And yet, as I look out the window of the plane taking me home for Christmas, that’s exactly how I feel. Everything’s wrong. I’m alone, and all the parts of me that shouldn’t hurt do. The parts that thought love could conquer all feel stupid. The parts that were firing with pleasure less than twenty-four hours ago are tainted and cold.
I’m so angry, I want to rage and smash things, but the pain, the illogical heartache, keeps me curled in my window seat, fighting tears and trying to ignore the sick rolling in my stomach.
I hate what he did. I hate the reasons he did it.
The word resonates hot in my chest.
Hate.
It’s easy to hate him, so I do.
It distracts me from how much I love him.
*
When we land, I exit the plane in a fog of cultivated numbness.
“Sweetheart.” Mom hugs me before pulling back to give me her usual once-over. “That’s what you wore to travel? They’ll never upgrade you if you wear jeans, honey.”
I sigh and turn to Dad. He wraps his arms around me and squeezes, and when he whispers, “I’ve missed you, kiddo,” everything breaks loose.
Mom awwws and shushes as I sob into Dad’s shirt. She thinks this display is because I’ve missed them. She gets teary and says she’s missed me, too. Dad shuffles nervously as he pats my back. He never was good at dealing with emotion.
By the time we collect my luggage and get to the car, I’m beyond drained. The trip back to Aberdeen passes in a hazy blur.
When we get home, I go straight to my room and get ready for bed. As I brush my teeth, Christmas carols echo up the stairs, along with my mother’s out-of-tune voice.
She loves Christmas.
Usually I do, too, but not this year.
It’s only when I crawl into my childhood bed that I find relief in deep, desolate unconsciousness.
*
The next morning, I zombie-walk downstairs.
“Merry Christmas, sweetheart!”
I get hugs and a large box. The hugs make me feel claustrophobic. The box contains a leather-bound copy of the complete works of Shakespeare. It’s beautiful, but I have an immediate urge to tear out Romeo and Juliet and throw it in the fire. That play will forever remind me of my first lead role. And the first time Ethan kissed me. He told me he wasn’t capable of being my Romeo. I should have listened.
I put the book down and thank my parents. My smile feels sickeningly fake, but they don’t seem to notice.
I give Mom perfume. Dad gets a detective novel. They both hug me, happy with their daughter even if they’re not speaking to each other.
When I’ve had my fill of tofurkey and nutloaf, I claim I have a headache and go upstairs. My room is small, yet the space around me screams its emptiness. Like I’m too shriveled to fill it.
I unpack the rest of my bag and when I find a small package at the bottom, the room gets even smaller.
I don’t know why I brought it with me. I peel off the too-bright paper and stare at the leather cover for a long time. I was going to give it to Ethan yesterday, but I got sidetracked by him breaking up with me. I was so excited when I bought it. My first gift for my first boyfriend. I was worried he’d think it was lame.
Turns out, his Christmas gift was the last thing I should have been concerned about.
I flick open the empty journal and run my fingers along the lines that should be filled with his thoughts.
Maybe I’ll keep it for myself. Make it the place I pour out all my toxic emotions.
I pick up a pen and try to write. Nothing happens. I close my eyes, but all I get is a cavalcade of Ethan. Kissing me. Holding my hand.
I wrap my arms around myself to stop the pain. God, I miss him.
Being away from him is one thing. Being emotionally severed is another. Both together are unbearable.
My last thread of self-control snaps. I grab my phone.
He said he wanted to be friends, right? I draft five texts before settling on one that sounds casual enough to be friendly.
As soon as I hit send, I want to take it back.
I spend the next hour in purgatory, waiting for him to reply. The hour after that I spend making up excuses as to why he hasn’t. The hour after that I feel more stupid than I ever have in my entire life. So ridiculous, and pathetic, and viciously dumb. I cry hot tears, and my chest nearly cracks with the effort to stay silent so my parents don’t hear.
I throw my phone onto the floor and try to sleep.
A tiny masochistic part of me keeps waking during the night to check if he’s texted.
When morning breaks, he still hasn’t.
*
“Cassie? Sweetheart, come on.”
“I’m sleeping.”
“It’s two o’clock in the afternoon. You need to eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
The bed dips. A hand touches my head and strokes hair that hasn’t been washed in the five days I’ve been home.
“Honey, I wish you’d tell me what happened. Maybe I can help.”
You can’t.
“Does this have something to do with that boy you were seeing? Ethan?”
I don’t answer, but Mom knows. Only love gone wrong could make a woman behave like this. I’ve seen her after she and Dad have fought. Heartsick looks the same on everyone.
“Sweetheart,” she says as she strokes my back. “Surely no boy is worth this. If he didn’t want you, then he’s obviously defective.”
She’s right. That was one of the things that attracted me to him.
“He didn’t . . . hurt you, did he? Physically, I mean.”
