For hours, I drove.
Aimless.
Over near deserted streets, passing by vacant parking lots, storefronts closed down for the night, I roamed through all the disorder that had taken over my heart and mind. Exhaustion threatened to pull me under, my eyes puffy and red and unable to see far enough into the mess that had become my life.
When I could go no farther, I pulled up outside the slumbering house, cut the lights and the engine.
God, what was I doing? Funny, how after everything, this was the one place I felt I could go.
Resigned, I stepped from my car and stumbled up the sidewalk. Above, the night was dense, the trees still and the air full. I drew in a heavy gulp of it and wiped my soggy face, knowing I had to look a total mess. Nothing to be done about that. Like they wouldn’t clue in that something had gone horribly wrong when I showed up at their house at three in the morning, anyway.
Softly I knocked on the door.
Movement rustled from the other side and the door cracked open to a sleepy, frowning Jared. “Sam?” He stepped back, opening the door wider, scraping a hand over his face to wake himself up. He wore only his boxers, obviously drawn from bed.
God, could I feel any worse for doing this? I peered up at him, tried to conceal the torment in my words, but it just leaked through like water through a sieve. “I’m so sorry for waking you up, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
His frown deepened, but not in annoyance. “Hey, don’t worry about it for a second. You know you’re welcome here anytime.”
“Thank you,” I said, and he ushered me in. Subdued lights from the kitchen illuminated the space, and Aly emerged at the end of the short hall that led to their bedroom. She squinted at me. “Samantha?” In sleep shorts and a tee, she shuffled forward, craning her head. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I admitted. And I thought I’d cried myself dry, but when I saw her face fall in sympathy, I broke.
Quickly she crossed the room and pulled me into her arms, shushed me and soothed me while I quite literally cried into her shoulder.
Jared stepped back, giving us space, but still there with unwavering support.
And in spite of every emotion I’d been wrung through today, or maybe because of it, I finally truly understood what friendship meant, what I’d been missing for all those years.
Little muffled cries stirred up from Ella’s room.
“I’m so sorry for waking you all up,” I apologized profusely, wondering if either of them could even understand what I was saying through my trembling voice.
Aly stepped back and rubbed the outsides of my upper arms. “No apologies.” She squeezed in emphasis. “Jared and I both told you before, you belong here, with us. If you need help, we’re here, night or day. Understand?” She gave me a warm smile. “Besides, Ella was due to wake up to eat any second.”
Sniffling, I nodded. “Okay.”
“Why don’t you go sit on the couch and I’ll make you a cup of tea. Sound good?”
“Yeah.”
She turned to Jared. “Would you get Ella?”
“Glad to.” He headed down the hall. The echo of his muted, tender voice filtered down the hall from his daughter’s room.
Slipping off my shoes, I took a seat on the couch and drew my knees up to my chest, hugging them, searching for some kind of comfort that seemed impossible to find.
Still, being here?
It helped.
I rejected another call from Ben while Aly flitted around in the kitchen, quick to return with a steaming cup.
“Thank you,” I said, accepting it. I blew at the hot liquid before I brought it to my lips to take a sip.
Aly settled at the opposite end of the couch, crisscrossing her legs in front of her. Jared sauntered in, swaying Ella in his arms.
“Mommy time,” he said softly, easing that sweet baby girl into Aly’s arms. Ella wiggled and grunted, little legs flailing as she was situated against Aly’s chest. Jared ran his hand over the back of Ella’s head and dropped a tender kiss to Aly’s forehead. She lifted toward it, her eyes dropping closed as she relished his affection.
“Love you,” she said.
“Love you.” He glanced over at me, his expression uneasy, questioning, before he tipped his attention back down to Aly. “Why don’t I let the two of you talk?”
“Thank you,” she whispered, smiling a smile reserved only for her husband.
Awkwardly, Jared stepped back, slipped around the couch, and walked toward their bedroom. We both watched him over our shoulders as he went. He paused just before he disappeared into their room, eyes earnest when they locked on mine. “I know Christopher can be a complete idiot.” He shook his head. “I mean, we all can. Messing shit up every turn we take when it’s the last thing we want to do. But I think you should know I’ve only seen him spun up over a girl twice in his life.” Hand propped on the doorframe, he hesitated, then said, “Both times, that girl’s been you.”
Gratefulness and sorrow hit me full force. I flinched but tucked his words in deep. He dipped his chin before he disappeared into his room.
For a few minutes, Aly and I sat in silence while she situated Ella to feed her. We drifted on the charged quiet, Aly running her fingers through the thin strands of Ella’s dark hair, looking down at her tiny cherub face. It was such a gentle scene of pure, unadulterated love.
It filled me with a yearning unlike anything I’d ever known and strangely comforted me at the same time.
Aly glanced over at me, turned back to rub the bottom of Ella’s foot. Ella grunted in satisfaction. “I’m guessing it was my brother who put that look on your face?” Aly ventured.
Air filtered regretfully from my nose. “I think he’s the only one who’s capable of it.”
“So… are you two…” She trailed off, confusion and question in her tone, like she was trying to catch up to the events that had led us to this place, when the truth was, I was having a hard time keeping up with them myself. I kept replaying and replaying everything Christopher had said, the pleas and the explanations I didn’t know how to piece together with what I’d seen that night.
“Yeah,” I finally confessed. The word was raw.
Well, we were.
Her face was downturned, but I didn’t miss the flash of a smile that quirked at one side of her mouth.
“Are you really grinning right now?” I accused, trying to keep back the incredulous, confounded laughter that seemed to want to work its way out.
God, I had to be losing my mind.
Here I was, sitting on a couch in the middle of the night with the sister of the man who had yet again broken my heart. And she was making me laugh. The same way she always did, with that uncanny ability to dive below the surface, to reach out and pluck the positive from every situation that seemed entirely hopeless.
