Never Let Me Go (29 page)

I shook my head, reaching across the table for his hand. “That’s not it. I didn’t tell Hayden because I felt like we were done. But I’d be lying if I said that I’d totally and completely wiped my hands of you.
That’s
why I’m here with you right now. Not because Hayden suggested it, and not by default, but because I’m suffering from indecision between the two of you, and I feel like giving you a second chance will help me make my choice finally.” I looked around the backyard, once again stunned by what he’d done for this date. “What exactly are we doing out here, anyway?”

For the first time that evening, he grinned, the smile spreading wide across his face with the mischievous smirk I’d grown accustomed to throughout our friendship and relationship. “You want to pull and all-nighter and watch the stars with me.”

I yanked my hand out of his grasp, and leaning back and gawking at him. What the Hell?

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“You tied it to a balloon on your fourteenth birthday,” he said simply, crossing his arms in front of his chest and raising an eyebrow, looking mighty pleased with himself.

“Wha…? You…? Wh…? How do you know about my balloons?”

It would be the understatement of the fucking century to say that I was shocked. No one knew about my balloons—no one. Not even Nickayla. The only people who knew were my dad, Gemma, and Hayden. And well, apparently Brody.

“I’ve always known, Mich, ever since you were a little girl. This is going to sound horrible and stalker-ish, but I swear, I had good intentions.” His voice lowered and he adjusted atop his pillow. “The year your dad left, you were a mess. No one could see it, but I damn sure could. I remember it was your sixth birthday and I wanted to do something really special for you, but I didn’t know what. So I asked Nic, and she said you went up to Nonna’s lake house every year on your birthday, but she didn’t know what for. On your birthday, I begged my mom to call in to work and drive me to the lake house. She did, and I waited there to see what the Hell you were doing up there. And there you were.” He smiled, shaking his head. “You wore a dress for the first time in your life—I remember because you
never
wore dresses until that day. You acted like you were one of the boys. You had your hair tied back with a white ribbon, and you played with your hair for almost two hours before your mom came up to the lake and tried to get you to go home. And when you wouldn’t leave, she yelled at you. She said, ‘He’s not coming, Michele! We have to go!’ And you cried for ten minutes and you just said, ‘He promised! He promised he would come!’ When your dad showed up, he showed up with Gemma, and you were so pissed. I remember that the most vividly. You cried and you told him to leave, and then I watched while you snatched a giant bouquet of balloons from his hand and stomped your feet and ran in the house. Then you wrote a bunch of stuff on a lot of tiny pieces of paper, tied them to the ends of the balloons, and then released them into the sky.”

I didn’t realize that I was crying until he reached across the table and wiped the tears from my eyes with the pad of his thumb. I shook my head, a small smile forming on my face.

“After that, you never stopped releasing the balloons,” he continued with a sigh. “So when I started getting an allowance, I would go to the party supply store and pay the attendant to only give your balloons ten percent helium, that way I could find them in only a short amount of time when they hit the ground after you left.” I watched with a mixture of shock, adoration, and curiosity as he reached beneath the table. He set a small box in front of himself and then opened it. “‘Sing karaoke’”, he read. “‘Try again with Brody’, ‘dye my hair’”—he chuckled. “Your hair was
terrible
when you dyed it black that one time. The only good part about that catastrophe was that one fairy cut you got when four inches of your blond hair grew back in.”

I laughed through my tears. “Pixie cut. It was a pixie cut. And it took forever for my hair to grow out after that!”

He rummaged through the box, pulling out more slips of paper as I tried to think back to all those birthdays—almost eleven years’ worth—and whether there was something I missed. Had I missed a small, considerate Brody rushing behind me every year and intercepting my wishes? Had I missed so many signs from our childhood that proved how much he really
did
love and care about me, even if he couldn’t say so in adolescence and adulthood? Had I missed
everything
?

God, I couldn’t be sure, but of one thing I was certain: I was falling in love with him all over again. Lord help me.

“‘Learn the lyrics to five Eminem songs’, ‘get on the Principal’s Honor Roll’, ‘watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy in one day’, ‘try again with Brody’, ‘beat Kyle at an arm wrestling match’, ‘be the first of my friends to get a boyfriend’, ‘pull an all-nighter and watch the stars with Brody’.”

I sighed, reaching up and wiping the tears from my face and thanking the Heavens that I’d decided not to put any makeup on, otherwise I’d have mascara tracks covering my cheeks.

“Brody…Brody, I can’t believe you were
stealing
my wishes!” I exclaimed with a giggle.

“I wasn’t
stealing
them. I was
borrowing
them.”

“Oh, like there’s a difference!”

“There is! I needed them for a time like this. For a time that I could use them against you when you needed hearts and flowers and romance.” He averted his gaze. “For a time that settling for me wasn’t enough.”

My head jerked up at that. “What? I never
settled
for you, Brody. I
chose
you. Time and time again, you let me go, and time and time again, I put you before myself. I chose
you
over
me.
” I leaned forward and pressed my open palm to his face. “Ever since I was a little girl, you were all that I ever wanted, Brody. I didn’t
settle
for you. I
waited
for you. Sometimes, I feel like I still am.”

“Waited for me? For what?”

“For you to finally want me. For you to finally love me as much as I love you.”

He winced visibly as though I’d struck him, and he brought a hand up to stroke his chin. He shook his head about two seconds before he lowered it.

“Is that what you think? That I didn’t want you? That I didn’t love you?” He sounded absolutely shocked, like this was a foreign notion to him. “Michele, how can you say that?”

“Because
you
never said it!”

He laid his palms flat on the table. “Maybe I never said it, but I showed it, Michie. I did.”

