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“Oh, I think that’s my phone.” June wipes the tears away in a hurry. “I’m sorry to be rude, Finn, but I'd better go.”
“Yes, of course.” I’m relieved, to be honest, because this lets me off the hook. “It could be news. You go.”
June slams the door on me and races inside, leaving me outside and cold, alone in this news. I don’t know what the hell I have done to Stella, but I definitely can’t leave it like this. I can see that we’re definitely over now. I guess that’s something I can’t fight, but I can work out why. I can get answers and try to make right anything that I have done wrong.
I don’t even know where I’m going. I have absolutely no idea where in the city Stella could be or who this Erin is. I have heard Stella mention her, but only in passing conversation or where she has been reminiscing about her college days. I don’t know enough about her to search for her, but I’m going to have to try anyway. I need to get my ass to the city to look.
Bill will be there as well. That’s going to be something I need to contend with, but I’m not worried enough to stop myself. Again, I’m so panicked that I’m not really thinking about theconsequences of my actions. I’m putting that in the ‘I will deal with that later’ box inside my mind. I don’t want to think of it at all. I just want to get in the car and drive off at the speed of light.
16
STELLA
“Oh, God, Erin,” I howl as sadness rockets through me. The tears are streaming down my face at the speed of light and I can’t seem to stop them however hard I try. “Thank you so much for taking me in. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“Shh, don’t worry, Stella, youknowthat I am always here for you,” my good friend reassures me in a soft-spoken voice. She’s doing her best to calm me down, just as she has been doing ever since she picked me up from the train station. I’m not really in a position where I can be cooled down, though. My head is all over the place. “I will do what I can to help you with this as well.”
But as I think about the mess that I’ve made when it comes to my life, I don’t know if this is going to comfort me at all. I don’t know if Erin can do anything to help me out right now. Everything is shattered around me. The moment I moved back home, the moment I laid eyes on Finn, I was in trouble, and now, the ramifications of that are coming back to haunt me.
“Oh, God,” I moan some more as another wash of pain comes over me. “There are so many times that I could have walkedaway from this, that I could have stopped this from spiraling out of control and I didn’t. I let this all happen. I’m an idiot.”
“It doesn’t sound like it was all bad,” Erin continues in her attempt to stop me from flying into hysteria all over again. “It seems like you had some good times with Finn while you were together. There were a lot of feelings there, am I right?”
“Yeah, maybe so.” I lean into her and wet her shoulder with my tears that just won’t stop coming. “Maybe so. It was good?—”
I don’t get to finish my sentence because we’re both shocked by the sound of someone banging hard on Erin’s front door. My heart leaps into my throat as I instantly expect the worst, but Erin simply rolls her eyes and snorts with an inexplicable rage.
“Oh, God, the delivery guys are always banging on the wrong door in this place. Next time, I’m going to just take the pizza.”
“Ooh, I could go for some pizza right now,” I tease back, still managing to be a little bit playful even in all of my agony. Hey, maybe that’s a sign that I will be okay after all of this in the end. Urgh, God. I don’t know if that’s possible. “You go.”
I lean back on the couch and do what I can to calm myself down as much as I can while Erin vanishes from sight. I know that my friend is going to be here for me no matter what, but that doesn’t mean I can just wail and sob all night long.
“I am coming through,” a growling male voice shocks me from my stupefied state. “I need to speak to her, Erin.”
Oh, my God.Is that my dad? Is that my fucking father? Ice-cold terror bolts through me as I realize that I haven’t exactly run off and hidden away from the world easily. My dad has found me already and he’s going to kick my ass. I guess the note I left formy mom telling her that I need some time and space away from family at the moment has been ignored. Fucking typical.
And now I can’t run. I want to run, I want to race off at the speed of light, but I can’t get anywhere. I’m stuck here on this couch, in my scruffy clothes, like a goddamn weeping mess. I scrabble backward as if I can vanish into nothingness.
“Stella, what the hell are you doing?” He is in front of me in a heartbeat with his burning red cheeks and steam pouring out of his ears. “What the fuck is going on? How can you just walk away from us like that after everything we have done for you without an explanation? Your mother is sobbing at home. She thinks that she’s done something to upset you.”
“Dad, Mom hasn’t done anything to upset me. This is something that I need to do for myself.” I jut my chin out and try to act like I’m all confident and not about to be walked all over by him. “I’m an adult, and if I want to move out, I will. You can’t control me. Iknowthat you’ve helped me and I’m grateful for that, but this is something I need to do. I have to. I really do.”
Dad stares at me like he’s trying to understand me. Instantly, I snatch my eyes away from him because I can’t be seen. “I don’t understand you at all, Stella. I don’t get why you’re acting like a runaway child. What about your job and everything?”
I shudder because that’s the last thing I want to worry about right now. I don’t want to think about work or Finn or anything. “I will worry about getting another job here, Dad. I don’t want to go back there now. It was an unpaid internship anyway.”
“But Finn was being so good to you. He taught you so much, took you to all kinds of meetings and everything. Why would you throw that back in his face? Why wouldn’t you keep workingthere until you get everything out of that job? That experience would be invaluable to you. And you don’t know, Finn might have even wanted to keep you working there forever.”
I curl in around my stomach as my father names the fantasy that I have been daydreaming about forever, the one that I definitely can’t have now because of course, I have screwed everything up in an epic way. In such a way that there is really no going back. Really, I’m angry at myself, but I end up lashing out at my father in a very hurtful manner, just to make him stop.
“What, so I can live at home for the rest of my life like a child? You knew that I only wanted to come back for a little while so I could get my life sorted. It was never going to be a long-term, permanent thing. Mom knew that as well, so I don’t see why you’re freaking out at me now because I’m working on moving on with my life. Why don’t you want that for me? That’s normal stuff.”
Dad is silent for only a moment, but as the time ticks past it’s the longest moment of my life. I hate it. I would do anything to swallow myself up into nothingness so he doesn’t look at me like that any longer.
“Because we know that something is going on, Stella,” he eventually replies in a softer way than I’m expecting. “That’s why. Your mother and I know that you are going through something and we want to help you. You mother is so upset because she is being frozen out of your life, and you know she’ll do whatever you need. Why are you keeping us out? What have we done?”
If only he knew. If only they both knew. I don’t think they’d have this kind of sympathy for me if they had even the slightest ideaof what I’m keeping them out of. I’ve escaped for a reason, and it isn’t a selfish one. It’s to keep them out of my mess.
