After Ever Happy (After #4) (51 page)

I still wasn’t ready or actually considering publishing it until I made the mistake of bringing it to one of my group-therapy sessions a few months ago. Luke had grabbed the binder from under my plastic chair as I told the story of burning my mother’s house to the ground. The words were forced—I hate talking about that shit—but I kept my eyes above the curious eyes watching me and pretended that Tessa was there, in the room, smiling and proud of me for sharing my darkest time with a group of strangers who were just as fucked-up as I am . . . was.

I had reached down to grab the binder as Dr. Tran dismissed our group. My panic was short-lived when I looked over at Luke and found the binder in his hands.

“What is all this?” he asked, his eyes going over a page.

“If you would have met me a month ago, you would be swallowing your fucking teeth right now.” I glared at him, grabbing the binder from his grasp.

“Sorry, man, I’m not good at social etiquette.” His smile was uncomfortable, and for some reason it made me feel as if I could trust him.

“Clearly.” I rolled my eyes, shoving all the loose pages back into the pockets.

He laughed. “Will you tell me what it is if I buy you a root beer from next door?”

“How sad are we? A couple of recovering alcoholics, negotiating to read a life story.” I shook my head, wondering how I got to this point at such a young age, but I was so thankful for Tessa. If not for her, I would still be hiding in the darkness, left to rot.

“Well, root beer won’t make you burn any houses down, and it won’t make me say hurtful things to Kaci.”

“Fine. Root beer is fine.” I knew he was going to Dr. Tran for more than couple’s counseling, but I decided not to be a complete dickhead and call him out on it.

We walked to the restaurant next door. I ordered a shitload of food, on his tab, and I ended up letting him read a few pages of my confessional.

Twenty minutes later I had to put an end to it. He would have read the entire thing if I’d let him. “This is amazing, really, man. This is . . . fucked-up in some parts, but I get it. It wasn’t you talking, it was the demons.”

“Demons, huh?” I took a long draw, finishing off the root beer in my glass.

“Yeah, demons. When you’re drunk, you are full of them.” He smiled. “Some of this I just read, I know wasn’t written by you. It had to be the demons.”

I shook my head. He was right, of course, but I couldn’t help but picture a creepy little red dragon-thing on my shoulder, writing the fucked-up shit that was on some of those pages.

“You’ll let her read this when you finish it, right?”

I dipped a cheese stick into some sauce and tried not to cuss him out for ruining my amusing thoughts about little demon creatures. “No. No way would I let her read this shit.” I tapped my finger across the leather binding, remembering how excited Tessa was for me to use it when she bought it. I fought the idea, of course, but now I love the stupid thing.

“You should. I mean, take some of that twisted stuff out, especially the part about her being infertile. That was just wrong.”

“I know.” I didn’t look at him; I looked down at the table and cringed, wondering what the hell was going through my mind when I wrote that shit.

“You should consider doing more with it. I’m not expert on literature or Heningsway, but I know that what I read was really, really good.”

I swallow, choosing to ignore the mispronunciation. “Publish this?” I chuckled. “No fucking way.” I ended the conversation there.

But job interview after job interview, I was bored, so fucking bored—and I left each one feeling even less challenged than at the last, and I couldn’t imagine sitting in any of those shitty offices. I wanted to work in publishing, I did, but I found myself rereading page after page of my fucked-up thoughts, and the more I read and remembered, the more I wanted—no, needed—to do something with it.

It just sat there, begging for me to at least try, and I had this idea in my head that if she saw it, after I could cut some of the harsh shit out, she would love it. It became an obsession, and I was surprised by the interest people seemed to have in watching someone else’s road to self-recovery.

Fucked-up, but they ate the shit up. I emailed each potential house a copy via an agent I knew from my time at Vance. Apparently the days of bringing in a stack of half-handwritten, half-typed pages are over.

This would be it, though, or so I thought. I thought this book would be the grand gesture that she needed to accept me back into her life. Granted, I thought it would be months from now, when the book was printed, and she’d had more time to do whatever the fuck she’s been doing here in New York City.

