Read Nova and Quinton: No Regrets Online
Authors: Jessica Sorensen
My heart slams excruciatingly against my rib cage. “You read my letter, didn’t you?”
“No… why? Did you say something like that in your letter?”
“No,” I say quickly. “And you don’t even have to read it if you don’t want to. Or maybe you threw it away already.”
“I still have it,” he tells me reluctantly. “I was just too afraid to read it, afraid of what you said. Afraid it might mean too much.”
“You should probably just burn it. I sometimes ramble when I write, like when I talk, and I don’t know how you’re going to take the stuff I said.”
“I don’t want to burn it. And besides, I’ve always liked your rambling. It can actually be insightful sometimes.”
“You say that now,” I tell him, forcing a teasing tone. “But try living with it.”
He’s silent for a moment and I have no idea what he’s thinking. Whether he thinks I’m crazy? Amusing? I remember that when I was younger I wished I could have mind reading powers, and I’m starting to wish that again so I could crack his head open and see what on earth he’s thinking.
“Nova, I’m going to read the letter,” he says. “I just want to make sure I can handle whatever’s in there.”
“I wish I could answer that for you,” I say. “But I don’t know what you’re expecting. Really, it’s just my feelings. About you and me.” Feelings I can still barely admit to myself. I was actually surprised at what came out of me. How much I care for him and how much I see him when I look into the future.
“Then I’m not sure I’m ready yet.” There’s an ache in his voice. “If it’s rejection then I’m worried it’ll break me and if it’s the opposite… if you want me as more than a friend then I’m not sure I’m ready for that, either. Because honestly, I’m really weak right now and even taking care of myself feels really hard.”
I get what he’s saying a little too well. It took me over a year to watch Landon’s video after he committed suicide, because I worried whatever was on there was going to shatter me into pieces. When I did finally watch it, though, I didn’t shatter. In fact, I started picking up the pieces of my life, but only because I was ready to.
“Then wait to read it until you’re ready,” I tell him. “And for now, I’m okay with just being your friend.” It feels like such a huge lie when I say it and actually kind of hurts my heart a bit.
“I would love that,” he says, unwinding. “So tell me something friendly.”
I snort a laugh. “What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know.” He sounds amused. “Tell me something you’d tell Lea or Tristan.”
“Um, well, I watched
Anchorman
for the first time tonight.” God, I’m so lame.
“And what’d you think of it?”
“I fell asleep,” I admit. “But only because I was tired to begin with.”
“Yeah, but it’s not for everyone,” he explains. “Although I know Tristan loves it.”
“Yeah, he’s the one who made me watch it,” I divulge. “He acted like I was crazy because I never had.”
He pauses again. “I’m jealous of him,” he confesses. “And I only said that because my therapist has been pushing me to talk aloud about stuff that’s bothering me… and it’s bothering me… that you and Tristan get to spend so much time together.”
“It’s not like that,” I promise. “We’re just friends and roommates.”
“I know, but I just wanted you to know that it’s making me feel… jealous,” he says hesitantly. “Although, if something did happen between you two, I’d understand.”
“We’re not going to get together. Trust me,” I say, thinking about what happened back on the sofa and how much I would rather it had been Quinton than Tristan. “And besides, we fight all the time.”
“Really? You two never did before.”
“Yeah, we did. And he can be kind of cranky… I think he sometimes has a hard time adjusting to the boredom.”
“I can see that,” he states with understanding. “I’m already getting sick of staring at my walls and I’ve only been out for a day, but talking to you helps.”
“Well, I can talk your ear off.”
He laughs. “Please do.”
I smile at the beauty in his laughter. “What do you want me to talk about?”
“You.”
“What do you want me to tell you about me?”
“Everything… I want to know everything about you, Nova like the car.” Amusement laces his tone as he says the nickname he gave to me pretty much the first day he met me.
