The Whole Story
“Riley!” I hear Alec calling from his window for what seems like the hundredth time since he came home from school. Once again, I ignore it. You’d think he would have got the hint that I don’t want to talk to him: my drapes are firmly shut, my phone has been turned off for the last few days and my window is only ever so slightly ajar. I don’t want to see people right now. “Riley!” he persists, calling again. “I know you can hear me! Your light is on!”
“Please just leave me alone,” I shout back, begging internally that my voice doesn’t convey my inner turmoil. I can’t do this today. I am not able. “Please, Alec. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, I promise. Any other day but this. Every other day but this one.” I walk away from the window and lie down on my bed. I haven’t really moved from there since this morning’s visit. I must look horrific.
Evidently, Alec ignores my words again, because it isn’t long until I hear the huff of effort and the loud thud of Alec landing on my windowsill. It takes him a good while to push himself over the window, but it’s not long enough. Alec emerges from my drapes and drops onto my bedroom floor almost proudly. His face tells another story, though.
Alec is concerned about me.
“Alec,” I mumble weakly, and I can already feel the fight draining from my body. I’m too emotionally purged to resist his advance. Maybe this is what I need. Maybe I need to talk to him. What if he is exactly the thing that makes these last few hours of today bearable?
“Riley,” Alec sighs, “I’ve been worried sick about you. Both you and Violet have avoided us for the past few days. Today, when you weren’t in school, I figured something had happened to you. What’s wrong?” His voice evolves into a soft murmur, which I would not be able to hear if I wasn’t listening closely.
Where would I even begin?
My bottom lip begins to quiver, and I feel the lump rise in my throat. Alec is seeing me at my most vulnerable, and all I want to do is to shield myself away from him. To hide, to put my walls up and never let anyone in. Yet, there’s another part of me. A part of me which yearns to spill everything out onto him. To smash the bottle of my feelings and feel the release that would come from telling someone other than Violet. Telling Alec. It’s this option that is simultaneously the most appealing and the most dangerous to me. I can’t stand being hurt again.
Alec senses my weakness and sits down on the bed beside me. Without question, he lies down and wraps his arm underneath my shoulders, pulling me to his warm body. I don’t fight it. In fact, curling up next to him is oddly comforting. The dribbling tears stop, and suddenly I can’t contain myself any longer. “This is the anniversary of my cousin’s death.”
Once the words are out, I gasp at the shock, relief and pain of it all. I shouldn’t have told him that, but at the same time, I’ve never felt more relieved. What will his reaction be? Will he run away from the emotionally damaged girl he’s holding, who’s been through enough crap and felt enough insecurity for a lifetime?
Alec stiffens, expectedly. It takes him a couple of seconds of breathing to come out with the words. “You don’t know how sorry I am to hear that.”
“I think I do.” I attempt a laugh, but the sound comes out hollow and sad. “She died a year ago.”
“How?” Alec adjusts himself, pulling himself further down the bed and tugging his arm away from me, before spinning to face me. We’re both sprawled across my Star Wars sheets, staring at each other, and it’s probably the most intimate moment I’ve ever shared with anyone. I want to tell him everything, I realise. Maybe I need to, for the sake of myself. I wince at his question choice, but there’s an indescribable pull from my soul. I want to share myself with him, if he wants to listen.
“Do you remember I told you the story about Toby and the cheating?” I ask weakly. Alec nods in reply and I continue, having already expected that. “Well I told you then that there was much more to the story. I . . . I’m going to tell you everything now.”
I look at him and with my eyes try to communicate the warning and dread I feel inside.
If he wants to leave, he should leave now.
“Go on.” Alec’s voice is raspy. His eyes are beautifully entranced.
“I had a cousin. Her name was Kaitlin.”
I let out a breath. Had. The word seems to stand out. It bends and warps the sentence around it from something happy, something positive, to a grim reality. There’s no going back now.
I knit my fingers together before continuing into the story, lying on my hands to stop them from shaking. “Kaitlin and I grew up as two quite different children. She lived a town over, but we would visit each other constantly. After my uncle’s wife left, our families really connected. We were both broken. We depended on each other. She was my best friend; I grew up with her. We spent weekends together, we had sleepovers and I spent all of my summers at her house or vice versa. We were inseparable. People thought we were sisters. We acted like it.”
I don’t think I can do this.
“Do you remember when I said Toby was my childhood sweetheart? My best friend?”
Alec nods.
No. I can’t do this. I can’t tell him this part. I can’t tell anyone this part.
“Well he wasn’t just . . . mine. Toby, Kaitlin, Violet and I were all best friends with each other. Toby had been friends with me and Violet for years, and so he used to come with us to see Kaitlin in the summer, or when she came to our house. We were a little gang. Kaitlin and I both had a crush on him . . .” I try to force myself to say the next part but every part of my brain is fighting it.
A darkness in my chest seems to suck the words back down my throat. So I decide to omit the part of my past I am most ashamed of. The thing that tears me apart inside every day. I don’t tell him about how Toby and I really came together. I tell him all he needs to know. Not even Violet knows that part.
“In the end, he liked me,” I hurry out. “It was Toby and I, and her and Violet.”
One look at Alec’s balled-up fists, and I know he’s thinking of Toby and what he did to me. I grab one of his hands in my shaking one, squeezing on his wrist for comfort. I need to tell someone. I needed to let this much out.
