Page 77 of Fall From Grace

“You will,” I told him. “I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to pass you in the halls. I don’t want to see you, period,” I repeated.

There was a hint of malice in the way he smirked at me. “Because you know this is stupid! You can’t bear the idea of seeing me withoutbeingwith me.” That was exactly it. I turned around and headed in. “We’re far from over Grace. We’re just getting started.”

Only I wished I hadn’t looked outside the window and saw him trying to pull himself together in his Jeep before he took off.

Mom was gone, Dad was lost, and I was broken, and I couldn’t let myself be healed by Noah. Not when we were to blame for Mom’s death.

33

Grace age 17

Noah age 18

My love hurts. She’s truly gone ugly. I pull and she pushes.

I reach out with phone calls, I drive forty-five minutes to her house almost every day where she doesn’t come to the door, and then another forty-five to get back. I’m anxious and afraid, yes, she has me terrified, and it’s truly the worst when it’s her that’s making me feel this way because she’s the one I want, the one I need when I feel lost and confused.

I stare at her mom’s text and convince myself a dozen times that she supported us, she believed in me, but I can’t say those things to Grace because she’s letting the guilt she feels swallow her whole. I want to save her, save us, but she won’t let me. If I push her on it, I’m afraid of pushing her away from me completely.

When I’m afraid that the guilt is threatening to swallow me whole along with her, I turn to Janet and let her listen because I need someone to listen and tell me that the one thing I’ve had that’s beautiful and exceptional hasn’t led to this. My feelings for Grace are powerful, they’re real and strong, that’s why it hurts so much more to think that we kept making mistakes when it came to her parents.

I know my priss loves me, it’s plain to see… that’s why she’s trying so hard, but I know her efforts are in vain. She won’t stop loving me, just like I let her make me suffer, and suffer even more because I love her, and I still think my future’s worth the pain she’s bringing me.

Because she’s the only future I’ve ever seen.

N.P.

Our house was no longer a home. It was a place where two people ate, slept, and lived without interaction. Not that I was the one making it that way. The first few weeks after Mom passed away, Dad went to work and came home and slept… I didn’t know if he was eating, I wasn’t…

I finally built up the nerve one day to tell him we needed food at the house, so he simply gave me money and I started going to the grocery store once a week in his truck. I’d make food, sometimes I thought my food tasted good, but most of the time it couldn’t compare to Mom’s cooking. I’d wait for him to get home before I’d eat in hopes that one day he’d sit down and eat with me. Instead, he chose to eat before coming home or eating when I was finished.

I thought I might understand Noah a little more in the past few months… The more Dad ignored me, the more I needed him to smile at me again. The less we talked, the more I missed him even though he was hurting me. If Noah craved his parents’ affection the way that I needed Dad’s right now, I don’t understand how he could smile and go on like he did growing up.

Dad stopped asking about Noah. He stopped asking about my life or caring since Mom faded from this world. Not that I had a life now. I rode the bus to and from school every day and that was it. I quit cheerleading. I stayed home on the weekends. I cleaned this empty house and washed our clothes while Dad stumbled around the house in a stupor. I wanted to be mad at him, but when I caught him with that look in his eyes sometimes or the way he cried while holding a picture of the three of us together, I’d run to another room and cry for Mom and wish she was here to make us better.

Noah tried to reach out to me every day. He came to the house every other day and on Christmas but I didn’t answer the door and Dad never came out of his room. He left me a present, a small necklace with my name written in cursive. I told myself not to wear it, but I never took it off once I tried it on that night. Every night he called and texted me knowing I’d never respond back. Dean and Janet tried reaching out to me many times.

Noah finally stopped coming in May and that set my world into another crisis. Even though I wouldn’t let myself have him, the thought of him giving up on me was hard to swallow. For six months I’ve ignored him, I didn’t plan to change it now. Even on the fifth, I never called and wished him a happy birthday when I should have. Noah deserved so much love, yet I only knew how to be this ugly creature right now. He might meet someone soon, what if she set his world aflame much better than what I could? My flame had dulled into a rotten apple.

I hated this future girl with a burning passion. I hated this pathetic person I’d become. Her friends were slowly giving up on her. Her father already had, and one day, Noah was going to wake up and see how dim she’d become. Or maybe he already had because he no longer tried to get in touch with me...

Until the day he sent me a friend request on Facebook. In my mind, I was already panicking because by doing this, I felt like he was invading on what I hid from him. The online world was always safe from his eyes. I never took our pictures off my page, I never changed my relationship status to single.

But I couldn’t for the life of me be angry because his profile picture was one of me and him. It was taken the first night we tried to have sex and we were lying in the back seat of his Jeep holding each other with smiles that I thought would never leave our faces. I covered my face and cried because the relief I felt was instant and it made me sick and happy all at once.

He hadn’t given up on me, even when I was trying my hardest to push him out.

_____

Noah never transferred senior year. He still wasn’t calling or texting me, but I wondered if he kept up with me through Facebook the same way I saw when he was hanging out with Lance and Jack when they’d tag him at places. I’d randomly post pictures just for him to see. Noah never posted anything, but he followed everything I posted.

I knew it was wrong of me to keep him this way, wrong of me to cling to him when I needed to cut ties completely.

I wish I could say John changed, but it took him months of occasionally asking for Noah’s number or money before he found out my mom had passed away. You’d think he’d see the empty spot where her car used to be and at least wonder, but it wasn’t until I finally broke down and told him that she was gone and that I was no longer with his son that he had the sense to look sorry. It kept him away for a bit but he eventually came back and it was after Noah turned eighteen that I handed over Noah’s number.

I never saw Noah’s Jeep at his trailer, not that I looked for it every day, and John finally stopped coming around completely. It made me wonder if Noah was letting him take advantage of him, not that I had a right to care or even think about him every day like I did.

The nights I was tempted to break down and call him, I’d pull out my phone and stare at Mom’s text and remind myself that my feelings for Noah led to her death even if the wreck was an accident that could have happened to anyone, these feelings of guilt were never going to go away.