Falling into Forever (Falling into You) (14 page)

I tense
. Maybe he and Hallie…

“
Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m a happily married man. Hallie and I are friends. We’ll always be friends. There’s never been anything else. There will never be anything else.”

My body relaxes.

“That’s more than I can say for you and her. So, anyways, she leaves, my inner caveman takes over, and I need to see that she’s not wasting away in some fucking dorm room somewhere, so I fly my ass to Atlanta. It’s worse than I ever could have possibly imagined. I mean, she’s a hot mess, all ratty hair and old sweatshirts and really bad poetry. I mean, Jesus Christ, she’s playing the
Rent
soundtrack on a loop. Of course, she’s still trying to say that nothing’s wrong and that she’ll be okay and that she just needs to make it to class. And all the while, she’s still getting straight As, because it’s just like Hallie to be crawling around like a little lost puppy while writing beautiful manifestos about Freud’s role in current psychiatric practice.”

I smile at that.
Sam temporarily forgets that I’m the one he’s talking to and he actually smiles back before a frown crosses his face.

“I’ve
never seen her like that, before or since. I could make her laugh and smile for a second or two, but then the smiles would disappear and she would go back to moping. She wasn’t even a shadow of herself. But then Ben showed up, and he kept prodding her, teasing her, making little jokes with her, and then she started smiling again for real. He was…” Sam clears his throat. “He was special. To her, to me, to everyone. The kind of special that doesn’t come around twice. He made her happy. She made him happy.”

It feels wrong to hate a dead man, but irrationally, I want to hit something. To be more specific, I want to hit Ben Ellison.
“I’ll be there to pick up the pieces.”
Of course he had been there.

Sam’s staring at one of the
paintings on the wall and twirling the stem of the glass in his hand carelessly. He eventually turns to me with a wistful smile.

“
Ben and I developed a little bromance, drinking beer and teasing Hallie and staying up all night to ponder the mysteries of the universe. We were young, but we weren’t, you know? Sometimes, it felt like we were a hundred years old, and everything since has just been aging backwards. I thought maybe life was going to be one long series of late-night conversations with a few bong hits sprinkled in to liven things up a bit.”

Sam’s poetic waxing about Ben Ellison isn’t improving my mood.
He seems to sense my impatience, and he revels in it, in making me squirm.

“
Ben managed to talk Hallie into transferring to his school in Ohio, and I was glad for it. Anyone could see where the two of them were heading, and I thought, finally, Hallie was going to find someone who wasn’t going to crush her heart into a million pieces. And I managed to find myself a best friend. I thought that the three of us would have a million more nights like that. And I guess we did, in a manner of speaking.”

He looks upward for a second. Yep, I’m a douchebag. I try to
remove all thoughts of hitting a dead man, but they’re still there, taunting me.

“
You probably know what happened next.” Sam peers at me for a minute. “At some point, he made a move, or she did, and their happily ever after started.”

“Is this entertaining you, Sam? Is this fun for you? What do you want me to say? Sorry? I fucked up? I did. And I am fucking sorry.”

He watches me closely as I stare at the candy wrappers in the corner. I reach down and pick a stray one up and twist it between my fingers.

“Ben was my fucking best friend
and he was a prince of the human race, a real goddamn American hero, even before the bus.”

“Clearly. And I’m an asshole.”

“Maybe.” Sam looks at me contemplatively and shakes his head. “Jensen, I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I think you need to know. Even as I was standing up there with my best friend on his wedding day, waiting for my other best friend to come out all smiling and happy in a long, white dress, I thought that you were going to come and screw it all up for her. I was just waiting for the minister to say, ‘And if there’s anyone here who has just cause for why these two should not be wed.’ I really thought that you were going to show up on a white horse to steal her away. But you never came. And they got married and got themselves a little house and…”

He lets the sentence trail off, lost in thought.

“It sounds like they were the perfect couple,” I say, bitterly. “And we all know that I’m not the knight in shining armor type. Even if I had shown up, ready to make my objection, I would have ended up with egg on my face.”

“Come on, man.” Sam slams his glass
down on one of the side tables in frustration. He gives me a long, cold stare. “Seriously?”

“Tell me, Sam.
You’re standing there, telling me how happy they made each other, that Ben Ellison was the once-in-a-lifetime kind of guy. And you’re actually trying to tell me that you were worried that my drunk ass would have waltzed in there and fucked everything up for the two of them? That’s bullshit, and we both know it. I’m the second choice for her now. It was probably always Ben that she was in love with. I’ve thought that for years. You have no idea how many times I’ve thought that.”

He doesn’t
respond at first. I’m shaking with it, the old fear that I would never be good enough, that it wasn’t me that she actually wanted to be with.

Sam’s voice is cold, and full of certainty and anger.
“I said that Ben was the kind of guy that doesn’t come around twice, and I meant it. I said that he was my best friend, and I meant it. I said that they were happy together, and I meant that, too. On paper, were they perfect for each other? Sure. But I never once saw her look at him the way she looked at you. It just wasn’t that kind of love between them, Chris. It was the comfortable kind, the sharing of socks kind, the making breakfast for each other in the morning, the shared history and memories kind of love that makes you grateful that someone can put up with you for so long.”

I take a breath.

“But it wasn’t the kind that wraps you up and spins you around and makes you want to scream and yell and never let go. I’ve had that, and I’m telling you right now that I would never be happy with anything else. I think you and Hallie had that, too. I don’t know if she was ever going to be truly happy with anything else.”

