14. Avery

He left a bottle of wine on the bathtub tray beside the wineglass.

I was taking a bath in Nathan’s gigantic bathtub.

Why was I taking a bath in Nathan’s gigantic bathtub?

I skirted the water with my toes before climbing in. It was the perfect temperature. My body melted into the pool of comfort as the bubbles fizzled from my contact with them. The whole room smelled like I’d stepped into a lavender field, and the heaviness of my heart began to ease somewhat.

Until I turned to my left and saw my wedding gown pooled on the floor.

In a different world, Daddy would’ve already given me away.

My sisters would’ve been standing by my side. Both would’ve cried, but Yara a little more than Willow. Pregnancy hormones had a way of doing that to a girl. Willow would’ve performed the sand ceremony, giving us the symbolism of two words blending into one.

We would’ve exchanged our vows.

Wesley would’ve cried.

I wouldn’t have.

He would’ve said, “I do.”

I would’ve said, “I do,” too.

Our reception would’ve been starting any second now.

We would’ve been introduced as Mr. and Mrs. Gable.

The room would’ve erupted into cheers.

There would’ve been cake cutting and dancing.

We’d be eating top-of-the-line food because Alex would’ve only prepared the best of the best.

There would’ve been a hot dog food truck for late-night snacks because I had an unnatural love for hot dogs.

Drew would’ve insulted me somehow, but I wouldn’t care because I would’ve been drunk on prosecco and love.

We would’ve watched fireworks.

Wesley would’ve kissed me.

I would’ve kissed him back.

Yet a part of me would’ve wondered if I were happy. A part of me would’ve pondered if I made the right choice in going through with the marriage. We were good before Drew came into the picture. Well, we were okay. I did avoid accepting his proposal at first, but that was just because I had a fear of commitment. I loved him.

Right?

Yes.

Of course.

I loved him.

One hundred percent.

It was me who was hard to love, not Wesley.

Stop it, Avery. He literally left you on your wedding day.

My brain was trying its hardest to talk down my overthinking heart. Yet it was next to impossible for it to happen. The thing about one’s heart was that it felt so deeply, even if the brain told it to shut off.

I wanted to feel less.

I wanted my heart to stop beating, and the numbness that I told Nathan I felt to be true. I wanted to erase the tear that danced down my cheek from his memory so he wouldn’t know that I was still capable of feeling pain.

The jazz music played in the background as I allowed my face to slip under the water. I held my breath as I hovered beneath the water and bubbles as long as I could. I wanted to disappear for a moment. Escape to a land far, far away from reality. I wanted to turn off my emotions for a little while.

I wanted my hurting to just…stop.

The worst part of being human was emotions. I didn’t comprehend why we had to be able to feel. I hated feeling. I hated breathing. I hated Wesley.

No, I loved him.

Or maybe I hated and loved him. Perhaps both things could exist at the same time, and that was what upset me. I hated that I loved him, and I loved that I hated him.

After I stayed beneath the surface as long as I could, I came up for air and raked my hands through my hair. Willow’s flower petals fell from my strands and landed in the tub.

I didn’t even want flowers in my hair. I hated flowers in my hair. It felt so far from me, but I wanted to be right for him. I wanted him to look at me and call me beautiful.

A beautiful bride.

Nathan.

Oh gosh, I’m in Nathan Pierce’s bathtub on my wedding day!

I instantly slipped back underwater.

After the longestbath of my life, I climbed out and dried myself with the towel that Nathan slipped into his towel warmer. Yes, he had a towel warmer. I wanted to mock him about it, but it felt like stepping straight into heaven. I tightened the towel around my body and poured the remainder of the wine into my glass as I walked over to his sink countertop. I looked at myself and saw how my makeup was smeared from how many times I sank beneath the water’s surface.

I looked awful.

As bad as a person who was left on their wedding day would look, I suppose.

Without permission, I grabbed one of Nathan’s black face towels and began cleaning my face using his face wash on the countertop. I scrubbed every drop of makeup away, and a small, broken smile fell against my face as I looked at my reflection. At least I looked a little more like myself again. A little more like Mama.

