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“You don’t have the baggage I do and be glad for it, because one day, I’m gonna be the reason you don’t get close to someone.”
She backs away from me, horrified. “Is that all I am to you?” Her eyes fill with tears and my heart crumbles each time one falls down her cheek. “Someone that will just be part of a past that you’re gonna regret someday because you think you jaded me?”
Shit. I swipe a hand through my hair and let out a breath.
“That’s not what I meant.” I reach for her but she moves away, and I grit my teeth. “You don’t understand what I’ve been through, what all of this is doing to me.”
The space between us is too great and I want to close the gap, but her tears form a moat around her that I can’t seem to get across. “Peter and Mia should have stayed in the past, and I was stupid to ever think those ghosts wouldn’t come back to haunt me, but you have to know, it was only because of my inability to…” I try to explain, but she interrupts me.
“Give me everything?” she answers for me, shaking her head.
It’s rhetorical, I know, but I want to tell her that I have given her everything within my ability, and that is more than I have ever given anyone.
“Do you know why I don’t regret Danny, the asshole that broke my heart?” she asks me, and I shake my head, my eyes pleading with her not to torture me anymore. “Because it was fate, Cash. It was always meant to happen. Just one bad decision that led me to the place I was always meant to be,” Tears stream down her face, “to you.”
My lips form her name, but no sound comes out, because I want that to be true. I want to know that every shitty decision I’ve ever made led me to her. I want to believe that I walked through a hurricane, stood at its center and came out the other side, just so that I could collide into her.
“All this time you were worried aboutmebreaking your heart,” she says quietly.
The record store pulses with emotion as we stand feet apart. I’m so close to her but feel so far away. I’m lost, like a ship being tossed at sea, and I’m tired of getting a glimpse of a lighthouse that I will never reach.
I lift my eyes to hers. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be followed around by a ghost?” I ask, shaking my head.
“I do.”
She stares at me, brown eyes glistening, tears staining her cheeks, and my heart aches because I want to wipe them away, but I’m the one that’s caused those tears.
“My grandparents look at me every day and see my mom. I’m the reminder of the daughter they lost,” she sniffs, using the back of her hand to wipe the tears from her cheek. “I’ve spent my whole life wondering who she was, that I became a photographer because of a single fucking picture of her,” she scoffs, “so yeah, I know what it’s like to be followed by a ghost, Cash. The difference is I’m not afraid of mine.”
She turns away from me and grabs her bag from under the counter. I feel powerless to make any of this better. We both have our demons coming to the surface today, tearing with hands and teeth, and I feel powerless to drive them away.
Standing near the door, she says, “By the way, I got the internship.”
And I let her walk out the door. As soon as it closes, I grab the record bin and tip the H section over, the albums spilling over the tiled floor like a set of dominoes.
38
I WANT IT ALL
CASH
Underneath The Stars by The Cure
“Look, I’m the last person qualified to give advice, but I’ve seen you and Cash together.” Peter stands in front of me, commanding my attention. “There was real love there, and nowadays, that’s rare. But if a picture can tell a thousand words, that one of you and Jack on stage is one epic fucking story.”
I glare at Peter but then remember the song he wrote five years ago, the one about the girl he was in love with that died, Maggie, and I realize that maybe he’s more qualified than he thinks.
“You never told me what happened to Maggie.”
“Ah.” Peter lights up another cigarette, the smoke billowing from his mouth.
“You owe me, Peter,” I tell him.
He smiles, sadly. “We were high school sweethearts,” he begins. “She came out to L.A. with me after we graduated. I started my band, we got some gigs, partied a lot, had fun, but Maggie just didn’t know when to quit. She got into the hard stuff, ya know? The stuff you can’t just walk away from.” Peter passes me the cigarette and I shake my head. “She was in and out of rehab, but it stuck when she got pregnant.”
“I wasn’t ready to be a father. I got scared and fucked around on her.” He peers at me with shame-filled eyes, but I don’t judge him. “She left me and went back home to Pacific Palisades. When I finally grew some balls to go see her, she said she had an abortion.” I can see his eyes start to fill up with tears, but Peter blinks them away. “It wasn’t something we could come back from.”
Peter kicks at the gravel and shoves a hand in his pocket. “I came back to L.A., got serious about the band, and tried to get her out of my head.”
