Loved - A Novel Read online

  We got to the park and found a spot to sit in the grass. We were on a hill that was level with the stage, which was set up on a river barge. I would be able to look straight on at Adam Duritz as he sang to me and twirled around the stage. The minute the band came out it began to rain, which I felt was more than fitting. I let the drops cool my face. Water cleanses you know, washes the past away, makes new, Chase had written to me once.

  I sat down for a minute and called him. He said he was excited that I had called but his voice had an unwelcoming tone. I wanted him to know that being at a Counting Crows concert was my way of reaching out for him but I couldn’t say the words. I was too scared. I didn’t know if I said them that it would even matter to him. I didn’t know if I believed our relationship could ever work. It seemed like it wouldn’t. Yet I couldn’t stay away from him.

  Later, the rain had stopped, the stars were out and the night air was cool and damp. The band began to play a song that was familiar to me but that was not on the only album of theirs that I had so far. My mind began to race. I’m sure I listened to this song with Chase. I didn’t know this was Counting Crows. Why is this song important? I tried to remember.

  All at once you look across a crowded room

  To see the way that light attaches to a girl

  And it’s one more day up in the canyons

  And it’s one more night in Hollywood...

  This is Chase’s favorite song. The lyrics are framed on the wall in his bedroom. We fell in love lying underneath them.

  I began to see spots and I reached for Megan’s arm as my knees buckled. She caught me and helped me gently to the ground. I sat there in a daze. The loud music surrounded me.

  If you think that I could be forgiven, I wish you would.

  I couldn’t hold back the tears. Brian sat down next to me but didn’t even try to touch me. He had to know what was happening. I felt bad for him but I was too wrapped up in my own sadness to do anything about it.

  I had to give him some sort of explanation for what was happening to me. On days when it was at its worst, I told him that I missed Chase, just someone who had been important to me in the past and that I knew it would pass soon. It was no big deal. I wanted so badly for that to be the truth. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.

  The thing about secrets is that they can hurt you more than the person you’re keeping them from. It's like eating the last piece of caramel candy, a delicacy for you alone to experience. You hold it on your tongue, savoring the layers of salty sweetness. It makes you so happy while it rots your teeth.

  At least I’d opened up the lines of communication with Chase again. But where would that get us? Could Chase and I make it work so far apart? Would he even be able to forgive me? I became more open about my feelings for Chase. He needed to know how I felt. I needed to know if he could still feel the same.

  His letters showed he was as torn as I had been.

  May 6, 2002 “Let your dim light shine”

  Kit, hello hello. I think its nice to be back in contact with you becoz’ the happiest I can ever remember myself being wasn’t while I was partying or laughing with friends, listening to Our Lady Peace, or watching the muppets. It’s when I was with you. When we could both just shut the fuck up and listen to the other one breathe.

  I really don’t know what to do. I know I still want you, and I know I still love you, as much as that may scare me, the heart wants what it wants, ya know. Maybe no one does understand how we feel. Maybe no one ever will. At some point though, we will and that’s all that matters, if you ask me.

  “So I memorize the color of your eyes, as you lay half asleep beside me, and I memorize the way our legs intwine as you drift away beside me. I miss waking up beside you...”

  May 30, 2002

  Kit - Hey, After I got off the phone with you, I just felt like I wanted to say more. I don’t know what I’m doing. I think you and I are both smart enough to know that things will never be like that magical summer when we spent all day laying in bed and falling in love. But that’s ok. I can honestly say that I still think about you, and it still hurts that you’re not mine anymore. You were everything I always wanted, and of course, I still love you. So that that didn’t go to your head, I love lots of things. I love bacon, and I love muppets. I love sleeping and I love escalators. When I was done talking with you, I went and wrote. I haven’t written in a long time. There’s been no...inspiration. I haven’t felt like I’ve had something to say. I still don’t, but now I feel a little bit more like I have someone to listen to it.

  I want you to know that my arms are not wide open waiting for you, they are crossed...and I am skeptical. That’s just me. Something needs to be proven or done, or something. I dunno.

  “You saved me, I hate you. You drain me, I love you. You hurt me, so I hurt you. But now, what do we do?”

  Shine.

  It was okay with me that he was protecting himself. There was no need for him to always be unconditionally available. That was a fair move for him to make, but he was wrong; someone else didn’t understand me better than he did.

  June, 2002.

  I knew now, even without any guarantees from Chase, that it was time to let Brian go. The last thing I had wanted was to hurt him. We sat on the steps outside my apartment building, the cement leaving impressions on my thighs where my shorts ended.

  “I can’t marry you. This was too much, too fast. It’s not something I’m ready for.” I told him. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Do you need more time? I’m not in a hurry. We can keep seeing each other,” he pleaded. “I love you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We want different things. We really do.”

  I gave him the ring back.

  He called a few times to ask me to dinner or to come over and talk but there wasn’t any point to that. I didn’t see him the same way anymore. I couldn’t even consider that a relationship with him might be the right thing.

