Dedicated to s_strawberry. Thank you for the cookies and the kind words. But mostly the cookies. Mostly the cookies. Here's to hoping you get what that means.
Cheap Hotel by Leon Else (though I can't find any YouTube videos for the song) because "you deserve more than the lover you chose".
Chapter 30
The next few weeks passed by with some sort of regularity.
Nate would drive me to school – Angelie no longer gave me the stink eye about it and instead went back to pretending I didn't exist – and I would wait for him in the library if he had football practice to catch a ride home. We would hang out at Annabelle's or at one of our houses and it was always nice when Amanda would join us.
A couple of afternoons, Daniel would drop by to hang out. We would pretend to do our homework or watch TV when, really, we would just fall asleep and nap on the couch. Everyone else in the house teased us about it whenever we got caught. It was very sweet, true, but some part of me felt a twinge of sadness because I woke up realizing that Daniel had fallen asleep first because the workload at Smithson was tiring him out so much.
Saturday mornings, I was at Julian's house – or villa as he'd temporarily moved back with his parents – working on our project, huddled in our own corners of the den until lunch came and Julian's parents would all-too-enthusiastically invite me to eat with them. I would decline but, as they pointed out with warm smiles, it was impossible to say no to a Pitt.
Daniel would pick me up after lunch with the Pitts and we would try for an actual date – an activity, usually a movie, and a meal afterwards. Eventually we would end up back at his house to study or nap – and it stopped strictly at the nap part.
Louis and Jenny had gone back to calling me a social butterfly while Allie frequently complimented me on how well I was juggling three guys at once.
I'd learned enough to simply roll my eyes and let their teasing pass. Eventually, we would all just slip back into the way things were before I had a spotlight placed on me. That, I think, was what I was most thankful for. Calm in the middle of the eye of the storm.
In all honesty, it felt good to be surrounded by people and not to stress – as much as before, anyway – about school.
I'd taken my SATs in junior year and, in a spur-of-the-moment thing, decided against re-taking them this year. All of my college applications had been sent out and the work I put in the past three years gave me a lot of breathing room school-wise. I wasn't about to morph into a slacker but there was no harm in taking my foot off the pedal especially, as Allie pointed out, my GPA's greatest threat had transferred to Smithson.
It looked like a senior year that I could – crossing fingers – enjoy. I could, at the very least, spend Thanksgiving break stuffing myself with food and binge watching sit-coms.
Becca, the afternoon before Thanksgiving Day, walked into my room armed with a tub of mayonnaise and a pack of turkey jerky and parked herself – growing tummy included – on my bed. "Whatchoodoing?" she cooed.
"The better question is what are you doing?" I grimaced, as she took a bite of what I imagined was pure disgustingness. "Shouldn't you be getting ready for your flight? You have to be at the airport soon, you know."
"Adam is finishing up with the packing," she explained. "He's nervous I might overexert myself and suddenly give birth while placing my bunny slippers in our suitcase."
I chuckled. "He does know that's physically impossible, right?"
"Theoretically, yes. But has just about abandoned logic with all of that excitement of his." She ended with an exasperated sigh.
I got up, gave her a hug and patted her rotund belly. "I think it's cute."
"I think I don't want to talk about this anymore," she huffed before munching on another jerkey-mayo monstrosity. "What about you? Any special plans for tomorrow?" Her eyebrows began to wiggle teasingly. "Maybe some plans that involve your boyfriend and a very empty house?"
Ginny was spending Thanksgiving with her family, like she did most holidays. Adam and Becca were flying to Nebraska to spend time with Becca's family before she was banned from flying; and, due to some scheduling issues with the private airline they worked for, Mom and Dad couldn't be home until the day after Thanksgiving itself.
"I'm sleeping over at Nate's tonight," I told Becca pointedly. "When Mom and Dad get in tomorrow, we'll probably just go out for dinner if they still feel like it."
"Sorry about having to ditch you," she apologized for the fourth time today. Her eyes were already starting to well up. Hormones. I walked over and gave her a preemptive hug. "You're going to be all alone and this holiday is supposed to be spent with family –"
"It's okay, Becs. Really." I cut her off with a smile. "Nate's family is practically my family too and they're fine with Daniel coming over tomorrow. I'm not going to be alone, okay?"
"I know," she whined. "But I just feel like I'm abandoning you in this time of great emotional need."
I paused. "Emotional what?"
"You know."
My expression said I really didn't.
