How I Got Here (27 page)

Melissa rests her head on her knees and looks at Oliver, ‘Do you ever miss the city?’

‘Not the city so much, but I do miss my family, my sister and I didn’t part on good terms.’ Oliver shuts his eyes and shakes his head, he’d spoken to Amanda only twice since he’d left, and both of the conversations had been cold and distant, cut short even though he had time to stop and talk for longer, he just couldn’t face it.

‘That’s awful, what happened?’ Melissa sees her opportunity to get to know him a little better, and grabs hold of it trying to keep the enthusiasm out of her voice.

‘It’s complicated, she did something behind my back, I guess she was trying to protect me from something, but it ended up in me losing someone very important to me, and my sister never told me what she’d done, it was an accident that I found out, she slipped up and said something and I forced her to explain.’ Oliver doesn’t want to go into it, but Melissa isn’t willing to drop it yet.

‘The person you lost, who was it?’

‘Her name’s River.’ He smiles hearing her name, he hasn’t said it aloud in a long time, so hearing it now is nice, it brings a sort of comfort to him.

‘Was she your girlfriend?’

‘No, but if she hadn’t of left when she did I think that’s where it would have headed.’ He replies not looking over at Melissa, even though he knows that she wants him to.

‘How old is she?’

‘She was eighteen when I knew her in New York, she’ll be nineteen now.’ Oliver replies.

‘Oh wow, young,’

‘Yeah I guess, look I don’t want to be rude or anything, but I really don’t want to talk about her, it’s just too, raw.’

‘When did you last see her?’ Melissa promises herself this will be the last question, she doesn’t want to push him, but she wants to get answers to these questions.

‘Uh at the end of last summer,’ Oliver gets ready to go back to the house, picking up the mail, ‘I should check on how dinner’s getting on.’

Melissa looks after him with sadness washing over her, it’s been almost a year since he last saw this girl, and he was still clearly in love with her, as he disappears inside the house, she realizes that she’ll never be more than friends with Oliver.

He heads inside and looks through the stack of mail, stopping when he reaches a package which has been redirected from his old address; his heart misses a beat when he sees the handwriting, unmistakably River’s handwriting. Forgetting everything else he has to do tonight, he heads straight up to his attic room, laying on the couch and reading every last letter.

By the time he’s finished reading them he doesn’t know how to feel, she loves him even now, but she doesn’t want contact with him, which he needs to respect even though he wants to find her right now. He knows that she’s safe, and she’s stronger now than she’s been since he’s known her, so that’s an amazing thing which is taking a huge weight off of him. This sudden contact with her though, these letters filled with the remainder of her story, its bringing back all of his carefully packed away feelings.

He needs to try and be ok with this; he needs to try not to let it drive him crazy that he can’t see her. He runs his fingers over her letters, his eyes landing on her rambling words, her hopes that he did love her, and in that moment he hates himself for never telling her that he loves her. He only hopes that she knows.

Chapter Thirty One

River 1

River’s fingers run over the spine of the book in her lap, she’d almost forgotten that she had it, but she’d found it that morning while boxing up some of her books, and there it was hidden behind two other books which had fallen on her shelf, now she traced the gold title with her finger, almost afraid to open it up. The book belongs to Oliver, she’d been reading it the day Amanda had come to see her, and a few days later River had decided to heed Amanda’s advice, and she’d left the hospital, and the state. In the process of packing up her room at the hospital, she’d accidentally taken his book and put it with her own things, and it had been with her ever since. Now as she sat cross legged on her bed, she looked down at it with a sad feeling in her heart, she’d done her best to get over him, and most of the time now she felt fine, happy even, but she knew deep down that she still loved him, it was just a love that she could now manage to handle.

Feeling suddenly brave, because she did manage to enjoy her summer without him, she opens the book up. His name is printed neatly on the inside cover, in black ink carefully written on the white page, beneath that he’d written the day he’d received the book, where he got it from, and then the date he’d started reading it. She turned to the back cover, and printed in his same neat and tidy handwriting, was the date he’d finished reading it, and then a short review of what he’d thought of it. He’d told her once that he always did that with his books, because that’s what his mother has always done, and now River had fallen into the habit of doing it as well.

Her fingers trace his handwriting carefully, taking in his thoughts on the book, he hadn’t liked it very much, and she smiled at this, because she’d loved it when she’d read it in the hospital, they’d debated its merits and faults, and eventually agreed to disagree. Yet even when they got to the most heated part of their debate, they still found it incredibly easy to settle back into easy banter. The way they could always do that was astounding, which is one of the reasons that she was so upset that things had ended the way they had, but she still had hope, sending those letters had given her hope. The last words she’d spoken to him in person had been distant and cold, even though every part of her was screaming out to say she was sorry, to talk to him about her fears and worries, and to ask him what he thought they should do. In the end she hadn’t been strong enough. River is broken from her reminiscence by a tapping on her door.

‘Honey we should probably get going if we want to get there on time.’ Her father sits down on her computer chair and loo
ks across to her. ‘You haven’t changed your mind?’

‘No I haven’t, I think this is something I really need to do,’ she pauses for a second, ‘and that isn’t me speaking rashly or making a foolish decision, I know in the past I probably would have, but not now.’

‘Like making us up and move across the country, because of a boy.’ He smirks at her, teasing her in a way he hadn’t been able to in so long, because for the longest time he’d felt as if he were walking on eggshells around them. A loud crash sounds downstairs followed by her mother yelling at their cat, both River and her father start laughing joyfully, as the little grey kitten that River had rescued, came running up the stairs and jumps up onto her lap. She runs her hand through her soft fur and smiles, before looking back to her father and replying.

