It’s five days before Hayden contacts me again, and the second I see him walk through the front doors of my restaurant, I feel a weight lift off my shoulders.
He smiles when he sees me at the host stand, and I do my best not to show him I’m happy to see him.
“Hi,” he breathes, tapping his fingers on top of the counter.
“Hey,” I say, keeping my tone casual. “Want a table?”
“Sure.” He grins, and as I grab and menu, his eyes are on me, making me feel exposed. I lead him through the restaurant, and seat him at a small table in the corner. “Thanks.”
When he turns his head to look at the menu, I notice there’s something new tattooed on his neck. It takes me a minute to put it together in my mind, but when I do, I gasp and grab his face. “What did you do!?”
I twist his head to the side so I can see the tattoo clearer. Where he originally had a small P tattooed on his neck, he’s extended it into PENELOPE
He chuckles. “You like?”
Dropping my hold on his face, I put my fingers to my mouth. “What. Did. You. Do.”
He looks up at me, his dark eyes glittering as he reaches for my hand to squeeze. “I didn’t want there to be any confusion about who owns me.”
“Hayden,” I breathe, my entire body tingling. “You’re fucking crazy.”
He slides his thumb over my knuckles. “Crazy for you, and that’s not going to change.”
I graze my hand up my face and put it on my forehead. “Oh my god, you’re going to kill me.”
Leaning down, I get a closer look at the tattoo, reading my name over and over again as I breathe in his familiar scent, then I dip my head forward and kiss it. He stiffens, his breath catching in his throat as my lips move across the entire word, and when I pull back and straighten out, his eyes have dropped closed.
A moment passes, then he stands up quickly and slides his hand into my hair before his lips find mine. I moan without meaning to, melting against his mouth as we kiss, and then I force myself to pull back. My head spins, his lips having felt like coming home and rushing into a thunderstorm all at once.
“Hayden,” I say softly, squeezing my eyes shut as he breathes against my mouth. “Go back to California.”
“Not without you,” he whispers, tightening his fingers in my hair.
I step back, opening my eyes, and his hands fall from my hair. When his gaze finds mine, I see him break, and goddamnit, it fucking hurts so bad. My eyes fill with moisture, so I blink back the tears. Clearing my throat, I take another step away. “I’ll get your server.”
He shakes his head, his mouth dropping open as he exhales sharply. It looks like he’s going to start crying, but he runs his hand down his face before he does. Clearing his throat, he sits down and looks at the menu, his fingers playing with the edge of the paper. He’s silent, and I stand there watching him, wondering if this will be the moment I see the old Hayden again. Maybe I’ve finally pushed him over the edge.
The thought splinters through me in agonizing waves, so I sit down opposite him and grab his hand. “I’m sorry.”
He looks up at me, pain circling in his eyes. “For what?”
“Making you feel like this.” I slide my fingertip over the tattoos on his knuckles one by one like I used to in intimate moments.
“I don’t know what to do, P,” he breathes, and I lift my gaze to his. “Being without you, it’s fucking killing me. Being here, in Luxington, where everything was dark for me, it’s hard. But I can’t walk away… I can’t.”
My heart pounds in my chest. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry. Tell me you’ll take the risk – tell me it’s fucking worth it, like you did all those years ago.”
Removing my hand from his, I feel a tear slip down my cheek. “I can’t.”
I stand up and walk away from him before I have the chance to change my mind, before I show him how broken I am by the two little words. I want to be strong, I want to stick to my choice on this – because I’m not sure if taking the risk on Hayden Monroe is worth it this time.
I hide out in the kitchen for the rest of my shift, and when I go back out into the dining area, Hayden is gone.
Disappointment washes over me, unsettling me, because part of me was hoping he would still be waiting for me at the table I put him at earlier. Deep down, I think I want him to keep fighting, I just can’t admit it. My entire drive home, I’m thinking about how selfish it makes me that I want him to keep going through this.
As soon as I walk through the door, I pour myself a large glass of wine and sit down on the rug in my living room, my back against the couch. I don’t bother turning on the TV, putting my phone on the table in front of me. If I’m going to figure this all out, I need to do it silently and without anything distracting me. I know I at least owe him that.
