Aloha, page 73
“Big test tomorrow. Everything is on Do Not Disturb. What’s up?” I take the ear buds out.
“Jack texted me. Check your social media,” she says with wary eyes.
“Weird my brother texted you. You still trying to hook up?” I tease.
“He couldn’t reach you. Go check.” She bites back.
I open and it’s the first thing on my feed.
Rachel.
And not just Rachel… Rachel at Brooks’ training graduation. She’s in pictures with his family. There’s some of them only. She flew down to watch him graduate. He never even let me know the time or place.
“Did you know?” Ryder asks.
I shake my head slowly.
He didn’t tell me when he was here- that he saw her. That she flew hundreds of miles for something I didn’t even know happened.
My heart had hoped once more when he showed up at my door.
And now.
Now, it’s breaking all over again.
“Slut-ception,” Ryder adds and I veto it.
“Sleep-a-thon?” I ask but she crinkles her nose at it.
“Hmm,” she says, looking around our room like it will give her answers.
We decided I was going to actually get over Brooks. Even if it meant going through every guy at this school to do so.
“Whore-dom?” Her voice raises as she says it, like she's unsure even saying it.
“No,” I say.
It still doesn’t feel right. We’ve been trying to name the crusade I’m about to unleash on campus. Ryder is positive it needs a name, as if I am breaking a dam onto the student body.
“Whore-tism?” I ask.
“Feels common,” she counters. “And sounds weird.”
“Whore-icane?”
“That’s it!” Ryder yells. “Yes, we finally have a name for this beautiful season of life into which you are entering.” She claps her hands, and then dances to the bathroom.
I laugh but stop when she’s out of sight. The pain floods the spaces I reserve for faking my way throughout the day. He didn’t tell me Rachel flew out to see him. I have no idea what transpired between them. All I know is he didn’t tell me.
I believe him in the regard that he didn’t have much time allowed to go home and that he spent it with me. I know his schedule has been incredibly tight, and Jack has attested to that as well. No one else got letters, even still. No one mentioned if Rachel got any either, although I’m not sure if they would tell me.
“To get over him, get under someone else.” It’s what Ryder has been trying to drill into me the last couple days.
I can’t forget him if I don’t try. I look to my nightstand that has his cologne and pictures tucked away. I can’t get rid of them. I believe in what we have with each other, even if it's breaking me. And it is breaking me.
Hope opened my heart once more, and now I’m reeling from the consequences of it.
“It’s just heartless sex,” I tell myself as a pep talk for the night. “I need to get over him.”
I need to get over him. I need to get over him. I need to get over him.
I say it like it's a mantra. Maybe it is. I don’t know if it will ever be true, though.
I lied to Ryder. It was the only way.
I told her I got over Brooks, that he was in my past and there would be no future with him. There couldn’t be when he was impossible to reach and I was allegedly active on the dating apps.
I had been, for about two weeks into my whore-icane, then stopped when I got the next letter from Brooks. It was as if everything fell back into place. And this time, he asked me to write back. He admitted in his letters how before he knew he’d be able to surprise me, but he was now unsure of when he’d be able to come back home.
And I wrote back. I sent more pictures too. Some were a little bit racier than others. I didn’t care if they had been screened by someone else as long as they got to Brooks.
His letters were proof they’d made it to him.
Semester break comes quickly, and the first half of my freshman year is over. I go back home while Ryder goes on vacation with her parents, along with a guy she’s been seeing.
I don’t expect any surprises from Brooks. I don’t let myself hope to see him, not when his schedule is not his own. When his life is someone else’s to dictate.
And I don’t. No one hears from him in weeks, including me. I assume training has been too much and he has no time. Jack knows he came to see me, but doesn’t know the details. I can’t bring Brooks up to him, without presumably being told it wasn’t a good idea. That’s what everyone else on the outside has been telling me.
But they didn’t see us. I could, though. I could see us.
I don’t hear from him after Christmas either.
I still send letters. I write them in the library during study breaks so Ryder won’t catch me. And when I know she’ll be gone all night, I bring out the cologne and letters he once sent me.
My heart won’t give up on him or us, even when everyone else does.
I finish my first year without ceremony. Ryder ended it in a relationship. He’s nice; good to her, and most importantly he’s present. But he’s different from Brooks. The situation is different and that’s what I tell myself to keep the jealousy at bay. But it’s hard to watch Ryder get all the things I wanted with Brooks.
Halfway through the summer while sitting at my temp job, he calls. His name flashes on the screen of my phone, and I almost convince myself it can’t be him before I answer.
“Brooks?” I ask hesitantly.
“Courtney,” he answers and it nearly breaks me.
“Where have you been?” I cry.
“I’m home. I’m back for right now. Where are you?”
I tell him I’ll come to him and before he can protest, I let my manager know I need the rest of the day off and run to my car. I actually had found a job closer to his house than my own. It’s just a couple minute drive, but it still feels too long when I know our time is short.
I race through the streets, and on the way to his house I pass Rachel leaving the neighborhood.
