Page 21

Sadie

You always think you know exactly what you’d do in certain situations.

For example, my current one, I always knew I’d fight for Axell no matter what.

I always knew I’d never let him walk away from me without fighting first, without saying the words to keep him.

He’s the love of my life so it made sense to me.

Yet, here I am, standing perfectly still and silent.

My head is screaming, my heart is on a rampage trying to beat out of my body to follow him as he walks away.

My eyes betray me as the tears fall down my face.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t fight for him.

I just stood here and accepted this fate.

You may think you know what you’d do in a certain situation, but truth is you don’t.

You never know what you’ll do, what you’ll say, or how you’ll react until you are in the situation.

No matter how many times you play it out in your head, no matter how many times you practice the words, nothing truly prepares you for the moment.

The weight of the words being spoken, released out into the air so that everyone can see your flaws.

I don’t care about anyone else seeing my flaws.

I stopped caring about that a long time ago.

From the time I moved to Aynor, South Carolina.

It was small enough that the only thing they had to pass the time was gossip.

A new pregnant teenage girl with bruises and cuts covering her body was more than enough to start the whispers and stares.

Even after the bruises faded and the cuts healed, they still whispered about me.

I’d walk into a place and it’d all be completely silent.

It was a little too obvious if you asked me.

People avoided me like I was the plague.

I understood that part. I knew how I looked in their eyes.

Maybe, that’s why I kept the truth from Axell for so long.

He never looked at me the way they did. When he looked at me it set off a flutter of butterflies. He saw something more in me.

I can’t help but wonder if I’ve lost that too.

I stand in the sand staring at Axell’s back until I can no longer see him.

I stand there until my legs begin to cramp from not moving.

Eventually, I see Hollis at the back doors.

She spots me and moves to open the door, but I shake my head.

She stops, confusion written on her face.

I move then, I don’t know how but I make myself move away from the house.

I move toward the car, Axell’s car. As I slide behind the wheel I’m engulfed in his scent and it rips at my already tattered heart.

The smell of his aftershave and musky cologne wraps around me.

Laying my head against the steering wheel I sob until there’s nothing left.

His scent used to bring me comfort, but now it breaks me.

I don’t know what to do or where to go. All I know is that Axell is gone and I can’t go home, not right now anyways.

I start the car and Axell’s music fills the car just another reminder of his absence.

He’s everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.

I move the station until I find some acoustic station.

The lyrics call to my tired soul, they pull me in and I let them.

The soulful voices of the singers are like a calm to me.

I drive and drive until my eyes feel heavy and I have to stop.

I end up at the one place I know I can always go.

The one person who has never judged me. The one person I can always count on, Seth.

Tears prick the back of my eyes again as I move blindly for his front door.

I ring the tiny doorbell and wait. Time has no meaning right now.

I could have stood on his doorstep for just a second or maybe an hour.

I don’t know, and it really makes no difference.

For the first time in over a decade, I have nowhere to be, no one waiting for me to come home, no one that cares if I do.

Seth opens the door looking as if he just rolled out of bed.

It dawns on me then that maybe he has just rolled out of bed.

I don’t even know what time it is. Seth takes one look at me while whispering, “What the hell?” before he pulls me into his arms and slamming the door.

He walks me to the couch with an arm wrapped around my shoulders.

He sits in front of me on the coffee table.

“Sadie, what happened?” I give him what I would guess to be a pointed look and he runs his hands through his untamed hair. “Shit.”

“I told him everything,” I whisper into the darkened room.

Seth reaches for my hands. His hands are large and warm.

They are worn and rough from years of surfing.

Oddly enough, they remind me of Axell’s which causes a sob to burst through.

“I told him everything and he didn’t even seem mad really.

Just hurt. Oh my god, I hurt him Seth. I never wanted to hurt him. ”

Seth moves to sit next to me and pulls me into his side. “I know you didn’t and deep down Axell knows that too. Right now, it’s all fresh and what not. He just needs time Sadie.”

“What if time doesn’t fix this? I leave tomorrow, and I don’t even know for sure when I’ll be back.

What if we don’t talk the whole time I’m gone?

Do I come back here if we don’t, or do I stay in South Carolina and try to make a life for Drake and I?

That’s if Drake even wants anything to do with me, I can’t blame him if he didn’t,” I say through sobs.

I’m not even sure how Seth understands anything I say, but in true Seth fashion he hears everything and gives me exactly what I need to hear.

He sighs. “Sade, I don’t know what the future holds.

I don’t how long it will take Axell to get over this.

I’m not sure anyone could give you a time frame for this situation.

I mean, you just told your husband since you’ve basically been with since you were seventeen that you have a son that he never knew about.

That’s big, like Titanic big but I know Axell.

I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He loves you too much Sadie to hold this against you forever.

As for Drake, I’m sure he’s going to be pissed, confused, and hurt.

That’s to be expected, but you are all he will have shortly so I’m sure he will try to move past it.

Just remember he’s a teenage boy whose entire world is being ripped away from him.

You have plenty of experience in that field sadly,” Seth tells me.

Seth is right if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to handle a teenage boy with his world exploding. I just wish I wasn’t part of the reason why his world was changing. “Thank you, Seth.”

“Anytime Sade, anytime,” Seth whispers to the top of my head.

Hearing him use my nickname always makes me smile.

When I first moved in with him and my dad, I asked him why he always called me Sade.

He told me it was because he wanted a baby brother when our parents first told him he was going to be a big brother.

When they brought home a baby sister, he just decided to shorten my name, so it sounded less girly.

Over time the nickname has grown on me and I’ve even caught Axell using it from time to time.

At the thought of Axell, a sharp pain shoots through my heart.

Seth brings me some hot tea and Tylenol.

I lie back on his couch and even though I don’t feel like I could sleep I do.

The next morning, I wake to the beaming sunlight cascading through Seth’s wall of glass.

I check the time and see it’s just barely past six.

I get up and make breakfast, it’s the least I can do after waking him up and crying all over him last night.

He appears in the kitchen with a sleepy smile on his face.

“I didn’t mean to wake you I just wanted to make you breakfast to say thank you for being there last night. ”

“Sade, I’ll always be there, you know that,” he says, as he walks to the coffee pot to pour him a cup. “You still leaving today?”

I nod while biting my lip. “I have to. I put off going to South Carolina and taking care of things long enough. Mom isn’t getting any better and I need to try and mend or form some kind of relationship with Drake before she passes.

This transition is going to be hard enough as is.

Plus, I’m sure Axell could use the space.

I just hope it helps us heal instead of drifting farther apart. ”

“It’ll be okay.”

I shake my head. “You always say that.”

“Because it’s my motto. I have to believe that.

If I believed everything was going to come crashing down every day I woke up, well I’d have no reason to get out of bed.

I choose to believe that everything will be okay.

Things will work out however they are meant to anyways so what good does it do to worry yourself sick.

I love you Sade, but you worry too much.

Just breathe and have a little faith,” Seth says.

“Faith?”

He nods. “Yes, faith. Faith in Axell. Faith in your relationship. Faith in the love you two share. Faith in yourself.”

“You make it sound so easy,” I mumble.

Seth gives me that lopsided boyish smile. “Because it is. We, humans in general, tend to make things complicated. When you think about it nothing in this world is really that complicated. It’s our way of thinking that makes things seem complicated.”

Seth’s words sink in slowly and he has a point. I decide that I will have plenty of time later on to figure out if this is all that easy or if I’m making it complicated, so I decide to turn the tables on him. “Speaking of complicated, how’s Lyndsay?”