He looks back again and is handed an album, which he places over my birth certificate, in a language I can’t read, from a life I don’t remember.
“Please, Sutton, look through the photos and see if you remember me.”
For hours, we talk, and he answers questions, and I try very hard to remember, yet don’t.
I learn that, before my mother died, she contacted him, and he begged her to let him come get me and offered to pay for medical treatment. He told me he knew she had taken pain medication to end her suffering.
No one knew that. No one other than Liberty. But deep down, I knew.
He told her that he loved her still, his first love, and when he said it, I knew he was being sincere.
He told me that, when I was left at Seashore, it was at his insistence. He had hired men to follow me, to ensure that I was kept safe. I now know he paid my bills and that the money in the account, one in which I never touched, one I thought my mother had set up, he actually did.
He was surprised I never used it. And the last thing he told me was that he promised my mother that, until I tried to find him, I would be left alone.
Tomorrow, he will be returning to discuss my future and the options available. Tonight, I lie looking at the ceiling, feeling guilt knot in my stomach because, once again, I am unsure of what to do.
“Don’t go,” Patrick whispers, as if reading my mind. “I know you’re thinking about it, Savvy—”
“Sutton,” I correct.
“Baby, please just finish out high school here, and then you’ll be eighteen, and we can go visit together. I don’t want you to do this alone.”
I squeeze his hand. “I love you. No matter what, I love you.”
“I’ll never stop. Don’t you either.”
* * *
The night before I leave, I thank Xavier and Taelyn for their hospitality. I thank them for making such a great human, and I ask them to please forgive me.
Taelyn hugs me but doesn’t say a word, tears filling her eyes. I know she’s worried about him. So am I.
Xavier’s goodbye is different—a hug and a whispered, “See you on the next trip around the moon.”
Patrick went to his room when I told my father I would come to Saudi Arabia with him, and he didn’t come out. That was two days ago.
Whenever I tried to explain, he’d say, “Shut up, Savannah.” Whenever I cried, he held me, but he did so with my back to his chest. When I asked why, he told me he had to get used to seeing me from behind, because I was choosing to walk away from us. I only asked once. And, at night, when he thought I was asleep, he sat in the chair next to the bed, and he watched me.
Saying goodbye to Patrick was harder than anything I ever did in my entire life.
Chapter 25
“Life starts all over again
when it gets crisp in the fall.”
~F. Scott Fitzgerald
Two Falls Later …
Patrick
My senior year at Seashore was fucking miserable.
The day before it started, she told me it was too hard to move forward when she was constantly reminded of what she left behind. She then told me that she loved me enough to let me go. I told her I loved her too much to allow that to happen. We had a million of those conversations while she was in Saudi Arabia.
Then, on December 20th, the last day of fall, she told me I would always be her first love … and she said goodbye.
The next day, I called and was told the phone was no longer in service. I tried to track her location that I never told her about doing, and it was unavailable.
She ended things the day before winter began.
Tris and I got really close that year, and although we didn’t bury any bodies, we did write some music and spent a year on tour; me managing and her singing her angry, little heart out. This summer, she got married to a man she met in Spain.
She’s a seventeen-year-old, platinum-selling artist, and he’s a twenty-five-year-old sculptor.
The amount of women I have gone through in order to forget Savvy is straight-up unknown, or maybe it’s not yet determined. Each one was supposed to remove the taste of her perfect, sweet little pussy from my mouth.
None did.
A couple months ago, we found out Grandma Patrick has breast cancer, and I decided to move to Boston to be closer to her and started school at Boston University.
Life was too short, and I was definitely not spending enough time with some of the people I loved the most, the people I lost sight of while in the fog that hangs over Heartbreak Highway.
Yesterday, I was walking out of the surgeon’s office with my grandmother when she joked, “I think we picked the perfect pair.”
“I think Pops will be pleased.” I winked at her.
Out of the corner of my eye, I swear to God above I saw Savvy walking briskly up the opposite side of the stairs, going into the medical complex. But that would have made absolutely no sense, right? Why would Savvy, the girl with the perfect tits, be going into an office building where it is strictly for breast surgeons who make fake titties?
I blew it off. Blamed it on all the leaves changing colors and beginning to fall.
And now, right fucking now, I’m standing a block and a half down from my building, looking across the street at a raven-haired beauty, who is looking up at a ceramic shop that has
