Giving You Forever (20 page)

“Fine, but you’re not driving home.”

“What?”

“Nolan, you’re so mad that you’re shaking. You’re not driving. Get in my car. We’ll come get yours later.”

Exhaling in defeat and closing my eyes to catch my breath, I tell her, “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Just meet me at home.”

Faintly, I hear the bell chime to the door of the florist, making my anger start to build again. We need to leave. We need to leave, now!

“Get. In. the. Car. Nolan!” Alexa says in a tone of voice I’ve never heard, and frankly, it’s a little frightening. Opening my eyes, I see her standing with the passenger side door open, pointing to the interior.

Seeing Margo coming into my peripheral vision, I decide to do the right thing and get in the car. With a disgusted look directed towards Margo, I do what my fiancé ordered and take a seat. No words are voiced the whole way home, and every time I steal a glance at Alexa, her hands are tightly gripping the steering wheel, placed firmly at ten and two. She keeps quiet, though, granting me my wish of waiting until we get home, and giving myself time to figure out how the hell I tell her and why she never knew. Margo is a part of my past; a past I don’t wish to relive.

By the time we pull into the driveway, the intensity between us has grown to unbearable levels. I should have just spilled it out on the way home. Now the pot has had too much time to stir, and the sass behind Alexa’s walk as she goes into the house tells me she’s pissed, and getting more and more by the minute.

As soon as I step foot inside the door, leading into the house from the garage, she lays in.

“Why do I not know about her? Three years, Nolan! We’ve been together for over three fricken years and I’ve never heard you breathe her name. How is this even possible?”

Taking a cleansing breath, and softly grabbing her hand, I walk us into the living room. Sitting us both down onto the couch, I begin. I tell my love all about my dark past, the past I never wanted her to know.

“Yes, you should’ve known. I should’ve told you a long time ago, but I didn’t want you to think different of me, I didn’t want it to matter. I’m not that person anymore…he…I was awful, and what she did to me…” I rub my face, remembering the pain, “I’ll never forgive her for it.

– ALEXA –

All the way home, I stewed. When we left the florist I was mostly confused, but as I drove, I got mad. Here we are, planning our wedding, and he shows up, basically loses a gasket in the middle of the florist’s on a woman that I have never heard about. Not a single thing. Then it dawned on me, I’ve never heard about any woman that has been in Nolan’s life–I barely know anything. He knows everything about me, down to the first time that I have ever had sex, or the one time I tried smoking a cigarette. To him, my life is an open book. His is sealed shut. Locked with no key to get in.

However, every tense muscle in my body melts as I see the love of my life clearly pained, sitting next to me on the couch and holding my hands with such intensity that I can feel his rapid pulse transfer into mine.

“I could never hold the past against you, babe.” I look him gently in the eyes. “You, right here and now, is all that I care about. But I’d like to know. I’d like to know how you’ve become the person you are today. I need to know these things.”

Swallowing hard, he nods his head in agreement.

“I know…” He exhales through his nose. “It’s just a lot. A lot to take in and have to remember. I hate remembering.”

– NOLAN –

Alexa doesn’t respond. Just waits. Waits to hear the past that has formed the person I am today. But will she still love it…me, the person with the demons? Staring at her sweet little hands, rested delicately in mine, I question if this will be the last time we sit here like this–hand in hand and in love. Will she still see me as the same person after hearing what I have to say? Will she see the reason why I carry the baggage I do and hate me for it? Hate me like my sister did for so long.

“Nolan, it’s okay. I love you. Nothing you say will ever change that,” she softly whispers, angling her face so that she can see mine.

With her platinum hair falling naturally to the side, her emerald eyes that make me weak on a daily basis stare passionately into mine, forming an ache inside of my chest.

God, I love her so damn much.

Taking another deep breath, I sit up straight and bite the bullet. She has to know. No matter how she takes it, she deserves to know.

“I’ve told you how my parents died, right? On 9/11…on a plane?”

She nods her head, agreeing.

“Well, they wouldn’t have been on that plane if it weren’t for me. They weren’t supposed to come back until that Saturday…but I got arrested. They had to come bail me out.”

Resting my finger over her lips as she starts to speak, I tell her no. “Don’t try to justify it, doll. They were on that plane because of me.” She swallows again with pain forming in her eyes. “Just let me finish…okay?”

She nods her head again before I remove my fingers from her lips.

“I was a fuck-up. Getting into trouble all the time...doing drugs and getting drunk, day in and day out. The night before the crash, I got caught. I was visiting some friends in California, selling drugs out of an old abandoned house just outside the city. The cops got wind of it, set us up, and arrested us all on the spot. My dad was a lawyer, though. The best around. As soon as he got the call, they scheduled their flight for the next morning, telling me to not speak a word to anyone until they got there.” I sigh, remembering the comfort in my dad’s voice that night. Not pissed. Disappointed, yeah, but there was still love and comfort in his tone, making sure I didn’t worry. That they’d help me, even after all the shit I put them through. Their love for me was unconditional. They never gave up on me–always seeing the good and having hope that I’d someday find the light and become a better person.

