Our Last Time: A Novel Read online

  “Mhmm,” I lied. I hadn’t felt like getting lapped up tonight. I was ready to leave.

  “Good,” he yawned. “Night, Willow,” he concluded, before yanking the bedsheets over himself, and turning on his side away from me.

  “Night, Zane.”

  I dragged my ass out of his bed immediately.

  “Lock the door on your way out,” he mumbled huskily, before grabbing a pillow to suffocate his face with.

  “I always do,” I said under my breath, rolling my eyes.

  I had a key to his place. I wasn’t exactly proud of that. Zane had been just an occasional thing, nothing serious. I was starting to get sick of him and his skills, or lack thereof. His timing was off every time, and I hated that.

  I grabbed my cotton panties and shoved my legs through the holes. I wore a sports bra under my scrubs today, along with a compressed long-sleeved shirt.

  I was fully dressed in seconds, already walking out of Zane’s apartment in a mild huff. I’d get so frustrated when I was unsatisfied. I was pathetic.

  I sat in my Jetta, letting out a sigh. I needed to call Caitlyn now. I’d been out for too long. I pressed the phone to my ear, waiting for her voice.

  “Hello?” she answered after five rings.

  “It’s Willow. I was just calling to let you know I’ll be home in fifteen minutes,” I said sweetly.

  “Okay, great!” She was cheerful, which soothed me. “Annette crashed a few hours ago,” she added.

  My chest tightened, and I smiled. “That’s good, I’m glad she’s getting some rest,” I sighed. “See you in a few.”

  “Alright, see you.”

  I ended the call, and then cranked my car up. My apartment wasn’t far, but even the short distance of silence would get to me. I turned the radio on, trying to fix my sudden discomfort.

  The song that played through the speakers yelled at me - it was Screamo music. I turned it off faster than I turned it on, and rubbed my temple with my free hand.

  I missed Kennedy today. I missed him a lot today.

  I bit my bottom lip, and I watched every streetlight I passed.

  I moved to Chicago the day after our final Hello. I stayed here. When I was eighteen years old, I had lost someone I loved deeply. I had also given a life to someone I loved deeply. Kennedy and I both did.

  I was raising my eight-year-old daughter, Annette, with the help of my roommate. Caitlyn had been my roommate since college. She wasn’t the father figure Annette needed, but she helped a lot. She was an aunt to Annette. I hadn’t known what I’d do without her.

  Being pregnant, scared, and lost in the worst kind of way at only eighteen years old - I was hibernating in my dorm for most days. I hadn’t realized just how broken I really was.

  When I arrived to Kennedy’s funeral showing off a stomach that wasn’t flat, everyone that knew me had known what had happened. After the service, Kennedy’s mom, Trace, grabbed my arm and pulled me to the side. She was worried, and I was broken. She could tell, and she wanted to protect me in ways her son couldn’t anymore.

  I told her I was fine, and I told her the baby wasn’t Kennedy’s. I told my parents I hadn’t known who the father was, and they had been disappointed.

  I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t ready. Trace reminded me of Kennedy, and it made me sad. I hadn’t wanted to be sad anymore. I wanted to hide.

  I’d been too bottled up in my head to call them up and to tell them I had been lying. Trace Danes hadn’t known she was a grandmother. My parents hadn’t known that Annette would never have her father.

  Annette had grown older, more and more each day. She reminded me more and more of him each day. It made me sad sometimes, and I wouldn’t know what to do. She’d ask me about her daddy, and I wouldn’t know what to say.

  Her daddy died before she was born. He couldn’t have been saved. He was dying when I expressed my love for the first time with him. I was reckless and had put her in a world when I knew she wouldn’t have a father. It hadn’t been on purpose, but it also hadn’t been a mistake.

  I loved my baby and I was glad I had her. But she wouldn’t be like other kids. She wouldn’t have a father and I wouldn’t have the man I loved more than myself. We would deal with loss on a daily basis, because he wouldn’t be here.

  That would be hard for her to swallow once she came of age to understand. I was dreading the moment would happen. I was terrified my child would turn against me once she realized she had a person to blame.

  I took a deep breath as I claimed my designated parking space across from my apartment.

  I was a registered nurse now. I worked part-time at the smaller hospital near the apartments. Annette would tell me I saved lives, but that wasn’t quite true. I helped sick people and I would attempt to make their day brighter by talking to them. But I hadn’t saved any patients. Some died, and some had taken longer than usual to heal. Typically, they’d heal as expected. My help hadn’t ever changed the process.

  Patient’s had functioned the way they would have without me. I was just an aid to their survival. I wasn’t their cure.

  I loved my job, and it helped me in a way. I knew I’d never get over Kennedy’s death, but being a nurse and dealing with the death of patients had helped me cope with my own demons in life. I was slowly becoming more stable, but I had my weak days.

  Today was a weak day. The sixteenth of August had always been a weak day.

