Page 24 of To Bring You Back
“But when something this big happens, you have to find a way. I mean, you knew him in high school and if your experience as a teen was anything like mine, every little thing was intense. The feelings were all so … big. Seeing those classmates again is a time warp. It’s like they have a special hold on me. If that’s what Gannon showing up here is like for you, how can you process it if you don’t talk?”
Adeline picked at her nails, the familiar pain in her throat. “He’s always had a kind of special hold on me. Even shortly after we met, our friendship felt easy and comfortable.”
Tegan chuckled. “Good for you. Ineverfelt comfortable around attractive guys in high school.”
The playful humor helped just enough that Adeline could continue. “Maybe I was okay because I didn’t consider anything happening between us a possibility. Lots of girls liked him, he didn’t show interest in me beyond friendship, and I was dating Fitz. Fitz was talented, a thoughtful boyfriend, and the whole reason I met Gannon and John to begin with. We didn’t really have problems between us, so I wasn’t going to break up with him over a friendship with someone else.” She lifted her feet and dug her heels into the ridge of the bed frame. “Gannon says Fitz was depressed all along.”
“Is that true?”
“He wouldn’t have lied about the examples he gave.” Even if she still couldn’t fathom how she’d missed it. However, both of his suicide attempts had been in California, when all Adeline had to go on were phone calls spaced further and further apart.
And before that? What had she missed?
“He didn’t do well in school, so when a test or semester grades came out, he would get down. I’d help him study for next time, but our work didn’t improve his grades or his self-esteem. I guess I always felt like he needed me, and I felt like I owed him loyalty or something. And like I said, Gannon and I were strictly friends. But I’d be lying if I said I never had moments when I …”
Tegan waited a few beats. “Wished for something more with Gannon.”
She pressed a hand to her forehead. Either she was burning up, or her fingers had turned to ice. “Gannon never did much about the girls who hung around, and even when the two of us got together to work on music, I never felt like he was flirting with me. We’d start with lyrics and melodies and end up in long conversations. In retrospect, we shouldn’t have met so often while I had a boyfriend, but Gannon … He gave good advice, seemed to have genuine faith, and when he talked about his problems, he didn’t fall in a black hole of discouragement the way Fitz did.”
“You liked him.”
She’d been in denial about her feelings back then, but thoughts of those lingering afternoons pulled her into a current of longing now that made disputing the statement impossible.
She’d liked Gannon then, and she liked him now, but those old days were over. They’d ended badly. Very badly. “When Fitz was doing well, he was fun to be around. He got me goofy anniversary gifts and …” She shrugged again. How could she have cheated on him? It’d been the last thing he’d deserved. “Right before California, he had so much hope for Awestruck. He was the happiest I’d ever seen him. So, when he proposed, I said yes.”
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
“That’s really young.” Tegan spoke gently, as if Adeline’s age excused what came next.
“After he’d been gone six months and things weren’t going well for Awestruck, he got down again. We were growing apart. I was a college student living with my parents, and he was a starving artist, waiting for the big break with less and less hope.”
“That’s a heavy load for an eighteen-year-old to deal with. That would be heavy for me at twenty-five.”
“Yeah, but I made terrible mistakes.”
“You’re not a psychologist. There’s only so much you could’ve done for him.”
“I could’ve been faithful.”
Tegan drew her mouth into a line, but she didn’t look as disapproving as Adeline had expected. “What happened?”
“After they’d been gone a year and a half, Gannon came home for Christmas. He wrapped me in this gigantic hug. It was like all the time we’d spent together, all the conversations we’d racked up, the ways he’d matured, the fact he was there, flesh and blood and present and interested in my life …”
“And at that point,” Tegan said, “you hadn’t seen Fitz in over a year.”
“That doesn’t make what I did okay.”
Tegan shifted in her seat, settling in, ready to wait her out.
Adeline pushed herself ahead. “I went to a classmate’s party, knowing Gannon would be there. I hitched a ride home with him. Kissed him in the car.”
When he’d responded in turn, she’d realized her crush wasn’t as one-sided as she’d assumed. Neither of them had wanted to stop, so they hadn’t. But they should’ve. The kiss never should’ve happened, let alone everything after. She deserved now for everyone to know she was that kind of person. The kind who’d done that. But her throat closed against the truth.
“I’m not saying it’s okay,” Tegan said. “I’m saying it’s understandable.”
“I betrayed Fitz. And God. When I told you and Drew the story the other day, I made Gannon sound like he was the one to blame, but I’m just as guilty.”