“They never made it. Kelly talked to them on their cellphone minutes before the plane went down. They were one of the people who notified their loved ones from the plane.” Alexa’s breath hitches and her hand covers her mouth, causing an ache in my chest.

She’s going to hate me…

“They were telling her who to call for me. Which lawyer to assign to my case.”

A knot forms in my throat, thinking about their devotion to me.

“Still, moments before they were about to die, they were worrying about me. Not them...me. As pissed as Kelly was, she did it. She did as they asked, calling my dad’s partner and assigning him to the case. He somehow got me released, winning me just a crap load of community service unlike the time in juvie that my other friends got.”

I shake my head in shame.

“I wish he would have just let me do the time. Maybe I would have straightened out sooner because I just got worse. Everyone hated me. Kelly, my friends, my grandparents...everyone. And they had the right to. I killed my parents and got away with it while everyone else suffered. I went harder than before, got into even heavier shit. Didn’t even know where I was half the time, or who I was screwing. My life was a blur, and that’s how I wanted it. I didn’t want to be alive. I didn’t want to remember.”

I close my eyes, not wanting to see the pain on Alexa’s face. I can’t bear it, but need to finish. I need to tell her where Margo came in.

“That’s when I met Margo. She was just as fucked up as I was, living her life high and passed out half the time. We had the most fucked up relationship, but I loved her. Even if I can’t remember the first half of our relationship, she was the only person that got me. Ran away and never looked back…like me.”

Alexa’s thumb caresses the top of my hand and I wonder why? How can she comfort me right now?

– ALEXA –

My heart is ready to explode listening to Nolan right now. The pain. The remorse. The regret that he has carried is almost too much to bear. And he blames himself. Everything bad that has ever happened in his life, he blames himself for. I wish he’d let me talk; to tell him it’s not his fault, that it was just an unfortunate coincidence. It wasn’t his fault.

“Just after my seventeenth birthday, Margo found out she was pregnant.”

My eyes spring open, not expecting that to come next.

“You have a kid?” slides off of my tongue without even thinking.

No words come as he looks down, eyes shut and lips quivering, shaking his head no. I inch closer to his side, resting my hand on his cheek. I’ve never seen him this exposed–so vulnerable.

He licks his lips before inhaling deeply, opening his eyes, but still looking down.

“We agreed that we’d clean up, for the baby. We started going to school every day, I got a job...finally getting our lives back on track. I got back in touch with Kelly, pleading for her forgiveness, telling her how sorry I was and that I needed some kind of family in my life, in my kid’s life. She had been going to therapy and was in a better place, telling me that she shouldn’t have blamed me, even though she was right to. It
was
my fault.”

I try to interrupt, to cut him off again with blaming himself, but he shakes his head and holds up his finger, silencing me before I can even start.

“She helped me get cleaned up, though. Bringing me to see her therapist, sitting in on my rehab meetings. She was my rock. Margo did the same, but on her own time while I was at work. We actually appeared normal, getting good grades and working hard. I tried to go with Margo to all her appointments, but missed the one when she found out it was a girl. I was so excited, though…”

He looks up at me with the corner of his lips slightly curled up into a grin.

“As much as I said I wanted a boy, the thought of having a little girl that I could call my princess had me fucking ecstatic. The weekend before we graduated, we went looking for apartments. Our plan was to move to one after graduation. We had it all figured out.”

Pausing, he bites down on his lower lip, his expression turning angry.

“That didn’t happen, though. The night of graduation I had to work while she went to some grad parties, saying that she wouldn’t stay long, that she just wanted to stop in and say hi. I was hesitant. We stayed away from parties, too many bad influences there, but I trusted her, we’d been doing so well. Just as I was finishing up my shift, doing my last pizza delivery, I got a call from her aunt, saying that she was in the hospital.” He sighs, shaking his head. “That she’d overdosed on prescription drugs. Immediately, I asked if the baby was okay, but she didn’t answer. Just asked me to hurry to the hospital. A million different emotions flooded my body driving there. I couldn’t believe that she would pick up another drug while carrying our baby...she promised that she was clean.”

Resting my hand on his thigh, I rub it gently, trying to comfort him as much as I can. There’s no denying his obvious pain, knowing that the story doesn’t end well.

“Well, I found out that she never gave them up. She wasn’t doing heroin which was our drug of choice. She was doing Oxycodone instead. The party drug for heroin. Well, that’s what she tested positive for, anyway. Along with some others.”

He exhales, rubbing his face.

“When I got to the hospital, she was in surgery, delivering our baby via c-section. I stayed in the waiting room. I wouldn’t talk to anyone...just prayed over and over again that the baby would be okay.”