Trapped✔️

10

H O L D E N

Eight Months Ago

It was funny, really, how an announcement that Holden had believed would make him further his addiction actually turned out to be the catalyst for him quitting.

When his father announced the new baby, Holden hadn't felt replaced. His first thought hadn't been, What a jerk. It had been, I'm glad he's finally moved on.

And that had helped him to move on as well. The realization, while harsh, had been the end of his weed-buying and smoking. He was done with drugs, done with the dirty feeling that came after the high, done with the disappointed looks his mother and sister gave him when he stumbled home wasted or failed yet another class. Just done.

So he took up the drums, threw himself into his music the way he had marijuana, letting the rhythms absorb him and block out any problems he had. His grades improved, because when he wasn't drumming he was studying. His bloodshot eyes were no longer from partying too hard but from staying up all night cramming for the midterm - though, as Hailee had informed him sternly, he still ought to get some sleep.

Things like math tests, once everyday nuisances, now felt like small victories when he found out he'd passed. Regret would try to consume him on occasion when he thought about Nina, when he was cleaning and found an old tent they used to camp in when they were younger, when he flipped through his old notebooks and saw Nina's handwriting from years of written conversation in class. Regret would try to swallow him alive then, because remorse was all he had left of her, to remind himself of his biggest mistakes, ones that had filled the space between them and widened it. Nina was synonymous with regret.

But he was okay. Mostly. All he wanted was to leave this town where every memory of his father felt like a betrayal, where everything he did was an echo of the person he had been before everything fell apart.

He was fine. He was getting there. Holden Green would be okay.

:::

"It was a Thursday," Holden said quietly. Outside Nina's sheer blinds, the sun was setting. It felt like a beginning; it felt like the end of something.

"Thursday?" She repeated at the same volume.

"When I quit." He fisted the comforter in one hand, staring at his phone with the other, half of him wishing that the screen would light up with the dealer's number, and the other half praying that it wouldn't. "My dad paid a visit, because mom was at - was in therapy. I guess he didn't want to see the damage she'd caused, or maybe he knew he'd only hurt her more. I like to think the latter."

A car whizzed by outside Nina's window. The world went on, and it would still be spinning when he was finished. Holden took a breath, let it out. The world would go on. "He told me he was having a kid, a new family. And I know you're supposed to feel - feel replaced, and angry, and all that. But I just felt - " a bitter chuckle escaped his lips, the last he would allow. "I just felt so stupid. So stupid, for wasting my time on someone who had clearly moved on. So I quit, and I moved on, the way you and him and her and everyone else had."

Holden turned to face Nina, to finish carving the path that his words had started: a route to her. This was what he'd been doing all day, and he hoped that she felt the same way.

"It was Monday for me," Nina answered, dropping his gaze. Would it feel that way every time she did that, like an amputated limb, every time she looked away? "I'd staggered into homeroom, hungover. My mom texted me that she was coming over after school, and all I could think was, who is this stranger? Not just because I'd deleted her contact info," she added hastily, laughing the laugh of a cheap joke, a pointless one. "But because... My mom was there for me. She drove me to swim practice and told me to do my homework and picked up my jacket even after she'd told me to pick it up for the thousandth time. This woman... she was weekend visits and missed calls and the sound of her answering machine more than she was my mom. This was not my mother."

Silence, time to absorb the blows, adjust to the lack of oxygen now that they were immersed, diving in but not quite drowning in memory. They could - would - pull themselves out; pull each other out.

"So that got me thinking - if no one cares what I do, why do I still do it? Who am I partying for - Todd? Because there's no use in waiting for my mom to come back home and set my curfew and lecture me and tell me not to wear such a short skirt when it's so late out." A choked sob, a sigh, the quiet steeling of resolve. "I stopped going out, after that. I missed it so much, and I took up friggin' knitting just to pass the time, but - I did it. I'm free."

"We both are."

They were free now, from vice, from the past, but there was one thing they both knew: they might never be free of each other.

Exactly the opposite, as he leaned towards her, lips brushing hers once, twice, before Nina reciprocated, as though it were anything but instinct to be this close to her, as though it were a privilege that might be snatched away in a moment. He cupped her head with a hand, reveling in the silk of her hair, the lushness of her body, and she wrapped herself around him like she couldn't get close enough.

They were bodies, responding; they were souls, rejoicing; they were Nina and Holden, finally done missing each other.

Hey guys! I know it's been a while and I'm sorry, but... I'm back! I just wanted to announce that I'm doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year on Wattpad, and it starts pretty soon, so some of my stories might not get as much love as the novel I'll be working on. I will do my best to be organized, but NaNo will be my main priority.