[a/n: hi! before anything else, there are just a few things i want to say about, well, how i write, in general. i'm writing this as a novel meant to be read all at once, not a chapter-by-chapter thing, and i just want to say that ending chapters with cliffhangers is NORMAL and important to set the pace of a story.
in this case, i used cliffhangers in the past 2 chapters in order to build up the tension, NOT to piss the readers off. i know you mean well, and i appreciate every reader--truly, i do--but it's honestly so difficult to motivate yourself to write when there are a bunch of comments telling me that i "can't fucking end the chapter like this!!!!!" i can, and i will, but please understand that i don't use cliffhangers to spite the readers. i use them because they are needed.
on a side note, i apologize for the late update. i should have updated last friday, but i ended up being too busy (in fact, i still have an assignment due tomorrow, and it's 11 pm and i still haven't done anything hahahahahahaha shoot me now), but aaaanyway, i hope you enjoy this nonetheless. :)
sam xoxo]
* * *
Chapter 23
It was ironic, of course, to think that we've checked all the places where I could actually expect to find Tori. We'd been driving around for so much time that it was stupid to expect we'd ever find her again, but it was a lot stupider for me to forget the one place where Tori and I had spent pretty much all our time together.
I'd been unable to slump in my seat all through the ride, too nervous about the thought of not finding her when I'd been so sure this time, when my gut was telling me that I'd finally got it right. It I couldn't be wrong now. Not anymore.
Austin and Lewis must have sensed my uneasiness because even the two of them had shut up and the car was fraught with a charged silence that none of us seemed to mind.
This was my last card, and if this didn't win the game, then I wasn't sure I could handle another one.
Less than fifteen minutes later, the white building finally came into view, looming larger and larger as we drove closer to it. It was dim in the moonlight and somewhat eerie in the absence of all the other people who usually filled every corner of it, devoid of the chatter and noise that always made the place seem smaller than it actually was.
This was it. It had to be.
We hadn't even pulled into a stop when I saw the lone car in the parking lot.
I felt my heart leap to my throat.
"Is that..." Austin trailed off, looking at me as he slowed into a stop by the sidewalk.
"Yes," I replied. "That's it."
It was my car.
It was here,
Tori was here.
As soon as the car stopped moving, I pushed the door open and stepped out. I was unsteady on my feet and I'd nearly caught on a stop as the blood pounded hard against my ears, making me painfully aware of just how overwhelmed I was for finally, finally finding Tori. I held onto the car until I was sure I could stand on my own, taking deep breaths in an attempt to slow my heartbeat down.
"Should we split up?" Lewis asked me as soon as he got out of the car. Austin had also gone out, and the two of them were staring at me expectantly. "That way, we can find her faster."
I let go of the car, still trying to keep my breaths even and my thoughts collected. I looked them in the eye and, with the certainty of someone who'd finally figured out the riddle, I said, "That's not necessary." I looked up at the school building. "I know where she is."
* * *
Four years ago, Tori and I had set foot in this Rivermount High as freshmen,. Two weeks ago, we graduated. Less than a month before that, we found out Tori was moving away to Japan.
A lot of things had happened over the course of our friendship. In the eight years that we'd known each other, however, the two of us had really grown up in high school, and I knew, I just knew, that Tori would miss it.
I would too, maybe. In a different way, at least. I wouldn't miss the school or the classes so much as I'd miss being with Tori nearly every day.
She could be a pain in the ass, yes, but she was my best friend, and even though sometimes I felt as though I was just too fed up of her antics, nothing would change the fact that she knew me better than anyone in the world and I wouldn't have it any other way.
I'd watched her grow. I'd watched her change. I'd been through all her phases and she'd been through all of mine.
We couldn't be more different from each other, but we've always made it work, because what most people didn't know was that I needed her, too, so much more than she probably needed me.
And if there was one thing that I hated about her, it wasn't her love for cheesy romantic-comedies, nor is it her stubbornness or her cluelessness. It wasn't her simple-minded attitude or her want-it-and-get-it nature.
It was the fact that she could stomach shutting me out.
In those weeks after the night she almost got raped when she'd shut me and the whole world out, leaving me in the dark with no idea as to what she was feeling or thinking or how she was holding up—if she was holding up—had been torturous. She'd left me out there, knocking on her bedroom door, trying to coax her into opening up so I could talk to her—so I could scoop her in my arms and tell her everything was going to be all right and that I was sorry, so so so sorry, for not being there when it happened, just like the way she did seven years ago when I first found out what it really meant when my father drove away.
It was my first birthday after he'd left.
It wasn't like we were doing a party or anything, because we almost always just celebrated my birthday by eating out or going to Cloudland, but I'd always expected him to come back, and I expected him to surprise me. I believed my mom when she told me he was just away for work, that he was just busy, and even though she never promised me that he'd come back, I always assumed that he would.
