlier that night, but I wouldn't know how to explain who I was and why I was the one calling. It could be nothing, so I'd only be putting us both at risk if I reached out to anyone, and I finally realized just how lonely this arrangement had made us—mostly me.
I'd only met Chase's parents once, and it had been through Stephen Delaroux and purely out of courtesy, as there was no real reason why a student should be meeting her professor's parents. I didn't know his friends, either, with him adamantly keeping us apart from each other to the point I doubted they would even bat an eye if they knew he was my senior advisor. I kept him away from Savannah and Ingrid for his own good, not to mention he couldn't stand the latter, and Stephen and my parents could never know about us. While I was glad to have a place and moments Chase and I could call our own, I hadn't considered the isolation they entailed, the inability to let anyone else in, and the despair that came with losing the other. What could I do on my own? Without him here, I couldn't go back home without Savannah and Ingrid figuring out the truth, and I couldn't even open my heart to them and be honest for once in my life.
When it came down to it, there was no one else out there for me except for him. It was more than enough, but it also left me stranded when he was gone—even temporarily. It was pathetic and ridiculous, like I couldn't live without him, but I'd made him the center of my universe for the past three years and everything I did revolved around him, so I wouldn't know how to do anything else if I were to lose him for good. By pushing Savannah and Ingrid away, over and over, by attempting to distance myself from my parents, I was solidifying Chase as the only constant presence in my life, and he had yet to give me a reason not to trust him, but I'd broken his trust countless times before. What would happen if he got tired of this—the lying, the sneaking around, the loneliness? He'd move on fine without me, but what would I do?
The front door clicked and creaked, interrupting my inner monologue, and I set my now empty glass aside. Chase walked through the door, soaking wet, but unharmed, and something kept me glued to where I was, fearing I'd send him running back to the storm if I dared to move a muscle.
"Are you okay?" I questioned.
He shrugged, tossing his coat to the back of a couch. "Yeah."
"I was worried sick about you. I woke up and you were gone."
He rubbed a hand across his cheek. "Why?"
"Why what? Why was I worried? It's storming outside, you'd been drinking, and, let's be honest, you haven't been yourself lately, and you're headed off to a dark path. I'm not worried about you just because you went out at three in the morning. It's the overall situation."
With a sigh, he headed towards the drinks cabinet and reached out for something in the back, where the heavier, stronger beverages were stored. After all the wine we'd had all day, switching to liquor was far from being a good idea, but he caught me staring as he poured himself a double shot of whiskey on the rocks and scoffed.
"What?"
I stiffened. "What happened? You could've woken me up."
Chase straightened, bringing the cold glass to his lips. "I went out for a drive to clear my head. Didn't see the need to wake you up in the middle of the night."
"During a storm?"
"Why are you making such a big deal out of this? Weren't you the one so willing to do the same thing a while ago? Didn't you tell Savannah that's what you were doing?" I stepped back towards the hallway leading to the bedrooms, knowing exactly where this conversation was headed. I also knew I didn't want to stick around to listen to it, aware of just how deep his words were able to wound me. "Let me have some time for myself, please."
"I'm making a big deal out of this because I know you're not okay, and I love you, so I'm obviously going to be worried. I've been trying so hard, Chase, I really have. I've given you space, I've given you time, but I'm not sitting back and let you self-destruct—"
He raised a hand to shush me. "I'm telling you it's not a big deal. Please give it a rest."
Tentatively, I approached him. "Just tell me what to do, then. Tell me what you want me to do to help, and I'll do it. It terrifies me seeing you like this—"
"Jesus, Penelope. Drop it. Why is that so hard for you to do? You're making this whole situation about you. If I needed help, I would've asked for it. Parading around the cabin like looking at you doesn't remind me of everything that happened this last month isn't helping." Though everything inside me threatened to crumble the second I looked away from him, though my eyes were scorching with tears, I kept my stare fixated on him. In theory, blaming his words on his heightened emotions and the drunken haze filling the living room was easy and natural, but my brain struggled with coming to terms it that. Knowing the why didn't make it hurt any less. "The second I leave to step away from all that, I have it thrown on my face, and why? What did I ever do to you?"
"Chase—"
His bright blue eyes, red-rimmed from exhaustion, drilled into mine. "Maybe your father doesn't actually know about us. Maybe him rejecting my script and indirectly calling it trash wasn't your fault. Maybe none of this was your fault and blaming it on you was really shitty of me. It was." My teeth released my bottom lip after gnawing on it so hard blood had pooled in my mouth. I was closer to him now, but still unable to forget about how my father had compared his work to mine, an innocent comment at the time, but the implications of it ran far deeper than he'd realized. My work, even if it were inexperienced and unpolished, wasn't trash. This wasn't fair, but that was how the film industry operated. "It doesn't make it any easier to look at you. I look at you and it hurts."
"I'm sorry—"
"And where does that leave us? I'm tired, Penn. I am." He finished what was left of his whiskey and, to my relief, didn't pick up the bottle again. "All I ever did was work my damn hardest on that script, for years, and it was tossed aside without as much as a second thought. Does it matter if your father is giving me a chance to rewrite and edit it? Does that matter when he doesn't expect me to succeed? I look at you and remember that, when I was your age, I really thought I had what it takes to make it big. I thought I had the talent, and needed the right connections. I have the connections, but I don't have the talent. I don't have the energy or the motivation. I look at you and think about everything I could have been, and this is where I ended up." He tried to move his now empty glass away from the keychain holder, but accidentally knocked it down, shattering it into pieces on the floor. I rushed towards him, trying to check if he'd gotten hurt by the glass. "This feels so lonely. Like there's no one else. Like I can't tell the truth to anyone, not even my friends. Not even my family. When they ask what happened, I have to leave half of the story out."
My chest burned like it was about to explode, but my head couldn't make much sense of what he'd just said, still woozy from the drinks. Even so, I'd heard him loud and clear—being around me hurt, but there was no one else. One day, when it hurt less, we'd be able to look back on this and see how much we'd grown, how much it had made us learn, but it still stung. It was still the most isolating experience of my life, even with him by my side through all of it, going through the same tsunamis as I was.
I told him that. There wasn't much else I could say or do, and I knew he didn't want me to give him a pep talk, especially now, much like I knew my words weren't getting to him the way I wanted to. He didn't make any motions to try to leave again, following me to the bedroom instead, shaking like an abandoned house.
I could have also chosen to leave, doing the right thing for his sake—why should I subject him to the torture of having me around when it hurt him that bad?—but I didn't. I clung to him for dear life, my lifeline, and I'd promised him (and myself) I wouldn't leave, not when things got hard or harder, but it was just dawning on us how massive the sacrifices we'd made—and still had ahead of us—truly were.
I could survive the unbearable loneliness of this world with him, but hadn't yet considered how it felt for him, when he had two other lives away from me; he had his career and his friends, two aspects of his life I absolutely could not meddle or get involved with. Like me, he had to lie and omit, but the stakes had always been much higher for him, and I wouldn't lose as much as he would if things were to not work out as planned. The pressure I and this relationship had been putting on him was finally making him crumble and crash, and no matter what I did, he was still slipping through my fingers like smoke.
I tightened my arm around him, forehead pressed against his t-shirt, and knew I loved him more than anything else in the world. Somehow, I feared the world would be much kinder to us if I hated him instead.