‘I needed distance back then, I was running from everything and everyone, I wanted to distance myself from, well from me and who I’d become.’ She lifts up the kitten, appropriately named Stray, and cuddles her small body. ‘I’m not doing the same thing this time, I’m not running
from myself or anything else, it isn’t distance that I’m seeking this time.’

‘Then what is it?’ Her father looks at her with a worried gaze, needing to know that she isn’t going to disappear on him again.

‘I need to find myself, and don’t even start on me ok, I know how terribly cliché that sounds, but it’s the truth after everything that’s happened, with my illness and Oliver, I feel like I’m so lost and the only thing that’s remained constant, through all of it and even before my illness, is the writing, and I love it so much so I think I need to pursue that.’ She smiles bravely, ‘I wouldn’t do this if I wasn’t sure.’

‘I know you wouldn’t, I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked, isn’t it what all kids going off to college say, that they want to find themselves, as if the person everyone is meant to be is locked inside college walls.’ He shakes his head.

‘It does make you wonder if they just hand it out on graduation day, you know a sort of congratulations on graduating, here’s who you’re supposed to be.’ River laughs softly, ‘who knows it could be that simple, either that or they give you the tools so you can figure out who you are once you’ve left.’

‘River you already know who you are, going to Nicholls college is just going to help you polish it.’ He insists, ‘But not if we don’t get there on time for your induction, and we have a long drive ahead of us.’

‘Yeah ok,’ River stands up and hugs Stray, ‘I’ll miss this little one, and you will make sure that mom doesn’t chase Stray away won’t you, I know she doesn’t like her all that much, but I expect to see her here when I get back on break.’

‘You will come back on break then?’

‘Of course I will.’ River hugs him.

‘Your mother and I could move back to New York, we’d be close then and you could stay with us on weekends.’ He offers already knowing the answer.

‘Don’t you dare, I know how much you love this house and your job, I’ve already unsettled you once, and you and mom have made some amazing friends here,’ She shakes her head fiercely, ‘I don’t need protecting, I’m doing ok and I’ll be going to therapy once a month while I’m there, and we can video chat and email, and call each other all the time, and I’ll be back in the holidays.’

‘Well then let’s get on the road, are you still ok to drive your own car?’

‘Yeah,’ she looks up at him with a raised eyebrow, ‘mom wants to come in my car with me. She still doesn’t trust me.’

‘She’ll come around soon, you know she’s just worried about you, we both are.’ Her father leaves the room and she goes back to her bed, picks up the book again and slides it into her dark grey shoulder bag, because she isn’t ready to let him go completely just yet.

Chapter Thirty Two

Oliver
8

‘I don’t understand why you’re doing this though!’ Melissa chases him outside, trying to block out the early September rain with his arms, failing miserably because it’s coming down to fast, her arms fall to her side and she picks up her pace, catching Oliver up just as he throws a bag in his truck.

‘I have to go Melissa.’ Oliver’s voice is tight and controlled, he’s staying calm but he doesn’t look at her when he speaks, his mind is made up and there isn’t anything she can say to change his mind. ‘I have something that I have to do, and I cannot do it here.’

‘That doesn’t explain why you’re not coming back!’ She yells fiercely, continuing the fight they’d started inside the house.

‘I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.’ Oliver counters trying to get away from this conversation, he’s craving silence, he’s only just got back from New York, after spending two weeks with his mom who was sick, but was now recovering, but he was still feeling a little stressed.

‘Ok so you have something to do, but one way or another you should be able to come back, in a month or two, or a year, but you should be able to come back! You can’t just write us all off, what were these months here? Just some little experiment for you?’ She snaps venomously.

‘What more do you want from me? I’ve worked as hard as I could at the clinic and at the shelter, which by the way wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for me, I’m giving the house to the town to keep open as a shelter, so really what else do you want me to do?’ Oliver yells, he can’t even remember the last time he really yelled, he usually keeps his tone level even when he’s mad, but this time Melissa just won’t let it go.

‘I want you to realize that the people here rely on you! That you can’t just walk away and forget all about us.’

‘Really the people rely on me? Because you’re the only one who is making such a big deal about this, people move on all the time, they leave and don’t look back; most of them don’t leave a house and $10,000 behind for the people in the town they’re leaving. I’m doing what I need to do, because my mother is getting over a serious illness and I want to move closer to her, and I need to do something for myself before I go back to New York.’ He slams the door of his truck closed and turns to her, ‘So it isn’t the town who want me to stay, so why don’t you stop hiding behind them and say what you really mean.’

‘Fine,’ she yells shrilly, ‘I don’t want you to leave, you’re mother’s a grown woman and she has people around her, and you’ve already said that she’s getting better, you don’t need to uproot yourself and move to
New York. Just visit her again in a few weeks and then come back, because I don’t want you to go!’

He stops dead and stares at her for a few minutes, there it was, the truth of her reaction to his news that he’d be leaving, he’d seen it coming a mile off, she had been getting more and more clingy recently, hanging around him all the time, childishly begging for his attention even when he was busy working, she’d seemed like such a level headed woman when he’d met her, but she quickly began to show her other side, the side Melissa’s father had warned him about, cautioning him that she can become obsessively attached to someone, he’d seen it happen before and was seeing it happen with Oliver, and so he’d warned him about it, because he could see that Oliver didn’t have any interest in Melissa beyond being friends, but when Oliver had spoken to Melissa, telling her that he wasn’t interested, she became even more obsessed, begging for his attention all the time.