Stepbrother Dearest(29)

I wiped my eyes. “What’s the difference? It doesn’t change the outcome.”

“No, it doesn’t. I don’t know what to say except that last night…it meant something to me. I want you to know that. I’ll never forget what you gave me. I’ll never forget any of this. But, you knew it was going to end.”

“I didn’t know it was going to feel like this.”

His hands were in his pockets, and he looked down at the ground then up at me. “Fuck. Neither, did I.” When he leaned in to hug me, I backed away.

“No…please. I don’t want you to touch me. That’s only going to make this worse.”

I couldn’t even speak as more tears fell. I shook my head in disbelief over how badly I’d lost my composure.

I cleared my throat. “What time do you have to leave?”

“A cab is coming any minute. It’s gonna take at least an hour to get to the airport in traffic.”

A fresh teardrop fell down my cheek. “Damn it,” I said, wiping it away.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

He left to take his luggage downstairs. By the time he’d returned to where I was standing in the same spot in my room, a car horn beeped outside.

“Shit. Hang on,” he said, running back out of the room.

I looked out the window and eventually saw Elec putting his suitcases into the back. When the trunk slammed shut, I could have sworn I felt it in my heart.

Elec said something to the driver and came back upstairs. I was still looking out the window blankly when his footsteps crept up behind me.

“I told him to wait. I’m not leaving until you look at me.”

I turned around. He must have seen the despair written all over my face.

His eyes looked watery. “Fuck. I don’t want to leave you like this.”

“It’s okay. It’s not gonna get any easier in the next minute. You’ll miss your flight. Go.”

Ignoring my earlier request not to be touched, he took hold of my face and looked deeply into my eyes. “I know this is hard for you to understand. I haven’t opened up to you about my relationship with Randy. Without your knowing everything and without your understanding what my mother is really like, it’s not going to make sense. Just know that if I could stay with you, I would.” He gave me a chaste kiss on the lips and continued, “I know that despite my warning, you gave me a piece of your heart anyway last night. And even though I tried to stop it, I gave you a piece of mine. I know you could feel that happening this morning. I want you to keep it with you tucked away. And when you decide to give the rest of yours to another guy someday, please make sure it’s someone who deserves you.”


Elec gave me one last desperate kiss. My eyes were stinging. When he pushed back, I gripped his jacket, tempted to never to let go. He waited until my hands left him to turn around and walk away.

Just like that, he’d exited my life as fast as he’d entered it.

I stood at the window and wished I hadn’t when he looked up at me one last time before entering the cab with the piece of my heart he knew he’d taken with him. As for the rest of my heart left behind, it was shattered.



***



Later that night, my phone chimed. It was a text from Elec with a link.



On the plane, I figured out if you scramble the letters of Greta, you get GREAT. Greta=Great. You’re amazing, actually. Don’t ever forget that. This song will always remind me of you.



It took me a few hours before I had the courage to click on the link. The name of the song was All I Wanted by Paramore. It was about wanting someone you couldn’t have and wanting to relive the short time spent together from the beginning.

I replayed the song over and over again in a torturous cycle that included inhaling his scent that lingered on his shirt that I was still wearing and on my bed sheets.

Elec would only contact me one other time over the next seven years.

On a random night almost one year after he’d left Boston, I was out with Victoria. I had just been thinking about him when a text came in and shook me to my core.



I still dream about your neck. I still think about you every day. For some reason, I just needed you to know that tonight. Please don’t write back.



I didn’t.

Despite the tears that fell so easily upon reading it, I didn’t. He hadn’t contacted me in so long, and I figured maybe he was just drunk. Even if he weren’t, it wouldn’t have changed anything. I understood that now. Actually, I’d become an expert at burying all of my feelings for Elec. His being so far away made that possible. The couple of times I disappointed myself by giving in to curiosity and checking online, he wasn’t even on social media.

Randy had also stopped going out to California now that Elec was an adult.

Even after several years, my heart still ached whenever I’d allow myself to think about our one night together. So, I did my best not to go there—out of sight, out of mind, right? That motto is just a temporary fix—until you’re forced to come face to face with what you’ve been running from. That’s when the mental walls you’ve built to hide behind come crashing down in one hard blow.





PART TWO