The Space in Between (36 page)

“You know what the worst part about all of this is?”

“Not sure, but if you’re laughing, it can’t be that bad.”

“How much do you know about her place?”

“You talking about her house or the place she runs off to when I piss her off?”

“The place she goes.”

“Not a lot, just that it exists. Why?”

“She took me there before we got together. This place that no one else knows about, she brought me there. I’m still blown away by it, but it was what happened that night that’s funny.”

“Care to share or would you rather I just beat it out of you?”

“We were talking about our parents dating and how it would be funny if the lady my dad was seeing and the guy her mom was dating were our parents.  That’s all it was supposed to be. A funny joke.”

“And you missed the part where the joke became reality?”

“Yes! But it’s more than that. I know the way my dad is. The way he was with my mom before she died, and the way he’s been since. He’s all work and no play. The guy used to piss me off with how much he was working. I never had to worry about him going out with anyone and replacing my mom because he would have had to stop working for five minutes in order for it to happen.”

“Which makes it worse, because me and Em, we talked about her dad a lot. How despite knowing he was never going to be around, she still had hope that one day she’d have one. She wrote a song about it and everything. Then her mom meets this amazing guy that changes her in all of these awesome ways and she’s telling me that she can’t wait to meet him because she wants to thank him for what he’s done in her life. Man, she was talking about my dad the entire time. She wanted to thank
my dad
for making her life better.”

“He wasn’t the only one.”

“That’s not true.”

What Johnny’s saying is complete bullshit. All anyone has to do is look at the way things are turning out. I wasn’t making her life better. Not the way she was doing in mine anyway.

Emery, from the day I showed up at this stupid school, changed me. She was breathing life into me again. She was my fresh breath of air, my muse, and reason for being.

All I did for her was take everything she already had and rip it away.

Including my dad.

I made her as alone as I was when I landed here.

“If you say so, Chris. But if that’s the way you want to look at it, maybe I was wrong before and it wasn’t always you that was meant for her. Because that guy wouldn’t be sitting here arguing with me about his impact on her life before.”

“Oh yeah? What would he be doing instead?”

“Fighting to make sure that his impact never ends.”

Emery

Duck and dodge.

Who knew I would be such a master at it?

Even having the classes we do together, I’ve still managed to get in and out before he can corner me and force me to talk.

I’ve had enough talking. I think we did all the talking we needed to at dinner the other night. I know what everyone wants, but I can’t give it to them. I need time to process it all.

Too bad my mom didn’t get the memo.

It started when I slinked my way into the kitchen this morning and the only reason it stopped at all is because I grabbed my bag and took off before she got back out of the shower.

She means well, I know, but after dropping not only the bombshell of who her boyfriend was on me, but also the proposal and what it means for all of us, I’ve had more than enough.

I can’t hide away forever. I know at some point I’m going to have to face it head on, but for now, it’s the way it has to be.

Coming to school and pretending that the weekend didn’t happen; that Christian and I are as in love as we were the night we confessed it to each other before making love for the first time, I can’t do it.

I want to do it. I miss him. It takes everything I have not to look across the room, meet his eyes and smile like I’ve done so many times before. Or find him at lunch and curl up on the grass in his lap spending more time kissing than talking, completely addicted to the way it feels being that close to him. I want to do all of those things, but I can’t.

I can’t torture myself by pretending.

This is real, it’s happening and now I’ve gotta figure out how to move on, live my life and adapt in the best way possible. Which for now means staying apart.

Too bad that in all of my decision making, I’d forgotten to inform the guy I’m trying to avoid of my plans. And now, after an entire day of hiding away, he’s putting an end to it.

This was supposed to my safe place. No one ever comes in here unless they have to, because like me, they don’t want to deal with Jordan’s overbearing attitude. Christian especially. After spending two months of our relationship holding him back every time Jordan got within a foot of us, he’d gone out of his way to keep his distance.

Until now.

The unique sound the door makes when completely pulled back alerts me to someone’s presence first, the hinges in desperate need of a spray, but it’s the click as the door closes and the intruder clearing their throat that has my attention torn away from my work and landing solely on them.

“I figured when I couldn’t find you anywhere else that you’d be here.”

Sliding out of my seat and ignoring my heart’s desire to run to him, I move around the desk and back up as far as I can go. A little overdramatic to be sure, but it’s the way it needs to be. If I get within a foot of him with the way I feel about him still so fresh, I’ll cave and melt quicker than butter that’s been left out overnight.

“A photographer’s work is never done.” I hesitantly joke. “Or at least that’s what Jordan thinks.”

“Can we talk?”

“I—uh, I don’t know.” I stammer, watching as those bright blue eyes I love darken as his shoulders sag and his eyes fall to his feet.

He’s just as nervous doing this as I am.

I’m not sure why I thought he wouldn’t be, but there’s something about the way he’s reacting, like a bubble that’s been caught and popped, that surprises me.

Maybe it’s because everything that’s happening could have been prevented. 

I think we still would have found our way to this spot, I mean it’s not like we can go back and undo the fact that our parents were dating and are now engaged, but the reason I can’t step forward, why I can only go back until my back slams into the chalkboard, is because of the gigantic space he put between us when he chose to keep it a secret.

“I’m not ready, Chris.”

“Please don’t do that,” he pleads, lifting his head up from the floor and focusing on me, putting the full extent of his pain on display. “Don’t call me Chris. You never do that. I’m your Mikey, remember?”

My Mikey.

God. This. Standing here with him, acting out the result of our choices over the last few days, it’s debilitating. It’s suffocating me. This moment right now is exactly why I spent the entire weekend dodging his calls and texts and I’ve been avoiding him all day.

