"I never stopped loving you."
-The Best of Me, coming to theaters October 17
***
There are melodies that fill you and never stop, almost as if it were in tune with your heartbeat, playing until your heart beat no more.
Mine was a strand of sounds from moments I never quite realized would make up the happiest parts of my life—Adam’s low laughter when he was deeply amused; the tinkling of ice against glass when we’d nurse that one drink during an entire night of conversation until the ice warmed into melting; the soft hitch of his breath whenever he pulled me into his arms; the slight catch in his voice when he said my name; the steady rush of the water when we’d stretch out on the grass by the creek; the crunch of dry, brittle hay on the old barn floor; the scuffle of our shoes on the stone floor when we slow-danced; the heavy-hearted crooning of love found and lost playing from the old cassette player.
“Your taste in music hasn’t changed,” I teased as I backed away from the pool table where I’d just missed my first ball after sinking three of them straight in a row. The strumming of a guitar played the first few notes of an old and sad country song. “Still lots of cryin’, lovin’ and leavin’.”
Adam smiled but I didn’t miss the brief, ironic flash in his eyes. “For some of us, those four-minute tracks are the stories of our lives. There’s plenty more where those came from, they’d never run out of songs.”
My smile slipped but I said nothing as I watched Adam lean forward to take his aim. With one swift motion of his arm, he punched the ball across the green surface until it plunged deep into a corner pocket.
A wavy lock of hair had tumbled down his forehead and I curled my fingers around my cue stick before I could reach out and brush the hair away.
I knew where I wanted to be—wrapped inside those strong arms—but we were still tiptoeing ever so tentatively behind the lines, afraid of the fires that still scorched the edges.
“Wanna dance?”
Sometimes, the only way to get to the other side is to burn a little.
Adam stared at the hand I’d extended to him as he straightened, like somehow a wealth of wisdom rested there to tell him whether or not taking it would be the best thing he did in his life, or the worst.
I patiently waited as he made up his mind.
I was, for him, both ends of the extreme, after all.
One touch and I might just save him or send him to hell for good.
Adam took my hand and gently pulled me closer to him, our cue sticks dropping to the stone floor with a clatter.
George Jones’s deep, clear voice thrummed with the longing and heartache of a man’s enduring love in perhaps his saddest classic, He Stopped Loving Her Today. It might have been a song written specifically for Adam except that on what could have been the last day he’d ever spent loving me, he might just love me still and perhaps, for always.
The way we fit together like puzzle pieces made me smile. So much had changed yet so much still remained. Our feet moved fluidly, as if we’d danced this dance a lifetime now, our legs brushing as they, too, followed each other’s steps with old instinct.
“You still have all the moves to sweep a girl off her feet,” I said lightly. “You’ve had practice with many?”
I nearly bit my tongue off with that comment because did I really want to know? And did I really have any right to judge him by the life he’d lived without me when it was me who walked out of it?
I was really all kinds of reckless tonight.
I looked away from his dark, penetrating gaze, afraid to see more than I was strong for, and fought to hold myself together as the familiar feel of Adam’s arms around me threatened to reduce me to a sobbing, stuttering mess.
He said nothing at first, just pulled me closer to him until my cheek pressed against his chest, his chin tucked just behind my ear. I bit my lower lip to stifle a gasp of tears, my eyes squeezing shut as the pressure behind my eyes built.
I never realized just how cold I’d felt this whole time until I re-discovered the warmth and security he’d always been ready to wrap me in. No matter what I did, it would seem that I would always be welcome. I was undeserving, of course, but it didn’t matter.
In the end, we were all undeserving, in some measure or another, because no one would ever be perfect enough to never screw it up at least once, but it was no reason not to love. Until we realized this, like I did tonight as I retraced the path I’d long abandoned, we would never be able to love hard, much and well.
The only real injustice we could ever do love is to take it for granted. Until you care enough about what you could lose, you will continue to sabotage it.
“I’m only this good if its for the only girl I want,” he murmured, his voice hinting at a smile. “Just like you, my best version is the one I am with you.”
I grinned in spite of myself and clutched Adam’s shoulder just as I felt a light, airy kiss on my hair.
I couldn’t say how long we danced—tonight, time seemed as endless as a moment on standstill—but eventually, the cassette tape reached its end.
Adam tipped his head back to look at me, his lips so close my next breath could almost be a kiss.
“We can’t stay here forever,” he said.
I swallowed hard and nodded.
Of course, we couldn’t. That would be too easy.