Becca rolled her eyes. "Your boyfriend choosing some stupid school over you!"
Becca had made it abundantly clear that she thought Daniel was a no good son of a butcher – she promised herself William (they'd finally decided on a name) would never hear her swearing – and that I should break up with him pronto.
"Smithson is not just some stupid school, Becs." There, again, was the sigh that came too easily whenever this was brought up. "It's an amazing school and an amazing opportunity for Daniel. So when he got offered an amazing chance –"
The dark look in her eyes stopped me. "Say amazing one more time and your hair is going to have some deep conditioning – mayo style."
I smiled nervously and stepped non-too-discretely away from her.
"He could have said no," Becca continued, grumbling around a mouthful of mayo-jerky. "It was stupid of him to pick a school over you – a school that you said no to!"
"I was the stupid one for doing that!" I forced myself to calm down and walked over to my desk to distance myself from my loveable and very hormonal sister-in-law. There didn't have to be two irrational people in this conversation. "Why are you so upset about this, Becs?"
That earned me a look. "Why aren't you?"
"I was upset, at first. But I can't blame him, you know?" I looked away. "I'm even jealous of him."
"You're jealous that he has to drive thirty minutes to and from school?" She practically barked in laughter. "If you had actually gone to that school, you wouldn't be hitting snooze on your alarm so much. You do know that, yes?"
"I'm not jealous of that," I laughed. "It's just an old regret resurfacing, I suppose."
"But you're having a great senior year at Warren Brown." She hugged the pack of turkey jerky and mayo jar closer to her chest. "Don't think about that stuffy school anymore."
"I don't think about it all the time. But I can't help that it pops into my head sometimes," I grumbled embarrassingly as I walked back to my desk
Becca got up off the bed – a feat that was a bit hard to do, belly and all – and gave me a hug. "And you really aren't mad at him for choosing to go? Even if it was the stupidest decision he could make?"
"No, Becs." I was tired of being asked this question so many times by everyone around me. "I'm not mad at him."
Her features crumpled into a concerned look and she nibbled on her food, all interest in its weird taste apparently gone. It was a minute before she spoke again. "Sara, have you been mad at Daniel for anything?"
I laughed. "Daniel hasn't really done anything to make me mad, Becs."
"Are you kidding me?" she hissed flatly, barely above a whisper.
That was when I knew how strongly Becca felt about this.
Loud and emotional were Becca's default settings.
When she was quiet, that was the signal to the apocalypse.
"He chose a school over you. There was no point of him going to that school because, seriously, how much of an advantage," she mocked, "is a few months of classes at some fancy pants academy going to give him?"
"He's going to meet a lot of people there, people who can be very important contacts in the future –"
"Contacts that he already has within his reach right now?" she pointed out. "Or have you forgotten that his dad's boss was the one who got him into the school in the first place? Can't that dude introduce him to other fancy dudes in the future? Doesn't that count as connections?"
I opened my mouth to answer but Becca shook her head to tell me she wasn't done yet.
"Maybe it is a great opportunity for him and good on you for not holding him back! Whoopee – here's your medal!" Becca threw her right arm in the air in exasperation, the jerkey in her hand suddenly seemed like it was a weapon. Her left arm was still wrapped around the mayo jar like her life depended on it. "But couldn't he at least have told you about the interview?"
I blinked.
Hadn't really thought about that.
Huh.
"'Hello, Sara, I've this exciting interview at Smithson Academy," Becca continued in a horrible English accent. "I'm seriously considering it and I thought you should know because you're my girlfriend because I'm a decent human being. "
Clearly she was implying what Daniel was not.
"That wouldn't have been so hard to blurt out, would it?" she pointed out. "If Adam suddenly said yes to a new job without telling me, he would be sleeping on the driveway for months. In underwear. Bright pink underwear. With little cupids and hearts on them. In body glitter."
"It's different with you and Adam – you're married." It was not the best argument but I was too busy trying to burn the image that had formed in my mind. "Daniel and I, we're dating in highschool –"
"So? It's still love. Puppy love, young love – whatever you stupid teenagers call it nowadays, it's still love!" Becca answered as if this was the key to the universe.
"I do love him," I frowned. "But I don't see what that has –"
"My parents don't do very well on planes," she started with a bitter laugh, "which is why I'm going to be the one in a very uncomfortable aisle chair in the next few hours even though I am one thousand billion gajillion percent sure my back will be hurting the entire time. They want to spend time with this baby even before he's born and I so very much want that for them too." Her hand curled protectively over her stomach.
