twisted | ✔️

chapter twelve

I spent the next day running circles around the track at the high school until my lungs were burning in my chest, until my legs felt like jelly, like they had nothing left to give. I had been here for over an hour, and still I craved a cigarette more than anything. But the baby was heavy in my stomach, reminding me not to forget about it, although at this point it was probably the size of a grape.

Last night, I had hurriedly got dressed, hoping to catch up to Noah, but he was gone. I met Ian at the door when I came back inside, shoving past teenagers who were having too much fun to notice an elbow to the ribs.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Get everybody out of here," I told him.

"But you said—"

"I know what I said," I barked, and he was shocked. I pushed my way into the living room, flipping off the stereo, causing a chorus of groans throughout the house. "Party's over!" I shouted. "Everybody go home!"

It took a while, but eventually the house had cleared out, leaving behind sad traces of the party—spilled drinks on the dining room table, cups scattered along the floor, cigarette butts on the porch and in the front yard. Ian had tried to ask me what happened, what changed my mind, but I evaded his questions, instead ordering him to clean up, and then running back to the safety of my bed. I hadn't been able to deal with the noise, the laughter, when it felt like a volcano had erupted in the middle of my room, destroying everything good in my life.

I collapsed on my back in the grass of the football field. Even though my body was nearly numb, nothing I did would turn off my mind. There were reasons our boundaries had been put into place, because we both knew what would happen if we got too close, if we played with fire. I knew it would have been my fault, too; I'd never trusted myself around him—too many feelings and too much history colliding all at once. Despite what Danielle had said, I didn't deserve Noah, not while my heart was buried six feet under.

And it was insane, wasn't it, to still be in love with someone who wasn't here anymore, who wasn't going to be coming back? Noah's words came back to bite me with their cruel honesty. I knew what he'd said was true, that I only wanted him because he was so familiar, the way he moved and spoke and touched me, that I was trying to bring my eighteen-year old feelings back to life, even though I couldn't bring back the boy who had sparked them in the first place. And it sounded vicious, heartless, and I hated myself for it.

I couldn't ever love Noah as much as he deserved.

I wobbled back onto my legs, both of them stacks of bricks, and made my way back to my car. I wasn't sure where I was driving until I pulled into the parking lot.

I hadn't been here in a while, and I felt guilty. I wove through the grass, following my memory, past the names of people I never knew until I'd reached the one person I did. I was shaken deep into my bones, like I was every time, because this here, in front of me, was too real, too permanent. I stopped, staring at the headstone.

Elliott Hudson, Loving Father, Husband, and Friend, the epitaph read.

It was so generic, and I hated how it didn't even come close to encompassing who my dad was. I remembered fighting my mom on it, wanting to inscribe something more personal, something only we would understand because it didn't matter what anyone else thought, strangers who would just breeze past en route to the person they were actually there to see. I had told her that nobody stops to read all of the inscriptions, and she had told me that it was her decision, leading us to argue in the middle of the funeral home.

We had scattered his ashes, this plot only ceremonial, but we all knew that we needed it here, if only to make it feel like he was still here. I needed it because I needed to know that he'd ever been here at all.