My smile takes up my entire face. Not because of his comment but because it’s the first real moment I think Quinton and I have had without drugs and anxiety filling in the blanks in our conversation. And so I do the only thing I can do. I start talking. In fact, I talk well into the early hours of the next day. And for a moment everything feels perfect, but I have a hard time believing it’s going to stay because it never seems to. Things just always sort of happen. Life always just sort of happens. And no matter what I do, I can never keep the bad out completely, despite how much I want to.
November 17, day nineteen in the real world
Jesus, time moves slow. Really, really slow. Especially when all I can think about is everything that’s happened. I knew I had a rough road ahead of me, but this is ridiculous. Everything is pissing me off today. The rain. The clouds in the sky. My therapist. It’s our sixth meeting and I’m starting to realize he’s a pushy bastard. Nothing like Charles at the rehab center, who always let me do things on my own terms. Greg, my new therapist, seems to take the opposite approach, like if I don’t start talking as soon as possible, then I’ll never get better or “learn to deal with my feelings,” as he puts it. Plus, after a suggestion he made to my dad, I’ve started helping around our community. Doing things like volunteering at the homeless shelter and visiting the elderly to keep me busy, like that’s the key to keeping me out of trouble. It’s not like I hate doing it. In fact, at times it’s nice because it makes me feel like I’m attempting to create something good to make up for all the bad I’ve put in this world. I just feel weird being out and about with people, who I swear can see what’s hiding under my skin. The invisible scars that make up my past and the things I’ve done.
Add that to the fact that I’m living in my old bedroom in my old home with my father, and I’m feeling a little unbalanced right now, like I’m walking on a tightrope and am about to fall. On one side lies a fall to that rock bottom I’m so familiar with and on the other is the fall that just ends it all. Both seem like easy choices, yet I keep making myself attempt to balance and walk forward, especially when life keeps throwing me challenges. Like the other day when I was in the grocery store and I saw Lexi’s mom. She didn’t see me, thankfully, otherwise I might have slipped up in my sobriety. She’s verbalized in the past how she feels about me and she has every right to feel that way. One day, though, I wish I could just tell her I’m sorry and that I hope maybe she can forgive me. The same with Ryder’s parents. I want them to know that I think about them all the time. That I hate that I’m the one who lived. That I’m trying to make up for it the best I can.
Despite the fact that life is complex, writing seems to help a lot, actually. So here I am writing and in just a few minutes I’ll go to a job interview for a painting job. Not an artist painting job, but a construction painting job, which isn’t ideal, but the hours are flexible and right now I have no more than a high school education so my job options are limited. Nova thinks I should go back to school, but I’m not sure I can handle that right now. Still, it’s nice listening to her ramble about the plus sides of getting a college education. The girl really could have a job as a motivational speaker if she wanted to, with all the positivity she sends out. I like her positivity, just like I like having her as a friend. I like everything about her and I wish I could tell her that. How much she means to me. But that’d be opening a door I know I’m not ready to open, which is why I haven’t read her letter, even though I’m dying to. In fact, I stare at it every day.
Even though there’s good stuff going on in my life, I still have frequent nightmares about the accident. I keep seeing Lexi die over and over again. Then myself. When I wake up, it feels like I’m back in the place of death again. That’s actually another thing Greg’s been pushing me to talk about. My death. He thinks for some fucking reason that some of my emotional problems and obsession with dying are connected to the fact that I already died. He even asked me how I felt when I died, what I saw, how I felt when I came back. I told him to fuck off, though, so he dropped it.
It made me angry that he opened the door and I was even more angry at myself for still not being able to talk about stuff like that. I still have such a very long way to go, everyone keeps telling me, like I don’t get it. I know I do. I think about it all the time, how long it might take me to get some sort of balance in my life. But the fact that I can envision that long away has to mean something, right? Has to mean there might be some sort of hope for me other than relapse, a word I became very familiar with in rehab. A lot of the people were in there because of relapse and I can’t help but think about it. How easy it’d be just to do it again. Get lost. Stop thinking about jobs. And therapy. Stop dreaming of Lexi and death. But it’s also hard because I have a few people now pushing me in the opposite direction.
