Nova Scotia

Chapter 10

Chapter 10:

The half hour drive from Halifax to Bedford had been complete and utter torture. Cruel and unusual punishment, even. The music that had been blaring from the radio wasn't enough to quell the heavy silence in Dallas' tiny car. He rolled the windows down and even though I was freezing, I didn't have the guts to ask him to roll them back up. He parked in front of Grandma Sheela's house and unlocked the doors. We didn't even say goodbye to each other.

I couldn't wrap my head around what had happened. We had the most perfect day together, full of laughter and butterflies in my stomach. How could a day that started out so perfect end so horribly?

Dallas kissed me. He wrapped his arms around me and really, truly kissed me. It was brief, but it was a real kiss. Shouldn't I have died of happiness, my soul floating slowly upwards to the ethereal beauty of heaven? Yes. Did I feel that? No.

I felt guilt. Immense, immeasurable, immobilizing guilt. The kind that made you lose your appetite and made your mouth dry. It could make your skin unbelievably clammy even if you were standing in the middle of the Sahara. There was a constant tension in your shoulders because of it, plus a persistent desire to put your head through the wall. Or maybe that was just me.

I was definitely not floating towards any ethereal beauty. I was drowning in guilt, sinking down to the somber circle of Hell where cheating girlfriends and sleazy friends went after they died, even if I wasn't a cheating girlfriend or a sleazy friend. It just felt that way. It was the kind of feeling that threatened to swallow me whole.

It was the kind of feeling that anchored me to my bed the next morning, eyes closed, and refusing to meet the new day ahead of me. The duvet cover was my safe haven, protecting me from the harsh glare of watery sunlight outside. I hadn't slept all that much, but my bed was definitely a better place for me to be than out in public, kissing boys I barely knew in Nova Scotia while I had a boyfriend in California – even if he was a crappy excuse for a boyfriend. My toes curled because of the sensation of comfortable warmth and soothing smell of laundry detergent. My field of vision was a black canvas, with doodles of Dallas and his perfect, kissable lips doodled all over it.

Someone knocked on my door, shattering the warmth and detergent smell. My canvas was ripped to shreds, falling to the floor in small pieces that echoed You have a boyfriend. Don't you?

"Candice, are you still moping in that pigsty you call a bed?" Grandma Sheela squawked. "You can't spend all summer in that hovel, you know!"

"Yes, I can," I shot back. "There's air conditioning in this room, isn't there?"

The door opened and Grandma Sheela crossed her arms over her chest when she saw me. She clicked her tongue in disapproval. "You're being ridiculous," she scolded me, coming over and yanking the covers off my bed. "You know that, don't you, Candy? What happened yesterday could not have been so terrible."

"How do you know anything happened?" I muttered, letting her force me up into a sitting position.

"I'm Sheela," she said. "I know everything. Also, Dallas is downstairs waiting for you to get out of this pigsty. He mentioned something about wanting to apologize."

My head snapped up. It felt like someone had shot ice water through my veins. I stared at my grandmother, suddenly feeling much more aware of my sweaty armpits, my smelly hair, and my crusty eyes. "What? Dallas is here?"