“Do you want to stay?” he asked almost shyly. “In Westfall, I mean. For a little bit, anyway.”
My throat was tight but I forced a smile, my words more honest that I expected. “I want to stay. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to stay here as much as I do tonight.”
Adam’s mouth curved into a smile, his eyes bright. “We can drive to the old barn. Just like old times.”
He had the nervous energy of a boy about to go on his first date, reminding me much of the night when Adam came over to my house to pick me up for a movie he’d talked me into seeing the day before. I was still putting my hair up in a ponytail when I yelled at him to come on in. When I was finally presentable in jeans, a plaid shirt and sneakers, I stepped out to the living room to find him there pacing. He’d cleaned up nicely, wearing dark jeans and a new sweater, his hair freshly cut and combed back. He was also clutching a small clump of pink and white lilies. When he saw me, he halted in his mindless circling around our old coffee table and opened his mouth as if to say something after he’d looked me over, but no sound came out. Instead he strode over to me and handed me the flowers with no explanation. The only thing he said, as I stared puzzled at the flowers, was that we had to go or we’d be late for the movie. This had been a few months before we kissed by the lake, and I hadn’t really realized then what Adam had been going through as he sat there stiffly in the movie house at first. He only relaxed after a shaky laugh when I accidentally knocked my popcorn over and spilled it all over his lap, dusting his new pair of pants with yellow cheese powder.
I grinned. “I’d like that very much.”
His eyes held a sparkle even as he released me and stepped back. “Okay, let me grab my stuff and we’re out of here. Did you bring your car over? ‘Coz if you did, I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”
I shook my head slowly, my heart clenching as I wondered how far fate would go. “I hitched a ride.”
Adam’s forehead scrunched up a little as if the statement confused him but he was eager so he just shrugged and went to grab his large, black winter jacket from the coat rack by the kitchen door. He was just slipping it on when he looked back over to me and paused.
“You’re going to freeze out there in that flimsy, little coat,” he said as he pulled his keys out. “Come here.”
I went to him and without any warning, he pulled me into his arms and wrapped what he could of his jacket around me. My arm slid under the jacket and around his waist, my head tucked under his shoulder.
Cold air blasted at us the moment we stepped out the door but the snowfall seemed to have lightened up somehow.
I couldn’t see well sheltered under his coat but I trusted where my feet moved as Adam steered us toward the reserved parking spots just around the corner.
He opened the door to his powder-blue 1979 Ford pick-up and helped me up.
I ignored the spike in my heartbeat and reminded myself that tonight, I was done being afraid. I’d wasted too many years already.
I dabbed some of the snow that had fallen and melted on my face and looked around at the familiar interior of the truck. It still looked as old as it did the day Adam got it for his sixteenth birthday. It had been ready for the scrapyard then, when he bought it for a couple hundred bucks, but he had cleaned it up and fixed what he could until it was finally in decent shape. From the looks of it, the last decade could’ve never happened. Of course, we both knew better.
“I can’t believe you still drive this old thing,” I said as soon as Adam scrambled into the driver’s seat and revved the engine. “Or that it’s still running.”
Adam smiled at me before he pulled out of the spot. “Some old things last longer than you can ever imagine. And I’m not one to let go of the past.”
No, you’re not, and I’ll be forever grateful for it.
I smiled back and reached for his hand that rested on the gear stick, covering it with my own until I could warm the chill off his skin.
The Bishop farm made up most of the town’s north section and it was a good twenty minutes away from the Grill on a good day. With the snow on the road, it would probably take twice as long but Adam didn’t seem to be in a hurry. His features were relaxed, a faint smile even hinting at the corner of his mouth, as he took us down main street.
Westfall was one of those quaint, little old towns you’d find on a postcard with its charming brick storefronts, cobbled sidewalks and vintage lamp posts. Tonight, it possessed an almost otherworldly beauty—the bare branches of the large, old trees covered in frost since morning and now dusted with snow, nearly glowing from the warm, golden illumination of the holiday lights strung across lamp posts from one side of the street to the other.
I didn’t leave Westfall because it wasn’t beautiful. My reasons had seemed so simple then, so clear, but that had been me thinking so far ahead I missed what had been waiting along the way.
