Change | E.D

Thirty Four

Ethan 

I'm completely defeated when I pull into my driveway late that night. It's dark, it's raining, I'm pretty much out of gas in my Jeep, and after coming up empty-handed on my search for Char, I can easily say that she's actually gone to her mother in Boston like she told Annie earlier on today.   

The book store had been my first stop, and I can still remember the look of utter pity that Annie had given me when I walked through those doors. She knew immediately why I was there and my heart had sunk into my stomach when she told me that I'd probably need to sit down when she told me what had happened to Charlotte.  

She'd been right.  

But I'd refused to give up, clinging onto some shred of hope that maybe the bus had gotten cancelled or she'd chickened out on the whole moving thing. I thought that maybe if I just drove around town I'd see her walking, or that I'd pull up to her house and see her checking the mail or something completely mundane like that.

I thought that maybe her going was so nightmarish that it could never actually happen. I thought that I'd never actually have to sit in my car like this, with this awful hollow feeling in my gut at the realisation that she did leave.

That my Char is gone and that the odds of seeing her again are slim to none.  

And now that it's slowly starting to sink in, I can't help but realise how miserable life is going to be without her here. I'm never going to be able to just sink my fingers into her hair and breathe her in, I'm never going to be able to thread my legs through her smooth ones while we sleep, never going to feel her slap me on the chest because I'd said something mean.

I'm never going to feel her breath on my collarbone while we watch something on TV together, completely intertwined on the couch. I'm never going to see her walk around with her pajama shorts unknowingly pulled up so high that I can easily check her ass out.

I'm never going to be able to slip my fingers up her shirt and feel her warm skin against my finger tips.  And I'm never going to be able to do any of these things ever again because I'm an asshole.  

Because I'm a stupid asshole who doesn't deserve someone as amazing as Charlotte Parker.  

No, she deserves someone who never broke her heart, who never gave her a reason to distrust them so badly. She deserves someone who she can see a future with, not someone that she can see leaving her so quickly. She doesn't deserve such a fuck up. She deserves so much better than me.   

I lean my forehead against the steering wheel and just start pounding my fist against the seat of my chair, letting out all of the pent up emotion that's been bottled up inside me throughout the whole search.

It's one thing to have hope built up so high, but it's completely another to have that kind of hope only to feel it come halting to a crash at the end of the road. It's completely another thing to feel the loss and defeat of letting something so wonderful float away.   

It's the worst thing I've ever felt in my life.  

The sad thing is that I deserve it. I deserve all of this misery and sadness. I deserve to have it shoveled heap by filthy heap onto my back. This is all my fault. Her leaving is of my doing. And the fact that I may have caused her sadness again, the kind of sadness where she just wants to flee town and never come back, is the worst part of all.  

Before I even know what's happening, I see a tear splash against the rough black material of the steering wheel. And before it can even register in my head that I'm crying, I'm sobbing.

The perfect golden boy who never has to go through anything remotely hard because of his perfect family, his perfect friends, is blubbering like a fucking baby in the dark loneliness of his Jeep.   

My Char is gone, she's left because of me, and I honestly don't think that she's coming back. I honestly never thought that I'd be able to feel this kind of guilt; this kind of gut-wrenching, heart-splitting guilt that makes me feel like the worst person on the planet.

All I can see is that devastated expression of Charlotte when I'd told her that I didn't like her back like that two years ago, that I was with someone. I can still remember how awful I felt when I'd seen her name flashing on my phone because of an incoming call, and had had to turn it down because Alexis had been right behind me.

I can still remember what it'd been like to see her in the hallways and just reach out to her, hug her in my arms and whisper to her that I'm so so sorry, but that I couldn't do it because it'd get back to Alexis and ruin that perfect image I'd had going.  

I can still remember back to a few months ago, when she'd snapped at something Mr. Holland had said in class, and I'd felt this huge hit to the center of my chest.

How I'd felt like such a piece of shit when she bashed every single word I sent her way. How, when she finally gave in and melted against my chest after the huge blow up with her dad, I'd felt this overwhelming sense of rightness because she'd been in my arms.   

And after all of that, after all of the mishaps and miscommunications and freak outs, I can't be with her. Because she just hates me that much.  

It feels like hours when I finally gather the pieces of my broken self and get out of my car. The night air is humid but somewhat chilly, and I can't help but just want to slink up the stairs and into my room and bury my face into the pillow that she'd used when she'd been here, get the last of her smell before it finally fades away and into the air.   

I slowly close the door to the car I've been in for hours now, and once it's good and locked, I press the lock button on my key ring and watch the front headlights blink twice in finalisation, briefly illuminating the darkness of the garage doors.

Stuffing my phone into my pocket, I then walk around the front of the car and start to walk the length of the front yard to the porch so that I can just disappear from the outside world for a while.  

But it's as soon as I step around the corner of the protruding garage that I see a dark, huddled figure leaning against the wall next to the front door. A few heart-pounding steps closer until I see those dark curls escaping from the hood of her jacket.

Feeling all of the breath escape from my body, I halt for a second, just letting my eyes rake over her body because she's here. Because this ghost of a girl that I've been searching for all day is sitting right in front of me.  

It's all I can do to just take those few final steps up the front steps and then kneel down in front of her, feeling some part of me cry out in the urge to just hold her tight and hug her and kiss her over and over because she's here.   

Charlotte is here.