Lost To Me (21 page)

KOLTON

It was over. Lauren was lost to me forever.

LAUREN

All the crying stuffed my nose. I couldn’t breathe. My eyes stung when I closed them. When I did try to sleep, my head spun and looped back through the scene at prom, then my mind played back Kolton’s voice on the phone telling me he wouldn’t put me through it anymore by being with me.

The initial shock still flowed fresh, seeping through my veins, mingling with my blood. I didn’t think I’d ever get that poisonous feeling out of me. I knew it would be there for the rest of my life, tainting the way I thought of Kolton. He knew it too, so he broke up with me. For me, he said. It was best—for me.

It happened so fast.

He wasn’t mine anymore.

How do you just turn off love? I couldn’t stop the intense emotions from swarming through my chest at the slightest thought of him. I couldn’t stop the image of his face, his eyes that kept flashing in my mind.

I loved him.

I wanted to love him.

I couldn’t love him anymore.

KOLTON

Tabby didn’t come back to school. Good thing. It was her or me; I wasn’t going to be in the same building with her. She’d written me a letter though. Amber gave it to me this morning at my locker.

Now that the school was empty and everyone had gone home, I sat in the gym with my back against the wall and opened the envelope.

Kolton,

I know saying I’m sorry will never be enough. I know I hurt you and Lauren more than I can make up for. More than that, I took advantage of Kyle’s illness to make him do something he has to live with forever. I’ll be living with it too. I don’t say that to get your pity. I know you hate me. I don’t blame you. I hate myself, too. I’m not coming back to finish our senior year. I can’t face everyone, especially you.

I just wanted you to know that I did it because I love you, and I always will, and I’m sorry.

Rob told me you broke up with Lauren because you blame yourself. Kolton, she needs you. I know I wanted to break you two up, but this isn’t what I thought it would be. I’m the one who ruined her and you have to put her back together.

Tabby

All the details leading up to prom night came out at the police station. Tabby told Kyle that Lauren was trying to turn me against him so Kyle would be out of my life and Lauren would have me all to herself. Tabby convinced him that if I slept with Lauren, I’d be willing to do whatever she said. Kyle agreed to stop prom night any way he could, thinking it was best for him and Tabby if Lauren was out of the picture.

I wanted to run and hide.

I wanted to take Lauren and run and hide.

I crumpled up the letter and pounded my fist against my forehead. It had been two weeks since I’d talked to Lauren. It was the worst call I’d ever made in my life. She pleaded with me to understand that it wasn’t my fault. But if she were with someone else—someone without a mentally ill brother who didn’t take his meds and psycho ex-girlfriend—this wouldn’t have ever happened to her. I was no good for her.

I got up and strode out of the gym to the main doors. In a few more weeks, I’d never have to come back to this place. There was no keeping me here. Not now. I wanted to go far away.

I could kidnap Lauren and take her with me. I didn’t know if she had gone back to school, or if she’d gotten her stitches out. I’d give anything to see her face and kiss her healing cuts.

I shook my head and got into my car. Hot air shot swarmed around me. I cranked on the A.C. and leaned back in my seat, fighting the urge to drive to Fredericksburg.

LAUREN

Something was about to break loose. I told Mom in the car on the way down to the cottage that something had changed. I felt it.

In the weeks that had passed, the tears didn’t come as easily, and the anger came more infrequently. I spent a lot of time imagining terrible things happening to Tabby for busting in on my life and leaving it a wreck.

We got to the cottage just after seven at night. I hopped in the shower. Mom and Dad ordered a pizza. We ate in front of the T.V., and I went up to bed early.

I hated lying in my bed at the cottage. I hated that my pillow smelled like him. And I loved it. And I cried, and hated myself.

I struggled to focus on the book I was reading, tried to pull myself away from the best memories that hurt the worst. When my phone rang, I grabbed it. I hesitated for only a second when I saw his number on the caller I.D.

It was time. Something had broken loose. I felt it.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Lauren.” He sighed, like hearing my voice was a relief. Maybe he thought I died.

I didn’t know how to react. I let the silence linger.

“Lauren? I’m sorry.”

“I’m here. I don’t know what to say.” I squeezed my pillow. I wanted to jump up and shout and tell him to come get me, but I couldn’t. How could I rush the fences I’d just put up? What if I dove back in and ended up hurt again?

“Lauren? Do you still want to be with me?” His voice cracked. I thought he might be crying.

“Yes. I don’t know. Let me process all of this.” I would not go running back in. I knew better now. Even if he wasn’t to blame, it didn’t make the hurt I’d felt any less real.

“Please. I love you so much,” he whispered. “Can I come see you tomorrow?”