I shake my head and block out images of how I gasped when he pushed inside me.
“So this is all just emotional?”
Just emotional? There’s no such thing. Emotions are nothing without a corresponding physical response. Adrenaline-fueled joy, heart-thumping fear, gut-churning loss.
Sure, Mom. It’s just emotional.
I nod, because I know it’ll make her feel better.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I shake my head again, really needing this conversation to be over.
She sighs and squeezes my shoulder.
I wait until she closes the door before I turn my face to the wall and go back to sleep.
*
“He’s a fucking idiot.” I can almost see the look of disdain on Ruby’s face through the phone.
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Yeah, well I do. He hasn’t called you at all? Not even on Christmas Day?”
“No. I texted him.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. I missed him, I guess.”
“Did he text back?”
“No.”
“Cock.”
“I don’t know what I expected,” I say and lie back on my bed. “We broke up.”
“No, he broke you up. There was no ‘we’ in that scenario. And don’t make excuses for him. He doesn’t deserve them.”
I really wish she was here.
Mom and Dad don’t understand, but Ruby does.
“What are you going to do when you see him at school on Monday?”
“I have no idea. Drop out?”
“Cassie, don’t even joke about that. Don’t you dare let that douchenozzle ruin your college experience. Just block him out. Do your work and kick ass. Don’t give him power over you and you’ll be fine.”
I sigh. It’s not like I want him to have power over me, but I can’t stop thinking about him.
“So, I’m coming back on the ninth,” I s
ay.
“I’ll be back from my parents’ by then. I’ll pick you up from the airport.”
“Thanks, Ruby.”
I’m just about to hang up when she says, “Cassie?” Her voice is soft and sympathetic. “I know it probably doesn’t feel like it now, but you’re going to be okay.”
I nod. “Yeah, I know.”
The truth is, I know no such thing.
*
My headphones block out the sound of Mom and Dad bickering downstairs. I have Simon and Garfunkel’s “I Am a Rock” on repeat. I kind of hate the song, but the lyrics speak to me. They talk about a rock not feeling pain and an island never crying. Sounds good to me.
I’m sick of the pain, and if I never cry again, it will be too soon. I just want to be over Ethan. I don’t want to be wondering how his holidays were. If he fought with his dad. How drunk he got.
If he thought about me.
I want to be me again and not his.
The way forward is to push every positive thought about him out of my system. It’s the only way I’m going to survive seeing him again. I refuse to pine for Ethan Holt for the next two years. No freaking way.
I close my eyes and try to focus. I picture him as I listen to the song, over and over again, and I let the lyrics harden my paper-thin layers.
I’m going to become a rock.
*
Ruby drops me off at our place before heading to the store for supplies.
I look around my apartment. Everything’s the same yet different.
When I step into my room, my stomach coils.
My bed. It’s stripped back to the bare mattress.
The morning he broke up with me, I’d ripped the sheets off and taken them to the laundry room. Then I’d turned the machine to “hot” and doused everything in too much detergent.
I remake the bed with fresh sheets, and breathe deeply as I tuck and smooth, and palm over the areas we made love like I can wipe them clean of memories.
When I’m done, it’s perfect. Pristine.
I look at it for long minutes as phantom lips suck my neck. Ghost hands trail across my thighs.
Screw this.
I shower. Wash my hair. Finish with water so cold it shocks me to distraction.
When Ruby gets home, we fall into a pattern of easy familiarity. We reheat frozen dinners, drink wine, watch TV, laugh. We don’t talk about him.
When 11 pm rolls around, we yawn and say goodnight. Ruby goes into her room.
I sleep on the couch.
*
The classroom is noisy, filled with chatter about who did what during the break. I’ve missed my friends and their hugs are welcome.
Aiyah and Miranda are holding hands. Like Ethan and I, they got together last year. Unlike Ethan and I, their love survived. Jack is telling jokes, and I smile as Connor and Lucas crack up. Heck, I’ve even missed Zoe and her friend Phoebe, despite their shrill conversations. They all seem happy to see me, too.
None of them know about the breakup.
I guess they’ll figure it out soon enough, but I’m not going to be the one to tell them.
The second Ethan enters, I know it. A vibration shudders up my spine and sets every hair on edge.
People ask him how he is. He answers, his voice low and quiet.
I don’t want to look at him but my body turns of its own accord, and there he is, towering over most of the people around him, even as his shoulders sag.
Excitement tries to fire in my veins, but I suppress it. Unwanted fantasies about kissing him crawl through my brain. It all seems so unlikely now, I almost laugh out loud.
He glances over at me, and that’s when all the air goes out of the room. His mouth sets into a hard line, and he looks away several times before returning. It’s like he doesn’t want to see me but can’t help himself.
I know how he feels.
This is what I’ve been preparing for. I breathe steadily and smooth down the rumbling waves of emotion. Make myself a rock.
