Chapter 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Alex

FOR A FEW brEATHS, neither of us speak. I stare down at my clasped hands.

"I'm so sorry you had to see that," I say when I can talk.

"Don't apologize to me. Alex, that was awful. Has she been like that the whole time?"

I laugh bitterly. "She's been like that my whole life. You wonder why I'm a lawyer instead of using my environmental science degree. Well. There's your answer."

I don't look over at him, but I can feel his horror heating the air in the car. He doesn't start the engine, doesn't say anything, but his stillness is more eerie than an outburst. This entire time, Henry has been joyful, exuberant, bursting with constant energy and optimism. This tense, angry quiet is such a dramatic change that it leaves me woozy with vertigo.

"Alex," he says eventually, slowly, quietly, "you can't let them control your entire life like this. Are you happy? Does any part of your life make you happy? Or are you simply happy you aren't here where they can reach you? Because if that's the case… Alex, they're still pulling the strings in your life, no matter how far away you live."

I swallow over and over, but nothing clears my throat. My knuckles are going white from how hard I'm clasping my hands. I look at nothing but the blood draining out of them.

"Alex."

"I can't answer that right now." It's a cowardly answer, but it's the only one I have.

Henry sighs softly, but lets it go. He turns on his car, and the rumble of the engine fills in the awkward space that's opened between us since we spotted my mother in the parking lot. I watch the trees flash by outside of the window as Henry drives back toward his house. Right. I have to return to his home to get my work stuff. I can't leap out and run away. Worse, I'll be going from him to my parents, who will surely have even more to say when we're alone. I can only imagine how my mother is describing this encounter to Dad.

"Alex," Henry says gently, "I'm sorry that happened to you. It wasn't fair. And it makes me really worry that you aren't happy. I know you don't want to talk about it right now, but I'm going to ask one more time: Are you actually happy in San Francisco?"

I answer on pure, bitter instinct. "I don't need to be happy. I need to do the things I have to do."

"That's not true," Henry says. "You do need to be happy. You deserve to be happy. If that means San Francisco, great. If it means hiking through the woods, that's just as valid a choice."

I jerk my head up and look at him at last. He's watching the road, but spares me a quick glance full of more pity than I can withstand. Henry doesn't owe me pity. I'm the one about to hurt him.

"Happiness isn't really part of the plan," I say.

"Whose plans? Yours or your parents'?"

I come up short yet again. My entire life, there's never been a significant difference between what I want and what they want. Or, rather, there has, but what I want has been trampled so thoroughly that I never dared to consider it a real option.

What would I do if I chose my own happiness, though? I thought that's what I was doing when I left Tripp Lake the first time, but the second I've returned, everything has gone back to the way it's always been. They haven't changed. My flight to San Francisco hasn't loosened their grip on me whatsoever. They want control over my choices as much as ever, and I'm folding to their demands as easily as I did as a teenager.

Twenty-five years, and I'm not sure I've ever made a purely selfish choice.

Except maybe Henry.

Nothing about him is in my parents' plans. They wanted me to come here and meet Ellie, but I went a different direction. And all of their suspicious looks and snide comments have never stopped me from ending up back with Henry somehow. It's only been a couple weeks, but the times I've spent with him have been some of the freest I've experienced in my entire life.

Am I actually happy in San Francisco? I don't know. But I'm positive I'm happy when I'm with him.

Saying that will only hurt both of us more. My time here is ending. I'll probably look up flights as soon as I get back to my parents' place. I don't want to dig the knife in deeper. That's not how I want this to end.

"I don't know," I say, a super belated response to his question. "I really don't know, Henry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry you saw that and that I have no answers and that it's all like this. I didn't mean to get you tangled up in my family's mess. I should have left a week ago."

His hand lands on my thigh, a warm, reassuring weight.

"I'm glad you didn't, for what it's worth."

I take his hand in mine. "All the parts with you have been amazing. I want you to know that."

"Are you saying goodbye already?"

"Not right this second but…" I let the rest of the sentence trail off into a silence heavy with all the things I don't want to hear out loud. He knows as well as I do that we're on borrowed time.

"Fair enough."

Henry's voice goes even softer. We don't speak the rest of the way to his house. The half hour drive feels both longer than it should and horrifically short, but then we're pulling into his driveway, and I have to release his hand and climb out of his car. It feels like stepping out of the safety of a hug and into an icy wind. I know I'm hunching when I head into his house and gather up my stuff, but I can't stop myself. I don't have his protection anymore. I can't hide in his bed, in his smiles, in his warmth. There's nothing to do but head back to my parents. And then back to San Francisco.

