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I look around at all the guys I’d been working with for the past three years. Their smiles match Robby’s. “Okay, I guess. Um… I quit?”
The room erupts with shouts and cheers so loud it echoes off the walls and the next thing I know I’m being tackled by the waist and dropped to the ground; a dozen men laughing, ruffling my hair as they all celebrate for me. “What the fire truck are you doing!”
“Tools down!” Robby shouts, and we spend the afternoon drinking beers and eating pizza.
I guess it’s a farewell to me and to a life I used to know.
The rest happens in a blur.
I dedicate every win, every loss, every spin of the wheels to the man who created me. And as I watch the sun dip below the horizon from whatever half-pipe I find myself on, I close my eyes and I feel him with me, watching me. And when the sun disappears and the night takes over, I laugh and smash the shit out of my skateboard—not out of anger but to remind myself that our raw imperfections make us real and make us human but they don’t make us.
And when the comps are over and the media and the hype of the event dies down and I find myself lying alone in a dark hotel room, I give in to the forever numbness of my half missing heart and I think about her. I close my eyes and I see her in my vision—feel her hair between my fingertips and her warm skin against my lips as I kiss her neck, holding her, keeping her with me forever. Then she pulls back, her bottom lip between her teeth and she smiles. She smiles and opens her eyes and even though, deep down, I know it’s a dream—a memory—and that when I come back to reality my heart will break and she’ll be gone, it’s worth it. For those few imaginary seconds, it’s worth every single ounce of pain and heartbreak. I smile back at her, call her Emerald Eyes, and I tell her that I love her.
That she was the only girl I’ve ever loved.
And that love is the only one worth sacrificing.
Epilogue
-Becca-
I woke up in a pool of sweat, my mind racing and my heart hammering against my chest. My heart—my poor, sad, broken, heart.
I dreamt about him—the version of him that had me thrashing against the sheets and my fingers gripping tightly to the covers surrounding me, suffocating me in my own thoughts. My own fears.
I hated it.
I loved it.
Which pretty much describes everything I feel for him.
My heart loves him.
My head hates him.
Even now, over a year later.
The first thing I did when my eyes snapped open was clutch a hand to my chest wondering how my heart was still beating after the painful onslaught the visions my dream had created. Only they weren’t just visions, they were memories.
True, life, memories.
He stood over me, his eyes glazed with tears mixed with rage. “I hate you the most, Becca,” he’d said, and I stood still, afraid of him.
Him.
The boy with the dark eyes and shaggy dark hair whose smile had once lit up my entire world.
And in that moment, I feared him.
It’s an overwhelming feeling—one I can’t put down onto paper like Linda had suggested I do, yet here I am, trying to justify it.
If there were a single word to describe it, it would be torn.
My head.
My heart.
The two parts of myself ripping my being in two.
I should be used to it by now, right? How many times have I woken up in fear, my nightmares grounding me to my spot?
Fear.
Love.
Hate.
Caused by two completely different people and circumstances.
One is dead.
One is Joshua Warden.
A knock sounds on my bedroom door and a second later the now familiar male voice speaks. His voice is low, barely a whisper. “Are you ready, Becca?”
I shut my laptop and slowly get up, turning to him as I do. His eyes are gentle, yet weary.
I nod, even though we both know it’s a lie.
I’m not ready. How can I be?
But I made a promise to him that I’d try.
Just like I’d try to drive; another item on my list of fears.
It didn’t go well, but at least I tried.
He’d sat in the passenger’s seat and showed me what everything was, and then asked me to ease onto the accelerator. I’d done it. But as soon as we were on the road I’d panicked and hit the brake at the same time. The screeching sound of the wheels spinning but the car not moving had set off something inside me. It also set me back three months of therapy. I’d blacked out apparently; like I was living in the nightmare and I’d just screamed. He’d held me until it was over and then he drove home, where I’d spent the next three days in bed, awake and alive but completely dead inside.
Dead dead dead.
Just like my mother.
He’d kept my bedroom door open and at night I’d see him there watching me, coffee in his hand, his shoulder against the doorframe and he’d cry.
He hadn’t known I’d seen him.
I’d never tell him.
He’d sat on the seat in the corner of my room and had continued to watch me. I’d thought about Henry Warden—the man who died with regrets. And I didn’t want that for him—so I’d agreed when my therapist had suggested the bucket list of fears… but on one condition. I wanted him with me when I ticked off every one.
Which I guess is why a half hour later he’s standing by my side, twenty feet away from a tour bus with the giant Globe shoes logo on the side.
“Is that him?” he asks, and I can feel everything inside me move faster, beat harder, and then drop.
