Loved - A Novel Read online

  A week before I was to leave for Nashville, Dad and I began packing everything I could take into the back of his red Ford truck. When Chase got off work that afternoon I drove over to his house and we sat down on the couch. It felt strange to be on the couch because we were so often in the sanctuary of his bedroom. Saffron, one of Chase’s mom’s birds sat on my knee.

  I could hardly get the words out.

  “I don’t want it to be like this,” I said, my hands clasped in my lap. If I squeezed my hands together hard enough, I thought, maybe I could keep from crying.

  “Saffron,” said Saffron.

  “But there is so much that I need to experience at school. I love you and I don’t want to stop talking or say it’s over forever, but I need to be on my own right now.”

  “Saffron.”

  “Yes, you too, Saffron,” said Chase to the bird, trying to show strength in his shaky voice.

  “And you have two years of school left before we could even be in the same place,” I said, “and I don’t know if you would ever want to live in Nashville.”

  Chase was crying, which really upset me. I needed to stop talking. I was quiet for a minute. I reached for him and we held each other.

  Finally he pulled away and looked in my eyes.

  “I understand,” he said. “I knew this was coming but that doesn’t make it any easier.”

  What else could we have done? I would rather have ended it on a high note and have been able to come back to him later than try to make it work, disastrously, and do irreparable damage to something so amazing. I told him what time we were leaving for Nashville and it was up to him whether or not he wanted to come see me off. Then I left.

  I cried on the drive home, warm tears leaving spots on the front of my blue tank top. I hoped he would come to see me before I left. I didn’t want him to be angry. To feel sad that we were broken up was inevitable for both of us but nothing would be worse than if this kept us from a future we were meant to have. I wondered if he would show up to see me off, if this was really the end or just the end for now, if we could still love each other even if we weren’t together.

  Saying goodbye to my friends was much more pleasant. Meredith and some of the other girls met me out for ice cream. We all shared the Dream Boat, which is a giant bowl filled with 24 scoops of various kinds of ice cream and every topping imaginable. We dug in with long silver spoons and ate until we were silly from the sugar. Then we stuck in straws and drank the melted ice-cream puddle left at the bottom of the huge bowl until we were sick.

  One of the girls started choking. “I sucked up a nut,” she said once she regained her breath and we laughed until we cried. Those tears felt good to cry.

  The following morning my parents and I left for Nashville and the girls came to see me off. I stood chatting with them in the driveway, the early morning fog beginning to rise from the fields. We were talking about the girls coming to visit me in Nashville when Meredith changed the subject.

  “Is Chase coming?” she asked softly.

  “I’m not sure. I left it up to him. I hope he does but if not I...”

  Just then I saw his mom’s car turn in to the driveway down by the barns. I smiled sadly, relieved he had come but dreading yet another goodbye.

  I thought of a quote from one of Chase’s letters. I will go anywhere she goes. Chauffeur the bags of a precious lover. I will go anywhere she goes. Sleep on the pillow that reeks of another.

  I turned back to Meredith. “Yes. Yes, he’s coming,” I said, flashing Meredith a smile that I knew she could read as happy-in-the-moment but not happy-in-my-heart. I knew she was the kind of friend who would be there for me when I needed her, then or ever, like the promise we had made to each other: super glue.

  Everything else went by in a blur and I found myself in the back seat of the truck on the road in Ohio. I flipped through my high school yearbook. Meredith wrote a whole page on how proud of me she was and how she was my biggest fan. Jeff Meyers claimed a page toward the back. He wrote, “Have fun in Nashville,” with his address and a sketch of a sun with a face. I traced the flames with my fingers. Goodbye.

  I slept for a while, lulled to sleep by Dramamine and exhaustion from the morning’s tears and the urge to dream of what this day would bring. Once I was awake again, somewhere in Kentucky, I asked mom to put my Dixie Chicks CD in the stereo and I sang along softly.