  I called Chase to tell him that my engagement was off and that I wanted to be with him again. He was hesitant, understandably, after what I had put him through. He was starting college in the fall, and despite our feelings for each other, I knew all too well that the idea of being single and available to meet new people and experience new things was enticing to say the least. So we stayed in limbo, having feelings for each other but not able to commit. It was what I had been trying to avoid when I left for college, this living in between, but now it seemed like the best of our options.

  A week after classes ended, Megan called me from home in North Carolina to tell me that she wasn’t coming back. At first I was shocked and angry. I felt abandoned. I berated her in my mind for giving up on Nashville and her country music dreams. However, the more I thought about it, the more I recognized that she had been unhappy. She’d gained weight, allowed herself to be mistreated by the guy she was dating and was otherwise on a constant search for approval. Still, I was heartbroken to lose my best friend.

  Fortunately, Belmont did my dirty work when it came to Brian. He was still trying to win me back when he was busted for stealing computers and musical instruments from other students on campus and was promptly kicked out of school. It turned out that’s where he had been late at night when he would disappear and not answer his phone: stealing things and selling them. Is that how he planned to become a millionaire? I wondered, disgusted. Until then, I had still been listening to his pleading because I felt guilty for the way I had treated him, for shutting him out of my heart but when he was forced to leave, I was free from all those feelings. He was not a good guy. He was not someone I should have been with in the first place. I had treated him badly too, but I now felt somewhat relieved of my guilt.

  Being devastated by losing Megan didn’t last very long when I started to realize how unhappy we had both been. It wasn’t the fault of one of us over the other. A friendship founded on need and dependence rather than love and support, even with the best intentions, is bound to be self-destructive. We h
ad been toxic for each other. I felt angry with her but I knew she blamed me for the same things. I knew I would be a reminder to her of a painful year in her life and of how her dream had crumbled under her feet. For all those reasons, instead of apologizing, instead of fighting for her, I let her go. I was getting pretty good at closing my heart to people.

  I had spent a year trying hard not to hear my own voice. Now, I was on my own, and I had nowhere else to look but within. I knew I wasn’t a victim. It was my own actions that resulted in the pain I felt, my own choices that caused others to hurt. It was time to face myself as an adult. I was alone but I wasn’t afraid of it. I saw opportunity. I saw a clean slate, but what kind of relationships did I want to build? Who did I want to become?

  I wasn’t sure yet.

  August, 2002.

  As I entered into my junior year, I considered it a fresh start. I moved into a different apartment on campus with Anna, who had been my Resident Assistant freshman year. I knew she was more conservative than many of the other students—she was still an R.A. and had to enforce the rules. I thought that might be good for me, as a different side of myself came back when I was with Anna. I was responsible, put-together and faithful—not just sad, drunk and confused.

  Chase and I had been going back and forth about what to do. He was starting his freshman year of college an hour from Westville. I knew it was unfair of me to ask for a commitment after I had broken up with him in order to have the freedom of a freshman year to myself; for this reason, we stayed in limbo, loving each other but questioning our future together. We both continued to hurt and continued to hope at the same time.

  He wrote that even with obstacles in the way, he’d rather die trying to have the one he wants than live a long life with just “someone.” He said, “I guess that’s how you know it’s love.” He explained that when he wasn’t talking to me it was because he couldn’t stand knowing I wasn’t his. I was relieved to know it hadn’t been out of anger or resentment. He said it was easier to just ignore the problem. “Out of sight, out of mind, right? No, just out of sight.”

  I told him I would come to see him over the fall break if he wanted. He said he liked the idea and that it tickled him. He said he was afraid I wouldn’t be attracted to him.

  Push, pull, look away, pull, push.

  August 3, 2002 “Just a whisper”

  I’m as confused as ever, on what or who I want.

  But I miss you. Even when you were around I missed you. I will miss you when I fall asleep and I will miss you when I wake up. It’s love. I’m tired. I wish I was still trying to pursue something in music. It’s terrible. It’s like there’s this evil monster behind my skin, but he can’t get out. Don’t get me wrong, I love theatre, but sometimes I feel like the only reason I wanna do anything at all anymore is just to spite the people who don’t think I’ll make anything out of life...or maybe I am just tired.

  I love.

  Shine.

  I knew that turning away from him had been a mistake and I vowed to myself that I would not make it again. If we weren’t going to be together, it wouldn’t be my decision. But we weren’t together and I didn’t know if we would be soon or ever, and so I also vowed to myself that although I was waiting for him in a sense, I would do my best to be open to the possibility of living a life aside from him, whether for a little while or for always.

  I continued to live as if my heart were detached from my body—my heart was at college in Pennsylvania, on stage with him. My heart was in a blue room in the summer, watching movies in his arms. My heart was in an apartment with brick walls in the city, misting rain out the window, sharing my life with him. In Tennessee, I had school and maybe a few friends. I didn’t know what else but I kept reminding myself to be open minded.

