Between Here and Forever - Elizabeth Scott [20]
I didn’t think I was too good for them, and I knew I wasn’t going to be Tess. I didn’t want to be. I just wanted a world that was me and Jack and nothing more. I wanted him to be mine and, for a while, I thought he could.
And then, after it was over, I didn’t want to go crawling back to my “friends.” I didn’t want to ask for forgiveness, didn’t want to beg to be let back into something I didn’t really want any part of. I didn’t want to live in Milford, but I didn’t want to live in Ferrisville either. I didn’t want to hear about boys or clothes or parties or anything. I just wanted to be left alone. And so I was.
And so I am.
But that’s now, and I still had to get to that point.
I still had to break my own heart.
In the end, it was easy. Jack kept talking to Tess, kept walking her home. He was volunteering to collect water samples from the Ferrisville side of the river as part of some project the state was doing to see if the water was less full of chemicals than it had been. And I kept talking to him.
He tried to talk to Tess about poetry, and I talked to him about biology, about the latest medical trends, about countries that needed doctors. He asked Tess out to dinner, and when she said no I made him sandwiches that we’d split as we sat in the dark on the beach, talking.
We talked about Tess less after a while, and talked more about him. About me. He was—and will always be—the only guy I ever told the truth about how I sometimes felt when Tess was with me. About how I hated being her shadow.
“You shouldn’t think like that,” he said to me one night. We were down on the beach, like always, and he pushed his glasses up his nose and turned to look at me, moonlight gilding his hair to a shade that was a richer blond than Tess’s could ever be.
“You’re not like Tess at all, so why compare yourself? She’s beautiful on the outside, but you—you have the …” He cleared his throat. “You have the most beautiful soul. I know that sounds stupid, but it’s true. Any guy would be lucky to be with you.”
How could I not kiss him after he said that?
So I did, and he kissed me back. He dropped the rest of his sandwich, and when we separated he stared at me like he’d never seen me before.
“Abby,” he said, and the ferry whistle blew.
“I see what Tess doesn’t,” I said. “I see you, Jack. And I think you’re amazing. Meet me here tomorrow night. Just—just you and me.”
“Amazing?” he said. “Me?” He sounded so surprised I had to kiss him again.
And the next night, he took the ferry over earlier, and I slipped out of the house after dinner and met him down on the beach.
My parents didn’t ask where I was going or what I was doing. They never worried about me. Tess was the one who got phone calls all the time, who had guys get into fights over her—including a memorable one during my parents’ company picnic—and who used to come home way past her curfew, mutely shaking her head when my parents demanded to know where she’d been.
The parties had stopped when she’d quit hanging out with Claire, replaced with her telling us over and over that she had to get into a good school and always followed by long, frequent bouts of sitting in silence in her room. But the guys still called, and people still wanted to see her. My father would sometimes joke that it felt like we were all part of “Tess’s Messenger Service.”
So, no, Mom and Dad didn’t worry about me. I was free, free in a way I took for granted. I was free to do what I wanted, to follow my heart.
Free to be an idiot.
And I was one.
The worst part is that I can’t blame Jack. He never lied to me. When he showed up that first night to see me and not Tess, he told me he liked me, but that he still had feelings for Tess.
“I just—I think that if she got to know me, she’d like me,” he said. “I know that probably sounds dumb, and obviously I like you too since I’m here, but I’m—argh! This all sounded