The Love Story (The Things We Can't Change Book 4) (16 page)

“This one,” I finally say, making my decision and pointing to a nail.

Jenny leans over to inspect it and then nods her approval. It’s simple, just flesh color polish and a white tip, a basic French manicure. But it’s neat and fresh.

A clean start.

Evangeline

99

Things don’t exactly get better, but the first time, they don’t seem to be getting worse either. I’m willing to take steadiness over decline. Zeke still isn’t
talking
to me, maintaining some kind of distance that I don’t understand. I don’t understand the reason or the suddenness for it. I worry about it until I ache and then have to remind myself forcefully, over and over, that
I’m
not the problem. It’s one thing to say it, however, and another to make myself believe it.

Having Jenny around helps though. For the first time, I have a friend that’s going through it with me, someone who understands perfectly. She endures her fair share of nasty comments as well, but most of the wrath still seems aimed chiefly at me. I haven’t been on Facebook in months but after Jenny tells me some of the stuff happening on her page and that she shut it down, I do the same with mine, ignoring the temptation to look at some of the comments and posts.

Jenny and I spend endless amounts of time together. I accompany her to dance, usually lugging all my homework along with me. The one upside to this is that my grades are effortlessly good this year since I have nothing but time to devote to homework and no friends to distract me during class. It feels like an empty gesture, even though all my college apps are finally done and submitted. I still don’t know what I want to study, what I want to do with my life. I haven’t tried writing yet, even though I told Zeke that I would give it a try.

I’m scared to try it. Scared that the only thing I’m still capable of writing are dark thoughts that will send me back into a dark place. Then again, sometimes I catch myself wondering if writing is just what I need to help me deal with Zeke, vent at how he’s acting lately. But it’s been so long since I’ve put pen to paper that I’m not really sure how to begin.

That all changes one weekend about a month before Homecoming. Jenny is out of town with her parents and out of loneliness and desperation, I finally call Uncle Greg and he agrees to have dinner with me immediately. We go to Red Robin and are seated and exchange the usual pleasantries about the previous week and then order our food.

“How’s Clarissa?” Uncle Greg asks as we give up our menus and settle in to wait.

I think of Clarissa upon her return from her cruise, diving straight into the liquor cabinet and screaming so loudly I could hear her from upstairs when she discovered it was mostly empty. And that this was somehow my fault because, being seventeen years old, I should keep the liquor cabinet full.

“Well,” I say cautiously. “She’s not doing any better, that’s for sure.”

Uncle Greg purses his lips. “So she’s worse.” It isn’t a question and I shrug.

“I guess. I don’t know that I’m qualified to assess the state of an alcoholic. I can’t speak for when I’m at school, but I know she hasn’t left the house since she got back from her cruise last week.”

He shakes his head. “It’s your house,” he points out. “If you want, I can make her leave. Or you can come stay with me. I don’t like the idea of leaving you with her. She could be dangerous and I don’t know that it’s good for your mental state, living with a borderline alcoholic. Somehow, that seems like it wouldn’t encourage recovery.”

I shake my head, not wanting to say that I like my house. I grew up there. I don’t want to go through the hassle of moving elsewhere or feel like I’m intruding. “I don’t know where you’d make her go. I’d feel bad having her go to the condo downtown and leaving her to just drink and waste away. And I love you for it, but I like my house. And since I’ll be eighteen in April, I can stick it out at least that long. She’s still my guardian and I can’t just live by myself.”

“I’m sure getting custody taken away wouldn’t be difficult right now,” Greg points out. “I could try.”

“That’s nice of you, but I’m working on it,” I say, smiling through the half-truth. “We’re going to have a throw-down eventually. I just intend to win it and get through to her.”

He watches me for a while and then seems to decide to let it go for the moment. “So, how’s school going? Apply to your colleges?” I nod and he asks, “Which ones?”

I run down my list for him, hesitate, and then admit, “I don’t know what I want to study. Like at all.”

Greg raises his eyebrows at me. “What happened to writing? I thought you were pretty firm on that.”

I shrug and avoid his eyes. “I was. Before this summer happened. Now, I just don’t know. I haven’t written anything in so long and I’m nervous to try again. I don’t know how to start. And then I think, oh, maybe I should try and help people like me, be a social worker or something. Then I remember that I still have unresolved issues so that seems kind of stupid. And then I remember I own half of Dad’s business and think I should do something with that, major in business or hospital management or whatever. And then I think maybe I should become a pediatrician or something after all. And then I realize that I have no idea what I’m doing.” I force myself to stop, surprised at all the words that have come spilling out of me.

I look up and Greg is regarding me with an understanding, empathetic face.
At least someone is willing to listen and care about my problems,
I reflect with a vengeful thought for Zeke. Then I feel guilty for thinking badly of him. Then I feel guilty for feeling guilty.

My head begins to hurt and I prop an elbow on the tabletop, despite it being bad manners, and rest my forehead in my hand. “I don’t know,” I say. “I just feel really… aimless right now. I know I can study for a year or two without having to know what I want, but it would be nice to have some direction or something.”

Greg pats my other hand, carefully and only twice and I manage not to pull away, actually somewhat comforted by his touch. “I have faith that you’ll figure it out,” he reassures me. “Just remember, you don’t have to follow in anyone’s footsteps. You can forge your own path, but sometimes you have to cut down a tree that’s in your way. Sometimes you won’t know if you’re going the right direction and you’ll have to go on blind faith. But I know you can do it. You can succeed with whatever you choose, be it writing or social work or anything else. Look at your father and me. We met when we were both starving medical students working at a diner. He was a waiter and I was a fry cook. Someday you’ll look back at this time in your life and wonder why you ever doubted yourself.”