Only when he hadn't shown up at my birthday did I first realize that something was wrong, and when I'd asked Mom, she finally broke down in front of me.
I'm sure she hadn't meant to tell me on my birthday, and technically, she hadn't, but I'd never seen my mom cry before that. I felt the gravity of the situation fall upon my shoulders and I knew, I just knew, even without my mother spelling it out for me, that Dad was never coming back.
When Tori came over, she'd found me in my room with a family album I'd taken off a shelf. I was ripping pictures of my Dad out. I refused to cry, so instead I'd let the anger take over, letting it boil in my blood, unable to destroy my memories so I settled on destroying our pictures instead.
Tori had seen me and all but rushed to me, and only when she pried my hands open and pulled me into a hug did I finally cry.
She didn't ask me what happened. She didn't have to. She simply pulled me into her arms and held me for as long as I needed.
Something had changed between us then. We were no longer just friends and ever since then, I'd always left the door unlocked for her because the thought of not letting her in was something that had quickly become foreign to me.
It hurt when I'd seen that closed door that separated us, but while I never told her that it did, I made it sure that I would never do anything that might make her lock me out again.
When I finally saw her, however, sitting alone on the bleachers with a couple of beer cans littered around her, I realized that she'd already shut me out again.
She might have been spending time with me. She might have been dragging me along for her movie nights. We might have had conversations, but she was never really talking to me, and it became clear, now that I'd seen her downing a can of beer, what this night had really been all about.
She wasn't trying to find her soul-mate.
She wasn't trying to have an adventure.
She wasn't trying to convince me that I was wrong about true love and fate.
She was ripping pictures up.
* * *
Tori didn't see me until I was almost directly in front of her. Austin and Lewis had stayed behind, almost as though they knew that this was something I needed to do on my own, and as soon as her eyes finally landed on me, I felt the weight of the night fall over me like a heavy blanket, and I couldn't shrug it off no matter what I did.
There were seven opened cans of beer around her, some of which had already toppled over, and another six-pack lay waiting just beside her. She paused mid-swig when she saw me. She lowered the can, clumsily spilling some of the liquid in her carelessness. She wiped her mouth with the back of her other hand.
Then she began to giggle.
It started out as a small bubble of laughter, her shoulders shaking up and down, until it began to build up into a raucous laugh that had her throwing her head back.
I'd seen Tori drunk. I'd seen her drunk so many times that I'd gotten used to it, almost to the point of nonchalance, but somehow, this was different.
I wasn't pissed, or even just slightly irritated.
I'd figured out, like I should have done so long ago, that I didn't know Tori Matsunaga as much as I thought I did.
"Want some?" she said, lifting her drink to offer it to me. "I've got more."
I looked at her for a long time, trying, at least for once, to see past that closed door she'd always kept between us.
It was in her eyes. In her smile. In the way she threw her head back when she laughed.
She had always been wearing a mask.
"Please tell me," I finally said, "that you weren't planning on driving home drunk."
"I would," she told me, "but then I would be lying."
Without waiting for a reply, she brought the can to her lips and took a swig, the beer spilling down her chin and soaking her shirt, too drunk to actually control her hand. I felt a lump rising to my throat and before I could stop myself, I swiped the can from her and threw it across the empty field.
She stood up, stumbling sideways for a moment. "What the fuck?"
"We're going home."
There was something off about my voice and I struggled to keep it even, forcing the words out my throat even though every syllable seemed to scald me on the way out.
I grabbed her hand, but she quickly snatched it away.
"I was still drinking that!"
"As if you're not drunk enough," I snapped. "You can barely stand as it is."
"I'm not drunk."
"Sure you aren't." I bent down to pick up the empty cans she already finished long before we'd gotten here, if only so I had something to do with my hands. I counted them off in my head, trying to distract myself to keep my thoughts under control, but just when I was about to pick up the fifth can, Tori kicked it out of my reach.
I flinched as the can bounced off the bleachers, the sound of metal banging against metal too loud in the darkness of the night.
I looked up and, for the first time in all the years I'd been with Tori, I'd seen her grow angry.
"I'm fine, okay?" she said, shooting daggers at my direction.
"You call this 'fine'?"
"As a matter of fact, I feel fucking awesome, so back the fuck off and leave me alone."
"I leave you alone for a second and the next thing I know you'd be drunk driving off a cliff, Tor." I stepped forward, closing the distance between us so that I could look her in the eye. "I'd spent years looking after you, Tori, and it's way too fucking exhausting, so please just—"
"I never asked you to look after me!"
"You might as well have!" I yelled back, feeling tears prick the corners of my eyes. "Come on, Tor. In all the time we'd spent together, name one moment when I didn't have to save you from your own stupidity. Name just one, I dare you, because goddammit, you are so fucking childish—"
"Oh, like you're so mature?" She scoffed, shaking her head as her lips stretched into a sardonic smile. "Why do you follow me around, Reed?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe because you're my best friend?"
