Sweet Cheeks(59)

Silence falls between us as I fight the agonizing destitution I’d felt from clawing its way back. The grief. The loneliness. The heartbreak.

The silence.

“You left me a message.”

“I left you a lot of messages.” I can’t help the rejected bite to my tone.

“You did. And I listened to every single one of them, Saylor. So many damn times. I was so homesick. And homesick meant missing you and Ryder and the normal everyday routine we had . . . but it mostly meant you. But there was one . . . f*ck, there was one of your messages that broke me, nearly made me pack my bags and come home. I’ll never forget the sound of your voice. How you were trying to seem so strong but there was this slight waver in your voice that f*cking killed me.”

I know I left what felt like a million messages running the gamut from sad to angry to begging to crying to furious, but I know which one he’s referring to. My final message. The one where I gave in and told him if he didn’t want me anymore, he could at least have the guts to tell me.

I chew the inside of my cheek, surprised how talking about this is bringing back so much of the pain I swore I’d gotten over. “Why didn’t you call?” I ask quietly, in an attempt to cover the hurt that still remains.

He shifts to a sitting position, his face downcast to watch his hands for a moment before looking back to me. “Because it was my only chance to get out of here. Away from my dad, his drinking, and quick fists and my mom and her acceptance of it. Everyone saw me as Dale Whitley’s son. The kid who had no chance and wouldn’t amount to anything—”

“I didn’t.”

“I know and that was part of it. I don’t expect you to understand any of my reasoning or forgive me for what I did. Shit, looking back, I get what I did was f*cked up. But you and Ryder and your parents were all the good I’d ever known. And God I was missing you. I was living in some shithole apartment, stuffing extra food from the craft service table into my pockets because I couldn’t afford groceries, and knew no one . . . but I knew if I talked to you, heard your voice, listened to you cry over the line, I’d drop everything and come back. I missed you like crazy. I felt so horrible for not having the guts to tell you when I left for that weekend that I might not be coming back.”

“I would have gone with you.” God, how many nights did I have thoughts of packing up my shit and driving to Los Angeles to find him? My own na?veté not knowing how big a city it was and how hard it would be to find him.

“I know you would have. But to do what? Skip out on going to college? Stand by and watch me chase my dreams while giving up yours? I couldn’t do that to you. You deserved the goddamn moon and stars, Say. Still do. I couldn’t make you sit in that rundown apartment all day and worry about your safety, while I worked eighteen hour days. I would have hated myself for it and you would have resented me for it.”

“So you just washed your hands of me and made it easy.” My voice is quiet, reminiscent of how I felt for almost a year after he left. Then again, now that I think about it, maybe I never became that carefree girl I used to be.

“It was never easy. Not a goddamn single day.” He fists his hands. Shakes his head. “If you only knew how I’d come home, collapse into bed from exhaustion, and miss every f*cking thing about you.”

His words cut open old wounds. Make me think of him all alone in a new town and feel sorry for him. But he needs to know what I went through too. “I walked around lost for over a year. We did everything together. You were my first love. My first everything. And you up and left and shut me out.” I look out to the water beyond. To the snorkels sticking up out of the water in the distance. Hear the laughter of someone seeing the turtles, and I’m sure I sounded just as excited about it when I resurfaced. “I waited for you. I told you in that last message that I wouldn’t, but I lied. I spent three years waiting. Three years adamant that every tabloid with pictures of you with some gorgeous actress on your arm was Photoshopped, or an innocent lunch date misconstrued. You tell me you missed me and yet, what I saw of your life? It looked like anything but missing me, Hayes.”

“Saylor.”

“No. It’s okay. I know I told you in that last message that I wouldn’t wait for you, but I did.”

“You also told me you’d always love me.”

I still do.

It’s my immediate thought. One I hate and love. One I shove from my mind so I don’t say it out loud, but regardless still leaves me reeling.

And I can sense the question on his tongue. The one asking me if my confession ten years ago still holds true. There’s so much emotion clogging my throat, so much history thick in the air between us, that it’s better if I just don’t speak.

So the silence holds us hostage as we stare at each other from behind the protective lenses of our sunglasses. A part of me wants to see what his eyes are saying. The other part of me is scared to find out.

So, we hide.

“I came to your house.” His confession shocks me. My lips fall lax and my heart constricts. “My mom finally left my dad. Said my leaving shocked her into reality so she kicked him out. I told myself I was coming home to help her get situated in her new place. And yeah, I did . . . but it was you I wanted to see.”

“Why didn’t you?” My still-hurt eighteen-year-old self knows that if he had, I would have been devastated all over again. Pain renewed. The fallout of seeing him, brutal.