“What are you saying to me, Sam?”

“You never listen, do you? Hallie Caldwell was always going to be in love with you. Always. It doesn’t matter how perfect for each other she and Ben might have been. It doesn’t even matter that the two of you were always going to be a powder keg of wrong. What I’m saying to you is that you could have waltzed into her happy little home and busted it wide open. Yes, I think that. She would never have left him, not once they were married, but I think she was always going to be at least a little bit in love with you.”

“That’s just you, making things up. Seeing things that aren’t there.”

“No, I’m not. It’s what Hallie thinks, too.”

“She thinks that I should have come and ruined her marriage? No, Sam.”

“Not like that. I’m not explaining myself very well right now, am I?” He looks to me for confirmation, and I don’t give him the satisfaction of a response. “For some reason, she thinks Ben’s death was all her fault. It’s insane, of course, but she thinks it’s all some cosmic joke, that he knew that she was never going to love him the same way that she loved you, and that’s why she lost him, that’s why he was taken from her. She thinks that she didn’t deserve him or their life together.”

“What?”

“She thinks that she didn’t deserve him or their life together, and that’s why he was killed.” He speaks slowly and clearly, like he’s talking to a small child. “You can’t carry that kind of weight without letting it fall in on you, man.”

I look at Sam.

“So, what do I do now?”

“
See, I thought you were just going to ask, ‘How do I find her?’ My response, before I started telling old stories, was that it was never the right question. Instead, you need to think about what you’re going to do when you do find her. And the answer to that is definitely not to fuck her. Even I understand that people have needs, but sex isn’t going to solve anything here. There are other issues at play, ones that you know nothing about. It definitely isn’t my place to get into those right now, but you really need to trust me when I tell you that sex is not the answer. So, Chris, what are you going to say? What questions are you going to ask?”

“I need to know whether the crazy kind of love that lasts lifetimes and makes you want to rip all your hair out and crawl inside the other person’s skin and never let them go is worth fighting for. I know what I want. I just need to know what she wants.”

Sam takes in my words, and long moments pass. “She’ll be in Chicago next week, for the production meeting. The only thing that I’m asking of you is to think about it, to think about whether your latent desires are worth possibly destroying her for good. You also need to think about whether it’s worth possibly destroying yourself for good. Because I don’t know. I just don’t know. I think if anyone ever managed to figure out this whole love thing, they’d have to shun society and live alone on an uninhabitable mountaintop to keep the people from beating down the door. If you’ve heard of anyone who’s ever actually done that, it might be worth taking some uninhabitable mountaintop climbing lessons.”

That makes me laugh.
“Uninhabitable mountain climbing lessons, huh?”

“It was the best analogy I could think of. I’m not the wordsmith. Ben was.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“See that you do.”

I extend my hand to Sam, and he shakes it tentatively.

“Thank you, Sam.”

“You’re welcome, Jensen. And if you let it slip to Hallie that I told you any of this, I will kill you. No alleys needed.”

I
take one last glance at the pile of candy wrappers and nod my head at him before we make our way back to the main gallery. As we reach the bottom of the stairs, he turns to me and shakes his head.

“You’re a prick who doesn’t deserve a woman like that. You do know that, right?”

“Does any man ever really deserve a woman?”

I
tilt my head towards a brown-skinned knockout wearing a silver dress who’s tapping her watch and giving Sam a death stare. They obviously belong to each other.

He takes a look
at her and grins back at me.

“Fair enough, man. Fair enough.”

I see the way that Sam’s hand rests on the woman’s back as they move into the waiting crowd, and I try to ignore the familiar twinge of longing before turning to scan the room for Marcus. I find him and Eva tucked away in a corner. She’s gesturing with an animated expression on her face, and he’s matching her, waving his frenzied hands in the air. People have moved away to give them a little bubble of space in which to air their anger. I think about going over to rescue him, but I decide against it.

Even Marcus needs a good ass-kicking sometimes.

HALLIE

The plane ride from New York to Wisconsin is just interminable enough that I manage to indulge all of my wildest fantasies about Chris and me before slipping into a melancholy state that’s only enhanced by the clouds passing by outside of my window. I read somewhere that planes make you nostalgic. Something about the lack of fresh oxygen.

I should have taken a bus, because that nostalgia is making me forget all of the reasons
why I should forget everything that happened in New York. Instead, it makes me remember.

Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved me. I loved him back. I thought that was all we needed. All we would ever need.

The worst part about it, even after life intervened and taught me that it can never be that simple, is that maybe I still believe that it’s enough.

I should know better by now.

*
* *

6 ½
Years Earlier

New York

“I have to go back to Greenview.”

The last thing in the world I really want to do is to go back to Greenview. Eight months with him isn’t enough. I need more. However, my mother’s nagging, insistent voice plays like a broken record, saying, “Hallie Viola Caldwell,” over and over again. Of course, she just has to add the middle name each time. It takes me back to my kindergarten self, standing, with my hand literally caught in the cookie jar. Damn it. Moms.

Chris twists
a long lock of my hair between his fingers. “I know.”

“And you need to go make a movie. The cop movie doesn’t count. It won’t be seen by enough people to be a real follow-up to James Ross, and you really have to think about your career.
I know I sound like Marcus right now, but you really need a new project that will keep your name on everyone’s radar. A big-budget film is the only real way to do that.”