"And even though they don't like travelling on planes, they already have their tickets for two weeks before my due date." She paused as if to let the significance of this sink in. "They're getting into the flying death traps, as they call them, because I want – need – them to be there when I give birth. Sure, they're seeing a therapist to hopefully get over their fear of flying but do you think that fear will matter when I am going to be passing a human being through me?"
Mentally I answered no.
Physically I could only watch her continue to fly off the handle.
"They're even staying here for two weeks because I just want them to be here and not even to help out. I came from a giant family – giant, Sara. I can take care of a newborn in my sleep but I cannot give birth without my Mom and Pop in the waiting room!"
There was some point she was trying to make and all I could do was wait until she got to it.
"And Adam, God bless him, is bending himself over backwards trying to do everything for me because I feel like a beached whale most days." She smiled at a thought that just came to her. "Did you know the other day he was running around town looking for an exact brand and jar size of pickles because I could swear it was the tastiest thing in the universe in that moment?"
"Plus, I let him talk to the baby too and I stay awake for all too!" Becca was on a roll now. "Your brother, the man who barely spit out three sentences during our wedding vows, thinks it's unacceptable if I was asleep when he told the baby about how you can determine the perfect roof angle for different kinds of houses and buildings."
She made a face that was the perfect mix of horrified and bored. It was a well known fact that having to hear about minutia about the minutia of Adam's profession was a dealbreaker for her.
"I keep telling him the baby doesn't necessarily sleep when I sleep but does he listen? Of course not because that's not what one single stupid Youtube video – in the whole entire universe of Youtube videos – told him."
I cleared my throat.
She calmed down a little bit but forged on with her rant.
"Sara, your parents spend half of the year away from you. As a soon-to-be mother," Again her hand ghosted protectively over her belly, "I can tell you that they don't really want to be away from you for a second. But it's a job that will pay for your college expenses so they do it. Yeah, you're getting a scholarship for your tuition but are you telling me you're going to get through college witout food, water, a roof over your head? Not to mention the things that you need – the things that you've needed – before you even go to college."
"And you, my smart-about-some-things-and-very-very-stupid-about-others sister-in-law," she smiled, "study even when everyone around you says it's sheer insanity because you want to make your family proud."
I was still, as much as it hurt to say this, oblivious to what she was trying to tell me.
Becca just shook her head, so attuned to something I had only recently been told about myself. She breathed out a tired sigh and ran her fingers through my hair gently.
"Wanting the best for another person and looking out for them even if it means you're going to be uncomfortable or scared or bored or tired or that you're going to miss them to bits or that the whole world thinks you're crazy," she paused for a breath, "that is the essence of love."
* * * * *
Becca's words stayed with me.
They sat, politely, at the back of my thoughts well after my brother and sister-in-law left for their flight. They hung around like an uninvited guest through dinner with the Anderson's, invisible to everyone's eyes but mine; and sat heavily between Nate and I as we watched movies in another pseudo-slumber party. They greeted me when I woke up the next morning and only got louder throughout the day until they escaped – in the worst place and time imagineable.
In the car with Daniel.
"I wish you'd told me about your interview at Smithsons," I blurted out, unable to help myself.
Daniel stopped unbuckling his seatbelt and looked at me in confusion.
Daniel had proposed we spend the evening doing schoolwork after Thanksgiving dinner at the Andersons. I didn't have the heart or energy to tell him I had been looking forward to the break part of Thanksgiving break. Besides, he had the harried and frenzied look of someone who was drowning in deadlines.
I, on the other hand, sat in the passenger seat of his car, half-hiding behind my schoolbag as, through the drive, Daniel looked more worried that he'd left his laptop at home.
The Tarvers' porch lamp washed the inside of his car in a faint yellow light. I could barely make out the confusion in his icy blue eyes but the way he spoke next made me sure it was there. "I thought you said you understood –"
"I understood why you decided to say yes when you were offered," I clarified. "But what I don't understand is why you didn't tell me about the interview in the first place."
Some part of me hoped for an answer that would wipe away the doubts that Becca planted.
"I didn't tell anyone apart from my parents about the interview," Daniel answered all too quickly. "I didn't want to jinx it and not get in."
I nodded, words failing me at the moment.
Outside the car, leaves were falling. Inside, doubt was in full bloom.
"I thought you understood," Daniel broke through the silence, his voice thicker – angrier.
