Elizabeth Scott - Between Here and Forever

It’s not scary. It’s past that, beyond that, and I don’t know what to do now that this thing—this dream, and yes, that’s what it’s always been, a dream, an impossibility that came true only when my eyes were closed—is real.

It’s not that I don’t believe in the kiss or what he just said.

It’s that I do. I believe he likes me, that he … that he sees me and wants me.

I don’t know what to do with the happiness I feel, with the want racing through me. I have lived with broken need and anger and fear. I have lived with an ache to get out of Ferrisvil e, to get away. I have built worlds where I leave this place and become someone others want to see.

I’ve never pictured anyone finding me here. Wanting me here.

I’ve never, ever pictured anyone like Eli.

“I don’t know what to do,” I say, and he’l know what to do, he has to know, this is the part where it wil al work out. I haven’t run away; I have stayed despite my fear and now this is real. Now we are real.

“Oh,” he says, and I watch him move back, hands clenched in on themselves until he’s back in his chair, where they rest on the arms and start to tap. “I thought—”

He shakes his head. His eyes aren’t meeting mine now, and I don’t understand. I haven’t left. I haven’t run. Why has he moved away? What’s happening?

“You thought what?” I say, my heart pounding please, please .

His fingers are moving very fast now, and he stands up, a jerky, quick movement. “I should go,” he says. “Let you think. Be with Tess.”

“Eli—” I say, but he walks away. Going, going.

Gone.

I sit there, and this—being alone, having watched someone leave—it’s more like what I’m used to. What I expect. But it feels wrong, and I am up and out of my chair suddenly, racing after him.

Tell me, I wil say to him. Tell me what you were going to say.

But he’s gone, and I can’t find him anywhere. Even Clement is gone, the basement storage room that is now his office shut and locked.

So maybe Eli didn’t mean what he said after al . I know al about that. I know what to do when a guy tries but can’t quite make himself care for me.

I know what it’s like to watch a guy walk away, but something is different now. I think of how Eli didn’t look at me before he left. I think of al the questions I couldn’t and don’t understand that were in his voice when he said my name.

I could go to his house. Talk to Clement. Talk to him. There is no need to create drama here, I have enough in my life already, and I don’t need to imagine how things wil be when I’m away from Ferrisvil e anymore. Not now, not when I have said everything that was in my heart and Eli stil wanted to look at me.

But it didn’t go like it was supposed to. If it’s real, if I saw what was in his heart, then why did he leave? Why am I here now, alone?

“What are you doing standing out here?” Claire says, and I jump, startled, and turn around, see her behind me.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey. What’s going on?”

“Just …”

“Just what?”

“Nothing,” I say, because I don’t want to talk about it, not even with her. I want to understand what happened. I want to know how I took a moment that was so right and turned it wrong and why—worst of al —part of me is okay with that.

“You want a ride to the ferry?”

I shrug and she helps me load my bike into her car. I don’t ask her to take me by Eli’s. I don’t even mention him.

I want to know why it is easier for me to stay quiet and be miserable than act. I want to know why I went after him, but only after he was gone. I want to know why I’m here, with Claire, instead of him.

“So, are you and Eli fighting or something?” Claire says as we are waiting for the ferry, and I fold my fingers up tight and sink down into the seat.

“Hey,” she says, when I don’t say anything. “Abby, are you—?”

“I’m fine.”

“Bul shit,” she says. “What happened?”

I force myself to talk because it’s Claire and I trust her, and I don’t finish the story until we are on the ferry and the river is churning beneath us.

When I do, I look over at her.

To my surprise, she’s looking at me like I’m the dumbest person she’s ever met.

“What?” I say.

“‘I don’t know what to do?’” she says. “What a load of crap, Abby. You tel him you want someone to want to be with you, to kiss you—and he says that, he actual y fucking kisses you and says that, and you say you don’t know what to do and then wonder why he left? How stupid are you?”

“I’m not—”

“Yeah, you’re not stupid,” she says. “You’re just like your sister, though. You’re so sure things have to be a certain way that you’l do anything to make sure they are. God forbid you be honest with yourself and him, right? God forbid you say ‘I want to kiss you too.’”

“I figured that was implied by me kissing him back. I mean—”

“Oh, sure, because there’s nothing like putting your heart out there and getting nothing in return to make a girl feel good,” she says, so angry she’s practical y spitting. “You’re sitting here feeling sorry for yourself when al you had to do was be honest with him and—”

“I was honest.”

“No, you weren’t. You know what you want. You know what to do. You’re just afraid. I didn’t realize exactly how much you’re like—you and fucking Tess, I swear.”

“I’m not like—”

“You’re exactly like her,” Claire says. “You want to be loved but when you are, if it’s not exactly how you expected it to be—if it’s real and you have to deal with feelings you can’t control, you freak out and push the other person away and—” She takes a deep breath. “Get out of my car.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” she says. “Get out of my car.”

“But I—”

“I swear to God, if you don’t get out I wil push you out,” she says, and I stare at her furious face, so like Tess’s the day she found out Claire was pregnant, so much like Tess’s the day Claire walked by the house and Tess ran outside to throw food at her, furious like—

Furious like her heart had been broken.

“Tess,” I breathe, stunned, and Claire freezes.

now. No anger. Only pleading.

I stare at her. “Tess was … you and Tess?”

Claire is silent for a long moment and then nods once, slowly.

“And then you … you got pregnant and—”

“I had Cole,” Claire says, her voice going hard again. “And now here I am.”

“So when Tess found out, she wasn’t mad you were pregnant—”

“She wasn’t?” Claire says, cutting me off. “She made it so I had to drop out of school, Abby. You don’t cal that angry?”

I think of how sorry I used to feel for Claire. How I used to think that Tess was cruel for turning away from her best friend because she got pregnant like it was a crime or something.

Like she couldn’t bear to be around Claire anymore.

“You … you broke her heart,” I say. “You knew how she felt and you hooked up with Rick and—”

“Abby—”

“No,” I say, and keep talking. “That’s why you never said much of anything about Beth, right? Why you always smiled when I talked about them living together. You knew, and you’d hurt her, and I thought she was being cruel when you—”

“Stop,” Claire says, and I realize we are moving, that the ferry has docked and Claire is driving off the boat. Driving back into Ferrisvil e. “You don’t—Tess dated guys too, Abby.”

“Yeah,” I say slowly, thinking of al the guys who’d cal ed Tess, who’d hung around her. How she’d talk to them, maybe see them at a party or go on one date, maybe two, and then send them on their way. None of them had turned her into the furious, hate-fil ed person that Claire had.