In such a close-knit, conservative community, the Matheson women had a reputation three generations of repeated history only helped solidify. We were romantics who always chased after the wrong men and paid for it dearly. When she was seventeen, my mother fell in love with a struggling musician passing by. In the two weeks he’d stayed, playing by the Grill and a couple other places in town, my mother was in cloud nine. When he moved on to the next town, she quit her job, packed her bags and followed him. Five months later, she came back, her eyes no longer bright with youthful innocence, her demeanor defeated, and her pregnancy starting to show. She got her job at the Grill back and she settled us in the mobile home that had been in her family for years. She got us by but many would say that she had not been the same girl when she came back. With their misguided good intentions, some of the town residents felt required to intervene this time around—three generations was long enough, after all—so they hardly ever missed a chance at reminding me to keep focused on my studies, giving me disapproving glances at the slightest indication of reckless behaviour, and warning me about any boy who paid me attention. It wasn’t everyone—just a small handful of people who were too involved in lives that were none of their business, and as a kid, it got to me before I realized the kind of poison it was. I never told my mother because she didn’t need more reminders of her mistakes but it had made me very stubborn over the years. I resented the assumption that I was going to turn out just like the other women in my family without their help and I grew very determined to prove to them wrong. Of course, no one made any direct criticisms when Adam and I started hanging out as children—not even when it was fast becoming obvious that we were headed for more than friendship. The restraint was mostly because no one said a bad word about the Bishops. And everyone liked Adam, with his serious nature and kind heart. He was the town golden boy—he could never do wrong in anyone’s eyes—and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree because despite the cliche, their faith in him wasn’t misplaced or undeserved.
Their worry, as I found out eventually from some people’s not so subtle comments after Adam and I made our relationship official, was not about Adam destroying my life like most men did to the other Matheson women—it was me destroying his very promising one. They didn’t care that he was being young and taking his time because in the end, he would eventually settle down with the perfect woman as was his due—but in the meantime, they weren’t sure it was wise to do all that youthful experimentation with a Matheson girl, considering the family’s history. If Adam knocked me up, they all knew he would do right by me and marry me, and that somewhat equated to me ruining his life.
So while I loved Adam with all of my young, foolish, immature heart, I left to prove that I wasn’t going to be the foregone conclusion some people thought I would be. I’d reasoned with myself that maybe, in becoming this other person, I would fully deserve Adam and no one would be able to disagree with the glaring evidences of my brilliant law career and my dreamy, big city life.
There was a certain irony in going so far out of your way to be something different and realizing you already liked exactly how you were.
I peered out the window just as we approached the first block past main street that our old high school took up. In the dark, even muted by the faint snowfall still lingering, it was hard to miss the outline of the three-story brick building, bordered by massive, old oak trees.
“Let’s go there,” I said out of the blue.
“You wanna stop by West Heights?” Adam asked in surprise. “It’s a bit late. We can go tomorrow.”
I turned back to him. “I want to see it again without anyone around. Come on. It’s not the first time we’ve snuck in there.”
Mischief lit up his eyes and without further protest, he turned into the driveway.
Some lamp posts were left on around the grounds but it was dark enough behind the border of trees that anyone driving past wouldn’t notice us too much, with the lights on the truck turned off. Besides, at this time of the night, in this miserable weather, no one would be driving around town.
We walked up the front steps and I spent a minute just looking at the announcement boards, smiling at the thought that despite the years that had passed, a lot of things remained the same.
“Let’s go.” Adam took my hand and led me down around the corner of the building where an exterior exit from the library was located. The door was locked but just a few feet away was an angled bulkhead door that gave access to the library’s basement storage. The raised end was maybe two feet off the ground and the doors were a weathered, rough-hewn pair of panels made from wooden boards screwed on to large metal straps. It came original with the school when it was built almost a hundred years ago and since there wasn’t much down there but a musty storage room of old books and broken library furniture, no one ever bothered to check if the bulkhead door was locked. It wasn’t—hadn’t been for over a decade—but the panel doors were quite heavy that no one probably ever bothered testing them out. Besides, in a school this old and in a town this sleepy, security wasn’t quite up to modern standards. Neither was it on anyone’s list of top priorities.
I helped Adam dust the snow off the panels until the metal handles resurfaced. With a heavy grunt, Adam lifted off one panel, the hinges groaning loudly.
Feeling a rush I haven’t felt in a long time, I eagerly followed him down the shallow, crumbly steps that led into the shadows of the storage room. I knew there was a sconce light a few steps down but Adam fished out his cellphone and turned the screen light on, illuminating our narrow path out to the basement stairs that led to the main library hall.
Most of the lights were off in the library except for a few wall-mounted emergency ones that brightened the shadows just enough to keep us from knocking over anything.
