My eyes slowly open as my breathing starts to even out. I squint, adjusting to the bright rays of the sun beating down above me.
“Hey, you’re okay,” he says calmly almost soothingly. “You scared the hell out of me.”
I stare into his intense green eyes, the eyes of the man who while I was with Tyler I never really cared for, but who over the last four years I’ve come to hate. In them I can clearly see his worry for me. He wasn’t expecting me to lose it moments ago, but more importantly I see the guilt, the apology that lies just below the surface, looming, hoping that I’ll make this easier on him and show him some kindness.
The problem is I don’t think that I’m capable of it. No…I know I’m not. I do not have it in me to show him anything but my true feelings. He’s the living breathing reason why my husband is dead, why I’m a widow at only twenty-six years old. The best man at our wedding who ended up being the catalyst for tragedy.
“I’m fine,” I say, hearing the sound of my own anger laced with my weak attempt at trying to sound unaffected.
“We’re drawing a crowd here Ev. Let me at least help you to the car.”
I push his hand off of me and quickly turn to close the trunk. The lightheaded feeling returns and I wobble slightly. Luca’s arm goes around my waist helping to steady me.
“Look, I know you hate me, but I’m only trying to help. I wouldn’t have stopped at all if I’d have known this is how you’d react.”
He can’t be serious; did he think I would greet him with open arms? “How the fuck did you think I would react?” I reply, my eyes nearly bulging out of my head. “You know what? Get away from me.” I try in vain to wriggle out of his grasp. I can almost feel my skin burning at his touch; I don’t like to be touched at all anymore but especially not by him.
He says nothing at first, just releases a frustrated sigh and stares at me. He shakes his head after a while and shrugs. “I guess I’d hoped that time might have lessened the anger you feel toward me. I see that that wasn’t the case.”
He forcefully leads me to the passenger side of my car and helps me in, holding onto me until I’m fully seated.
“What are you doing?” I look up at him through still hazy vision.
“I’m taking you home. I can’t just let you drive like this.”
“Yes you can. I’ll be fine. Turn around, walk away, and leave me the hell alone.”
He gives me a curt nod and lets out yet another sigh of frustration. “Okay Ev, I’ll do all of those things as soon as I make sure that you’re safe at home.”
I shake my head and scowl at him. “I’m not giving you my keys Luca, so you can just give up now,” I say, feeling especially satisfied with myself. Like hell I’m going anywhere with him, even if I did just freak out.
He grins down at me for a moment looking almost smug before opening the palm of his hands. “You mean these keys? Yeah, I picked them up after you dropped them during your little incident back there.”
I open my mouth to respond, but he shuts my door before I can get a word out. He’s in the drivers seat and backing out of the parking spot before I can protest at all.
A patch of dark clouds roll in, effectively blocking out the sunlight, and I zone out during the drive home, letting my mind drift off so that I don’t have to think about the fact that I’m sitting next to the one person I’ve focused on hating for so long. I let myself zone out so that I don’t have to participate in any meaningless conversation or forced niceties. I try to fight against the memories that linger under the surface when Luca is around. I try but I can’t stop myself from thinking back four years ago, to the moments after I realized my life had been irrevocably changed.
Luca came to see me almost immediately after I learned Tyler was gone. My parents had just driven me home from the hospital when the knock came on the front door.
“Everly,” he said on a whisper, his bloodshot eyes full of tears.
“Everly I’m so sorry.”
He looked distraught, disheveled, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought that he was in as much pain as I was. I couldn’t think of that though, couldn’t let myself sympathize with his grief when my own was so consuming. My body trembled at the sight of him, a mixture of anger and disbelief.
“Get out of here, I don’t want to see you,” I said, shaking my head. He visibly flinched at my words, but I didn’t care. Looking at him made me hurt, made me hurt everywhere, made me hurt even worse. The thought that he was here and not Tyler filled me with rage.
“I just… I don’t know what to say Ev. I can’t… I don’t know
how this happened.”
“This happened because of you!” I screech. “You did this, you killed him.”
His face blanched at my words, but he didn’t argue, didn’t defend himself, because he knew I was right. I watched him nod his head in agreement as he realized what I was saying. With no other words, he accepted the blame and then turned and walked away. I could have stopped him, could have tried to ease his guilt, but I couldn’t make myself care about his feelings. He was the reason I lost Tyler and nothing he could ever say to me would ever make me forgive him.
Luca left town a few days after that. He didn’t even go to Ty’s funeral, not that he would have been welcome there to begin with. I hadn’t seen him since that encounter, not until now that is. The shock of seeing him must have been too much for me, I’ve carried around all of this anger and resentment toward him for all this time and in the moment that we came face to face it finally just hit me all at once. Normally I’d be embarrassed about blanking out but right now it pisses me the fuck off. I hate that he has any effect on me at all. Any emotion wasted on Luca is too much—he doesn’t deserve even my hate but it doesn’t change the fact that I still feel it.
It’s raining by the time Luca pulls into the driveway.
“Garage door opener?” he says pointing to the remote on the visor. I nod, never looking his way. The less I say the better because acknowledging his presence only makes it worse. He presses the button and secures the car in the garage. I’m out of the car before he can even turn it off. I wait for him as he rounds the hood and hold out my hands for the keys.
“I’m going to call a ride to pick me up. Do you mind if I wait inside until they get here?”
“Yes I mind,” I say walking into the house. I hear the distinct rustling of grocery bags being pulled out of the trunk, and moments later footsteps reaching me in the kitchen, but I don’t acknowledge him. I don’t know how to cope with having him around me. He places the bags down on the granite countertop while I open the refrigerator and grab a bottled water. I’m taking a sip as he begins speaking into his cell phone requesting a taxi to pick him up.