I began digging through my hair, pulling out the million and one bobby pins. Once I was free from the bondage of pins, I shook out my wet hair and searched Nathan’s cabinet drawers for a hairbrush.

As I opened a drawer, I paused when I saw condoms sitting stacked in the drawer.

With haste, I shut it.

With curiosity, I reopened it.

With more haste, I shut it.

With more curiosity, I reopened it.

Magnum.

XXL.

Heavy on the XXL.

I picked up the pack and read the side. For extra length and extra width.

“Geez!” I muttered, tossing the condoms back in the drawer and shutting it for good. When Nathan and I were younger, we never crossed that line. I was waiting until marriage. However I often wondered what equipment he was working with. My imagination took me to all kinds of places, but my goodness.

XXL.

I shook my head, trying to erase the thoughts from my mind. The drunkenness was kicking in as I downed the rest of the wine in my glass.

Leave it to Nathan Pierce to be packing on his backside and his front. Just more reason to hate him.

“You good in there?” he called out, almost as if he knew I’d found out his dirty little secret. Okay, his dirty big secret.

“Fine!” I shouted, trying to shake off the bashfulness landing against my cheeks. “I’ll be out in a second.”

“Want me to order some dinner? I can get wings and tater tots.”

“Yeah, okay.” I shook my whole body, trying to remove the butterflies. “With?—”

“Extra ranch and honey mustard?”

Jerk.

He still remembered how I liked my wings.

I sighed. “Yeah, that.”

I opened one more drawer and found the hairbrush I’d been looking for. I quickly brushed my hair into a high bun and tossed the hair tie I’d pulled out earlier over it.

Afterward, I slid into Nathan’s black sweatpants and his baseball sweatshirt, which I drowned in.

“What’s becoming of your life, Ave?” I muttered to myself before combing my hands over my temple. I turned around one last time to see the wedding gown pooled on the floor before heading out to find Nathan sitting on his couch.

“Thanks for that,” I said as I walked over to the opposite side of his couch than he was on and took a seat. I pulled my legs into my chest and wrapped my arms around them. “And for the sweatpants.”

“They look good on you,” he mentioned. “Want more wine? I can grab the bottle from the bathroom and?—”

“I drank that all,” I blurted out.

He arched an eyebrow. “You drank a whole bottle of wine?”

“Yup.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Define drunk.”

“Do you feel a bit better than when you went into the bath?”

“Well, yes. I feel…” I giggled a little and shrugged.

He smiled, and for some reason, his left dimple looked deeper than ever before. As if God himself carved it out a little more to pull me in.

“You’re drunk,” he said. He hopped up and headed toward his kitchen.

“Do you have vodka?”

“I have water.” He poured me a glass.

“Is that code for vodka?”

“You don’t need more alcohol, Coach. You said you were already numb before you drank one glass. I don’t need you to flatline.”

“Flatlining doesn’t sound too bad to me right now. If I could, I’d take myself out,” I semi-joked.

Nathan gave me a stern look and grew extremely somber. He walked over, kneeled in front of me, and said, “Don’t ever say that kind of shit again.”

“It was a joke.”

“It’s not funny,” he scolded. “Suicide’s never funny.”

You’re right.

It’s not.

My hands wrapped around the edge of his sweatshirt sleeve, and I lowered my head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s fine. You’re drunk.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to tell you that secret.”

“What secret?”

“That sometimes I’m so sad I want to run away from everything.”

Why was I telling him this? Why was my mind buzzing so much, and why did I feel as if I were still underwater, drowning in my sadness? And why was I showing this part of myself to Nathan?

That was why I didn’t drink.

When I drank, I became too truthful.

When I drank, my reality slipped out.

He placed the glass of water on the coffee table before turning back to me and placing a hand on my kneecap. “Should I be worried about you, Coach?”

“No. I’m the strong one, remember? No one worries about the strong one. The strong one worries about everyone else. We take care of others. We don’t get taken care of.”

