Right Where You Left Me

ricocheting tears

"I'll have the crepes with strawberries, thanks."

I smile awkwardly at the waiter as he quickly jots down my order. Next to me, Nate is laughing at something with Kit. Alexandra and Kate sit across from me, in a heated debate about books. I lean forward to hear their conversation over the loud mingling of the restaurant.

"Adya," Alexandra says, "Give us your opinion. Which is better; murder mystery or thrillers?"

I look between the two of them and shrug with a grin on my face. "Murder mystery."

"See?" Kate points at me. "She's right. Murder mystery is so much better."

Alexandra shakes her head. "Thrillers are so much more spookier though. Like, hello? Creepy clowns and haunted forests?"

The bewildered and slightly intimidated waiter interrupts their argument to take their orders. As they scan the menu, Nate turns to me.

"You okay?" he asks, leaning close to talk over the noise.

I nod. "Yup." I glance at Alexandra, who's waggling her eyebrows with a grin on her face between us. I roll my eyes.

"So," says Kit, leaning back and stretching. "Are you guys ready for the new school year?"

I shrug and fiddle with the napkin in front of me. "I need to do some shopping."

Alexandra nods. "We should all go shopping together. We can get cute little pens and matching notebooks."

We chat for a few minutes before we're interrupted by the waiter bringing our food. I poke at the strawberries at my plate and then steal a dollop of nutella from Nate's plate. In return, he takes the little bowl of ice cream I ordered. I scowl and snatch his napkin from underneath his fork. He grins and begins to eat my ice cream.

"Rude," I mutter, but I'm grinning too.

Kate tries a bite of my crepe in exchange for a piece of her eggs Benedict toast. Alexandra steals sips of the milkshake Kate ordered. We're all laughing and stealing each other's food and probably making a lot of noise. But I'm smiling, and Nate's doing that thing where he tips his head back and flashes his row of straight white teeth and laughs, and everything is so perfect.

𓍊𓋼𓍊𓋼𓍊

Nate and I walk next to each other, our sneakers crunching on the gravel path beneath us. The green hills span on one side of the road; on the other, trees and flowers that give way to giant farmhouses. The sun is low in the sky, but not yet setting. Instead of going home, Nate and I have been walking and talking.

"When I first came back you said your mother left." Noah runs a hand through his hair and looks at me. "What happened?"

I shrug. "She left a few months after you did. The drugs found her again. Well -" I laugh bitterly. "More like she found the drugs. Snatched them and ran."

"I'm so sorry." He stops walking and turns to face me. "I'm so, so, sorry."

Words I've heard so many times. When you lose your best friend and his grandfather and your mother, people gossip. They have so much to say about me behind my back, about who I am and who I'll become, but they'll never have the guts to say it to my face. So instead they say those words. "I'm sorry."

But Nate continues. "I fucked up by leaving. Fuck, I should've never left you to deal with that alone." He runs a hand through his hair. "Did Nancy talk to you? Did she comfort you? Tell me she did." He looks into my eyes and sees the truth. Nancy was so caught up in her search for Nate; she moved me into her place after my mom left and Nancy was so kind and accommodating, but she never really stopped to think about my feelings. What I went through.

The desperation creeping into his voice is like ink spreading across a page in a book, smearing and blotching the words. "Adya, tell me she did."

I don't want to make him feel guilty for leaving. I don't want to make his situation worse. But I need to tell him the thought that's been in my mind.

"You could've come home," I say quietly.

He sighs. "Grief does horrible things to people-"

"I know what grief does to people," I say, cutting him off. "I've been through it myself. I can understand that this place, with the gossiping people and the rumours that travel around so fast; it can be suffocating. I get that. I know you had to leave. But three years? Three fucking years, Nate?" My voice breaks a little, and I realize it's because I'm desperate too. Desperate for an answer. Any sort of answer.

Nate turns to me. I'm suddenly caught in a net of his tragic beauty; the way the sun catches the glint of his messy copper hair and the startling clarity of his blue eyes. The sharp cut of his cheekbones and jawline, and how odd vulnerability looks on his face.

He points to the rolling hills beside us, gesturing vaguely and wildly to the sun as it burns orange against the green land. "I could go anywhere I wanted, yeah? Anywhere. A different city, a different country, a different life. I could go ANYWHERE, except I couldn't fucking come home."

I'm crying now. "Our doors were always open - You could've just walked right in-"

He gently sets his hands on my shoulders and leans close to me. The warmth of his fingertips, the vanilla and cigarettes, his face inches from mine - it's so much of him so close to me. I lean back a little, startled, and his grip on my shoulders tightens to make sure I don't fall.

"I couldn't, though," he says. "You have to understand. Tell me you understand. I was too fucked up, there were too many drugs in my body and too many emotions and I couldn't come home. Please tell me you get that." His thumb gently brushes away a tear on my cheek, and his touch burns an imaginary imprint in my skin that I will never forget.

I stare into his eyes. I'm ready to tell him I understand. I'm ready to tell him whatever he wants to hear.

Then I realize that's the problem, and the sadness pooling in my eyes turn into hot, angry tears.

I push him away from me. "You can't come back here and do that, Nate. You can't expect me to just understand. I didn't spend the last three years waiting for you to come back, because I didn't know if you would come back. You took all the uncertainty in the world and you placed it on my fucking shoulders."

Nate turns away, and I can only see his silhouette against the sun and the hills. He's silent, so I continue, my voice softer this time. "You're drunk on pain, and you're tossing blame around carelessly. You can't blame Nancy for not worrying about me enough. She was too busy worrying about you. And so was I. It was so, so tiring, but there was nothing else we could do."

I don't wait for him. I've spent my whole life waiting for him, and I can't do it anymore. I turn around and continue walking down the gravel path, over the rolling hills, past the oak trees, all the way back home.

a u t h o r ' s    n o t e

hope u enjoyed this chapter, lmk if u know what taylor swift song this scene was based off of :))

i'll try to update tmr <33