“You might want to get some rest,” he finally says almost harshly. If I didn’t know any better I could swear I hear a twinge of anger in his voice. That’s rich; I’m the only one here with a right to be angry.
I turn around and glare at him. This seems to be my permanent face where this man is concerned. I have no kind words for him, no words of thanks. One word about sums it all up. “Goodbye.”
He pauses briefly, looking around the house as if he’s taking in pieces of art on a museum wall, carefully inspecting his surroundings. He looks at me, giving nothing away except for a slight nod of his head. His eyes are guarded in a way that I can tell he has something to say but he won’t.
“I’ll see you around sometime,” he says brusquely before turning around and walking out of my front door.
I know it was rude of me to kick him out like that after being decent enough to make sure I got home, but being nice to Luca was never my strong suit. It wasn’t his either—he was always a jerk to me. In fact, there was only one day in our history that I can ever recall him being nice, and it was the day we met. Then of course there was today, he’d been nothing but kind to me today and I treated him like a bug that I needed to squash as quickly as possible. The thing is that after getting over the initial shock of seeing him and of being around him, I realized that the hate I felt for him four years ago was just as consuming now as it was then.
I’ve been extremely isolated since Tyler died, living in my own little world, a bubble of my own creation. I’d gotten used to feeling empty and numb inside. I’d gotten used to a mostly solitary existence, and I’ve accepted that as my fate, my future—a life spent alone
Luca was closer to Tyler than just about anybody. I admit that I never really understood the bond between them. Never understood what it was about Luca that made him such a necessary part of Tyler’s life. I had tried in the beginning to befriend him, to make an effort to see what Ty saw, but Luca never liked me. He never accepted that I was the woman Tyler loved, so I was made to feel like nothing more than an outcast whenever he was around
I feel anger and tension just rolling off of my body in waves. I suppose I never allowed myself to think about the possibility that I would see Luca again. He’s been gone so long; I just assumed
or hoped
that it was a permanent move. I’m not stupid or naïve, I understand that Luca didn’t actually kill Tyler. He didn’t hold the gun to his chest or pull the trigger. I know that technically it wasn’t his fault, but his actions were what led to it. If he’d just left Tyler alone that morning he’d still be here with me. I called my mom in an attempt to take my mind off of things, the surprise in her voice making me sad. I never call her, never pick up the phone—I’m always too busy hiding out. If it wasn’t for her regular grocery deliveries I might never see her. She was shocked when I’d told her she didn’t have to bring any food this week; I think I may have even heard a little bit of relief in her voice. I think it made her happy that I’d finally taken back a piece of my independence, however small it might be. I decided right then and there that I would be getting my own groceries from now on.
~ Luca ~
Seeing Everly really did a number on me. I had thought that with time she would be able to learn how to move on from the tragedy that took Tyler away. I had hoped that time would have lessened her hatred for me and that she could possibly forgive me for what she believes is my role in his death. I thought wrong, I was so wrong, but even though her forgiveness didn’t come, seeing her again made me feel something that I hadn’t felt toward her in a long time. Anger. Anger toward her and the fucking blinders she’s always had where I was concerned. In fact, Everly has spent the majority of her life walking around with her head in the clouds, only seeing what she wants to see. Despite the anger, every feeling, every emotion that I ever felt for her, toward her, about her, came right the fuck back or maybe it never left me at all. She’s beautiful, even now with the clear as day mask of pain she wears on her face. Her brown thick brown hair falls down her back in waves and her dark almond-shape eyes show every single expression on her face. She’s never been good at masking emotions. She’s of average height for a girl, and her body is curvy in all the right places. No one has ever made me feel as intensely as Everly Phillips and she’ll never know that. She’ll never understand how her presence has always caused a reaction in me. Whether it is good or bad, she gets a rise out of me, and I can’t deny that. I tried to cut her out of my life cold turkey when I walked away and left. I was already scheduled to leave for school in Chicago, but Tyler’s death just pushed me to go sooner. I wanted to let her move on with her life without a constant reminder of what she lost and who she blamed, but I never truly let go. Ev’s best friend Morgan filled me in every couple of months on what was happening while I was away. From what she told me, I knew that she was having a hard time adjusting to life without Ty, but seeing her just made it hit home even more. She’s a girl frozen, stuck in her own grief and unable to move forward.
I knew Everly hated me. I could understand it, understand why she’d felt the way she did. I don’t blame her, truth be told I was never her favorite person, I made sure of that. It was better for me to let her hate me all those years ago and to let her believe that I was an asshole. This way she never got to see the truth, she got to have her perfect relationship while never knowing how deep my feelings for her really ran. A revelation like that would have ruined my relationship with Tyler, and he was always like a brother to me. Above everything else my loyalty lay with him, it had to.
I sit in my car for a while; I haven’t been here before now. I’d left town before the funeral took place, and it’s hard to come to grips with this, even now after so much time has passed. I get out of the car and walk across the lawn. It takes me a few minutes of searching before I found the one I was looking for. I notice the fresh flowers as I run my hand over the engraved lettering on the tombstone,
Tyler Maxwell West
. I let out a chuckle and shake my head.
“Dude.
Maxwell?
I knew you practically all your life, and I never knew that was your middle name. I don’t blame you for hiding it though.” I release a sigh and look around me, unsure exactly of what or who I’m looking for. I crouch down until I’m eye level with the headstone.
“I’m so sorry man.” My voice cracks as I say the words that I’ve been holding in for so long. “I’m sorry for so many things. Mostly I’m sorry for not being there for her, even though she didn’t want me around, even though I know it’s what you would have expected from me. I couldn’t, I couldn’t be around her. And she would never have accepted my presence. I’ve never had such mixed emotions for anyone in all my life.”