My stomach drops.
I try giving myself reasonable explanations for why she was there before me, but none come to mind.
Still, I go. Still, I drive to his house.
He’s standing on his driveway when I pull in and I don’t know if it’s to welcome me or to say goodbye to Rachel.
I get out, but stay next to my car.
“I saw Rachel leaving,” I say. It isn’t a question, but it might as well have been.
“She just left,” he says shamefully.
“She was your first call?” I brace myself for the answer.
“No.” He walks to me. “I didn’t know I was coming home until the last minute. Her mom and my mom still see each other all the time. Her mom told her to come. I swear I didn’t tell her I was coming home.” He’s at my side now.
“What about your graduation?” I ask, tears streaming down my face. There’s no surprise on his face at this, like he knew that I’d found out.
“My mom invited her mom to make a mini vacation out of it, and she brought Rachel. That’s it. I had no idea until she was there.” He wipes my tears away.
“You could have told me.” I stand tall.
“I should have. I’m sorry.” He kisses the top of my head.
“I thought your mom liked me,” I say with realization.
“She does. I think it’s harder on Rachel’s mom and she’s been super pushy about things.” He grabs my hands. “Please, come inside. I’ve missed you and I don’t want to spend my time with you talking about her.”
I nod my head and agree.
“Let’s go.”
I spend the weekend in his bed. We visit other places as well, but the highlights are his bed. It takes me back to when it had been just us, at our best. When we found ourselves through all the other shit going on.
When he leaves, he promises he’ll have the opportunity to be better at communication. And he is. For the months following, he’s been able to call me once a day and he spends his entire phone time with me. I schedule it out too. Ryder doesn’t notice when we get back to school because she’s been too busy with her boyfriend. But Brooks and I have found each other once again, even with all the miles between us.
“What do you want out of life, Court?” he asks me one night.
“I want to see the world. And I want to do it with you,” I admit.
“I’m gonna give that to you someday.” He mirrors my hopes and dreams. “Where to first?”
“Some place I’ve never been, that looks nothing like here. I’ve only ever been home and school. You’ve seen more of the world than me.”
“Well, the extra I have seen hasn’t been fun. Not yet anyway. What about Alaska?”
“Definitely on the list,” I answer.
“What’s number one on the list?” he asks.
“Well, what are the eligible locations where you’d end up?”
“Well, there’s Alaska - already mentioned. Let’s see… Colorado is a possibility. The mountains are nice. Oh, there’s also Hawaii.”
“Hawaii.” I cut off the list there. “That would be my number one. I’d only ever go if you were stationed there.”
“It’s my top spot too. I’d have to be insanely lucky to get it, though. But you’d come out there for me?”
“Yeah… I would.”
Each conversation leaves me more sure of where we stand. I’d finish my degree and then we’d see where he was at in his career. I’d follow him anywhere if he let me.
We end every conversation with a promise to talk again. The first night he doesn’t call, I don’t call him, but only wait for him. Then the next night is the same. And the nights that follow. I think that’s what breaks me the most. I fell for it again.
I become a shell of my former self. Brooks made the parts of me I thought were shadows feel seen. Without that, without him, I’m hollow all over again.
Letters come sporadically, and with no real explanation for why the phone calls stop. They just do. And just when I think I might be able to move on, a new letter comes. I can’t tell Ryder or Jack what’s happening. I don’t want to hear about how stupid I’m being with Brooks, again.
For weeks, I go through the motions until it happens again.
Rachel posts another photo of them together with the caption: Somehow we always find our way back here.
It breaks me.
I don’t know when it was taken. I have no context. But I know I haven’t heard from Brooks in a few weeks, and Rachel’s picture shows the new ashy blonde look she recently changed to. He’s also wearing the hoodie I bought him. So, I know it’s not an old picture.
I recognize the place they were in too. He was home and he was with her and I hadn’t heard anything.
I delete my accounts that night. And I also restart my dating apps. Not being with Brooks hurts, but knowing I wasn’t with him and he was with her nearly kills me.
I block his number and stop writing letters.
I have to be done with him. I don’t care if it ends up being some innocent occasion between them. We’ve never reached the level of relationship Brooks and Rachel had. And now it’s apparent I never would.
Ryder goes home for semester break our sophomore year. Her boyfriend ended up not living too far away from where we had grown up, so she’s able to see him during break as well.
On New Year’s Eve, he throws a party at his brother's house. It isn’t super far to drive and Ryder promised me a bed to sleep in when we eventually crash for the night.
The theme is black and white, and a couple of days prior I decided I’d make my hair match the theme. I had been able to get an appointment with a stylist who gave me my black and white hair, with the middle part splitting the black and white. It’s perfect.
I find a dress in Ryder’s closet that fits the theme as well. It’s the time of year for resolutions - promises of new starts, and I’m in desperate need of one.
New Year’s Eve day is spent with Ryder and I getting ready at her house, just as we do so many times at school. We dance and curl our hair and take shots. By the time we leave her house, I’ve loosened up and resolved myself to have a night filled with fun.
