Next-Door Nemesis(84)
“Don’t ‘Collins’ me.” I hate when he does that.
He used to do it all the time when we were younger. Saying my name like it explained everything in the world. The frustrating part is that he’s usually right.
I guess the bad thing about being with someone who knows you so well is that they know you so well, they won’t even let you lie to yourself.
He lifts the wine to his mouth, his full lips settling on the glass, but never takes his eyes off me.
“Stop it.” I want to shield myself from his knowing gaze, but there’s nowhere to hide. He recognizes pieces in me that I have yet to discover about myself. “I’m serious. If I go, I’m still going to have to work with him and I don’t know if I can do that. How do I let myself be vulnerable enough to create with someone I can’t trust?”
My stomach twists as the reality I’m facing sets in.
Peter is dangling my dream in front of me. Everything I worked so hard for is at my fingertips but firmly held in Peter’s grip. If I walk away, he has no incentive to admit any wrongdoing or clear my name. I’ll still be blacklisted from writers’ rooms, agencies, and production companies. If I don’t go now, I might miss the window to ever return.
I thought I was going to hate my time at home, but it was the break I didn’t know I needed. I’m just not sure if it’s plausible for me to stay forever. HOA**holes is the strongest thing I’ve ever written, and if I don’t figure things out now, it will live in my computer instead of out in the world where it belongs.
“You told me how much that script meant to you, how many years you spent working on it,” he says. “If you care about something that much, you do what you can to see it succeed. Even if it hurts.”
He’s not talking about the script anymore.
“Nate—” Emotions clog my throat. I can’t speak.
“No.” He sets his glass on the counter and turns to me. He holds my face in his hands, wiping away tears I didn’t even know were falling. “If I didn’t love you so much, I’d ask you to stay. I’d beg you to forget about everything and stay here with me, forever. But I can’t do that.”
I was sixteen when I experienced my first big loss. My grandpa had a stroke and died. It was unexpected and we were all in shock. My dad didn’t talk for an entire day after he found out. I was devastated. Nobody I knew had ever died before. The thought that he’d never call me on Sunday night to hear about my week and what I had planned for the next was almost incomprehensible. How could someone be there one minute and not the next? The finality of it, knowing I would go back in time and do whatever I had to do to hear his voice one more time, to have another week of it, broke me in a way that even after I healed, I was never the same.
And here with Nate, I feel a new crack breaking me apart.
“Maybe you could come too?” The tears are falling faster. I can’t get ahold of them. “Or we could do long-distance. It won’t be like the last time I left. I’ll come home more.”
He looks at me with a sad smile and I know what he’s thinking before he says it.
“Me with my love of khakis and sweater-vests in California? You know that wouldn’t work.” His laugh is hollow, but I can’t find it in myself to even try. “I know you’ll come back and I’ll be waiting at your parents’ house, but then you’ll leave again. Your dreams are in Los Angeles. I’ve seen firsthand what happens when someone tries to stand in the way. I refuse to do that to you.”
His mom.
I cry harder. My chest aches. The sobs feel as if they’re being pulled from the bottom of my soul.
“You knew I’d hurt you.” White-hot memories flash bright in my mind. This is why he stopped talking to me all those years ago. He was afraid I’d hurt him just like his mom did, running away from home to chase far-off goals. I clawed my way back into his life only to do the exact thing he was afraid I’d do.
I struggle to breathe as guilt like I’ve never known before ensnares me in its grip. I feel dizzy with regret as I process the mess I’ve made. The damage I’ve done.
I bury my face in my hands. I can’t look at him.
I can’t let him see me.
“Collins.” His voice is muffled like I’m underwater. Before I know what’s happening, his arms are wrapped around me and he pulls me off the stool. The same stool where things began . . . where they’re ending.
He carries me up the stairs and I wrap my arms around his neck, clinging to him as I cry into his shoulder.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I don’t know what else to say. I want to tell him I love him, that I might have always loved him, but it feels cruel. Too much hope lives in those words and this feels hopeless.
“Please look at me,” he whispers, his voice soft but his tone firm.
It takes a moment for me to garner enough control to stop crying long enough to give him at least that.
I focus all my attention on the man in front of me, the man I loved even when I hated him. The intensity staring back at me from hazel eyes steals my breath away.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about. You are going to go back to California and you’re going to do what you always said you would do. You’re going to write shows and win awards and I’m going to be right here watching, telling everyone I know that I beat you in the race for the HOA.”