It’s too much. This much pain in your heart isn’t supposed to happen. It’s not healthy and I’m not strong enough to handle it. 

“Not anymore. You can’t be.”

“So, that’s it then? You’re ending things?”

No. Of course that’s not what I’m saying. I mean, it’s not, right? I can’t be ending things. Not when even after being given a fallback option in Johnny, I still chose him.

Giving up on Christian isn’t possible.

Except with what I just said, that’s exactly what’s happening.

I’m letting my mom’s happiness, and the pain of being lied to for weeks, win.

It’s over. It has to be. I’m not allowed a happy ending.

“It’s the way it has to be.”

“That’s fucking bullshit, Emery!”

I want to raise my voice like him, scream back and admit that I know it is, but I can’t do it because it doesn’t change the facts.

He lied to me for weeks, and when our parents marry—which there’s no doubt they will—we’re going to be related.

He’ll be my brother.

“You need to go.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Chris…”

“No, Emery. I don’t care what your mom thinks, what my dad is stupidly going to agree to because he loves her, or what any of these jackoffs here think. I am
in love
with you and nothing is going to change it. It’s infinite.”

Snap.

The snap. It means it’s starting. I can physically feel the cracks and breaks in my heart with every word he says. It won’t be long now until there’s nothing left.

“I…Chris…I,”

“What baby? You what?”

Two roads. One where I admit how I really feel and tell him that I love him too. That it’s forever, never ending and like he said, infinite. Then the road I know deep down I need to travel despite my absolute hatred of it. The one where I push him away and do the right thing for my mom. 

“I can’t do this with you anymore. Our parents, they’re in love and I want them to be happy. I want us to be a family. What we have, it’s not as big as you think. It’s not. We need to end this before we make things even worse than they already are.”

“Stop it!”

“No, Christian.” I cry, tears forming and freely falling in rapid succession, the control I’d somehow been able to maintain, as cracked and as broken as what’s left of my heart. “We’re done. I don’t know how much clearer I can say it. This,” I point between us. “Can never happen again. It’s over.”

“No! I refuse to believe that. You love me too. I can see it in your eyes even now. Why else would you be crying? You want this…us—as much as I do and if you would just listen, hear me out, we could make this work. It doesn’t have to end.”

“I’m sorry, Christian. What we had, it was amazing. The stuff that the most beautiful songs are made of, but it’s over. Every song, even the ones that are the hardest to write eventually hits a time when no one is listening anymore. This is ours.”

Moving quickly, before my words have a chance to resonate or he finds a way to respond and make me stay, I grab my portfolio off the desk and move around him, swinging the door back and running out, not stopping until I’m slamming my shoulder into the front doors of the school and heading out toward the parking lot.

Continuing to run around the side of the building, my stomach churning and my face soaked with no sign of drying, I see the hedges lining the area surrounding the entrance and immediately drop to my knees in front of them, jamming my fingers down my throat, desperate to end the twisted feeling taking me over and finding peace as my lunch makes its way up and out.

Purging not only the food from my system, but Christian too.

Chapter Thirty

Nicholas

I first met Emily Brooks when my family moved from Toronto to Port Hope over the summer that predated my senior year of high school. So struck was I by her blonde waves, cold as ice blue eyes and lopsided smile that I made her my girlfriend not long after.

No relationship born in high school is easy. While you’re there trying to survive the classes and the social order, doing everything you can to fit in, you’re also trying to breathe life into this delicate relationship with someone. A relationship that transcends all of those other things you’re supposed to be thinking about until it’s all you can focus on.

Somehow, we survived it and she became Emily Cayne two years later.

I’ve never been academically inclined, so when all other avenues seemed to fall away, in order to support myself, my new wife and a baby we found out quite soon after our marriage was on the way, I’d started looking into Police College. If I couldn’t make a difference doing something academically, I was going to take it to the streets.

I just didn’t realize at the time how much of myself I would lose while climbing the ranks, and how much time I would lose with the wife I had a hard time picturing my life without.

It was high school all over again, but on a much grander scale. And for a long time, just like we did as teens, we survived it. I was able to work enough hours to pay for her schooling without a whole lot of student debt haunting us, put food on our table, and even hire help after she had Christian so when we couldn’t be there, someone always was.

My life with Emily wasn’t the kind of thing people write about, but it was ours and no matter how nine to five or bland it seemed to anyone on the outside looking in, it was perfect for me.

At least it was until we got the call saying that her sore throat, headaches, nausea, fatigue and dizzy spells weren’t viral or bacterial infections the way we assumed. That it was lung cancer, brought on by the years of smoking she just couldn’t seem to break herself of.

Everything changed after that.

I saw this vibrant woman slowly turn into a broken down shell of herself. The fight never entirely left her of course, but as each day, month and year went by, you could see the life slowly draining from her eyes until the very end when there wasn’t much left there at all.

Christian was young when it all happened, but not so young that he couldn’t grasp what was taking place. He knew deep down, even before we sat down and talked about it that she was dying, and that there was nothing we could do that the doctors hadn’t already tried to save her.

He was the one with her when she finally said her goodbye to the world, our marriage, and the life we created, and it’s haunted him just as much as it’s haunted me ever since.

We both stopped living that day and until I moved back to Toronto and saw Rosie again, I was sure it was the way we were destined to remain.

Christian had pulled away the same as I did, choosing instead to mourn my love away from everyone’s eyes. My belief at the time being that I was doing the right thing for him and because of that, he crawled up deep inside himself to where there were days that he wouldn’t even speak at all.

The closeness of family that we had, how we were with each other even when I was working and he was hanging with his friends, leaving Emily home missing us both, it all vanished when she left and neither one of us fought very hard to get it back.