I can’t sit here any longer. There is a limit to my newly found patience, and I’ve reached it. I hate, absolutely loathe, the idea of Tessa’s walking around this massive city alone, mad at me. She’s been gone long enough, and I have explaining to do, a lot of it.

I grab the last page of the book and shove it into my pocket, not bothering to fold it. Then I text Landon and tell him to leave the door unlocked if he comes in or goes out and head out of the apartment to find her.

I don’t have far to go, though. When I step outside, I find her sitting on the front stoop of the building. She’s gazing off into nothing, her eyes focused and hard. She doesn’t notice me when I approach her. Only when I sit down next to her does she look up at me, her eyes still distant. I watch closely as they slowly soften.

“We need to talk.”

She nods and looks away, waiting for an explanation.

W
e need to talk,” I repeat and look at her, forcing my hands to stay in my own lap.

“I would say.” She forces a smile. Her knees are dirty, marked with angry red lines.

“What happened? Are you all right?” My plan to keep my hands to myself goes out the window as I reach for her legs, examining the wounds closer.

She turns away, cheeks red and eyes matching. “I tripped, that’s all.”

“None of this was ever supposed to happen.”

“You wrote a book about us and shopped it around to publishers. How was that not intentional?”

“No, I mean all of this. You and I, everything.” The air is humid, and I’m finding it harder than I expected to get the words out. “This year has been an entire lifetime for me. I have learned so much about myself and about life and about how life should be. I had this fucked-up view of everything. I hated myself, I hated everyone around me.”

She remains silent, but I can tell by the trembling of her bottom lip that she’s doing her best to keep a straight face.

“I know you don’t understand, not many people do, but the worst feeling in the entire fucking world is hating yourself, and that’s what I dealt with every single day. That wasn’t an excuse for the shit I pulled. I should have never treated you the way that I did, and you had every damn right to leave me the way you did. I only hope that you will read the entire book before making your decision. You can’t judge a book without reading from cover to cover.”

“I’m trying not to judge, Hardin, I’m really not, but this is too much. I fell out of this pattern, and I didn’t see this coming, and I still can’t wrap my head around it.” Her head shakes as if she’s trying to clear the rapid thoughts that I see firing behind those beautiful eyes.

“I know, baby. I know.” When I reach for one of her hands and wrap my fingers around it, she winces. I gently turn her hand over to examine the welts covering the skin of her palm. “You okay?”

She nods, allowing me to trace the wound with my fingertip.

“Who would even want to read it? I can’t believe so many publishers want it.” Tessa looks away from me, focusing on the city that somehow keeps moving around us, as busy as ever.

“A lot of people.” I shrug, stating the truth.

“Why? It’s so . . . not a typical love story. I’ve only read a little bit of it, and I can see how dark it is.”

“Even the damned need their stories told, Tess.”

“You aren’t damned, Hardin,” she says, despite the betrayal she must still be feeling.

I sigh, slightly agreeing with her. “In hopes for redemption, maybe? Maybe not, maybe some people only want to read about happiness and cliché love stories, but there are millions of people, people who aren’t perfect and have been through shit in their lives, and maybe they want to connect with it? Maybe they would see some of themselves in me, and, hell”—I rub my shaking hand over the back of my neck—“hell, maybe someone could learn something from my mistakes, and yours.”

She’s looking at me now as I vomit the words onto the concrete stairs. Uncertainty is still clear in her eyes, pushing more words from my mouth.

“Maybe sometimes everything isn’t so black-and-white, and maybe not everyone is fucking perfect. I’ve done a lot of shit in my life, to you, and to others, that I regret and I would never, ever repeat or condone. This isn’t about that. This book was an outlet for me. It was another form of therapy for me. It gave me a place where I could just write whatever the fuck I wanted and what I felt. This is me and my life, and I’m not the only person out there who has made mistakes, an entire fucking book of them, and if people judge me for the dark content of my story, then that’s on them. I can’t possibly please everyone, and I know there will be more people, people like us, Tessa, that relate to this book and want to see someone admit their issues and deal with them in a real way.”