I smile at him as they set our plates down before us, not really believing him but feeling marginally reassured. “Thanks, Uncle Greg.”

What I don’t tell him is that sometimes I feel I’ll never amount to more than a rich woman with a big bank account. That I already feel myself drifting helplessly down that path. Someone who wants to do too much and ends up doing nothing at all. That I’ll shop and wine and dine myself into oblivion, probably right into another relationship like I had with Tony. Always being directed and never directing.

That’s exactly
why
Zeke is acting the way he is,
I scold myself as we start eating and talk once again of the mundane.
So that you don’t get trapped into that. So stand up for yourself, dammit. Have some faith! Do
something
for a change, if you don’t want to sit and watch life pass you by.

But as always, I’m left with the question of, what? What should I do? How do I act?

More than anything in this moment, I want to talk to Zeke. I want to ask him what I should do, tell him all my thoughts and fears because he always helps me to make less of a mess of my confusing thoughts. But I can’t. I know this is something that I have to work out on my own.

Uncle Greg and I finish our meal and he even takes the time to go over some updates in the practice with me and I agree to attend the board meeting next week. I resolve that if all else fails, my fallback will be to major in business so I can run the practice. Uncle Greg won’t always be around, and at least that way I won’t waste away into oblivion like Clarissa.

Even though my thoughts are still a muddled mess, I feel better for having gone out with Uncle Greg. I got out of the house with someone aside from Zeke or Jenny and that’s a good thing. And it’s just nice to have a friendly ear and hear encouragement from someone who believes in me more than I believe in myself.

On our way home, I’m surprised when Uncle Greg takes a detour and we end up parking in the lot of a Barnes and Noble.

I raise my eyebrows at him. “What are we doing here?”

“Just thought we’d take a look around,” he says vaguely, getting out of the car.

I trail him inside, following duckling-style as he leads me over to the wall that’s covered in journals and waves a hand at it.

“What’s it to be, Evie?”

I stare at the wall, and then back at Greg. “What’s this?”

He shrugs. “You’ll never decide on or eliminate writing if you don’t start doing it again. You’ve changed, Evie. You can’t go back to writing exactly the way you did before. So go back to it a different way. Ease into it. A journal might be a good place to start, with all the tumult going on in your life.”

“I haven’t journaled in years,” I murmur, unable to resist stepping forward and running a hand over a leather bound book. It used to be I was writing so much that recording trivial details of my day seemed exhausting. Then I was afraid to record anything about Tony and my relationship for fear my dad would find it. Now…

“So maybe it’s time to pick it up again,” Uncle Greg suggests. “Seems to me getting all those fears and insecurities out on paper might help. And it might jump start you writing something else again.”

I stare at him for a moment, surprised that I didn’t think of this on my own. He’s right. Most of my problem is that I’m afraid of the paper, that when I look at it, my mind goes blank of ideas. But there’s so much inside of me that wants out. Maybe paper is a good place to put it for now.

“I’m going to look around,” Greg says as I turn carefully toward the shelf of notebooks. “Let me know when you find one. It’s my beginning of the school year gift. Pardon its lateness.”

I laugh and then he steps away, leaving me to peruse the books in peace. I pull random books off the shelf and examine them, eliminating prospects one by one as my standards grow higher for what I want. It has to have lines or my handwriting will be all over the place. Not too small but not huge either. I linger over the leather ones for a long time but most of them have flimsy covers and I want something sturdier.

I hold one possibility in my hand for a long time as I think and look over the others, treating this as a life or death decision. It has a black and white sketch, an old classic kind of style with soft lines in the figure of a woman. It’s beautiful, timeless, and I’m about to go to Uncle Greg with it as my choice when it occurs to me why I’ve chosen it.

It reminds me of Zeke.

The drawing, the fact that it’s sketched, even the style of it. It speaks to me because it makes me think of Zeke. Because it’s something he would draw, something he would like. Normally I wouldn’t think twice about. I would buy it and show it to him, excited and pleased that
he
was pleased by my choice. But now… that seems so wrong. That I’m getting a journal to help keep the focus on myself and what I want and yet I pick one that someone else would like.

It’s a beautiful cover, I enjoy looking at it but it only speaks to me because it reminds me of Zeke. I think of how I got my nails done, not in bright, loud colors that would tell Zeke I was trying to obey him, but in a calm color that
I
liked. Something new and clean. Isn’t the whole point of this break, the whole point of suffering through his cold shoulder and disregard so I can focus on myself? On standing up for myself and realizing who I am again?

Baby steps,
I tell myself as I slowly return the journal to its place on the shelf. I think of this summer, how long and arduous the journey was to recovery. It might take just as long, if not longer, for this.
Baby steps and keep pushing even when it doesn’t feel good or right.

I reexamine the journals and finally find one that makes my heart sing, though I don’t quite know why. It’s navy blue, metallic all over with an angel on the front in an old painting style, clouds and stars all over it. It’s a beautiful thing, whimsical and filled with soul. I like it and it doesn’t matter why. I don’t have to explain myself to anyone.

I find Uncle Greg and we pay and he takes me home. I manage to give him a quick hug at the doorway and he’s polite enough not to comment when I pull away rather abruptly. It doesn’t matter either. Slowly, marginally, just as Zeke said, time has helped with me trusting people again.

I change for bed, putting on old sweats for comfort and then crawl into bed with my journal and favorite pen in hand. I stare at it for a while but the silence feels oppressive so I get back out and fetch my phone, putting on low background music. Then I stare at the blank pages. Just like the past few years, their clean neatness seems to mock me. I would look at the fresh, precise page and know that I would never be considered that clean ever again.