“What?” This time she let her smile widen, slanted it over at me, full and on display, her shoulders up to her ears. “Shouldn’t I be excited that my friend finally got that screw loosened that had her wound up so tight?”
She winked, just accentuating the horrible joke, and this time I barked out a laugh that was hoarse with all the tears I’d shed. “Aly, you’re terrible. Terrible.” I cast her a trembling smile. “Thank you,” I said again, this time quieter, letting her know how much I appreciated her.
“Seriously, Samantha.” She sucked in a breath, as if she was trying to gather her thoughts. “You and Christopher… when you’re in the room together? There’s no question where either of you belongs. I’m not sorry that it makes me happy that you found each other.” She blinked hard. “But what I am sorry about is that it led to this. You want to tell me what happened?”
Starting at the beginning, I told Aly everything, how much I’d loved him and how much I’d believed he’d loved me. My parents and all the rules they’d imposed with the intention of snuffing our love out. I tried my best to describe how horrible it’d felt to find him with Jasmine, how it’d wrecked something in me that I’d never thought could be repaired. I left out none of the sordid details, exposed myself in that time’s innocence and the lessons I’d learned the hard, hard way.
And to be honest, it felt good to have it revealed.
Yeah, Ben knew all about it. He’d been there. But for years, he’d held it over my head as a fault to belittle my judgment, pouring continuous salt in that forever festering wound.
Nervously, I picked at the hem of my shirt. “The worst part of it all was finding out someone I thought was committed to me wasn’t at all. I lost so much faith that night, seeing him with her and then Ben breaking it to me that he’d been with her all along. It killed something inside of me, Aly.”
Regret slowly shook my head. “But being with him now? That part felt alive again… like I could really breathe again for the first time in seven years. How pathetic is that?”
Aly shifted in her discomfort for me. “Not pathetic, Samantha. It means you love him. Wholly. That he’s a piece of you and when he’s missing you feel the vacancy. You can’t blame yourself for loving someone.”
She swallowed and continued. “I’m so disappointed he put you through this. No matter what the circumstances or how difficult the situation, there’s no excuse for him sleeping with her. He knew how miserable she made you. And I know my brother is prone to making all kinds of terrible mistakes. But I also know he’s not a terrible person. I see the way he looks at you, and if one thing is obvious, it’s the way Christopher feels about you.”
I chewed at my bottom lip, fidgeting more, and a confused, hopeless sound worked its way free from my throat. “Tonight he told me Ben lied. He said he’d only been with her once. Of course, that was after he lied to me about ever being with her in the first place.”
She paused, seemed to consider my words as she stared out into the darkened room. She turned to look at me, her chin tipped up in intensity. “Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know. He sounds sincere, and every part of me wants to believe him. But my greatest fear is that desire is just another weakness… wanting him so much that I’m willing to delude myself into believing he really cares about me. All these months, I fought my feelings for him because I didn’t trust him. Then the second I give him my trust, he turns around and crushes it again. The ironic thing is nothing in the past even mattered to me anymore, Aly. I was willing to forgive him for everything, if he’d just respect me enough to be honest with me.” I pressed both my hands to my chest. “If he’d just love me and respect me and tell me the truth. That’s all I asked of him, but he couldn’t even give me that.”
Slowly, she exhaled. “I’m no expert, Samantha, but one thing I’ve learned is men tend to take the worst paths to try to protect whatever means the most to them.” She laughed lightly. “Stupid and destructive, and it doesn’t make it okay, but it’s the truth.”
For the umpteenth time tonight, my phone lit up, and I groaned toward the ceiling when Ben’s name appeared on the screen. Both he and Christopher had been calling incessantly. I pounded at the screen to silence it, tossed it to the middle cushion between me and Aly.
“God, I wish he’d give it a rest tonight. You’d think after twenty rejected calls he’d get the message that I don’t want to talk to him.”
Aly gestured to the phone with her elbow, now cuddling Ella against her chest. “If things don’t work out with my brother, will you go back to him?”
“No.” With pursed lips, I shook my head. “No matter what, that’s over. I love Christopher, and going back to Ben wouldn’t be fair to either one of us.”
Five seconds later, my cell rang again. “Grrr…” I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, reclining my head against the back of the couch. “Which one is it?”
If all these calls were any indication, Ben wasn’t going to just give up. I’d have to go back and give him the truth I’d intended to tell him earlier today. Even if he didn’t deserve it, he would get my honesty. But it’d no longer come at my expense. No longer would I allow him to talk down to me or over me.
No more.
“Neither. It’s your mom.”
“Ugh.” I dropped my arms, shaking my head. “I’m sure Ben called looking for me and has her completely worried. Things didn’t go so well when I ended things with him earlier tonight.”
“Why don’t you let me answer it? I’ll just let her know you’re safe and you’re staying at a friend’s.”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Thank you… for taking care of me.” I gave her a soft smile.
The smile she returned was knowing, filled with sympathy and all the support I didn’t realize how much I needed until now. “I told you a long time ago I felt like we needed to be friends. Now I know we do.”
She grabbed my phone and accepted the call. “Hi, Mrs. Schultz, this is —,” Aly started to say, before she was overtaken by my mom’s hysterical voice on the other end. But her worry wasn’t for me. All I heard her screaming was “Stewart!”
Stewart.
Stewart.
Stewart.
The coldest chill slid down my spine, the empty feeling swooping in as if it’d drained all my blood with it. Hollowing me out.
No.
God, please, no.
Aly went pale, her voice so quiet I could hardly hear. “Okay,” she whispered. She pulled the phone from her ear and shakily passed it across to me. “You need to take this.”