Change of Heart (5 page)

Pretty soon I’m pulling into the subdivision I grew up in. Everything is the same, yet so, so different. And there are some things that will simply never be the same. I turn onto my parents’ street and try not to look at the house across the road, but I can’t not see his big, red truck in the driveway. I’d always poked fun at him for that monstrosity. But I loved that damn truck. Almost as much as he had.

I pull in my parents’ driveway, behind my dad’s truck. Tears burn behind my eyelids as I put the car in park, and I can’t stop them from spilling. I don’t have to anymore because I’m finally here.

After three years, I’m home.
 

Chapter Seven

Decker

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. What the hell is she doing here?

What are the chances that the one weekend I decide to come home and surprise my mom and dad is the same weekend Casey actually shows up? Three fucking years I’ve managed to avoid her, though from what my mom has said, she doesn’t even come home. Her parents always go to California to see her. That’s rich. Disappears without a damn trace and is too chicken shit to show her face back here.

Until now.

Three years and I still don’t know what the fuck I did to make her leave so abruptly. Three years is a long damn time to be holding a grudge, but to me, it’s valid. Twelve years we spent together, side-by-side, and bam! One day…she’s just gone.

Well, I’ll be damned if I let another day go by without telling her just how I feel about her sudden fucking departure from my life.

I storm out the front door and down the steps into the grass. She hasn’t gotten out of her car yet, so I know I’ll catch her before she disappears inside the house to hide. I look through the rear window of her car as I approach and it looks like she has her head down, probably trying to psych herself up. She always had to give herself little pep talks before big moments, and I’m sure being home after almost three years is a big damn moment.

Just as I approach the driver’s side door, it pops open. I take a startled step back, just as she looks up at me.

What the hell?

“Casey? Case, what’s wrong?” All traces of my anger are obliterated as I take in her wet, swollen face. She’s been crying. And not just a few tears, but rivers of them. Her eyes are red and puffy and the top of her t-shirt has been soaked through. She looks fragile—broken.

Nowhere in front of me is the girl I used to know. This Casey is a stranger. If she hadn’t shown up in her car, I wouldn’t have known it was her. Not at first. She’s pale, so pale. And thin. She was always thin, but this…this is something else. She looks gaunt. Unhealthy. Wrong.

A sob breaks free from her, and I fall to my knees, pulling her out of the car and onto my lap. My protective instincts have taken over and all I want to do is take care of her and make her feel better. I need to fix what’s broken. My arms are wrapped around her, holding her tight to my chest as she cries. She’s wailing now, like a wounded animal, and I have no idea what to do. She’s gripping my arms, the only sign that I might be doing something right here.

“Casey? Baby? Talk to me, please? I don’t know what to do here.” I beg and plead for her to give me some kind of sign. Some inkling as to what is wrong. She doesn’t respond, just continues to cry and shudder in my lap, her arms desperately gripping mine.

After a few minutes, she finally settles down a bit. Her breaths are coming in short pants, but the tears have subsided. She pulls away from me slightly and looks into my eyes, like she’s realizing who I am for the first time. And she looks
pained
to see me.
She
looks pained to see
me
.

“I’m sorry, Decker,” she mutters as she pulls herself completely out of my embrace and stands up. I let her go. I don’t know what just happened, but I don’t want to upset her further. I want her to feel comfortable with me…to talk to me.

But when she turns to go to the house without another word, that’s when I’ve had enough.

“What the fuck, Casey?” I shout at her retreating back. Her slight jump is the only indication she’s even heard me as she continues walking away, faster now.

Not this time.

I get to my feet and quickly run after her, grabbing her arm and spinning her around to face me. “You are
not
walking away from me. We need to talk.”

She tries to tug her arm from my grasp, refusing to make eye contact or even acknowledge my presence or my words. “You’re hurting me,” she cries.

