Between Here and Forever - Elizabeth Scott [70]
“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.
“I want her to be sorry.”
“I want her to be sorry too,” Claire says, stubbing out her cigarette. “But I’d also like to be able to move out of my parents’ house and meet someone who wants to hold my hand where people can see.”
“You’ll meet that someone,” I say, and she looks at me.
“No,” she says. “I probably won’t. I’m twenty, with a two-year-old, and I live with my parents in a town where everyone is pretty much each other’s cousin. I get up, I take a shower, I go to work. I give dying people sponge baths and change bedpans. I come home, I see my son, I go to bed.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t be happy.”
“Who says I’m not happy?” Claire says, and then grins at me. “I’m not unhappy, Abby. I just am. I have Cole, I have my parents, I have a job. It’s enough.”
“It’s not,” I say, so strongly I surprise myself.
“Why not?” she says. “Look at you. You’re doing the same thing. Before the accident, you got up, you went to school, you came home. Now you get up, you go to school, you see Tess, you come home. You totally blew off El—”
“I don’t want to talk about Eli,” I mutter. “Especially not if you’re going to bitch at me again.”
“Fine,” Claire says. “Throw away something that could be great because you don’t know what’s going to happen. Go ahead and—”
“I’m not like Tess.”
“Yeah, you are, because you’re afraid too. Not of the same things she was, but you’re still afraid. You know what I wish someone had told me back when I was trying to decide what to do after Tess said sorry, she wanted things to stay the way they were?”
“That you were better off without her?”
Claire shakes her head. “No, I told myself that. I told myself lots of stuff like that, right up until I woke up, went to take a shower, and realized I hadn’t had my period in a while. I wish someone had told me to believe I deserved what I wanted, that wanting Tess to love me like I did her was okay. I wish someone had told me I deserved to be happy. I wish … I wish I’d believed I deserved to be.”
“But that’s so obvious,” I say. “I mean, everyone knows they deserve some happiness. That’s all people think life should be, Claire. Happily ever after all the time. It’s not—no one wants to be unhappy.”
“You do.”
“I—yeah, I asked for Tess to be my sister. I asked for her to be in an accident. I asked to live here. I asked for all of it, when all along, I should have been asking for candy and ponies. What was I thinking?”
“You know I’m right,” Claire says. “I can tell, because you’ve gotten all bitchy.” She looks down at her hands, and then at me.
“Look,” she says. “I’m going to say this to you because I really do wish someone had said it to me, even though right now you’re being a total pain in the ass. But you—Abby, you can be happy. You should be. And I wish you would see that. I wish you would believe it.”
There is so much sorrow in her voice, and it’s not just for her, it’s for me, and it breaks my heart.
It makes me think. “Claire—”
She stands up. “I’m going to bed.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“For Tess?”
“No. I mean, yes, for what she did, but also for not—I should have known you would never hurt her. You aren’t that kind of person. And what you said, I just, you know …”
“You’re welcome,” Claire says, and then laughs a little. “Only in Ferrisville could my best friend be my former never-really-real-girlfriend’s younger sister. Although I think you trying to say thank you is weirder.”
“If I believe what you said, will you believe it too?”
“No,” Claire says softly. “I won’t. I can’t. I’m not—I’m not strong enough to now.