But that birthday was different.
I was so lonely. We had made a pact that if by our thirtieth birthdays we weren’t married, we would marry each other.
It was stupid and it never really would happen, but there I was, seventeen again and laughing with him after prom.
I sat at the beach for four hours. With each stroke of my brush, a tear would fall, mourning the loss of him over and over. All the feelings of sadness I’d pushed aside washed over me. I was sitting, watching the waves crest and retreat, painting them with the sun from a different angle.
He turns, our eyes lock on each other, and my heart begins to race. He looks at me like he’s seeing straight through my heart.
Derek doesn’t say anything. He watches, searching deeper inside of my soul than I give him permission to. It unnerves me and I feel exposed.
Too many feelings fill me.
Too much of…all of it.
I turn my head, and start to walk away, but he grips my wrist. “I’m sorry.”
My eyes snap back to his. “For?”
“Everything.”
Each breath I take is heavy and my head is spinning. When I paint, I’m raw with emotion. Now, being in this room with him looking at my work, saying these things, has me feeling vulnerable.
“It was a long time ago. It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
His lids fall, and I know that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but it’s all I can give. I need to build my walls back up because Derek is the dream that will never come true for me.
“I’m still sorry.”
“I am too.” For everything.
“Do you think we can ever be friends again?”
We’ve lost too much, hurt each other too deeply to ever be more than…this.
Indifferent old friends who won’t be able to get through the mucky past, which is filled with quicksand. I can’t afford to step in it and get sucked under.
Chastity needs me to be strong. I can’t become this weak woman who is heartbroken over him.
“I hope so. I hope we can be a different kind of friends. Ones who are older, wiser, and honest. Do you think that’s possible? Considering our history?” I ask.
Derek shifts to the side. “History doesn’t always have to define the future.”
I ponder that for second because I don’t think that’s true. “It usually does.”
“Sure, it has before, but we’re the ones who get to decide if that’s the case for us.”
I smile softly, wishing if I believe it hard enough, it could be true. But wanting something doesn’t make it a reality.
Sometimes, shit happens and you have to make the best of it.
“What if something else has already made that choice for us?” I counter.
Derek shrugs. “Then I guess we’ll have to figure it out.”
“As friends.”
“Good friends,” he tacks on.
“Friends who will coexist in this ridiculous town and encourage our daughters to find a way to get along.”
His eyes turn back to the painting. “I hope we’re able to do more than coexist. I guess time will tell.”
Yeah, I guess it will.
Chapter Eighteen
Teagan
Present
“I don’t know how you can talk to my mom,” Chastity says to Nina as we put away my mother’s newest finds.
“Why?”
“Because she was mean, like Everly.” The name comes out as a sneer.
It’s been a week since Chastity’s brought up Everly and I’d hoped it meant Everly had moved on, but apparently not.
“Have you tried to talk to her?” I ask.
“You can’t talk or look the Devil in the eye, Mother. You’ll go straight to hell.”
Nina snorts. “It’s so hard for me to imagine that girl being anything but nice. Derek was such a good guy—still is, so I’m surprised his offspring isn’t.”
“Dr. Hartz is the best. He’s so nice and lets me do way more than the other Dr. Hartz.”
It eats me alive a little bit knowing she spends so much time with Derek. Each day, she heads there, works with him, and then comes here to tell me how much she likes him.
I’m jealous that my daughter is hanging out with a man I want to see, which makes me the worst mother ever. I’m the picture-perfect image of maturity.
“He’s a good guy.”
“You two were best friends, right?”
I nod. “Once upon a time.”
“What happened?”
I would throw myself off a building to avoid this conversation.
“Nothing. We drifted apart.”
Chastity nods. “Sad that it happened, since he’s pretty cool. Even if he was responsible for creating Satan’s spawn.”
I burst out laughing. “You’re so dramatic. You also have no idea what that girl went through.”
I watch my daughter’s eyes narrow in disgust. I know she hates Everly, and rightfully so, but exercising compassion is never a bad thing.
“So that gives her the right to be nasty to me?”
“Of course not, but I don’t think she’s inherently mean.”
“I know what it’s like to only have one parent and I don’t treat others that way.” That statement wasn’t meant to be a dig at me. I know this. I can rationalize it, but it still bugs me that she doesn’t know the love of two parents.
“Do you think that’s because you never knew what it was like?” Nina asks.
“I also don’t know what poop tastes like, but I know I don’t want to try it.”
“Chas, that’s not exactly what we’re…”
“All I’m saying is just because you got knocked up with me from that guy who wanted nothing to do with either of us, doesn’t mean she gets to make bad choices too.”
“So I made a bad choice?” I ask.
“Mom,” Chastity says and moves toward me.
“No, no,” I tell her with my hand up. “I get it. Mean girls for the win, right?”
Nina touches her arm. “I think what your mother is saying is that Everly’s mother was killed in front of her. We know that your father is…well…but you didn’t know what it was like to have him, lose him, and then be taken from all you know.”
I need to send Nina a gift for