“Stop twisting and it wouldn’t hurt,” I bite out. She stops resisting and I let go of her arm. “You have to talk to me, Casey. You can’t just show up out of the blue, crying your eyes out and not say anything. You can’t keep blowing me off! I deserve better than that, damn it.”

Her lower lip quivers and part of me, the part of me who was best friends with this girl for so long, feels awful for attacking her like this. But the other part of me, the part of me that she abandoned, doesn’t care. He wants to know why she left, and why, all of a sudden, she’s back.

“Not now. Please just let me go inside, Decker.” She looks worn out, completely defeated.

“Fine,” I say, clenching my jaw. “But we will talk before you skip town again.”

She nods absently, almost robotically.

“What’s happened to you?” I whisper. The Casey I knew was full of life. She’d been a little bit of a geek, but she was my geek. This Casey is lifeless. Emotionless, aside from that breakdown of course.

She meets my eyes so quickly I almost miss the movement entirely. Shaking her head she turns towards the house.

“Decker? Casey? Is that you?”

Casey and I both turn our heads, taking in my mom’s quick approach from across the street. I hadn’t even heard her car pull up. She completely bypasses me and pulls Casey into her arms. Casey immediately starts sobbing again.

What the fuck?

“Have I entered some kind of alternate universe here?” I ask no one in particular.

Here’s my mom, who hasn’t seen me in a good month, and she just runs right to the girl who devastated me when I was eighteen. My mom was there. She saw what Casey’s disappearing act did to me. Whether I admitted it at the time or not, she’s my mom, she knew.

My mom pulls away from Casey and holds her at arm’s length. “How was your drive? You must be exhausted.”

“You knew she was coming?” I can’t even believe this.

My mom shoots me a glare, but behind it is utter sadness. She’s been crying, too. “You should try answering your phone.”

“It died…I wanted to surprise you.” I’d been on a road trip with the baseball team for the past seven days and I’d left my cell phone charger at the dorm. I ran into the dorm long enough to swap out my overnight bag, but I didn’t have time to charge my phone and I don’t have an in-car charger. My mom had my schedule. She knew how to get in touch with the team should an emergency come up, all the parents did.

“Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” I shout.

My mom glares at me again and turns Casey towards her house. “Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you inside.” She looks at me over her shoulder, “Wait for me at the house.”

I watch my mom walk Casey into her house, wondering where her parents are. Did something happen to Mr. and Mrs. Evans? That could explain why she’s home and why she’s so upset. Why my mom’s upset. The thought causes a heavy weight to press against my chest. Mr. and Mrs. Evans are like second parents to me, have been since we moved to this street fifteen years ago. I hope nothing’s happened to them.

God…I was such an asshole to Casey. I was such an asshole and obviously something must have happened to bring her back here and have her so upset. I just couldn’t see past my own anger over her leaving to even begin to process that something might have truly been wrong.

Shit. What did I do?

***

An hour later my mom finally walks into the side door to the kitchen. I jump up from my seat at the kitchen table and approach her.

She looks at me and sighs, shaking her head. “Mr. Evans died yesterday.”

Her voice breaks along with my heart. The air whooshes out of my lungs. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I slowly back up and sit back down in the chair.

“What happened?” I whisper, my eyes wide and unfocused as I try to absorb what she’s just told me.

“He had a heart attack, five days ago. They did an angioplasty and everything seemed to be okay, fixed even. Then things went sour yesterday, he had another heart attack and didn’t make it.”

I run my hands through my hair and down my face. I’d just seen Mr. Evans two weeks ago when he and my dad drove up for a game. They were tailgating and having a great time. He’d looked fine. He didn’t look sick.

Oh God. Casey! She didn’t get to see him before he’d passed. She was probably on her way, thinking she was going to visit him at the hospital. No wonder she was inconsolable. I look back to my mom, and she knows what I’m thinking.

“She’s resting. You can go see her tomorrow. Let her rest today. She needs to be with her mom right now.”

