Page 76 of The Fate Of Us

Was this it? Was this where our story ended? Was this all we were meant for?

“Maybe I never loved you, Nate.”

Lie. An earth-shattering, heartbreaking, soul-destroying lie.

“Happy now?”I didn’t give him the satisfaction of letting me hear his answer, stormingoff in the direction of the hallway, but as I did, Jacob and Florence walked back through the door, holding hands, matching smiles plastered on their faces.

So, very clearly, in love.

I’ve never smiled so quickly in my life.

Looking around now spurs on everything I felt that night, made worse by the lightpounding already in my head. I fanned my eyes, drying the bulge of tears that manifested from the memories and sucking in a precious breath.

Instead of wallowing on that night, I took advantage of the fact I wasn’t being watched byNate to see his apartment on my own, or just the living room, I suppose.

I hadn’t truly known him as an adult. I’d been around him, sure, but knowing what laybeneath those glares and lingering stares? I had no idea of the person he’d grown to be. What he watched on TV, his favourite movies other than Star Wars, his coffee order, his go-to meal when he has nothing in the refrigerator, what he reads…

I thought I could easily tackle the last one with a quick snoop through the bookshelvesthat adorned the walls. Several Star Wars collector copies lined the shelves, the gold trims and foiled letters shining in the sun as it peeked through the windows. The droopy sleeves of Nate’s sweatshirt, too big for me and my surprisingly short arms, dragged along the spines, my fingertips stretching to grace them too.

A collection of clothbound classics were dotted across the shelves too. I wondered if he’dever read them. I’m sure he would have, he wasn’t the type of person to buy something for its aesthetic, or just to say that he owned it. Plus, the tabs that were sporadically placed within the pages, all matching the colours of the cover, gave away that he’d spent some of the time we were apart delving into the books that shaped the world.

I drag my still sleepy eyes over the rest of the books, all different widths, differentheights, and different authors, when my eyes latch onto a collection of hardback books, each bound in a different shade of green. The gradient from forest green to pastel sage puts me in a trance, floating my body over to them. Gold foil outlines the titles stamped onto each of the eight spines, again, glistening from the sun.

I didn’t immediately recognise the titles, but still, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d seenthem somewhere before. Something about the subtle beauty and foreshadowing of the plot intrigued me, and when my eyes fell to notice my name also shining in that gold foil, I think my heart forgot how to beat.

These books… they’re… they were mine. The ones I wrote.

I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt tight, constricted by vines and flowers and questions.

I pulled one off the shelves, my hands tingling as they brushed the material covering thefive-hundred and eighty-two pages of the first, truly good book I’d ever written. It was the pastel sage one, somewhat fitting for this book, considering the main female character was called Sage.

I peeled open the book, my eyes falling onto the dedication I’d written, onlyseen by me, and the person this copy belonged to.

For me.

I wrote a book. A good one. Not like my first one, which is full of plot holes and spelling mistakes. This one has potential.

I wonder if a dedication is a bit pointless if no one else but me will read this.

But maybe someone else will, one day.

Hopefully.

I tear up at the sight of it, at the thought of a teenage Adaline, typing away on her laptop in the early hours of the morning after thousands of soul-sucking auditions, surviving on nothing but the hope that one day this would be her purpose. What the world would know her for.

My heart ached for her, for the lack of hope she had, for the sleep that sat in the cornersof her eyes at 5:00 AM as she entered another windowless audition room.

I wiped away the tear that had slipped down my cheek, dropping the book to thecouch, and then picking the next book off the shelf. And the next. And the next.

Until I had eight of my books in my hands.The eight I wrote before I left home. The good ones.

After I'd let the shock settle in my bones, I allowed myself to question what on earth Natewas doing with these. Better yet, how did he have these? These stories had only existed on torn paper and battered notepads. Some of them I typed up once I got a laptop, and printed them out in my high school’s library so my parents didn’t ask too many questions. Hovering around the family printer, waiting for a fantasy book to finish printing, would have caused more grief than my fourteen-year-old self had the patience for then.

Part of me wondered if, when I gave my books to Nate, he made copies of them. Isuppose he must have done, seeing as though eight beautifully bound copies of my books were currently in my hands.

But then, the eighth book catches my attention, the one covered in the darkest of thegreens. My heart skips a beat when I realise that it isn’t humanly possible for Nate to have this book. I finished this story when he left for college, and wrote the dedication on the day he left. It wasn’t possible for this to exist outside of the boxes that all my belongings were shoved into when I left home. And when I came back the day I was supposed to meet Nate, I couldn't find it… as though it had vanished.

How the hell was this even—

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