I hesitate at his door.

"I'll see you again," I say.

He nods, and I cup his face in my hands, stroking my thumbs against his cheeks, holding on for as long as I can. He sets his hands on my wrists like he's cementing my hands in place, but I can only stay this way so long.

While I still have time, I bend down to kiss him, lingering against his mouth for as long as I dare. That kiss tattoos itself on my heart like a scar. As sweet as it is, an edge of pain poisons the gesture.

I don't stay long enough for that foul edge to bleed into the rest of me. Let this remain sweet. Let it remain precious.

I slip free of his hold. We both suck down steadying breaths.

"I'll see you again soon," I say.

"I want to say I'm excited for that, but…"

But it'll probably be goodbye. I know. I don't finish the thought, not wanting to hear it out loud. Instead, I sling my laptop bag over my shoulders and finally drag myself out of Henry's house.

I'm not sure if he watches me go. I don't let myself look back. The second I'm outside, all that softness he inspires in me hardens. A shield comes up to protect myself from whatever my parents have in store.

The storm hits immediately.

The second I step into their house, I hear them arguing.

"There he is," my father says. "Back from that … that person's house."

I snort a bitter laugh. They can't even call him a man. It'll make it too obvious precisely how I'm disappointing them.

"I had work in the morning," I say.

It's a flimsy excuse, and my parents predictably swat it aside like tissue paper.

"What happened to working here so you could help us?" my mother says.

I gesture angrily at my father.

"Dad's doing better. I had to take a meeting this morning. Henry's place is quieter. I thought it would be a better place to work."

My mother's laugh is the scrape of nails against a brick wall. "Quieter. He's saying we annoy him. His own parents. Who need his help ."

"I've been helping."

"Sure, for as long as it suits you. You know, you could stand to be more grateful after we basically put you through school."

This is the point where I start tuning it out. I've heard all the reasons I should feel guilty about a hundred times since I was a teenager already disappointing them. I could probably recite them from memory. Thank goodness my little sister lives at school. I don't want her getting mired in this shit like I have been.

And then my mother hits the climax of her tirade.

"You can't go back there."

I blink, actually taken off-guard this time. I can't go back there? To Henry's house? Are they seriously baring me, a whole twenty-five-year-old adult, from going wherever the hell I want?

I'm too stunned to even argue about it. Clearly, in their eyes I am still fifteen, still their kid living at home, still dependent on them. They helped me out in college, and that binds me to their every whim forever. They can tell me where I can and can't go even when I'm an adult.

I don't reply, heading for the stairs instead. I have a plane ticket to buy.

"Did you hear me?" my mother calls after me.

"Don't ignore your mother," Dad adds.

He really shouldn't be yelling like that. He should be recovering. But, well, I'm sure that's also my fault somehow.

I ignore them. Their anger bounces off of me as I head up to my childhood bedroom. I close the door, but it doesn't really shut them out. This room still contains the bed I slept in when I was a teenager. The same posters of video games and anime plaster the walls. Some of my clothes still hang in the closet. It's like a time capsule, or maybe it's more like a time anomaly, this weird, warped space that froze while the rest of the world moved on. Nothing has changed since I lived in this bedroom, no matter how much I've grown, no matter where I live, no matter who I spend my time with. In this house, everything is exactly the way it was ten years ago.

It's time to get the hell out of here.

I feel bad about it even as I open my laptop and start looking up the most reasonable flight I can get on short notice. The prices aren't pretty, but what is all that environment-destroying lawyer money for if not this? I took the job to get away from them, right? So why shouldn't I blow way too much money rushing myself onto a flight back out of here?

I find one that's only a few days away and won't leave me eating instant noodles for the next month. It'll also give me a few days to say goodbye to Henry. I'm not looking forward to that. It won't be fun. I know we'll both walk away hurting, but maybe I can ensure it's the good kind of hurt. Maybe I can get him chocolate or a fancy meal to show him that our time together meant something to me, that he isn't the reason I'm leaving.

I forget about the plane ticket almost immediately, instead plotting out what I can do to say goodbye to Henry in the kindest way possible. He doesn't deserve to leave here with the same scars I will. I want to give him something tangible, something that might ease the sting, at least a little. And who knows? Maybe fate or luck will bring us together again some day.

If Tripp Lake has anything worth coming back for, it's him.