  There’s no mercy in a live wire. No rest at all in freedom. The choices we are given, it’s no choice at all. The proof is in the fire you touch before it moves away. You must always know how long to stay and when to go.

  The words resonated with me. As hard as it was to leave Chase, I knew it was my time to leave. I knew how long to stay and when to go.

  Finally, we reached Nashville. The skyline appeared in the distance, a sight that was becoming familiar to me. We ate dinner and stayed in a hotel. Tomorrow, I thought, crawling into my hotel bed. Tomorrow I wouldn’t have time for nostalgia. Tomorrow my heart would be full of anticipation. Tomorrow I would be Kim Carlson, Belmont student and resident of Nashville, Tennessee, with my whole life in front of me. Tomorrow I will put Westville behind me and step into my new life.

  In the morning, we pulled up in front of Wright Hall, the brick U-shaped girl’s dormitory. Parents and new students were unloading cars with license plates from everywhere: Texas, Oregon, Maryland. I had never met anyone from Texas, Oregon or Maryland. My world was growing exponentially larger and not a moment too soon.

  We took the elevator to the fourth floor and checked in with my Resident Assistant, Anna. She was the smallest and peppiest person I had ever met.

  “Welcome to Belmont,” she said, making an effort to really pronounce the “t” at the end and clasping her hands in front of her like one of the Von Trapp children. “Where are you from?” she asked us.

  “Pennsylvania!” my mom said, adjusting her tone to mirror Anna’s. My parents talked with Anna while I watched my new neighbors coming and going from the elevator, boxes in hand.

  Mom made a point of telling Anna that I was only 17 and really just a senior in high school. Anna looked at me quizzically, trying to figure out if I might need consolation when my parents left. If she only knew I had begged to be sent to boarding school at the age of ten. I loved my parents but I was ready for this.

  Anna showed me her room, the first one on the right and then mine, number 417.

  “Let me know if you need anything,” she said. “I’ll be just” - sharp t - “down the hall.” She smiled at my parents and tucked a strand of stick-straight blonde hair behind her ear. “I’ll see you guys later!”

  We spent the rest of the morning unloading the truck and the afternoon trying to figure out where to put everything. I met my roommate and her family. She was tall with straw colored hair cropped neatly below her chin, dressed casually in jeans, a T-shirt and tennis shoes. She was friendly but quiet. She didn’t really make eye contact with me when we chatted; rather, she just looked around the room or into boxes. I thought maybe she didn’t know what to think of me.

  When her parents were ready to leave, we all stood in a circle holding hands and prayed. I knew that my parents were relieved that her family prayed together too. A few months earlier, mom had ordered a book for me called, How to Stay Christian in College. I would never open it. It was like when I was in the seventh grade and she brought home from the library a book about periods, trying to prepare me for something I was just going to have to experience firsthand. Each ended up stashed under my bed. I didn’t question my faith; I just didn’t want to read about it in a book like that. I wondered if my roommate was the same way.

  Then, my parents and I had the dorm room to ourselves and they sat on either side of me on the bed, one of the few pieces of furniture in my tiny new room. Mom pulled a small present out of her purse. It was a children’s book called, The Kissing Hand, about a little raccoon who goes off to school. His Mom kisses the palms of his hands each morning so he has her wi
th him all day long and so he won’t be scared at school. Then Mom kissed the center of my left palm and Dad, my right. We stood there and hugged.

  When they left I could feel their sadness. Dad had tears in his eyes, which was unsettling to me. I had only occasionally seen him cry and there was something strange about seeing my father that way. This time, it was my fault. I went over to my window and watched through the blinds. I saw them walk to the truck. Dad opened the door for Mom. They waved and though I wasn’t sure they could really see me, I waved too.

  I felt torn between paralyzing fear and an overwhelming excitement. Turning to my quiet dorm room, I thought, This is my home now. No matter what happens, there’s no going back.

  September, 2000.