I nod my assent, knowing that as soon as I can, I’ll be climbing in Casey’s bedroom window. Tonight.

Chapter Eight

Casey

Decker’s mom stayed with me until my mom returned from the funeral home. I’d wanted to meet her there, but Mrs. Abrams insisted that I rest after the long drive and emotional couple of days. Once she’d gotten home, my mom and I huddled on the couch and cried for what felt like hours before retreating to bed.

And now here I lay. I can’t sleep, and I feel like I can’t possibly cry another tear. I feel numb. Like all the feelings and emotions I’d had in me have been cried out.

I hadn’t been expecting to see Decker when I got to the house this evening. I’d assumed he would still be at school. The baseball season isn’t over yet and the coaches were strict outside of the season, I could only imagine how brutal they were during the season. It was a surprise…for both of us.

The look on his face when he’d first seen me was pure anger. Not that I can blame him. Decker has every right to be angry with me. But when he’d seen my face…my tears…it was like a switch had been flipped. He’d automatically fallen into his former role as best friend and for that I am grateful. I know we’ll have to duke it out eventually, but not today, thank God. I can’t handle much more today.

He’d looked really good. Better than the last time I saw him. I let out a small laugh. The last time I’d seen him had been right here, in my room. He’d been drunk that night, but he was still Decker. Memories of our last night together roll through my mind, it’s all so bittersweet.

Knowing what I know now, I don’t regret leaving the way I had. Sure, I’d regretted it at first and planned to make it right at Thanksgiving—beg his forgiveness, but then things happened that had changed the way I looked at everything. Those things still have an effect on my day-to-day life. I’ve missed Decker every day and nothing will ever change that, but I can’t regret the decisions I’d made that summer. Not with knowing what I know now.

I lay on my bed, staring at those damn glow-in-the-dark stars. Things really do have a way of coming full circle, don’t they?

I hear a familiar sound. Still familiar even though it’s been nearly three years.

“You left it open,” he says.

“Old habits die hard, I guess,” I say, still staring up at the stars on my ceiling. I vaguely recall having flipped the lock on the window when I had come into my room hours before. It had been automatic…a reflex.

Keep telling yourself that, Casey.

He takes off his shoes and slides onto the bed beside me, still fully clothed. That’s new. I roll onto my side, my back facing him, and he pulls me back into his chest, wrapping his arm around my middle. I close my eyes at the instant comfort it brings and will the tears not to return.

“I’m so sorry about your dad, Case. I didn’t know. Mom told me when she got home.”

I’d figured he didn’t known about my dad’s passing. He never would have behaved the way that he did if he had known. Even if I did deserve it. Decker just isn’t like that.

“I know; it’s okay.” I squeeze the hand he has wrapped around me.

“It’s not okay. I was awful to you,” he argues, pulling me even closer, as if he’s afraid I will disappear again if he lets go.

“I deserved it,” I say, feeling myself crack a little on the inside.

“You didn’t, not today.”

I sigh. Maybe not today, but one day.

“We will talk about what happened after graduation, Casey. Not tonight…not until you’re ready. But it will happen before you leave again.”

I nod, knowing it’s unavoidable. He deserves something. Maybe not the whole truth, but some truth. We lay in silence for several minutes, listening to the sounds of crickets and frogs in the night. My mind’s swirling with a million thoughts, most of them memories of my dad.

I sniffle, and he tightens his arm around me. “I just can’t believe he’s gone.”

I hear him sniff and know that he’s fighting some emotion as well. “I know. I can’t either.

He whispers soothing little nothings into my ear as I cry for my dad. I cry for the memories I’ll never forget and the ones I’ll never get to make. The moments of my life he will no longer be there for. I cry for my mom because when all is said and done, she’ll be alone.

“So…how do you like Stanford?” he asks me several minutes later, once I’ve calmed down. Surprisingly, his tone holds no bitterness.

I smile a little, this is something I can talk about. “I love it. It’s everything I dreamed college would be.”