And fun turns out to be dominating the beer pong table.
I don’t know what it is, but I’m on absolute fire. I team up with Ryder’s boyfriend's friend, Nick. He and I absolutely sweep the competition. We have a twenty two game winning streak before we take a break to go play other games and see what’s happening elsewhere. And for whatever reason, we stick by each other for the night. We aren’t as good at tippy cup, but pump our egos back up again at the beer pong table.
And for the first time in a long time, I realize I haven’t thought about Brooks. It isn’t in a way that makes me miss him more, but in a way that makes me realize the ache is missing. I think that’s what hits me the most as the clock counts down to midnight with this handsome stranger next to me. That for once, my day hasn’t been affected by Brooks. So when the clock strikes midnight, I kiss him.
I barely know his name, but I know there’s something happening in me.
A couple weeks go by and I’ve been texting with Nick, the guy from the party. He isn’t spectacular, but he’s new and most importantly, available. And he wants to see me when I come home to spend the weekend doing laundry.
He’s nice enough, so I agree. I don’t tell Jack or my mom I’m coming home. I just show up while mom’s cooking dinner. Since Nick told me he was bringing us food, I don’t eat but I sit with my mom while she does. She doesn’t tell Jack I’m back but told him he should spend the night at home. I didn’t get to see him that much during my break because he was working and I stayed away from home as much as I could to avoid questions.
But I have to admit, I’ve missed him, and it’ll be nice to see him. And also to berate him with how he ended up with a giant TV in his room while I was gone. The family room still has a decent sized one, but he must have bought himself a nice set up.
Nick texts me when he arrives and I bring him downstairs right away because I don’t want him to meet my mom yet. Not when we haven’t been able to spend enough time to find out if it’s worth it. My mom doesn’t think Jack will be home tonight anyway, but at least I’ll get to see him in the morning before I go back to school.
“Do you like scary movies?” Nick asks on the way downstairs.
“Only if I can follow them up with the cheesiest girly movie ever so that I’m able to fall asleep,” I say in all seriousness.
“Deal. If I make you suffer through something, then I guess it’s only fair you make me suffer through something as well.” He smirks, but it doesn’t ignite sparks in me like Brooks does.
We eat first before settling into a movie surrounding hauntings. They genuinely scare me, so it doesn’t take long for me to bury myself against Nick. We eventually find that him lying on his back and me lying down on my side next to him offers the most comfortable position for us. I’m able to hide in him when I need to and he’s able to still watch all the parts he wants. It’s an added bonus that it means he’s holding me the whole night.
Almost three quarters through the movie, the door to the basement bursts open and Jack waltzes in.
“Courtney!” he yells, clearly intoxicated. “You’re home and I missed you. And I guess that’s why mom told me to come home. But since I wanted to stay out celebrating with my friends, I brought my friends back. You and whoever this guy is, go take my room and we’ll take the TV down here,” he says as he falls onto the other end of the sectional.
I lean over to grab the remote as Jimmy walks in with Brooks behind him.
Brooks is home. Brooks is here.
Brooks is in my basement and I’m lying down cuddling on the couch with someone else. My face heats and my heart races. I’m not cheating but this feels the same. He’s the one I want to bring me dinner and watch movies with on the couch.
He stops walking in as soon as he clocks the situation.
“What are you celebrating?” I ask, staring at Brooks.
“I got stationed,” he answers. “I’m going to Hawaii. First stop in seeing the world.”
The words gut punch me. I’m supposed to have that with him. To be with him through it. It’s our dream and it’s happening, but without me. And I have no idea if it’s still something he wants with me. I’ve never known what he truly wants from me and for us because he’s never let us become anything. And now that we’ve found ourselves here in this moment, I know that it never will. Because he could have included me in this- could have told Jack to tell me, but he didn’t and I guess that’s clear enough.
“Come on, Nick.” I get up and walk straight past them to the stairs.
Jimmy stops Nick, though. “What are your intentions with Courney?” he asks through drunken slurs.
I stop going up the stairs.
“Right now, to get through our movies.” It’s a smart answer, and probably the correct answer but the tone sets Jimmy off.
“Hey!” he barks. “I’ll kick your ass if you hurt her.” He points as he sways.
“Leave him alone, Jimmy,” I say defeated. Jimmy has always been my protector, and that’s why no one outside of Ryder knew about Brooks and I this last year and a half. I could barely handle Ryder’s hard truths. I wasn’t going to be able to withstand it from everyone else, too.
I can’t look at Brooks anymore. Because I know what I’ll see. I’ll see that I’m putting him through everything I went through.
I think that’s what does it. Walking into the house and seeing me with someone else.
He stops pursuing me after that. No more letters, not that there had been any in a long time. I unblock him just to see what would happen, and there’s nothing. I can’t bring myself to reach out first, either.
I think I broke him the way he broke me.
Nick wasn’t worth the fallout, worth hurting someone else over. We fizzled out quicker than we started. But he’d been a catalyst in the end.
I wanted someone to love me back.