  I loved walking to class. The campus was beautiful, covered in flowered trellises, intricate gazebos and elegant statues. There were new people everywhere, playing guitars in the grass and walking in all directions. I loved the freedom of my days; it was all so different from high school. I had an early morning tennis class and then a break until eleven o’clock when I would go to Artist Management class and then to Sociology after grabbing a pack of pop-tarts from the corner market. Other days I could sleep later before I had Marketing and Statistics classes.

  I met some people in my classes but no one asked me to hang out. My friendliness was often shrouded by my reluctance to chat with strangers. I never regretted missing my senior year but I was surprised at how lonely I could feel while surrounded by all these people who were just like me. I expected to feel more at home than ever and instead I found myself yearning for close friends.

  Chase and I chatted sometimes. We tried not to talk often since technically we were broken up but we missed each other and I didn’t have a lot of other company. My roommate, who was older and should have been more ready for college than I was homesick for her nearby hometown in Kentucky, yet somehow she seemed to be making friends and fitting in easily. This perplexed and frustrated me. Was I destined to be as invisible here as I had been in high school?

  One afternoon I was alone in the dorm room after class. Through the window, the sky was bright blue, the kind of fall day that I should have been enjoying outside with friends. But I had no one to call and there was no one to invite me to join in their trip to a park or whatever the other students were doing. I didn’t even know yet what there was to do. So I sat at my desk, an open textbook shoved off to the side and a deserted chat window open on my computer. A Faith Hill song played on the stereo: It just isn’t right. I’ve been two thousand miles down a dead-end road. Let me let go.

  Chase had just signed offline after giving me some short answers about how life was “sucky.” He wasn’t being responsive to me and wasn’t letting me have access to him. The distance between us was greater than the six hundred miles that separated us. I didn’t know how to fix it.

  I felt overwhelmed by emotions that were unfamiliar to me. Fear, loneliness, uncertainty, all of this broke open inside me and I didn’t know how to release it. Tears didn’t seem big enough. Words, well, there was no one to talk to. Determined now to find some way, any way, I took a small X-Acto knife out of my desk drawer. I had used it on some school project. I pulled the leg of my sweatpants up to my thigh. There were ancient first bike-ride scars on my knee so if the cut left a mark it wouldn’t seem suspicious or out of place. I gripped the orange plastic that surrounded the blade and drew a small line no longer than half an inch across my knee with the sharp metal tip, and I watched as the point left a scarlet trail in its wake.

  Suddenly, I felt calm. I took a breath that felt like the first breath I had ever taken in the world. I had just been born again. Suddenly, I knew I would make friends and everything would be fine with Chase. Whatever had seemed so pressing on my mind wasn’t so pressing anymore.

  I hobbled slowly across the room, not that I needed to hobble because it didn’t really hurt, and I pressed the cut with a piece of tissue paper until the bleeding stopped. It wasn’t blood I was after; it was peace.

  I finally made friends with Megan, a girl who lived down the hall. She and her roommate were welcoming to me when I was bored and wanted to hang out in their room and they invited me to come along when they went to Target or out to dinner. I didn’t feel like a burden to them. Megan, who was from “North Carolahnah,” as it sounded in her heavy accent also loved country music more than life itself and was a music business major. She was shorter than me with curly blonde hair and a big smile, indicative of her big personality.

  Classes, bad cafeteria food and group study sessions, life was turning into a pretty typical freshman year at college, except when I would walk down the hall of my dorm and I would hear one girl singing and playing the keyboard and another practicing her fiddle. Walking across campus, there would be a guy strumming his acoustic guitar in a gazebo and a group of students jamming around the grand piano in Neely Hall. I loved that music was everywhere. When I felt like a kite tumbling scared on the wind, music was my string—my connection to the ground.

  I still held on to Chase like there was a string tied between us too. I couldn’t let him go and I guess he couldn’t let me go either. Even if he was trying to shut me out, the letters still came and though they were always welcome, each one left me feeling confused. Should I be happy he wrote or sad that we were apart and that this was continuing to hurt him?

