Chase got to his car, the onslaught of emotions he had felt only moments before replaced by an eerie numbness. He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, driving aimlessly, turning on and off of roads that meant nothing to him.
He didn’t want to go home. But he knew he couldn’t go back.
He needed to go somewhere. Anywhere.
His loyalty to Colin should have been enough to prevent this. All of it. His feelings for Andie, his constant thoughts of her, his undeniable need to be near her. It should have been enough to stop him from going to her tonight. It shouldn’t even be a question in his mind, he realized. It shouldn’t be something he had to fight with himself over.
But it was.
What did that say about him, that his feelings for his friend’s girlfriend were proving to be stronger than his loyalty to that friend?
He sped onto the highway, his subconscious taking the reins. He hadn’t even realized where he was going until he was almost there.
By the time he arrived, nearly an hour had passed since he had left Andie, although it could have been seconds or days; time ran together, an insignificant blur to him.
Chase pulled up to the darkened street and cut the engine, twirling the keys between his fingers before he took a deep breath and exited the car. He knew it was closed, that the gate would be locked, but he also knew that the stone wall around it was low and easy to climb on the left side.
He approached it quickly, his breath visible before him in the darkness, and he placed his hands on top of the wall; with a quick jump, he was up and over the side, walking briskly through the uncut grass, his hands thrust in his pockets. His eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness, barely making out the shapes of things as he passed, but he knew his way around this place better than he would have liked.
Finally he stopped, staring until his eyes could just distinguish its outline. He stood there for what seemed like forever, his eyes focused on the arch of it; the only sound was the rustling of the remaining leaves in the trees, and the low, distant hissing of cars on the wet asphalt.
Slowly Chase dropped to his knees, feeling the soil and the pebbles and the grass beneath his jeans. It had been too long since he’d been here.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been around in a while,” he whispered, leaning forward and resting his forehead on the cold, rough stone; almost instantly, he felt the familiar quivering of his chin.
This time he wouldn’t even attempt to fight it; he’d had enough of trying to inhibit his emotions for one night. He felt his eyes begin to well, and at that moment, he welcomed it. He wanted it. He wanted to drain himself of every single emotion that fought for control in his chest until he felt empty.
There had only been two women in Chase’s life who truly meant something to him, who made him want to be a better man.
One of them lay beneath the headstone in front of him.
He exhaled heavily, his head still resting on her grave, and as he closed his eyes, he felt two trails of heat rush down his cheeks, a sharp contrast to the cold air.
Because as much as he wished it wasn’t true, he realized that the other was just as inaccessible.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Every thing in my life that once seemed so significant suddenly felt extremely trivial. It was as if every thought, every feeling, every experience I had before this was just practice for this moment. All at once, the world around me felt real. And for the first time, so did I,” Andie typed, stopping to take a sip of her iced tea before she put the glass down and continued.
In another chapter, she would be finished with the novel.
It had been two weeks since Chase came to her apartment, two weeks since they sat on the piano bench in each other’s arms. Ever since that night, it felt like she was overflowing. It was as if her fingers couldn’t move fast enough to record all the words in her head.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there after he left that night, and she honestly couldn’t remember a single thought that went through her mind. All she knew was that one minute she was sitting immobilized on the piano bench, and the next she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her laptop on her thighs and her fingers flying over the keys.
She wrote for three straight hours that night.
And in the days that followed, it was much of the same. It was like some undisclosed, limitless resource had been tapped; if she wasn’t at the restaurant or with Colin, she was writing.
The only thing more prolific than Andie’s composing was her desire to talk to Chase. So often she found herself wanting to call him, to tell him, to thank him, just to hear his voice again. But for all of the times that desire consumed her, she only allowed herself to contact him once. It was the night she realized that she was only a few chapters away from finishing the book, and she had sent him a text, asking him if he would read it once it was completed.
He had answered her almost immediately, saying of course he would, that he’d be honored. And that was all the contact she’d had with him.
Andie no longer fought her thoughts of him; she embraced them as part of her daily routine, welcomed them as the obvious muse that had re-inspired her.
The door to the back room of the restaurant opened, and Andie’s mother came through with a box in her arms. A few weeks ago, Andie would have jumped to hide what she was doing, but today she kept her eyes on the screen, her fingers clicking away at the keys.
“Hi sweetheart,” her mom said, placing the box down and grabbing a box cutter from one of the drawers.
“Hey,” Andie said, smiling up at her for a second before she resumed what she was doing.
It was quiet for a moment, the only sound being the clicking of the keys, until her mother said, “Whatcha doing over there?”
Andie smiled. “I’m writing.”
“Oh yeah?” her mom said, her brow raised and her eyes focused on whatever was inside the box she had opened. “Writing what?”
“Just…a story I’ve had in my head for a while.”
Her mom looked up at her for a second and smiled. “Good for you, sweetheart. You always did have a way with words.” She reached in and pulled two jars out of the box, turning to place them on a high shelf on the other side of the room.
Andie looked up over the screen and watched her move back and forth, pulling items out from the box and stocking them on the appropriate shelves as she hummed to herself.
Her fingers stopped for a second as she thought about her mother, trying to picture her when she was young, trying to imagine what made her smile back then, what made her think, what she was afraid of, what she wished for.
She wondered if it was this.
“Hey, Mom?” Andie said, and her mother glanced over her shoulder as she stood on her toes, putting things away.
“Hmm?”
Andie paused, thinking of how she could phrase it, and finally said, “What did you want to be when you grew up?”
Her mother laughed softly, turning around and placing her hands on the small of her back, arching and twisting as she stretched. “Wow, it’s been a while since someone’s asked me that.” She straightened up, adjusting her shirt. “Well, when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a queen,” she said, and Andie laughed. “But when I realized that wasn’t going to pan out, I wanted to be an obstetrics nurse.”