“A few months before her fourteenth birthday, we all went to a party. Toby and I, well we were fifteen years old and this was one of our first experiences with alcohol. We got tipsy, and Kaitlin decided to leave early . . .” I swallow down my sins, choking back the demon growing in my stomach. I feel nauseous with guilt. I hear myself say the next words rather than feel them. I feel detachment from myself, like I’m looking down and watching the girl who’s been through so much, done so much, admit her past to the boy she likes. Don’t think, Riley. Don’t think too much. My therapist’s voice echoes in my head.
“She got hit by a car outside the party and died instantly.”
Alec’s small intake of breath alerts me back out of my daze, and I’m suddenly aware of the water that’s spilled from my eyes.
“Hey,” he murmurs, wrapping his arms round me to enclose me into a firm hug. Telling him has made it more painful, and I let out a strangled sob as I bury myself in his arms. However, I also feel relief. Relief that I’ve shared my story. That he understands me. He smells like vanilla and cologne, and it’s all the comfort I need.
“That’s why I wasn’t in school today,” I choke. “We visited the place we scattered her ashes this morning. I saw my uncle for the first time in eleven months and he was a mess, Alec, he was broken. She’s been gone a year, Alec. A whole year.”
And it’s all my fault.
“I know,” Alec mumbles, stroking my hair, “I know it hurts. But it will get better. I promise you, it will get easier.” His words are like magic to my ears, or maybe I’ve just cried myself out today, but I can feel my sobs slowing to splutters. “How’s your mom coping?”
“She’s just holding on I guess,” I breathe. “We’re all holding on by our fingernails. Kaitlin was like another daughter to her, and having to lose contact with her brother too . . .”
Alec shoots me a questioning look. I take a breath. I want to get every detail out that I can manage to. Everything but that.
“My uncle . . . he suffered severe depression for months after Kaitlin died . . . We thought he might commit suicide, but instead he just disappeared into thin air. Lost contact, aside from the occasional message.” I try to slow my breathing, “My mom didn’t take it well either, but she coped. She held on, and so did I.”
“And Jack?”
It somehow flatters me that he’s asking these questions. He wants to know. He cares. My breathing is normal again, and I wipe away the evidence of my breakdown from my cheeks. “Jack has cried too. He doesn’t want me to know that, though.” I sniff slightly and try to fight away the sinking feeling in my chest. The feeling I get before I get swallowed with anxiety, or wracked with guilt. I’m okay. I’m going to be okay. Alec is here and he cares.
“You can guess the rest.” I sit up and turn to face the wall. I daren’t look Alec in the eye, I’m so humiliated. “Dad had already left just after Jack was born, but he was notified. He came to the funeral and said his goodbyes to his niece.” I grit my teeth as the image enters my head. I hurt so many people with my actions.
“As for Toby . . . he took it hard as well. I think he wished he’d chosen her . . . I guess the guilt and hurt got too much. He cheated on me, and when his mom was offered a new job in Chicago six months ago, he didn’t tell me he was leaving. He managed to escape everything.” I chuckle bitterly. “Now he’s back, and after a year of me, Mom, Violet and Jack trying to avoid the topic because it hurts so much, he’s brought all those memories back. He wants another chance,” I mutter.
He did choose her. You ruined that for Kaitlin. You ruined that for Toby. You ruin everything.
“Who was the girl?” Alec questions softly.
“Tiana.” I glance back at him. The shock in his face is evident. He would never have expected that. Most people don’t understand the dynamics of mine and Tiana’s relationship . . . other than what they take at face value: she’s a generic mean girl and I’m a generic dweeb.
“I . . . I don’t know what to say,” Alec says quietly. “Thank you for telling me everything. I’m so sorry about Kaitlin, Riley, I really am. You’ve been through so much crap, and I can’t even begin to make up for that.”
“Thank you for listening,” I reply quietly, chuckling another hollowed laugh. I don’t regret telling him, but I feel oddly vulnerable. How is it that I’ve known this boy only a month or so, and already I’m telling him things about myself that I struggle telling anyone? Am I so needy, so weak, that a boy can break down my barriers so easily? “Sorry for getting tears on your shirt. It’s a good job I’m not wearing make-up, isn’t it?” My dull attempt at humour sucks, but Alec feigns a laugh anyway.
It was good that I got part of it off my chest, but at the same time so much worse. There’s so much I can’t tell him, and omitting it from everything has made the guilt fester in my brain. It reminds me that what I did, I can’t tell anyone about. It reminds me that I’m the worst person I know. Having someone to tell should make me feel loved. But this? This only reminds me of how unloved I will be if I ever tell him the truth. I don’t think I can ever share that part of me with him, as much as I’ve come to care for him.
There’s something inside Alec Wilde . . . a warmth, below the shell of cocky bad boy, that’s slowly coming out. Alec’s changing as I get to know him better, and slowly I’m getting to see more and more of the sweetheart coming out, not the bad boy. I want him to see the best in me too. I don’t want to show him what I did.
“What do we feel like doing?” Alec asks, as though it’s assumed that he’s staying with me until I feel better. “Do we feel like watching a movie and trying to keep our minds off things? We could go to my railway-bridge spot and talk some more? Or you could kick me out and say you need time alone.” He elbows me in the ribs lightly. Believe it or not, it is enough to make me crack a minute smile.
“Movie sounds good,” I say. “Let’s have a movie night. With lots of gore and violence and blood.”
Alec blinks. “You worry me sometimes.”
I smile weakly. I miss Kaitlin with all my heart, but if she were here right now, she would be screaming at me to let the cute boy comfort me, to let someone in.
“I know,” I say.