Chapter 3 - Derek
“Oh Derek, honey, they’re beautiful,” my mother says as she takes her flowers out of my hands.
“Happy Birthday, Ma.”
She ushers me into the house and I’m hit with all the familiar sights and smells that I grew up with. She’s wearing her faded apron with the little pink flowers on it, her long grey hair tied back in a braid.
“Come in, Derek. Drop your bag. I made your favourite!”
Every time I come back it’s like I never left. The wallpaper in the hallway is still peeling, and Ma is still cooking in the kitchen for me like I’m still eleven years old. I offered to buy her a house when my first album hit it big but she said no. “What would I do with a big fancy house now, all on my own here,” she said. I can’t blame her, but I wish she accept more help from me.
I sit down at the kitchen table and watch her work.
“Now not much has changed since you were here last, the Grays’ got a new roof on the grocery there, it was leaking like you wouldn’t believe during the storms,” she says as she stirs a pot of delicious smelling sauce.
“Yeah, Mrs Gray told me that,” I respond. Ma keeps talking, updating me on who’s gotten married and who’s had kids. Who’s been sick and who’s died. I listen and answer when I’m supposed to, but my thoughts drift back to Ellie. Eleanor.
I love the way she looked at me sideways and her eyes sparked at me. Then her hair fell forward and she tucked it behind her ear. I picture the way she was moving. She’s always been graceful, but purposeful in her movements. She’s fluid but she always looks like she has somewhere to be. I always admired that about her, her drive and determination.
I’ve lived in LA for seven years now, surrounded by the most beautiful women in the world. Women trying to make it as models, actresses, singers. Women trying to get a piece of someone else’s fame. They’re all done up to perfection, but none of them make me look twice the way I look at Ellie. But she’s out of reach. I lost that chance ten years ago.
She hates me.
She’s hated me since the minute she found out about it. It was silly. It was stupid. Teenage boys thinking they were funny. I still remember seeing her face change.
We were at school, and she’d come up to me wearing a huge smile. We had plans to go to the movies together after school that day. We were going to watch Into the Wild, because as Ellie said, both of us were only waiting for our chance to disappear from this town. She had walked up to me and asked me if I was ready. My best friend at the time, that brute Randy had laughed and opened his big mouth. It was almost like it happened in slow motion, everything fell apart right in front of me.
I can still picture her face. Her smile faded and she looked at me, a frown stitching her forehead together slightly. Like a fool, I just stood there. Randy was laughing and I was speechless. Her eyes faded into confusion and then sparked up again when she realised it was true. I’ve never seen anger as strong as I saw in her green eyes that day. It hit me to my core.
And like an idiot, I just stood there. I didn’t say a word.
She just turned around and walked away and Randy had clapped me on the back and laughed. And I’d just stood there. My brain was yelling at me to run after her, to tell her that I cared about her, that I wanted her, that she was the most beautiful, intelligent, witty, funny girl I’d ever met.
But I just stood there.
She walked away, and never looked back. Then I left to follow my music career and she left to go to college, and that was that. I never watched that movie, not once in the past ten years.
I’ve only seen her three times in the past decade, and every time is like a dagger to my heart. I think I’m over her, but no other woman is good enough, smart enough, funny enough. I think I’m over her but somehow things never work out. I’m always on my own.
And now she’s engaged, or maybe she’s already married. To Chad fucking Baker.
Chad Baker was my opposite in high school. The jock. Successful, hair gel Chad with the Colgate smile.
I’m pulled out of my daydream when Ma mentions her. Her name snaps me back to the present, to my mother’s kitchen with the peeling wallpaper.
“... and little Ellie Walters! Well have you ever heard anything so absurd! North Korea of all places!”
“What’s that? What about North Korea?”
“She’s going! She’s leaving on Monday! Well, I never! When she left to go pursue this journalism thing I knew they’d start putting all kinds of silly ideas in her head but I never thought it would come to this.”
I frown. What is she talking about!
“Ma, hold on. What? Why is she going to North Korea!”
“Oh who knows, Derek. Some kind of investigation or journalist thing. She’s writing all about politics and wars these days. It’s all too much for me. I think that’s why it never worked out with Chad Baker, you know. She got all kinds of ideas and then living in Greenville wasn’t good enough anymore. And now look, disaster.”
“It never worked out with Chad Baker?” I hate how strained my voice sounds. Ma turns towards me. She’s wiping her hands on a dish towel as she leans back on the counter and cocks her head to the side.
“I’m sure I told you that, honey. Six months ago. She called the whole thing off.”
“She called it off?” It’s like I’m unable to do anything except repeat whatever Ma says.
“Oh it was the talk of the town, let me tell you.” Ma turns back around and gives the pot of sauce another stir. “No one could talk about anything else. They had to forfeit their deposit for the venue AND the caterer. The Bakers lost a fortune with the wedding called off so late.”
My head is spinning. So… she’s single! And going to North Korea?! I don’t know how to feel. There’s a glimmer of… something. Hope? Desire? It’s curling up inside me. But I know I don’t have a chance with her. Why am I even thinking like this. She’s leaving on Monday, and so am I! And I’m sure as hell not going to North Korea.
“Well anyways, you eat your dinner and then head on down to Finlay’s pub. They have a new band there on Fridays, I’m sure it’ll be packed tonight. I know you love music.”
She dishes up my dinner and the two of us sit down together, in the same seats we always sat in.