I’ve never known Hayden to beg for anything, and I know that’s why I’m even considering letting him get close again. Maybe he has changed; I just need to take the leap into the cold water and risk my heart again, and that’s what’s so fucking hard.
Five years ago, he came crashing into my life, and I haven’t been the same since.
But what if that isn’t a good thing? What if I was meant for more – a life with my dream career, a family, happiness. Would I have ever been able to have any of that with the Hayden I fell in love with? My high school student?
I’m getting lost in the thoughts of the first time we met, when my phone buzzes on the table, pulling me from the memory. Grabbing it, I see I’ve gotten a text from an unsaved number.
UNSAVED NUMBER:
Penelope, I’m not sure if you remember me… This is Logan Briar, Hayden’s friend… Do you have a moment to talk?
My heart pounds under my ribs, and I type back quickly.
ME:
I remember you, Logan.
I watch as the dancing dots come up in the text box, then her response comes through.
UNSAVED NUMBER:
Unfortunately, all I can do is text, because I’m sitting at a football practice in Philly, but I wanted to reach out and have a quick chat, girl to girl.
The dots come up again and stay that way for a few minutes before her next message comes through.
UNSAVED NUMBER:
Listen, maybe it isn’t my place to say anything, but I’ve never been good at keeping out of Hayden’s business, because I care about him. I felt like I needed to say something.
Luckily, I’m tight with his assistant, and she got your phone number from his phone bill.
I’m not there, and I won’t pretend to know your side of what happened when we all lived in Lux, but I can’t sit back and listen to my best friend break all over again.
His life has never been easy, but I have never seen him the way he was when he first got back from rehab. He spent months looking for you, Penelope. He went to the hospital where your dad was, but by the time he got back, your dad had already passed.
He was an empty shell for the rest of our senior year. He didn’t go to prom, he didn’t do any of the senior activities he should have done, he didn’t even walk at graduation.
All he wanted was you back. He spent every day walking the halls as a ghost, haunted by what he did to you.
I’m sobbing as I finish reading the message, my hands shaking. Tears splash off my phone, and my eyes burn as I watch the dots dance across my screen as Logan keeps typing.
UNSAVED NUMBER:
What he did was fucked up – I won’t tell you any different, but that’s all he knew. He was addicted to drugs, dealing with a loss that he never processed correctly, abandoned by his father, and fighting the urges inside of himself to self-harm every minute of the day. I didn’t know at the time how bad it had gotten; I never knew how much bad shit he was doing in secret. And maybe that’s on me and my friends for not paying close enough attention, but at the end of the day, he wasn’t in the right state of mind to make the right decisions. He was sick. He always will be, but the difference now is that he’s strong enough to know it.
He won’t tell you that he’s in therapy once a week, that he’s on meds that balance him out, that he’s been sober for three years, he got straight As through college and started working with his dad his junior year, and now he’s the CEO of a major corporation. He finally visited his mother’s grave in Paris, spent time with his grandparents, he fixed things with his dad and accepted that it was never his fault that he didn’t have love growing up. And now that his dad has died, I thought maybe I would be shipping him back to rehab, but he’s kept strong. He’s celebrating three years sober today, did he tell you that?
Crying, I read the message twice, letting her honesty seep into my soul, then another message comes through.
UNSAVED NUMBER:
You’re inside him, Penelope, you never left.
Maybe over the last few years, you’ve moved on, maybe he wasn’t a big part of your life like you were his, but he never even thought about moving on. Even when we tried to set him up in college, even when people threw themselves at him at parties, even when we lectured him that he needed to move on, it was always you and it always will be. You were the first person in his life who he loved, and I’m sure you’ll be the last.
He’ll be at the church on the corner of Grove and Beckett, out by the beach, tonight at 6:30. You should go and listen.
I spend the next thirty minutes reading her messages repeatedly, sadness pooling in my eyes and dripping down my face, and by the time I look up at the clock, it’s nearing 6. I hover my thumbs over the screen, then type a message back to Logan.
