Elizabeth Scott - Between Here and Forever

“Wait a minute,” I say, thinking of the picture of Tess and the guy on the beach. Of the anger in Tess’s eyes and how I assumed it was because Claire had hurt her, gone off with a guy like Tess had, only for real. “I thought—”

“You thought I got pregnant and broke Tess’s heart.”

“Yeah. I mean, before that, back when I thought you were just friends, I thought she was mad at you for—I don’t know. I thought she was judging you. You know how Tess could be. She liked things to be—”

“How she wanted them,” Claire says. “Believe me, I know.”

“But you two weren’t just friends, and she—”

“Tess couldn’t do it,” Claire says. “Wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t stop being who everyone thought she was, even though it wasn’t who she was. She said that if we—she said if we told everyone we were together, we wouldn’t be who people thought we were. That’s just how she said it too. ‘If we do this, Claire, nobody wil think we’re who we say we are.’” She looks down at the ground.

I think she’s going to cry so I say, “Claire?” and touch her shoulder.

She looks at me and I see she isn’t going to cry. She’s furious, so angry her mouth is working like it’s ful of words and she’s trying to get them to come out in order.

“It was such a load of crap,” she says. “Tess just—she wanted to be Homecoming Queen like everyone said she would be. She wanted everyone to keep trying to dress like her, be like her. She didn’t want—she wanted to be Tess , the girl every guy wanted and dreamed about having even if he had a girlfriend. She didn’t want to be Tess, the gay girl.”

“Wait,” I say, because this is not what I pictured, this is not what I pictured at al . I can see Tess being the one to break Claire’s heart. I remember the pictures and can see them for what they are now, how Claire used them to show Tess what she’d felt they’d lost. What she thought Tess had given up. “My parents said Tess—they said she—”

Stupidly, absurdly, I lower my voice, as if someone might hear, as if what I’m going to say could be somehow overheard. As if Tess could somehow hear it now. “They said she had to go see a doctor. They said she was upset and—”

Claire shrugs. “Maybe she was. Maybe after she told me we had to be who people thought we were, and I said no when she wanted to mess around and then went off and screwed Rick and got pregnant, proved I could be straighter than she ever could—yeah, then maybe she might have gotten upset.”

“No, I think she—I think my parents meant she was upset over you.”

“Over me?” Her voice cracks on the last word. “She wasn’t upset over me.”

I think of Tess refusing to let any of us even say Claire’s name. I think about the day with the meatbal s. I think about how Tess always turned away whenever she saw Claire, or Claire and Cole, like she didn’t want to see them. Like she couldn’t.

“Look, I know how Tess is—was,” I say, and it hurts to say that, to put Tess in the past tense. Even now, hearing that she broke Claire’s heart because she wanted to keep on being the girl everyone wanted, the girl who was always just out of reach, it hurts.

I didn’t know I loved Tess this much. Not until now.

I look down at the ground, blinking hard, my eyes burning.

“I know how she was,” I say after a moment. “She was—she loved being adored, and I … you know I hated living with that. Being Tess’s little sister. Being the one who wasn’t as nice, who wasn’t as pretty. Being the one who had to watch her get everything she wanted. But she—when she found out that you were pregnant, she changed. It was like she had … like she decided her life was a role or something. She’d go out smiling, but at home she was upset. She was so silent sometimes.”

“Oh, so she was quiet?” Claire says, and although there’s scorn in her voice I hear something else too, something wounded and hesitant, and think of how Claire always manages to come by Tess’s room at the hospital.

I think love is huge, overwhelming. I think it’s terrible and beautiful, and I wish Tess had found a way to live with it. To let it in when she had the chance. I wish she hadn’t broken Claire and then broken herself.

“I never saw her cry,” I say careful y. “But she … she would come home and sit in her room and just stare at nothing for hours, and I thought—wel , my parents told me she was worried about col ege, and you know how her grades were.”

“I remember,” Claire says, but I can tel she is thinking of something else. Of a Tess I never knew at al .

“She was unhappy,” I say. “She was—”

“And I was what, spinning around ful of joy?” Claire says. “Tess broke my heart and then made life impossible for me. She was beyond cruel.”

“Your name is her computer password,” I say in a rush. “She kept pictures you sent her. She even—you’re the reason why she and Beth broke up. She didn’t—”

“What? Love Beth the way she loved me?” Claire says. “I’ve seen Beth visit her, I see how Beth looks at her. I know that look. Tess wouldn’t choose her either. Beth was just smart enough to be the one who left.”

“It’s not—I don’t think she knew how much …” I take a deep breath. “I don’t think she knew how much she loved you until you got pregnant. Until you … I guess maybe she thought you’d come back or—”

“You know the real y pathetic thing?” Claire says. “I would have. I would have gone back. I told her I wanted to actual y kiss her in public, that I wanted people to see how much I loved her, but I would have kept on being the best friend. I would have kept on going on double dates with her and making out in my room, in the dark, when we got home.”

She taps ash off her cigarette. “I would have done anything for her. But she couldn’t get over the fact that I got drunk, had sex, and got pregnant.

She couldn’t understand it. That’s what she said. ‘I don’t understand.’ Sometimes I think that’s what made her the maddest, you know. That I could want somebody else, even if it was for just a little while.”

“Tess wasn’t—she isn’t evil, you know.” I’m surprised to hear myself say it, because there have been times when I’ve pretty much hated Tess.

Times before the accident. After the accident. But she wasn’t—she wasn’t who I thought she was. And now that I’ve learned more about her, the real her, I see what a mess she made of things. How imperfect she was.

How she could and did break her own heart too.

“I know,” Claire says, and then seeing my face, adds, “I do. Now, anyway. The first time she came home from col ege and I saw her, I didn’t feel like I was going to die. I just thought, ‘Oh, there’s Tess. I wonder if Cole’s hungry.’ Having him—” She shrugs. “I couldn’t think about just me anymore. I can’t think about just me anymore.”

“But you miss her.”

“No,” Claire says, shaking her head. “I just—I look at her lying there, and I think, No. I think Wrong. I wish she’d wake up. I wish we were fifteen again. I wish I’d never met her. I wish she’d said, ‘I want you, just you.’ I wish she’d said she was sorry for everything.”

“She would have …” I say, and then stop, because I don’t know if Tess would have. The Tess I know wouldn’t—she never apologized for anything because she never had to, because she never did anything wrong. But the other Tess, the real Tess, maybe she wouldn’t have either. Maybe she knew some things are too big for “sorry.”

Maybe she knew what she’d done to Claire couldn’t be forgiven.

“Look, sometimes you just have to live with how things are, even if they aren’t how you want them to be,” Claire says.