  The only people I was hanging out with were Anna, occasionally Brittany and friends of Brian’s. Now that Brian was gone, his friends all showed up to tell me that they’d always liked me and that they were glad he was gone because they had known what trouble he was, and they took me in like big brothers. I would sit on the couch at Ethan’s while they smoked pot. They never pressured me to have any. Instead, they just let me know I was welcome to if I wanted. They didn’t care how late I stayed over or how much of their liquor I drank. They gave me a good contrast from life at home with Anna. I needed both atmospheres—one to propel me forward and another in which to hide.

  One night we were hanging out on the back patio at Ethan’s, which was a slab of cement that met a steep hill. I was curled up in an orange velvet chair that sat just outside the door and the guys were standing on the only patch of level grass, smoking cigarettes. I picked at the fuzz on my sweatpants and half-listened to their conversation about drumheads, upcoming recitals and good weed.

  “Dude, that blueberry shit was awesome.”

  “Yeah, we’ll get some more.”

  “Anyone want to go to Guitar Center with me tomorrow?” Several of my friends were music majors and they were preparing for upcoming junior recitals.

  “I have class and then I work,” I said, even though they probably weren’t asking me. Why would I need to go to Guitar Center?

  I looked at each of the new friends that surrounded me. Kyle was protective—a big teddy bear of a guy, the one who had first reached out to me once Brian was gone. Peter was the artist, weird and interesting with whom I had great philosophical conversations that I mostly bullshitted my way through. Ethan was the sexy one. He had long dark hair and played the drums and his only outfit was jeans and a plain white t-shirt. There was this particular way he would look at me that made my heart speed up. I watched him a little too closely sometimes.

  Though I wouldn’t commit myself to another man like I had with Brian, I still craved the attention of a man. I wasn’t getting enough from Chase. Maybe that man could be Ethan. He was certainly someone who wasn’t looking for a commitment either.

  “Who wants beer?”

  Ethan went inside to stock up for the group.

  As Ethan went into the kitchen, two guys came out the neighboring door onto the patio to smoke a cigarette.

  I was suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that I was the only girl hanging out with a group of stoner guys and I wondered what these neighbors thought of me. My days of being quiet, friendly, “country music Kim” were over. I liked what I was learning about myself but I was scared that when people looked into my eyes they could see the pain that lay behind them. Eyes are windows and the rooms inside of me were different now.

  Ethan came back out with an armful of beers. He offered one to each of the guys. In the orange chair, I tucked my feet underneath my legs and chatted a little with the neighbor guys without taking my attention fully away from the other chatter on the patio.

  Ethan never led the conversation. He interjected only when he truly had something to say. Most of the time whatever he said made us laugh, the result of wit and excellent timing. While we were laughing he would chuckle lightly, flash a blinding white smile and run his fingers through his hair, and I would melt.

  We all chatted until the bugs began to bite and the group was dwindling. I hadn’t realized it was one in the morning and I was disappointed that everyone was leaving. I didn’t need sleep - I needed company.

  Ethan and I went inside. Suddenly eager to fill the silence; he began to tell me about everything he had to do the next day so I sat down next to him on the couch. He was tall, even sitting next to me.

  “Hey, just so you know. I’m…I’m really glad you aren’t with Brian anymore. I always thought you deserved better.” Ethan said with a sudden earnestness.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Then he kissed me. It was slow, not hungry but rather indulgent. This was a passion born of desire, dark and sweet. I put my fingers in his soft hair and he put his in mine. That was the first night I stayed over at Ethan’s, my heart detached.

  September, 2002.

  Chase wrote that he missed me eternally. He quoted Counting Crows. H
e made a list of things that made him happy: the middle finger he can’t give people until they walk away, the feeling he had with the only one he wanted, breaking up a wedding, seeing someone he doesn’t know and telling them they’re beautiful and having someone ache for him. He said happiness is something that he’d never have again until he had me.

  A true artist, the more unhappy he was, the better his creativity. His writing was more beautiful than ever. He was getting lead roles as a freshman at school. But part of a true artist’s spirit is that he can’t believe that people could believe in him. Furthermore, he couldn’t believe in himself.

  Sept 2, 2002

  I miss you, can I say that? I got a lead in a play, Lysander in Midsummer Nights Dream. You should come and see it. I wish I still believed in magic. Who knows?

  Cha$e

  I tried to limit my expectations of him, knowing that he had put a wall between us. I thought it might be made of paper, but it could have been as solid as the brick wall in our apartment in my dreams. It could have been a minefield. I didn’t know. Still, we spoke often. He told me a lot about the play, the only thing he was holding onto at school. He told me how much fun he had blocking fight scenes and how they were ahead of schedule and how the director was so pleased.

  I made plans to go see him over fall break as I had offered. The closer we got to our visit and to the opening night of his play, the more he began to open up to me and the more optimistic he became.

  Sept 11, 2002

  Kit - Hello. I love you won’t you tell me your name, how are you? Are you still gorgeous? I’m sure you are. I’m okay. I don’t wanna sound like “the boyfriend” or anything, coz’ I know it’s not like that, but I really can’t wait to see you. Everyone here is tired of listening to me talk about you. They just wanna see you, but not as much as me. Even after all the drama, all the pain and hurt and loneliness, I just wanna see you and hold you and kiss you and have you. Until you leave again.