Still, I can’t help but be hyper-aware of all the places I know I could get drugs from. Like Marcus down the street, who’s still dealing, from what I heard. Or my old friend Dan, one of the guys I first got high with. I ran into him the other day at the grocery store while I was picking up some milk for my dad. He looked ripped out of his mind and it made me sort of envious. He even asked me if I still did it and I almost wanted to say yes, because I knew where that path would lead me. But instead I found myself saying no and a few minutes later I was standing in the checkout line, such a simplistic, boring thing, which allowed too many thoughts to slip into my mind. Like how close the lake is to the grocery store, the one where the accident took place. The one where I died and came back to life. The one where two lives were lost.
“Are you about ready to go?” my dad asks as he knocks on my doorway before strolling into my bedroom, interrupting my writing.
I stop moving the pen across the paper and glance up from the notebook. He’s dressed in a polo shirt and slacks, instead of his usual button-down shirt and tie, but that’s because he took today off from work.
“What time is it?” I ask as I set the notebook and pen aside on my bed.
He glances at his watch. “A quarter to two. It’s a little bit early, but I figured we could stop and get a bite to eat and maybe talk or something.” He scratches the back of his head, seeming uncomfortable.
“Sure.” I get up from my bed and grab my jacket off the back of my computer chair, then we head out of my room.
As usual, neither of us talks as we get into the car and drive down the road. The entire journey there’s nothing but silence, but I’m familiar with it. In fact, it’s become really comfortable. Things only start to drift toward unfamiliar territory when my dad pulls up to a restaurant instead of a fast food drive-through. Sit-in dining has never been his thing. In fact, I can’t even remember a time when he took me to a restaurant.
“Are we eating here?” I ask as he parks the car in an empty space toward the back section of the parking lot, near a grassy knoll.
He turns off the car and stares at the restaurant, which is decked out in Thanksgiving decor: orange lights trimming the rain gutter and pictures of turkeys painted on the windows. “I thought we could get something good to eat for a change. I know I’ve been a crappy cook for the last few weeks. I’m just too used to cooking for one, I guess.”
“Trust me, I’ve eaten better in the last few weeks than I did for the entire summer.” As soon as I say it, I want to retract it. I never know how honest to be with my dad. How much he wants to know about the stuff I did—how much I want him to know. It’s not like we ever had that great a relationship anyway and honestly, I thought he hated me because of the accident. And maybe he does. Maybe he just feels obligated to help me because I’m his flesh and blood. I’m not really sure. I asked Charles about it once about three weeks into my recovery and he said I should talk to my dad about my feelings, but I don’t think I’m ready to go there yet, not knowing whether I can handle it or whether he can.
“Still, it’d be good to get a nice meal.” He doesn’t say anything else, getting out of the car and shutting the door.
I get out, too and then we walk across the parking lot and enter the restaurant. We’re greeted by a blonde hostess wearing a pair of teal vintage glasses, and I immediately smile at the sight of them. I think she thinks I’m checking her out because she gets this really big grin on her face and starts coiling a strand of her hair around her finger as she chats about the food and guides us to the table.
I’m only smiling, though, because yesterday Nova asked me if she should get glasses. She said the eye doctor recommended them for when she was reading and working on the computer. She said she hated the idea and that it would probably make her look dorkier than she was. When I disagreed with her and told her she could totally rock the look, she laughed and said she should just get a vintage pair with a little chain that hooked around them, like women wore in the 1950s.
“What are you smiling about?” my dad wonders as we take a seat at the corner booth.
“Nothing.” I glance up at the hostess, who’s still grinning at me as she sets our menus down on the table in front of us.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asks, glancing at my father, and then her eyes land on me and fill with expectancy.
My dad starts to shake his head as I say, “Yeah, can I take a picture of your glasses?”
My dad gives me a befuddled look from across the table, like I’ve lost my mind, but the hostess seems flattered.
“Absolutely,” she says, and then she flashes me a big grin as I raise the cell phone I bought three days after my dad was an hour late picking me up from therapy and couldn’t get ahold of me to tell me he’d be delayed.
I snap the shot of the glasses, then thank her before she saunters away, looking really pleased with herself.