Like most things I was discovering about Westfall tonight, not much had changed in here either as I catalogued the same rows of books and reading desks. There were now a few computer stations scattered about but everything from the furniture to the wallpaper remained the same.
“They still have your picture with the trophy and everything,” I said in awe as I came up to one of the glass display cases lined up along the hallway just outside of the library. There were a couple of trophies there along with an old team banner, a ratty football, several newspaper clippings and half a dozen pictures at least. My all-time favorite photograph was still there. It was a big blown-up shot of Adam as he leapt into the air to catch the ball. He was in his green and white uniform, his face barely visible behind the grills of his white helmet but the intensity of his expressive eyes, the tautness of his muscles as he cradled the ball to his chest, and the powerful lines of his body had made this random shot of him famous in town.
It had been a homecoming game and a tight, fierce one at that. Adam scored the deciding touchdown that won us the game. The entire student body erupted into chaotic victory and I remembered trying to squeeze my way through the throng of bodies from my seat somewhere up in the bleachers when suddenly, I was plucked off my feet and spun into the air.
Adam, with his helmet off but still in his filthy, sweaty uniform, had somehow found me in the crowd. He neatly avoided every cheering fan trying to waylay him so he could grab me by the waist and hoist me up for a wild kiss in front of the entire student body.
“I remember that game,” Adam said from behind me.
I sucked in my breath as his arm wrapped around my waist from behind, pressing me close against him. “I do, too.”
“I remember what followed it even better,” he added, the husky quality of his voice riding down my spine in a trail of heat. “It was one of the best nights of my life.”
My cheeks flared hot as I glanced back over my shoulder, tipping up my chin so I could look at him since he now stood so close to me. He was gazing at me, his eyes in the shadows that I couldn’t tell their expression. Nevertheless, I felt them on my skin like a bold caress, reminding me of the exact memories going through his mind right now.
We went to a party after the game then for a drive to the creek where we sat and cuddled inside his truck. He told me then that he loved me.
“Of course, I’ve always loved you. But now, I’m in love with you, too. Isn’t that crazy, Lil? To know you’ve always loved someone and to find out that you could love them even more?”
I had a silly smile on my face when I told him that yes, I knew exactly what he was talking about.
We kissed some more before it was time for him to drive me back home. On our way there, on a wild, reckless impulse, I told him I wanted to stay with him that night, at least for a few more hours.
When you were drunk on love, it was very, very hard to remember the rules, much less, follow them.
He’d looked at me in question, asking me at least twice if I were absolutely sure even though his eyes glimmered with hope.
We drove to the Bishop farm but headed for the old barn instead of his house.
We’d stretched out on the layers of old, thick blankets on the loft many times before, usually staring out at the sky from the large window directly across from us, but that night, there had been something else between us. It was something we couldn’t quite name but we couldn’t brush off either. It was in the way we held hands, the way our bodies moved, the way our kisses blazed to near combustion, the way we said no words to each other yet perfectly understanding what we both wanted and needed.
We made love that night for the first time, and perhaps, gave something of ourselves to each other that we were never able to take back despite everything that had happened between us since then.
“It was one of mine, too,” I admitted, turning a little in his embrace until we were face to face. “I never regretted that night, Adam. I never regretted loving you.”
Adam’s brows knitted together in a frown, the hurt in his eyes plain now when he leaned forward until our foreheads touched. In a low, gruff whisper, he asked, “Then why did you leave me?”
“I left because I thought I knew what I was doing,” I whispered back, my own throat closing up with tears. Even as my head hung low, I reached up, the tips of my fingers touching the rough stubble on his jaw. “I don’t regret becoming a lawyer but I regret that along the way, I gave you up in a stubborn, ruthless war against myself, and broke us irrevocably.”
Adam tipped up my chin and looked into my eyes. His own burned with determination. “You’re here, aren’t you? I say, we’re not done while we still want this. And Lil, I’ve wanted nothing more for so long. There’s a very good chance that I will want this for the rest of my life.”
He kissed me.
It was featherlight at first, no more than a mere, fleeting brush of his lips against mine but I surged up like someone who’d been drowning for a while now and finally breaking over the surface to gasp in some air.
My fingers curled around the lapels of his jacket, my mouth seeking more than just a kiss. Maybe, if we could somehow link what was in us that desperately needed this, to fill what we’d left empty for years, we could be endless.