“I’ll take care of you.”

Tears began streaming down my cheeks as I stared into his eyes. The sincerest looking eyes I’d ever seen. The same sincere eyes I’d once loved.

“I don’t believe you,” I whispered, not even trying to stop the tears from falling. I was too drunk, too heartbroken to even care that I was being vulnerable, which meant I was treading on very dangerous territory. The last time I was vulnerable—truly vulnerable—was with…well, him.

Over seventeen years ago.

Was that right?

Seventeen years of not feeling that deeply with another human being?

Wesley was right.

I was hard to love.

“Why don’t you believe me?” he asked. His concern made my whole body break out into shakes.

“Because.” I wrapped my arms around my body because self-comfort was the only thing I could think of doing. “You said you’d take care of me before, but you still left.”

I saw it—the heartbreak that flashed through his eyes. The hurt that almost swallowed him whole from the truth I chose to say. I hated that I was crying, but I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t stop the tears from gliding down my cheeks at an annoying speed.

I was drunk.

And sad.

And drunkenly sad.

His hand caressed my cheek, and I shut my eyes. His fingers swallowed up the tears that kept flowing. “Ave…if I could go back in time, I would’ve never left you. I’ve regretted that decision every single day of my life.”

“Then why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

I opened my eyes and stared into his. “Why didn’t you ever come back? I needed you, Nathan. I needed you to come back for me. And I waited, and waited, and, oh my gosh…” Reality stumbled back into me as a moment of soberness snuck in. I shook his touch away from my skin and hopped up from his couch. “What am I doing? I can’t do this. I can’t…” Oh, gosh. Pull your drunk self together, Avery. “We can’t do this, Nathan.”

He stood. “Do what?”

“This,” I urged, gesturing between us. “We can’t be close like this. Physically and mentally. Especially when I’m drunk and sad. Especially on my wedding day.”

“Why not?”

“Because we aren’t us anymore. We haven’t been us for seventeen years. And we can’t be us. Not again.”

“Exactly,” he said as he stepped closer to me. “We aren’t the same stupid kids who made the same stupid mistakes. We’re grown now, Avery. I’m grown, and I wouldn’t hurt you again. Trust me. I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“That’s what he said, too,” I whispered as the ache in my heart only intensified. “Because that’s what you men do—you lie to get what you want. And then a better opportunity comes, and you leave. And then my mind will try to move on while my heart keeps breaking in the silence, wondering why I was never good enough to stay. You left me for baseball. He left me for space. And here I am once again—alone with the pieces of my heart that I have to repair on my own.”

“Avery—”

“Can I go to bed?” I asked, still crying, still breaking, still drowning. “Please?” I whimpered, nodding down the hallway. “Can I sleep in your spare room?”

He hesitated for a moment before surrendering. “Yeah, sure. Second door on the left.”

I hurried down the hall, into the bedroom, and shut the door. I crawled into the bed and wrapped myself in the blankets. I hugged the pillow and cried into it, having the first emotional release I could remember. I fell apart completely on his satin pillowcases as all my heartbreak caught up with me. Years of hurt wept out of my eyes; years of pain that I kept stored deep within myself poured from my spirit.

I wanted it to stop.

I wanted the tears to stop falling, but that was the issue with holding so much in for so very long. Once the walls began to crack, a deluge was released, and there was no turning back. I had to feel everything, even if I didn’t want to do so.

And the only thing that kept crossing my mind as I sobbed into the pillowcase was how deeply I wished Mama was there to hug me. To hold me. To tell me everything would be fine. I deserved more time with her. I deserved more comfort through heartbreaks and more laughter during the happy days. I deserved to be able to call her whenever the world was swallowing me whole. I deserved her comforting voice to remind me that everything would be okay, even if it seemed like nothing would ever be okay again.

I deserved more of her love, and I wished she was there to hold me in her arms as if I were still her little girl.

It wasn’t fair that mamas could die.

Their daughters still needed them so very much, no matter how much we grew up.