My reply was thin. "You can understand something but still be hurt about it."
I sounded like a broken child. But only as the words slipped through my lips, did I realize this was how I was truly feeling – how I had been feeling from the very start of this whole mess.
It took time for the feelings to come out, time for me to make myself deal with them – and, in turn, to make Daniel deal with them too.
The time had come for me to deal with them and a part of me knew that Daniel had to deal with them too.
"You said –" His frustrated huff of air cut him off and his brows furrowed impossibly deeper in confusion. "You said you weren't mad –"
"I'm not mad." I blinked against the frustration of him not understanding what I was so clearly telling him already. "You don't have to get mad to get hurt."
My backbone was fairly new.
But, I'm happy to say, was also fairly strong.
Inwardly, I repeated what I had realized about myself weeks ago.
I still cared if the people around me were happy. But, more importantly, I now gave my happiness as much value as theirs.
I said this to myself over and over again as I waited for him to say another word.
Daniel was radiating emotion at this point – most, if not all, of it negative – as he opened the car door and got out. Unlike normal, he didn't open the car door for me so I stepped out and followed him to the porch. But he held up a hand before I could follow him through the door.
"I've got a lot of anatomy homework to deal with so I can't deal with this right now, Sara." His tone was completely different from the animated way he usually spoke.
A voice in my head yelled that the books could wait and this absolutely couldn't.
Another voice said that Daniel would need time to come process all of this. If I needed time, he would need it too.
I watched in silence as he locked the door behind him. I counted to five in hopes that he would come out and offer to drive me back.
I got to one hundred and fifty-two before accepting that I would have to find my own way to the Andersons.
I propped my schoolbag on myshoulder and hugged my jacket close to me. It wasn't cold yet but I needed its solidity as I walked to the bus stop.
Maybe this thing between Daniel and I wasn't so much as mixing water with water. That would have been too easy – effortless, really – and it would always work, without faily.
This, right now, was the the complete opposite of easy.
Maybe, instead, it was more like putting the same kinds of magnetic poles side by side. Sure, they were made of the same stuff. They were alike in every way possible. Some people would smartly say that this was why they should never got together.
In fact, some people had smartly told me that.
Enough.
I imagined flicking off a switch in my brain – the switch to part that tried to rationalize emotions that, clearly, couldn't ever really be rational.
One thing at a time, I chided to myself and decided to focus on the more pressing concern at the moment – getting home.
I turned back around to look at Daniel's house. I was at the end of the block already, a step away from being under the shade of the bus stop.
If I asked, I knew Daniel would give me a ride.
I also knew that he was ten thousand kinds of confused at the moment. I would be, if I was him and wasn't I so very much like him?
As I turned around, I found myself staring at the house across the street from Daniel's.
I wouldn't have thought of it as a home on any other given day but, right now, it looked inviting and warm – despite the fact that all the lights were off, the bright blue car wasn't in the driveway and, clearly, no one was home. Its almost permanent resident was too busy living in their own personal version of hell at the moment, on the other side of town no less. I noticed, with a tiny laugh that the motorcycle was still in the drive way though, parked so uncaringly by the kind of person who could afford to buy another dozen Ducatis.
What if someone was home?
I forced the question out of my head.
A helping hand was always welcome in these kinds of moments but they weren't always available.
Nor are they always needed, a smaller – a braver – part of me answered.
I can figure out some other way to get home. What else were my brains for, right?
Although my brain had been temporarily numbed by the throbbing in my chest – by my proverbial broken heart, I suppose – there were still a few working brain cells that were smart enough to know that I could get through this.
And on my own two feet, at that.
I smiled at this fresh, untested knowledge of what I was capable of.
Then I once again slung my bag over my shoulder and, head sort of held high, waited for the bus to arrive.
I've always believed that you get back tenfold of what you share. My words from the land of fiction have brought back words of love, concern and support. Today of all days, there are a lot of things I want to tell you but the most important of those are THANK YOU.
I left because I was lost and, ironically, I came back because I'm still lost.
It wasn't very nice of me to disappear - a universe of sorry's, person who has still stuck with me this long - but I just couldn't come back with nothing to show for myself.
No story recommendation for now but if you're interested in a future story recommendation, send me a message (inbox, please) and I'll see what I can do for you. Chapter dedications to awesome comment-leaving peeps.
VOTE. COMMENT. SHARE. (And follow? XD)
- Chompy
P.S. I've missed you guys. For realz.