ME:
Thank you.
Standing up, I rush to my room to change my clothes and splash some water on my face. My skin is red and blotchy from crying, and my eyes are bloodshot, but I don’t want to spend any more time here than I need to – I don’t want to have enough time to change my mind about going to find Hayden. I’m dizzy and nervous when I grab my purse and rush out of my apartment, but I push myself to get into the driver’s seat of my car and head for the church on Grove and Beckett. I’m not sure what I’m going to find, because I’ve never known Hayden to be religious, and ideas float around in my mind for the entire drive.
The little parking lot is half full when I pull in at 6:35, and I park in the back just in case I want to stay hidden. Turning off the engine, I toy with my keys in my lap for a minute, feeling so nervous that my stomach is flipping. I take a deep breath, then blow it out and open my car door.
When I get to the front doors of the church, there’s a flyer taped to them.
NA meeting tonight: 6:30PM, conference room.
Taking a breath, I pull the door open slowly. The air conditioning blows over me as I walk in and close the door with a quiet click, and I walk through the lobby to find the right room. There’s a pair of doors sitting in the back with glass panels, so I look through them. A dozen or so people are sitting in folding chairs in the room, and I spot Hayden in the front row, listening to someone standing at the podium talking.
Surprisingly, I’m able to creep into the room and sit down in the back corner without anyone noticing. A few people take turns standing up in front of the group to share their stories, and tears fill my eyes as I listen to their struggles. After twenty minutes, a man with light hair and an aged face steps up to the podium and smiles at the crowd.
“Alright, everyone, we have one chip to hand out tonight.” He holds his hand towards the crowd where Hayden is sitting. “Hayden? Do you want to say anything?”
Hayden stands, his hands sliding into the front pocket of his jeans as he walks up to the podium, then he turns and faces the crowd. I slide down in my seat, not wanting him to see me just yet because I don’t want to ruin the meeting for him. I still want him to be able to speak freely like he needs.
“Hi, I’m Hayden, and I’m an addict.” His lips press together, and he looks down at his hands as everyone in the room says “hi” back to him.
His gaze stays on his hands as he begins talking again. “Today, I’m three years sober and I’m still making amends. You know, when I first joined the program four and a half years ago, I thought it would be a quicker process.” He chuckles, shaking his head slightly. “But this journey doesn’t ever end, and getting this chip doesn’t mean that I’ve reached any sort of finish line, it just shows me that I was strong enough to stick to it.” He pauses for a second, and I can see as his expression changes, a different emotion settles over him.
“My dad died recently, and I had to come back to this town, and it’s been so fucking hard that I couldn’t even begin to put it into words. I’ve had to face the mistakes I made before I was clean, the ones I avoided by staying across the country for four years, but I’m glad that I’m here. I’m sad that it took my father’s passing to make me realize I needed to be back here, that avoiding Luxington wasn’t solving anything. I was just using the distance as a Band-Aid that covered everything I was feeling.” He takes a breath. “See, there’s this woman who got caught up in my mistakes, and I treated her really badly all those years ago.”
He chokes on the words, his throat swelling with emotion. When he’s taken another breath, he starts to talk again. “I thought maybe I loved her because of the drugs, that she was just another part of my destructive streak, because the way we met and the relationship we had was so far from normal, I couldn’t even begin to explain it. There was part of me that thought I was holding on to the memory of her to keep the dead parts of me alive, but now I know.” He clears his throat. “Now that I’m back here, and I’ve seen her again, I know.”
My chest burns with anxiety as I watch him, then his head lifts and he looks out at the group. “She’s my soulmate.”
Tears stream down my cheeks, and I wipe them away.
The leader of the meeting hands Hayden a chip and shakes his hand, and he stares at it. “So, this chip isn’t just for me – it’s for her too. Because without her, I probably would have fallen off the wagon again when my dad died, but the reminder of her kept me going. And every chip after this, I’ll thank her for as well, even if I never see her again.”
When Hayden has returned to his seat, I stand up and run from the room. I don’t stop running until I’m outside, then I fall against the doors and cry.
