Page 90 of Conception
My eyes cut to his.
“So much for a summer fling. You fell for her. Just as quickly as I fell for Maria, even though you scoffed at the idea.”
I’m waiting for the “I told you so.”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen,” I say. “Hell, I don’t even knowhowit happened. One second, I was content just being with her, and the next, I couldn’t fathom a life without her. I don’t even know when or where the flip switched.”
“You never stood a chance.”
I move my gaze from my drink to Clay. “What do you mean?”
“I could see it on your face. It’s the same expression I’m sure I had when I met Maria.”
I groan. “Oh, hell, not this again.”
“Hey, I didn’t buy into it, either. Not until it happened to me. But there’s something to be said for the Wellington Way. It hit me like buckshot. One single moment splintered me into a thousand pieces. Pieces I never wanted put back together. Because going back to life before Maria? Unfathomable.”
He’s lucky his was just buckshot. I’ve taken on a whole battalion of artillery and then some. And I still lost the war.
“I don’t have a choice.”
“The hell you don’t. You know where she is.”
“Dad needs me here.”
“There’s nothing here I can’t handle.”
I want to believe him. But I made Mom a promise, and if I take off, Dad will try his damnedest to go back to work before he’s ready.
“I need to be here, Clay. You still need to focus on school.”
“And yet your heart is stillthere,” he reminds me.
I sigh. “You’re right. Each mile I got farther from Crystal Cove was agony. I could feel it in my bones. How wrong it was. It’s been weeks and I miss her more than I ever thought possible. More each day.”
Clay raises a glass. “She’s the one, bro.”
No shit.
“I miss her like oxygen,” I tell him. “Like she’s the air in my lungs, and without her, I’m left breathless. Sometimes it’s only in the back of my mind. Like when you’re standing on the shore and the tide recedes. You miss the water, but you know it’ll return. Other times, like when I’m lying in bed at night and it’s quiet, it’s so intense it feels like drowning. Like I’ve gone underwater and, no matter how hard I struggle, I can’t come up for air. Without her, I don’t know if I ever will.”
“Because you love her.”
Because I love her.
“But my life is here and hers is…everywhere,” I reply. “Our futures are out of sync. Heading in complete opposite directions.”
“Is that what she said?
I recall her words:Our lives are intersecting lines, never to meet again.
“Basically,” I tell my brother. “She doesn’t want to be rooted to Tennessee, and the roots I have here are firmer than a white oak’s.”
“That is quite the conundrum.”
“It is what it is. I’ll get over it. Eventually.”
He knows it’s bullshit as much as I do.