I stare at him without apology, and let him see my indifference. Dare him to challenge it.
For a moment he frowns, like he expected something else. Hurt or longing, maybe. If he thought he’d find me a blubbering, emotional mess, he must be sorely disappointed.
His expression is one of indescribable sadness before his familiar barriers slide into place, and it’s almost as if nothing had happened between us.
No one can tell how unleashed I am on the inside. Not even him.
Especially not him.
A line from As You Like It comes to me: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Standing here, staring at Ethan, that concept has never been truer. The Grove is now our stage and these are our new roles.
Separate. Loveless. Unaffected.
I take a deep breath.
Curtain up.
ELEVEN
OPEN BOOK
Present Day
New York City, New York
The Apartment of Cassandra Taylor
My head is on his chest, my arm draped over his waist.
I can’t quite believe he’s in my bed, the scene of so many angst-driven fantasies about him. We’re both fully clothed and completely silent, yet this is the most intimate I’ve been with a man since . . . well, since him.
He takes my hand and places it on his chest then presses it down. I can feel him willing me to trust him.
I want to, but I don’t know how.
“Ethan? When did you know you were capable of changing?” He strokes my hand for a few seconds, but doesn’t answer. “I mean, you tried to change when you were with me, right? To become more open?”
“Yes. Jesus. And failed spectacularly.”
“So, how did you go from the guy who left me twice to the guy you are now?”
He looks down at me. “I did mention I’ve been in therapy for three years, right? And I’m not talking just one session a week. In my darker days it was two . . . three sessions a week. My therapist had the patience of a saint.”
“Yeah, but you could have gotten therapy when we were together, couldn’t you?”
“Technically, yes. But the thought of it scared the crap out of me, and we both know that back then I was ruled by fear.”
“Then how did you decide you weren’t scared anymore?”
He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you this story, but I guess you deserve to know.”
“What story?” I break out in goosebumps, certain I’m not going to like what I hear.
He pushes my hand under his shirt. On the left side of his rib cage, my fingers graze a clump of scar tissue. I’d noticed it when we ran our love scenes, but I was always too distracted by his kisses to find out more.
I lift his shirt and lean over to get a better look. “What is that?” He strokes my forearm as I continue to graze the rough skin.
“That’s where a tube was shoved into my lung to drain out the blood that was drowning me.”
I look up at him and frown.
“And there’s this.” He takes my hand and lifts it to his head. At the back, there’s another patch of raised skin. “That was where my head smashed into a tree. Fourteen stitches.”
Bile rises in my throat. “Ethan, what the hell?”
He takes my hand and plays with my fingers. “After I left you in senior year, I hit my low point in France. The show was a hit, and I was getting great reviews, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I felt so goddamn guilty about failing you. Again. I already told you I was drinking a lot. Getting into fights.”
I nod.
“Well, after our season, we had a week off before we moved on to Italy. The rest of the cast was going to do a tour of the wineries, but I couldn’t cope with being a
miserable bastard around them, so I hired a motorbike and just left. Traveled aimlessly around southern France, full of self-loathing. Driving drunk, driving too fast, taking crazy risks. I was a fucking mess. I don’t think I had a death wish but . . .” He looks at me. “I guess I wanted to hurt myself more than I’d hurt you.”
“Ethan.”
He shakes his head. “Pathetic, right? Well, one night I decided to head for the Italian border. It had been raining. Too much alcohol, too much speed. I took a curve too fast and slammed into the guardrail. My bike went cartwheeling across the road as I flew over the rail and down a steep embankment. Pretty sure I hit every damn tree on the way down. By the time I’d reached the bottom, my helmet was cracked, my leather jacket was shredded, and it felt like someone had shoved a dagger into my ribs.”
“Oh, God.”
“I lay there for a while, just trying to breathe. When I moved, I was hit with so much pain I almost passed out. I managed to pull off my helmet, but that was it. There was pain in my shoulder, my wrist, my chest. I could feel blood running down my leg.”
“What did you do?”
“I seriously thought I was dying, and took a moment to figure out if that was a bad thing.”
I take his hand and he lets out a shaky breath. “It’s weird, you know, facing your own mortality. People talk about their life flashing in front of their eyes, but I didn’t get that. All I got were flashes of you. They were so vivid, it was like I could reach out and touch you. I wondered how you’d react if I died. Would you mourn me? Or would you be happy I’d never hurt you again?”
As I listen, anxiety begins to coil in my chest. Thinking about him dying makes my throat close up.
“How could you think I wouldn’t mourn you?”
“I was in a dark place. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“God, if you’d died . . .” I can’t finish the thought, let alone the sentence. Even at the height of my hatred for him, I couldn’t imagine living in a world without Ethan. The mere concept was distressing beyond words. “Okay, tell me what happened next before I freak out about the death thing.”