Page 98 of Falling for You
‘What girl?’ I say spitefully, even though we both know who he’s talking about.
‘Bat Girl.’
I shake my head, swigging my beer. ‘It’s over. There is nothing there.’
‘Right,’ he says slowly, his voice hollow. ‘You really want to go back, then? Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘There’s nothing I can do to make you stay?’
I lean back into my seat. ‘No.’
A siren wails past outside, momentarily flashing our living room with streaks of blue and white light. I glance towards the window. Rain hammers against the pane, the murky grey sky dotted with flickers from the Christmas lights that peoplehave put up, unable to wait a second longer to drape their homes and the street in Christmas cheer.
I’d had big plans for Christmas in the flat. I know Stevie has never bothered to decorate it during the years that he’s been here. He’s always told us that he’s been too busy to come home for Christmas, which I’ve never questioned too closely, and he spends Christmas Day with a friend. Whenever I called him from New York and we turned our cameras on, I could see his pale flat in the background. No lights, no decorations, no Christmas tree.
When I decided to move here, I knew I was going to have to transform the flat for us both. I’d fill the fridge with Christmas food. I would get us a huge tree and make novelty pictures of our faces squashed on the top of elves’ bodies to stick on the fridge. I’d get us some form of hideous singing reindeer that sang every time you walked past it and put it outside Stevie’s bedroom door, just to annoy him.
I had so many plans for my life in London.
‘I don’t want you to go, though.’
I take a deep breath. ‘You can come with me if you want.’
I know I’m behaving like a teenager, prodding the bear. We’ve had this conversation a hundred times and it always ends the same.
Stevie looks away. ‘I’ve got to work, you know that.’
‘Just for a weekend?’ I offer. ‘I’m looking at flights – you could take a week off.’
‘No, I can’t, Nate. Sorry.’
This is normally where I’d have to fight the anger I feelwhenever Stevie refuses to see or speak to Mom, but this time it doesn’t come. I’m so tired, it’s like I have nothing left.
‘Okay,’ I say, getting to my feet. ‘Suit yourself.’
‘I don’t know how to deal with all of this, Nate,’ he says, and although he keeps his eyes locked forward, I notice that they’re shining. ‘She’s not who she was any more and I don’t … I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’
‘Just be there, Stevie!’ I say, exasperated. ‘That’s all Mom wants. I mean, man, do you thinkIknow what I’m doing? You just need to be there. Go see—’
‘I did.’
His words cut across me like a piece of glass. ‘What?’
‘I did go see Mom. Last year.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘I came back for a week. You were away with work or something, I don’t know. It was just me and Mom. I thought I’d surprise her.’
For the first time, he looks over at me and my heart turns over. It’s like looking at four-year-old Stevie again. ‘Nate, she didn’t have any idea who I was. She was terrified of me. Like, do you have any idea how that feels? For your own mom to be scared of you?’
‘What happened?’ I can feel my heart racing in my ears.
He scratches his shaved head. ‘Dad calmed her down. He tried to make me stay, said she was just having a bad day. But I left. I can’t do that to her again. She was so scared of me. She looked at me as if I was about to …’ He trails off, his voice catching. ‘And it’s my fault. If I’d been there more over the years, then maybe she …’
‘She’s not well,’ I say, forcing myself to say the words thatcircle around my mind every day. ‘That’s it, Stevie. It could have happened to me, Dad, anyone. You just caught her on a bad day. When did this happen?’
He shakes his head, swiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘I don’t know. Like, last October. I asked Dad not to tell you.’
‘And you haven’t seen her since?’