“I’ll have to talk to my mom. I’ll let you know.” He didn’t know I was at the cottage, and he wanted to drive three hours to see me. That should count for something, shouldn’t it? But where had he been all along—after the…accident.

“Okay.” He paused for a second. “Please don’t shut me out. I know I hurt you. Please talk through this with me.”

I wanted to scream, I love you, into the phone. I wanted him to show up under my balcony again. I had to hold back this time. I had to be smart and think it through, not let my heart lead. “I won’t shut you out. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Okay. I love you, Ladybug.”

My heart seized. “I know.” I hung up. I couldn’t take anymore. I cried until I was gasping for air and squeezed into a ball on the floor with my arms around my knees.

I had to fight it. I couldn’t give that much of myself ever again.

I stared at the ceiling all night, and out the balcony doors where the hazy sky blurred the stars. If only something were clear.

The next morning, I watched the sun rise then went down on the beach to take a walk. The water was cold and numbed my feet. I wondered about the numbness, and how everything hurt so bad right before it set in. Maybe always being numb was the answer.

I knew every minute that went by without my phone call was tearing Kolton apart. I couldn’t help it. I deserved this time to figure out my feelings.

I plopped down in the sand in front of the cottage and watched the waves roll in and pull back out, a constant state of flux. Everything was always moving and shifting under its surface. How can you be certain of anything in a world that’s always in motion?

As I sat there thinking and crying, a little girl in a pink polka dot bathing suit ran by with her mom chasing her. The little girl saw me, and the look on her face threw me inside my head where I replayed the past few weeks, especially prom night.

Dad sat down beside me in the sand, distracting me from my contemplation. “So,” he said, ruffling the back of my hair.

“So.” I couldn’t decipher the expression on his face.

He raised his chin and looked out over the ocean, handing me a caramel. He almost appeared to be grinning, just the corners of his mouth bending slightly upward. “Want to talk?”

I pulled my knees up to my chest, and rested my chin on them. My fingers tunneled down into the sand at my sides. I shrugged. “If you want.”

He leaned back onto his hands and stretched out his legs. “What do you think about all this?” I felt his eyes on the side of my face. I could smell his deodorant—clean and soapy—the scent I’d known him by for my entire life.

I shrugged again.

“Want to know what I think?”

I turned my head, facing him, laying my cheek on my knees.

“I think the whole situation stinks. For both of you.” His lips pulled in, making a sympathetic smile. “You know, it’s tough being a guy. It’s bad enough when we do stupid things—make stupid mistakes. But this guy thought he was doing the right thing by staying away. It was his brother that did this to you. That’s a lot for someone to handle.”

He let his head fall back and watched the seagulls flying over our heads. “Being in a relationship is tough work. It takes swallowing your pride sometimes. I can say that your mom’s swallowed hers a lot over the years.” He pulled my hand out of the sand and held it. “I’m glad she did.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes. I wondered what he meant, what had happened over the years between him and Mom. He stood and brushed off his shorts. “My keys are on the breakfast bar if you need to borrow the car.”

I blinked back tears and smiled. “Thanks, Dad.”

“It’s what I’m here for.”

I watched him walk back up the beach onto the patio. He sat beside Mom and pulled her feet up onto his lap. She put her magazine down and studied him for a minute before smiling. Then she took his hand and squeezed.

The ocean mirrored everything else in life.

It was always changing.

Cuts healed, and people moved on.

I slid my cell phone from my pocket and dialed his number. “Meet me at our dune,” was all I said when he answered. Then I hung up.

There was one thing I had to get before meeting Kolton with my decision.

I ran past Mom and Dad into the cottage, up to my room. Under my bed, stored away in a Monopoly box, my ladybug necklace waited for me.

FOUND AGAIN

10 Months Later

LAUREN

I knocked on the door. Kolton opened it wearing one of Rob’s crazy t-shirts. This one was bright orange with the Frosted Flakes logo on it.

“Hi,” he said, taking my hand and pulling me into his dorm room. “I have to change really fast then we’ll go.”

I traced Tony the Tiger’s face on Kolton’s chest. “I was hoping you were planning on changing.”

Rob spun around from the desk where he sat on his side of the room. “Don’t tell me you’re a Frosted Flakes hater. They’re grrreat!” He jabbed his finger into the air like Tony the Tiger.

Laughing, I grabbed a balled up pair of socks from the floor and threw them at his head. “You’re not normal. You know that, right?”

“Normal’s not fun. We’ve been over this before.” He threw the socks back at me.

Rob and I became good friends after the accident. He spent a lot of time with Kolton, so he spent a lot of time with me by default when we got to UVA.

“You sure you don’t want a ride home with us?” Kolton asked him.

