You and Everything After (Falling #2)(58)
Kelly was his girlfriend—his best friend. Kelly is the Always. I know it in my heart, and I’m broken immediately just knowing it.
“After my accident, I had to relearn how to do a lot of things in my life. I wasn’t always the guy I am now—the guy who can figure out how to make the bench press work for him, and who can handcycle for ten miles. I didn’t know how to lift myself up from the bed. I didn’t know how I was going to get to the bathroom, or if I would ever be able to drive. I watched my mom pretend she wasn’t crying when I wasn’t looking. Watched my dad do the same. And Nate…he couldn’t hide it, so I just watched him cry. That was the hardest part, because I didn’t want to make it worse for anyone by crying for myself…for all I’d lost. I lost a lot of things, things like baseball, which, while I know that sounds so very unimportant and trivial, it’s still a thing. It was my thing. And I had to let it go; I had to watch my brother take it over, love it, become it. I needed a new thing. And as much as my brother, my father, and even on some level my mom thought that I found other things to replace it quickly…I didn’t. I found darkness. And Kelly’s the only one I really told.”
His story hits me with a weight of a thousand bricks. He’s still lying on the ground in front of me, his watch slowly twisting between his fingers. He touches it with a fondness that I’m beginning to understand, with a fondness that scares me, because I don’t know if I can compete with it.
“My physical rehab was brutal. I’m a lot like you, in that respect,” he flashes his eyes from his watch to me, a small curve denting the corner of his lip. “I push myself too hard sometimes. I don’t like hitting walls, don’t like there to be things I can’t find a way through or around. But I was finding those things everywhere I turned.”
I slide from the bed to the floor, my back against my mattress, and my feet pushed in so I can fold my arms over my knees and lay my head to the side, truly listening to him.
“When Nate would visit, we’d play catch. If I missed a ball, he’d run and get it. Because it was faster that way, and I couldn’t run and get it myself. He’d ask me to show him the weights in the therapy room, ask me to lift things, show him how strong I was getting. And I was getting stronger, but only on the outside. Inside…I was dying.”
“Kelly would come every morning and night, on her way to and from school. She stayed longer into the evening than she should, and she failed biology our sophomore year because of it. But I couldn’t get her to go; she wouldn’t leave. She promised me she’d never leave, and I knew she meant it—she would stand by her promise. Then one night, I took advantage of her loyalty. I was so f*cking depressed that I asked her to help me stop hurting.”
The impact his words have on my chest is massive. They strike the air from my lungs with one pass and push the tears from my eyes the next. I let them fall in front of him. I let them slide down my cheeks, and chin, and neck, until they fall to the floor. I watch him struggle through this, swallowing hard, breathing deeply, closing his eyes until he opens them to rest on the watch again.
The watch. I get it. The watch.
“She refused, as I probably knew she would,” he says, a painful smile coming and going. “And the next day, she didn’t come. I thought that was it. I thought I had pushed her away because of how deep and dark and afraid and hurt I had become. And I was okay with that, because in a way, I liked the idea of not dragging her down with me—of her getting to go do all of those things that we had planned, just with someone else. I was even okay with the someone else.”
“And then the day after that, she showed up on her way to school, and she put a box on my lap while I was getting ready for my morning rehab. It was this old beat-up cardboard box that looked like it had been through a fire, but somehow the sides still remained intact and the lid still fit snuggly on top. I opened it and found this watch inside,” he says, handing it back to me to take. I’ve seen it, memorized it in the twenty-four hours that I’ve had it in my possession, but out of respect, I take it from him anyway, turning the inscription over to say it aloud.
“Always,” my voice is hoarse and beaten down.
“Kelly’s mom bought this watch for Kel’s dad after he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Her dad was a blue-collar man who worked hard, with his hands, his entire life. But the cancer left him weak, unable to breathe without a tank at his side and unable to provide for his family the only way he knew how. Kel’s mom gave him this to remind him of the things that matter—to remind him that he doesn’t have to carry everything on his own, and to remind him that he’s loved—always. And that’s why she gave it to me.”
“You still love her. Why aren’t you with her?” I ask, not in a jealous way, but in an earnest one. I am jealous, deeply so—full of envy for all of the things Kelly has from Ty that I don’t. But his words have also opened my eyes to how deep his relationship is with this woman, this woman who I don’t even know, who I envy, but cannot possibly hate because of what he’s told me.
He laughs softly, a faint smile painted on his face as he pulls the watch over his hand and clasps it firmly to his wrist.
“Always,” he says, looking at it. “Yes, Cass, I will love Kelly…always. But this,” he turns his arm in front of me, flashing the silver band of the watch. “This was all so long ago. And my love for Kelly, it’s different now. It’s part of my past, and I honor it and am thankful for it. And for the last six years, I’ve had her friendship, and this watch. And I draw strength from that.”