  Hurting both of us.

  He wrote about wearing a cape to school or dying his hair purple, he wrote that he still loved me, more than ever and that he still loved me even if I was happier with other people in my life. But I wasn’t. It was harder than I thought to be away from him. I liked college and I loved Nashville but I lit up inside every time I got a letter from him. It was clear for both of us the passion was just as strong but he had two years of high school to go so we still knew we couldn’t be together now. We were stuck.

  Chase was as torn as I was. As the weather grew colder so did his letters. Companionship is hard to convey with someone you see once every few months, he wrote. We fought because he didn’t know anything about my new life and didn’t seem to want to be a part of it but when he offered to visit I would turn him down. I was afraid to let him see my new life for fear that he might reject it. I wanted to continue to hope he would love it here like I did and to dream that eventually he would come to stay. Once he saw Nashville, I wouldn’t be able to just hope any longer. I would know how he felt about it and that terrified me. Finally, tired after two months of arguing about it, I agreed to let him visit.

  The plane tickets were a gift from his mother for his October 30th birthday. He appeared in the airport terminal wearing a leather jacket and a cowboy hat. That’s not him. What is he trying to pull off? I want him just the way he is, I thought. Seeing him dressed so differently made my unease more palpable but he was trying to show his openness to Nashville and I recognized that.

  Autumn was in full swing, brilliant red leaves on trees lining the sidewalks to my dorm, golden yellow as the sun by the historic mansion that was the visual highlight of the school. I walked with Chase all over the campus. This is my world. Isn’t it beautiful? Don’t you want to be a part of this? I showed him around school and introduced him to people I knew. Most of them had heard about him because you couldn’t know me without knowing about Chase.

  He wasn’t allowed to stay overnight in the dorm with me because Belmont is a Christian school and they had strict rules about visitation in the dorms. My roommate and her new boyfriend agreed to rent a hotel room with us so we could all get off campus for the weekend. It felt very grown up. I wished we could have had our own hotel room but that seemed unfathomable, far off from where we were in our lives and in our relationship.

  Chase and I had talked before about when or if we would have sex. I wanted to wait and though he made it clear that that was one of the many ways he wanted to show me he loved me, he supported my decision and didn’t ever complain. This was the first time since prom night we had spent the ni
ght together. If it hadn’t been for my roommate and her boyfriend in the room near us or my fear, I may not have been able to keep my promise to myself. But I did.

  On Saturday we went to the mall. I hadn’t been in Nashville long enough to know how to show someone the town and though neither of us really cared to be in the mall, it was something to do. After we were bored of wandering around the stores, we walked across the parking lot to where the riverboat docks and sat on the ground under a wooden gazebo. The sky was overcast and Chase was smoking a cigarette, which I held for him between drags. I loved holding his cigarettes.

  “You seem really happy, Kit.”

  “Yeah, I guess. This is kind of where I belong, I think.”

  “Right, I can see it.”

  “You would like it here too,” I told him. “There’s so much music and not just country. There is a lot of rock too. So many of the kids at Belmont, I’ve been to their shows and you would love this stuff.”

  “I can’t afford to come here. I am going to have to stay close to home for school, Kit, or move somewhere and not go to school just, like, get a job.”

  “We can make it work,” I assured him.

  “I want to but I don’t see how,” he said, defeated.

  He stubbed out his cigarette butt. My hands felt empty when he didn’t hand it back to me. I reached out and held his hand. We were quiet for a few minutes.

  “I’m not saying no or anything,” he said finally. “I just don’t know yet what I want. I do love you. That’s all I can say right now.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “You’re cold. Let’s get back.”

  I tucked the Camel coupon from his cigarette pack into my pocket, a souvenir of the moment where he said maybe. I would hold on to his maybe for as long as it would take, even forever.