Her lips turn up at the corners, and she sighs, shaking her head slightly. “What if people don’t like it? What if they don’t even take the chance to read it, but they hate us for what’s inside of it? I’m not ready for that type of attention. I don’t want people talking about my life and judging me.”

“Let them hate us. Who gives a fuck what they think? They weren’t going to read it anyway.”

“This is just . . . I can’t decide how I feel about this. What type of love story is this?” Her voice is shaky and unsure.

“This is the type of love story that deals with real fucking problems. It’s a story about forgiveness and unconditional love, and it shows how much a person can change, really change, if they try hard enough. It’s the type of story that proves that anything is fucking possible when it comes to self-recovery. It shows that if you have someone to lean on, someone who loves you and doesn’t give up on you, you can find your way out of the darkness. It shows that no matter what type of parents you had, or addictions you were faced with, you can overcome anything that stands in your way and become a better person. That’s the type of story
After
is.”

“ ‘
After
’?” She tilts her chin up, using her hand to shield her eyes from the sun.

“That’s what it’s called.” I look away, suddenly feeling self-conscious about the name. “It’s about my journey, after meeting you.”

“How much of it is bad? God, Hardin, why didn’t you just tell me?”

“I don’t know,” I honestly say. “Not as much as you think is bad. You read the worst of it. Those pages that you didn’t see, the ones that are the true essence of the story, they are about how much I love you, how you gave me a purpose in life, and how meeting you was the best thing that has ever happened to me. The unread pages share our laughs along with my struggles, our struggles.”

She covers her face with her hands out of frustration. “You should have told me that you were writing this. There were so many hints, how did I not see it?”

I lean back against the steps. “I know that I should have, but by the time I understood and began to change what I was doing wrong, I wanted it to be perfect before I showed you. I truly am sorry for that, Tessa. I love you, and I’m sorry that you found out about it this way. My intentions were not to hurt or deceive you, and I’m so sorry that you felt that way. I’m not the same man that I was when you left me, Tessa. You know that I’m not.”

Her voice is barely a whisper when she replies, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Just read it. Will you please just read the entire book before making any decisions? That’s all I ask, please just read it.”

Her eyes close, and she shifts her body, making her knee lean into my shoulder. “Yes, I’ll read it.”

A fraction of air returns to my lungs, some of the weight is lifted off my chest, and I couldn’t put my relief into words even if I tried.

She stands up, brushing off her scratched knees.

“I’ll get something for you to put on those.”

“I’m fine.”

“When will you stop fighting me?” I try to lighten the mood.

It works, and she fights a smile. “Never.” She begins to walk up the steps, and I stand to follow her. I want to go into the apartment and sit next to her as she reads the entire novel, but I know that I shouldn’t. I use the small amount of judgment that I have and decide to take a walk around this dirty city.

“Wait!” I call after her when she reaches the top. I reach into my pocket and pull out a crumpled piece of paper. “Read this last, please. It’s the last page.”

She opens her hand and holds it out in front of her.

I take the steps quickly, two at a time, and place the wad of paper into her hand. “Please don’t peek,” I beg of her.

“I won’t.” Tessa turns away from me, and I study the way she turns her head to smile back at me.

One of my greatest wishes in life would be for her to understand, to truly understand, that she is rare. She’s one of the few people in this world who know forgiveness, and when many would call her weak, she is truly the opposite. She’s strong, strong for standing by someone who hated himself. Strong for showing me that I’m not damned, that I am worthy of love, too, despite growing up thinking the opposite. She was strong enough to walk away from me when she did, and she’s strong enough to love unconditionally. Tessa is stronger than most, and I hope she knows that.

W
hen I enter the apartment, I take a moment to gather my thoughts, which are shooting this way and that. When I reach the binder lying on the table, all of the pages are shoved inside, out of order.