“What was that about?” my dad asks, as I try to crop the picture and zoom in on the glasses as much as I can. “Do you like that girl or something?”
I shake my head as I attach the picture to a text message addressed to Nova. “No, Nova and I were just talking about glasses the other night and she mentioned getting some like that girl had.” I type:
these would look good on u. They match your eyes
. I move my finger to hit send, but then stop myself, wondering if maybe I’m being a little too flirty with her. We’re supposed to be just friends. It’s a good thing, too. Everyone says I need to take it easy. No stressful situations, and relationships are stressful, especially when my feelings for Nova are so intense.
But it’s just a text message.
Dammit, I’m so confused at my life choices, from where the hell I’m supposed to go from here to sending a simple fucking text message. Things used to be so much simpler. Or maybe I was just oblivious.
Finally I just hit send and let it be, telling myself to stop over-analyzing everything. But even as I put my phone away, thousands of thoughts race through my mind, like what it means that I can be sitting here and picking out glasses for Nova, when ten miles away Lexi is buried under the ground in a cemetery up on the hillside near her neighborhood. And if I drive about fifteen miles to the east, I’ll arrive at the place where her life ended.
But you need to let it go. Heal. Accept what is. Stuff happened to you. Bad stuff. But it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to live
. That’s what Charles used to tell me in rehab and I try to remind myself over and over again. But I fall into a slump and by the time my phone buzzes in my pocket, I don’t want to look at it, so I hit ignore and order my food when the waitress comes to take our orders. She brings us waters and when she leaves, my dad starts chatting about his job to me. I zone off, wondering how I went from okay to down in the time it took to text a picture.
“So what do you think?” my dad asks as he unfolds the napkin that’s around the utensils.
I tear my attention away from my thoughts and focus on him. “About what?”
His forehead creases as he places his napkin on his lap. “About moving to Virginia.”
“Why would we move to Virginia?” I ask, and then take a sip of my water.
“Because my company wants to transfer me?” His puzzlement deepens. “I just told you this a minute ago. That my boss wants to put me up for the transfer.”
Great. Apparently I zoned off and missed something really important. I’m finding it very hard to breathe and there’s no way I can wrap my mind around the abrupt change he’s throwing out there. Move. I can’t move. Not when I just got here. Not when I’m just starting to get my life back on track.
“What would you do?” I ask, battling to keep my emotions under control, otherwise I know I’m going to flip out. “Sell the house or just keep it until we moved back?”
“I’d sell it,” he says, stirring the straw in his glass of water. “It’s a permanent transfer. The pay is great. And Virginia seems interesting and it’s close to the ocean and a few art institutions.”
“So’s Seattle.” I frown as I feel the familiar constricting sensation inside my chest. I’m not sure if I can move—go anywhere, when everything is so unstable as it is. I need to stay here. Need to keep doing what I’m doing. I need to do more. Everything might not be great, but it’s okay. And I haven’t had okay in a long time. “And I don’t think you should sell the house.”
“Why not?” he asks. “You’ve barely lived here in the last couple of years.”
“Because it’s Mom’s house.” I’m not even sure where the hell the thought came from. It’s not like I’ve had a sentimental attachment to it before. Well, maybe I did before… the accident. But the last couple of years I’ve felt detached from everything. Maybe that’s where the feeling’s coming from—now that I’m sober maybe I’m heading back toward the old Quinton who existed at seventeen, before the accident, before he died. But would that mean I’m letting go enough of my pain and guilt to get there?
Shit
. No, I can’t.
Pity fills my dad’s eyes. “Quinton, I know that, but still… I don’t quite understand your attachment.” He rakes his hands through his hair, at a loss about what to do or say next. “It’s not like you have memories of your mom in that house, and you haven’t even been living there for a year and a half.”
This is the thing about my dad. He comes off as a douche a lot, but I’m not sure if he’s aware of it or not. I haven’t figured it out yet—haven’t figured him out yet. And that’s why I tell myself to try to calm down, but this forced, major, life-changing question is making my thoughts go into overdrive. I’m not ready for this.