At that,
I
winced. I was fuming. I couldn’t believe that he was saying that to me. I’d loved him all my life, and while we had some amazing times that kept his hold on me alive and well. But for every good day we had, there were five more bad days. So of course I was pissed. Maybe you couldn’t prove love by saying it a million times, but you could prove it by showing it. And as far as I was concerned, Brody had done neither.

“When? Please tell me when you showed it. Was it when you were fucking Belinda Moreno in middle school?”

“Will you get
over
that, already? God, it happened six years ago! Give it a rest!”

I stood up, shaking my head. “I can’t! Because for me, it wasn’t six years ago! For me, it was yesterday! For me, seeing that
slut
in school every day and hearing your name come out of her disgusting mouth and watching how you ran to her
every time
you broke up with me is like being hit by a bus! It’s like watching it happen over and over and
over
again!” I leaned forward, clutching my chest, because the physical pain of all that we’d been through was truly hitting me for the first time since I’d escaped to Big Springs. “When did you show me that you loved me, or that you wanted me? Was it perhaps when you told me that you could
never
be with me in front of the entire school freshman year? Or was it when I was with Austin, and you
finally
decided that you wanted to be with me, once I was una-fucking-vailable? Oh, oh, I’ve got one! Was it when I asked you why you didn’t ask for help to finally escape your dad, and you dumped me on the
spot
for even bringing it up? Or, since you always accuse me of bringing up things that happened in the past, how about I try something recent? Did you show me how much you loved me when you left me in the middle of a fucking spotlight at prom, sobbing and looking like Homie the fucking Clown with makeup all over my face? Did you show it when you so kindly stopped by my house and dropped off my stuff so you could dump me in the middle of the rain? What about when I
finally
started to move on and be happy, and you show up here like
I
fucking owe
you
something, and kiss me? Ooh, how about the most recent? Was it yesterday, when you threw me to the ground and sucker-punched my boyfriend just because you didn’t get your way? All of that was love, wasn’t it?” I paused, breathing hard and gasping for air. “
WASN’T IT?!”

Brody blinked at me a few times, and when I started shaking and bending double, he leapt to his feet and rushed over to me. “Goddammit. This isn’t right.”

He wrapped his arms around me from behind, holding me as we fell to the floor. He brought his knees up and cradled me in his arms as I sobbed, letting myself finally let go of what had been hurting me, what had caused me to be angry and resentful of him. He kissed my hair over and over, pressing his lips to my ear. “I’m so sorry, Michele. I didn’t know. God, Michele, I didn’t know. I’m
sorry
.”

I shook my head, clutching onto his arms as they wrapped around my middle and he continued to whisper his apologies repeatedly into my hair in between kisses. “You…you say that you—that you showed it. But I—I never felt it! Not once! I held on all this time just on the possibility, on the tiniest of hopes that maybe one day I would. And to this day, I still haven’t.”

I could feel him heaving, like he was feeling everything I was, like the weight of the world had just crashed and fallen down on the both of us.

“Michele, I never meant to hurt you. You have to know that. I’m stupid, Mich. I don’t do the right thing, probably ever. I always meant to do right by you, but I never seem to, do I?” He paused, grabbing a lock of my hair and tucking it behind my ear. “I didn’t know that what happened with Belinda hurt you as much as it did. I didn’t know that anything I’ve done could break you like this. I’m responsible for making you this way. I’m responsible for this heartache you’re feeling. And I’m so fucking sorry.”

I nodded, letting the tears flow freely like a waterfall out of me. I couldn’t hold back anymore since he finally knew. He knew what was hurting me, and so I was finally free.

“I forgave you a long time ago, Brody. For all of it, even Blow Job Belinda.”

He gave a low, dark chuckle, and kissed my temple. “It didn’t feel you’d forgiven me just now with that outburst.”

“I know. But I did. I did forgive you. I just…I just hadn’t let go until this very moment.” I turned around and planted a kiss on his jaw. “I just wanted us to work, Brody. I just wanted us to love each other and graduate and start a life together and live happily ever after.”

He nodded against me, his arms holding me tightly. “I know. But I don’t have money to give you hearts and flowers all the time. I’m not raking in the dough like Hayden is. I can’t give you what he can. I can’t spoil you like he can.”

I turned around, bringing my hands up to my face and wiping it once more for good measure as the last of my tears fell. “Is that what you think I want? To be spoiled?”

He nodded once, but he didn’t say anything.

“Being spoiled is nice, I’ll admit. Because every girl, no matter who they are or how down-to-earth they claim to be, likes to be pampered every once in a while. But I don’t need that, Brody. I never have.”

Before us, a bluish, purplish glow was consuming the night sky, stretching far and wide and covering every inch of the land that surrounded us. I stared up at it, wrapped up in the arms of the boy I loved and feeling like I was on top of the world and at rock bottom all at the same time, and I tried to figure out how it was even possible to feel so high and so low simultaneously without completely shattering into a million pieces.

And there I was again, afraid to hold on to him, and terrified to move on from him even though my feet were halfway out the door. It was a never-ending cycle, and I still had yet to decide if I was ready to finally break it. Because more than anything, more than there were clouds in the sky and grass on the ground and more than there were people in Heaven and people in Hell, I knew. I
knew
that I had to be the one to do it. I was the only one with the power to end the game we’d been playing all our lives once and for all.

Brody planted another kiss to my temple, and when he did, that was when I saw it. One by one, they broke through, first just a tiny, insignificant speck in the giant sea of purple and blue, and then more followed, forcing the darkness out with the immensity of their light. It was just a start, but I felt it, and I knew that he felt it too. The stars in the sky were a symbol of what little hope we had left. But as long as they burned bright, hope was still alive.