"That's a lie and you know it!"
My brows scrunched up in confusion. "What are you talking about?"
"For fuck's sake, Reed. The only reason you go along with everything I say is because you want to do all those things but you're so fucking scared that you never let yourself get out of that fucking comfort zone."
"That's not true!"
"It is and you know it!" she yelled back. "You forced yourself to grow up the moment your dad left and you never let yourself become a child anymore, and you know why? Because you're afraid. You're afraid and you've always been afraid of not having every fucking thing under control, so—"
"Shut up!"
She came to an abrupt halt and silence ensued between the giant rift that seemed to separate us.
We were both breathing hard, gasping for breaths as though we'd just finished throwing punches at each other. I looked at her; at the stranger looking back at me with an expression I'd never seen on her before.
My throat was parched, my mouth too dry, and my eyes were stinging.
I could feel the ground shifting beneath the two of us, cracking apart so that we seemed to stand in different continents slowly drifting apart from each other.
I took a step back.
"You know what?" I said, shaking my head as I took a deep breath, bracing myself to say the words that I knew would change everything between us—from our past to now to our present. "I may be afraid"—I took another step back—"but at least I'm not some eighteen-year-old toddler who can't take care of herself, and I'm done being your babysitter, Tor."
I looked at her, trying to see past the stoic expression on her face, but her lips remained pursed and her eyes betrayed no emotion.
"I'm done." I took one final breath, inhaling deep and exhaling all the weight that had settled in my chest the moment I realized I wasn't welcomed behind the door she'd kept shut close between us. Then, finally, I said the words, "We're done."
* * *
Everybody always said that every relationship has its fair share of ups and downs, be it a romantic one or not, and I'd always had people telling me that it was literally impossible for friends not to have arguments whenever Tori and I told them that we'd never gotten into a fight before.
Yes, we've had little arguments about petty things like what movies we should watch for a movie marathon or who gets to choose the music in the car, but we've never, not once, fought in the entirety of our friendship.
Until tonight, Tori had never gotten truly angry about anything and I, while often irritable and impatient, had always subconsciously come to understand that being friends with her meant that there were just some things I needed to accept and deal with, so in all the years we'd spent together, I never expected us to ever end up in a fight that would lead to either of us walking away with no intention of looking back ever again.
In this case, it was me.
After our argument, I'd grabbed the purse I'd accidentally left with her earlier the night, walked away and headed straight to the parking lot where she'd parked my car. On my way, I'd run into both Austin and Lewis, who, by the looks on their faces, must have heard the whole thing.
Lewis's face was marked with unconcealed worry, but behind his glasses, Austin's eyes were trained on me with a calmness that only made me feel like he could see right through me; that he could see all the things I was holding back, that he could hear the blood pounding against my ears, that he could hear me trying to swallow past the lump in my throat.
"She's drunk" was all I told them before making my way past them, asking without asking to make sure she gets home safely.
"Where are you going?" I'd heard Austin ask behind me, but I merely walked on, eager to make my escape because I wasn't sure how long I could stand there without my knees collapsing on me.
It was the first fight I'd gotten into with Tori .
It was, I was quickly beginning to realize, perhaps the last and only one we'd ever have.
Perhaps this was the reason why, fifteen minutes later, I found myself walking alone in the park, heading towards The Bench where it all started nearly a decade ago.
At that moment, it only made perfect sense for it to end here, so without thinking, I found myself sitting down on the cold, metal bench, pausing for a moment when I thought back to all those moments when Tori sat right next to me in this very spot, and the bench suddenly felt colder than it had been just five seconds ago.
Before I knew it, all the things I'd desperately been trying to hold in came rushing out of me, the current so strong that I could feel my bones quivering and shaking with every wave, again and again and again as I brought my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around myself, wishing the storm would pass before all my bones could shatter.
I waited it out, like a child taking shelter from the harsh winds, only to realize that no matter how much you close your eyes, the wind can still drag you away and the water could still find a way to soak you up, and you realize there's no use in trying to hide under an umbrella because the rain would never stop until it felt like stopping.
So I stopped trying and let it all out, and when I did, I found myself unable to stop, much less care about stopping in the first place, because even though I was the one who'd said the words we're done, it still felt like she was the one who'd said goodbye.
I wasn't sure how long I'd been there when I heard the sound of a twig breaking.
My head snapped up to the direction of the noise, suddenly aware that I was a vulnerable teenager crying alone in a park at nearly three in the morning.
"Red?"
I felt my breath catch.
Then a figure emerged from the darkness, stepping into the light of the lamppost near the bench.
My heart dropped to my stomach.