“Lily,” Adam’s breath came in sharp, stunted pants as he broke off for air, his cheek pressed against mine, his heart pounding so hard in his chest I could feel it even through the thick layers of our jackets. He raised his eyes to me—dark, vulnerable and searching. “You have no idea how much I… All this time…”
I bit my trembling lower lip as I nodded and blinked back tears. “I know, Adam… I know exactly what it was like.”
His eyes fluttered close, his hand wrapping around the back of my neck as he brought me even closer. His head lifted, his lips imprinting a firm kiss on my forehead as he murmured almost to himself, “I’ve got you now. I’ve got you.”
I let him hold me, choosing not to speak because what else could I say?
He’s got me and that will never change—not in our hearts anyway.
He’s got me all this time and just as he had, he will not let me go no matter how far away I am. Fate doesn’t get a choice about that. We choose who we love and sometimes, we choose them forever.
A smile hovered on his mouth when he finally stepped back but he kept his hold on my hand. “Come on. Let’s finish this tour if only to get you back home. Six years, Lil. I’m a patient man but I’m not a goddamned saint.”
I broke out laughing, the light, giddy sound of it filling the hall. “For a little while, I only remembered you to be a gentleman. I forgot just how much of a rascal you can be.”
He arched his brows playfully. “I’m even more obliged to remind you now. If you’ve forgotten that much, it’s going to take all night.”
Despite my face being aflame, I kept laughing and hooked my arm through his as we continued down the hall.
It felt good—new yet old—to be talking and laughing like this.
For a moment, the world truly felt right.
Later, when Adam drew me close as we stood in the middle of the football field, where he had once played relentlessly as I cheered my lungs out, and kissed me slowly and sweetly this time, the world was right.
The snow continued to swirl around us but despite the cold, we were warm with memories—old ones we would always remember, and new ones from tonight that we would hopefully never forget even after the morning sun invaded the dark skies.
Tonight was like a snowflake—beautiful, rare, fleeting—a moment to be never had again but one we’d always remember in vivid detail.
Once we were back in the truck and on the road, I asked, “Can we make a stop at the church yard?”
Adam’s look told me he understood right away. “You haven’t been back to visit her in the last eight years. We’ll go.”
He looped around the block to head for the edge of downtown, just right behind the old white church that sat on a prominent hill. We parked on the gravel road and walked over to the low, rusted metal gates. Adam easily climbed over it and helped me up over one of the stone posts that held the gates together.
The gentle slopes of the church yard were blanketed with a thick layer of snow that only the top half of the taller tombstones remained visible. It had been many years but I quickly spotted my destination. With Adam right behind me, I navigated the graves until I finally came to a stop in front of one right next to a large, weeping willow whose cascading, frost and snow-covered branches surrounded us like luminescent, still-life waterfall.
I sank into my knees on the soft heap of snow and brushed off what I could from the small, modest tombstone that bore my mother’s name and the years of her life.
In the end, we would be no more than a tally of years to most people walking past our graves, a summary of numbers. The real meaning of our lives—the one no tombstone would ever fully capture—was what we made of it beyond the numbers. If we could fill the days with the people we love, the choices that make us happy, the path that takes us home and keeps us there—then that life might just be worth well more than its weight in years. No matter how short, or how long, we could all make it worthwhile.
“I’ve missed you, Mom,” I said softly, swallowing past the lump of tears in my throat. “I wish I’d spent more time being with you rather than trying to be not like you. You were right when you told me we don’t always know what makes us happy until we either find it or lose it. Maybe if I listened to you more, I wouldn’t have made the mistakes I have.”
And maybe it wouldn’t have to be like this. Maybe it would be more.
Adam said nothing but he placed a hand on my shoulder, lightly squeezing to let me know that he was right there.
A brisk wind suddenly blew past us, the chill shooting through me like ice needles piercing my body and soul—a pain remembered.
I didn’t stay long. There will be time for that later.
Adam held my hand as we walked back to the truck.
He must’ve seen something in my face just as he opened the door for me. He cupped the side of my face, his cold hand still warm enough to push away the icy numbness spreading inside of me.
“You, okay?” he asked, frowning as his thumb brushed the trail of a tear that had frozen into fine ice crystals on its way down my cheek.
I nodded. “Take me with you, Adam. Take me home.”
A/N: I hope you liked this newest chapter for Lily and Adam.
I do want to remind everyone that this is a short story—just a little piece of my heart—but it's brimming with a lot of ups and downs. At least that's how it felt to me writing it.
I hope you enjoy it!
Don't forget to catch the movie! =)
Ninya