“Gabe,” Duke says, surprised, when he opens the front door.
“Hi, Duke.” Before I can explain why I’m standing on his front porch, soaking wet, Maggie peers over his shoulder.
“Gabe,” she says with equal surprise, but comprehension quickly settles on her face. “Now’s not a good time,” she says quietly, and I know Liv must be inside.
“It’s okay,” Liv says moments later, squeezing between her parents. She closes the door behind her, giving us privacy, and eyes my wet clothes. “Gabe, you’re drenched.”
She’s wearing sweats and an old T-shirt, her hair is pulled up, and she’s fresh-faced, blinking up at me. God, she hasn’t changed a bit. I stare at her for several quiet seconds as I’m swept back in time, reminded of how things used to be between us. Then I see the iridescent line that stretches across her cheek in the dim light of the porch and my chest rises and falls with labored breaths.
“Gabe, are you okay?” she asks, taking a step toward me, but she hesitates and falls back on her heels.
“I was really messed up after the accident,” I say urgently, unable to contain my thoughts any longer. “I still am.” I run my hands through my wet hair, tracing the scar over my ear. “I’m sorry, I don’t want it to be like this. But I can’t change what happened. I can’t take it back. And I can’t make it go away. I’ve tried. I swear to God, I’ve tried. But I don’t know how to fix it. I can’t fix it,” I admit, wishing like hell I could.
Liv’s eyes fill with tears, but she doesn’t say anything.
“I was good, Liv. I was good before—”
“I know,” she says, taking a step toward me again. This time she reaches for my arm, touching it gently with her small hand. “I know you were.”
“I did everything I was supposed to do, you know? Made good grades, played sports, got a full ride to college. I even waited for...” I look away from her sympathetic eyes, full of compassion I don’t deserve. “For a while, I had it all. A best friend who was like a brother and a girlfriend who—” I pause when I see the way she’s looking at me now, desperate for every word, every admission I came here to make. And full of forgiveness, still, after all these years. “Who was a best friend,” I say honestly, wanting her to know. “Who was everything.”
Her green eyes shimmer behind her tears and my heart hammers inside my chest as fast and hard as the rain pounding on the sidewalk. I want to pull her into my arms and tell her that everything will be okay, but I don’t know if it will be. I don’t know how it could be.
I clear my throat and continue, “But I took it all for granted. And just like that, it was all gone.”
She reaches for me again, but hesitates, like before. “I’m messed up too. I think I probably always will be.” She presses her lips together into an unapologetic smile and shrugs. “But not just because of the accident. Because of everything that happened after it,” she says flatly, piercing my heart.
She’s messed up because of me. I already knew that she was, I could see that at the cemetery. But hearing her say it, hearing her admit that I’m the culprit of her pain, and probably always will be, nearly tears me in two.
I gaze at her through a sea of sadness I usually camouflage with silence. But I can’t be silent around her. I can’t pretend to be the person everyone thinks I’ve become, the person I often believe I’ve become, with her. She deserves more than that. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
The pained look on her face tells me I did, I hurt her deeply. And I meant to. As much as it killed me, as much as I didn’t want to hurt her, I meant to. But I don’t know how to make her understand that even though every bone in my body was telling me not to, I did it for her.
“You’ll never know how sorry I am,” I say, leaving it at that. I drop my head and shove my hands into my pockets. “I guess that’s what I really came here to say. That I’m sorry. For all of it...for the accident, for Brandon, and most of all, for hurting you.”
She blinks back the tears that fill her eyes, but she doesn’t respond.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me, especially not for Brandon, but I just wanted you to know. I am sorry.” Having said what I needed to say, I duck my head, step off the porch, and jog through the rain toward my truck.
“It’s okay,” Liv calls urgently, and I pause.
I turn around and watch her jog down the steps on bare feet, and run through the grass, ignoring the pelting rain. She collides into me, wraps her arms around me, and presses her cheek to my chest. “I forgive you,” she says with a breath of relief, like she’s been holding it in all this time, and I feel a small weight slip off my shoulders, startling me, because I’d forgotten it was there. I’ve been carrying it so long.
I close my eyes and wrap my arms around her shoulders.
“I forgive you,” she says again, and I fight a tear that leaks onto my cheek and mixes with the rain on my face.
I tighten my arms around her and hold her until I feel the warmth of her skin against mine through our wet clothes. And for the first time in seven years, I feel relief.
“There’s no easy fix, Gabe, for any of it. But maybe...maybe we can just be messed up together.” My heart races, defiantly thrilled at the unlikely prospect, but it calms down when she adds, “As friends.”
Friends. I hadn’t considered this.
Could I be friends with Liv? My mind runs in circles around the idea, and I grasp at the possibility. We were friends long before we were together. And damn I miss her. She clings to me beneath a crack of lightning that lights up the sky, and I say into her wet hair, “Maybe.”
Chapter 9
Liv
“Ow!” I shake my hand and wipe off the hot oil that splattered it. I hold my finger to my mouth and continue dropping pieces of floured chicken into the popping skillet with a pair of tongs.
“Liv, baby, what are you doing?” my dad asks, looking surprised to see me standing over the stove, frying chicken in the middle of the day.
“I’m making lunch.” I keep my eyes on the skillet. “For Gabe.”
“Oh,” he says gently. “Well, all right.” He pours himself a cup of water. “You and Gabe spending some time together now?”
“No, not really.” I shrug. “I just thought it would be a nice gesture.”
He nods and sips his water. “Well, I think that’s a real nice thing to do.”
“I’m still not sure how this is going to help you move on with your life,” my mom says, joining us in the kitchen. “On from Gabe,” she adds with a knowing glance.
She was happy when I told her that Gabe and I made amends last night, but she had hoped we’d leave it at that. Sometimes I think she just needs something to worry about.
“I’m convinced there is no moving on from Gabe, Momma, not if I’m going to stay here. There’s just finding a new normal.”
“So, are you going to stay?” my dad asks, with hopeful eyes.
My mom gives me a subtle grin, and I nod happily in his direction. “Yeah. Momma and I found the perfect little condo this morning and it’s just a few blocks from the beach. But,” I add with a sigh, “it’s being renovated, so I won’t be able to move in for at least another month or two.”