We were headed to Virginia Beach for spring break. Kolton was staying at the cottage with me until my parents came in two days—they knew we were together, but would never approve overnights at the cottage—then he was planning on staying at Rob’s.

“Nah,” Rob said. “I need my car at home. Thanks for the offer.”

“Sure,” I said, since I was the one driving.

“I’m having a party Friday night.” Rob grabbed his Cat in the Hat hat from the floor by his desk and plopped it on top of his head. “Beer Pong Champion of the World!”

Kolton looked at me, and I looked at him. “I think we’ll pass on the party,” Kolton said, turning to Rob. “I see you enough as it is.”

“Then why is your dumb ass staying with me over break?”

Kolton picked the ball of socks up from the floor by my feet and winged it back at Rob. “I’ll be right back,” he said to me, then disappeared into the bathroom with a change of clothes.

Rob sighed, throwing the ball up in the air and catching it. “How are we going to get our boy to talk to his brother again?”

“I don’t know.” I’d been wondering that myself.

At the end of last summer, Kyle wrote me an email asking me to forgive him.

I didn’t think I could forgive him at first.

About a week after getting Kyle’s email, I knew the only way I could come to terms with what happened to me was to talk to him, so I went to the hospital to visit him. Mom and Dad thought I was crazy to go. Amy drove me. She understood my need to get face-to-face answers.

Kyle was medicated and stable. He was about to be sent home. The doctor was certain he could live a normal life. Kyle and I sat outside at a picnic table under a tree. He didn’t stop drumming his fingers on the tabletop the entire time we talked.

In the end, I forgave him.

Because he’d been taken advantage of.

Because he needed my forgiveness to heal.

Because I needed to give it to heal.

On the outside, my scars were faint lines on my cheeks. They were no harder to cover with makeup than my birthmark always had been. If I decided to, I could have cosmetic surgery.

The bathroom door opened and Kolton came out. “All set. Let’s get going.” He hoisted his duffle bag over his shoulder and whacked Rob on the back. “Give me a shout when you get there.”

Because of the traffic on the Chesapeake Bridge, we didn’t get off the highway until almost four hours later. When I made a left at the first intersection instead of right toward Sandbridge Beach and the cottage, Kolton grabbed my hand. “You turned the wrong way.”

I held on to him tight, threading my fingers between his like he might get away, jump out of the car or something. “We’re going to your mom’s apartment.” The foreclosure on their house happened last fall. “You haven’t been there yet.” He hadn’t even gone home for Christmas.

“Lauren.” He rubbed his free hand over his face, scrubbed at his forehead with the heel of his palm. “I can’t.”

“You can. Ten minutes.” I turned left again, getting closer by the second.

“I don’t want to see him. I’m not ready yet. Can’t you understand that?” He slouched down in the seat.

I pulled into a convenience store parking lot and stopped. “Of course I understand.” I pointed to my face. “Hello!” I waited for him to look at me. “The thing is, I know how much better it feels when it’s in the past. You need to talk to him to get over it, Kolton.”

He took a deep breath and groaned. “I know.” His eyes held mine for a minute. “I know,” he whispered.

“When?”

“Soon, but not this week.”

“Promise?”

He ran a hand over his head and sighed. “Promise.”

Taking his word for it, I drove us to the cottage. He lugged our bags up the steps to the door. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “I’m starving. Let’s go get pizza.”

I had other plans in mind. “Okay. Can we take a walk on the beach first? Will you die of starvation?” I leaned in and kissed him as he placed our bags on the kitchen floor.

He held me against him tight and kissed me, deeper this time. “A walk on the beach in the dark with you?” His eyebrows hitched up and down. “Count me in.”

“Good. I’ll be right back.” I darted upstairs, pretending to run to the bathroom. When I came back down, he was waiting on the patio.

We walked in the surf, hand in hand, his thumb rubbing over mine. We didn’t talk, but we didn’t have to. Since we saw each other every day, we had time for silence now.

At our dune, he climbed up first, then reached down to take my hand and pull me up into my spot. I snuggled into him. The waves crashed and rippled across the sand. The moon rode the waves, and the sea grass shushed in the breeze.

I shivered.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

I looked at him, the boy I sat here with a year ago and kissed for the first time. He smiled, knowing the shiver wasn’t from being cold.

While we kissed, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small, medal racecar. When I put it in his hand, he parted from my lips and opened his palm.

So much had happened in the past ten months, but it was finally our time.

“You want to play
Monopoly?
” he asked, rolling the tiny car around in his palm.

“I want to play Monopoly,” I said, and dove for him, wrapping my arms around him and pushing him back on the sand as I kissed him.

Both of us laughed between kisses.

“You’re always getting me in trouble.” He rolled us over and ran his thumb across my birthmark and the scars on my face. “I love you, Ladybug.”