  I had gotten out of my car and grabbed my workbag before hoisting it over my shoulder. I started walking towards my apartment and could see Caitlyn on our balcony as she heavily puffed on a cigarette. She must not have been getting any sleep tonight. She had seen me making my way towards the front door, and she put her cigarette out in the ashtray before walking inside of the apartment.

  I locked the door once I was in, and then turned to walk up the opening staircase.

  There was our living room which was a decent size, and our kitchen was on the left wall past the living room. We had three medium-sized bedrooms on the right wall past the kitchen, and also two bathrooms. I had the master bedroom, but Annette and I shared my bathroom.

  Caitlyn’s bathroom was on the left side of the hall across from the two bedrooms closest to the kitchen.

  We had minimal decorations within the place, but plenty of famous mock-paintings and a few family portraits of our own. We were technically family.

  Our furniture was nice and our TV was big. I enjoyed watching cable after work.

  I wanted to sit on our black leather couch and stretch my legs over the coffee table. I wanted to hide under a soft blanket while watching some random movie I’d probably seen before.

  It was an every-weekend routine, unless Annette was awake. But I stayed out past my shift, and now it was almost Thursday. I had also relied on my roommate to take care of my kid while I had a mini-relapse. I had lost my grasp on reality.

  It was almost twelve o’clock in the morning and I had to take Annette to school at eight. It’d be her first day of third grade. I had to go to work at nine, right after dropping her off. It was honestly too late to watch TV.

  Caitlyn walked from the kitchen to where I was standing. I was about to lunge my workbag off my shoulder, and onto the floor when she cleared her throat to catch my attention. She hitched her red eyebrow at me as I paused to look at her face.

  “Why do you look like you’ve had a rough night?” she asked me in a whisper.

  “Because I have,” I replied.

  She hadn’t known what day it was at first. I watched as she sighed and realization met her face.

  I nodded before quietly placing my bag on the floor next to the couch so I could sink my ass in the cushions. I wanted to relax.

  She whiffed the air around me as she walked closer, like she had smelt something bad. “What’s that smell?”

  I narrowed my eyes at her as I perched over the armrest to watch her eyebrows as they scrunched together in my direction. “I screwed Zane before coming home. I probably ne
ed a shower.”

  “Ew,” she groaned.

  “What?” I protested.

  “He’s hot, I’ll give you that. But the guy doesn’t know how to treat you,” she sighed. Her dark green eyes crinkled at the sides. “And I don’t think he knows how to wash his dick, either. I’m sorry, Willow, but he made you smell like the worst kind of sex. I’m tempted to throw your ass in the tub myself, and wash you clean.”

  Her bright red hair was held up with chopsticks on the top of her head and she had already taken off her makeup for the night. She was wearing her silver-speckled night gown, and I felt less and less clean as she continued to stare at me with that disapproving look in her eyes. Caitlyn was a neat-freak, but I hadn’t liked being told I smelt bad by anyone. I stood up from the couch, rolling my eyes.

  “Your message has been heard. I’m going to take a shower and maybe soak for a while. I need to clear my head, anyway,” I said to her, before walking off towards my bedroom.

  “I love you, Willow. Sorry for being blunt,” she said to my back, her tone soft and apologetic.

  I looked over my shoulder and mouthed, “I love you, too,” before heading to the shower to wash my unfortunate night away.

  May 4th, 1997, 3:47p.m.

  Willow

  “You’re going to prom with me,” he said.

  “I don’t want to go to prom,” I mumbled as a response.

  “Come on, Will. For me?” Kennedy pouted his lips, teasing me.

  I ate the last of my cheeseburger, studying him curiously. I wondered why he’d possibly want to go to prom all of a sudden. We had joked about how ridiculous prom was for years on end.

  “What’s the catch?” I asked slowly, bumping his shin with the tip of my converse sneaker.

  He smiled his smile - that smile that I loved most about him.

  “Maybe we should be like everyone else for one night,” he shrugged. “It might be fun.”

  “But why?” I asked, still not getting the point behind it. “I kind of like being in the shadows.”

  He sighed, tilting his head to the side. He had put his milkshake down on the table like this was actually something serious, and it confused me.

  “For me, Willow? Come on. We can only go to prom once, and I don’t want to waste time in my life wondering what it could have been like. Let’s just go, and we can leave if it’s awful. I promise.” He held out his pinky over the circular-twinned dining table we were seated at, his expression hopeful.

  I couldn’t tell him no, especially when he looked so fixed. Even when things hadn’t made sense, I pretended. Only for Kennedy.

  I smiled, crooking my pinky over his before shaking it.

  “Okay, fine,” I said softly under my breath. I brought my hand back to my side of the table. “I don’t know why you’d want to go to prom, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll go with you, stretch. If that’s what you want.”

  He had smirked before sipping on his milkshake again. His chocolate mustache always made me laugh.

  Kennedy hadn’t liked using straws, because he thought it was emasculating. I told him people wouldn’t think he was gay otherwise, but that hadn’t stopped him from taking the white and red stripped straw out from his milkshake, and placing it in mine every time we came and ate out at Cape’s. I had been getting used to using two straws. I had expected it after a while.

  It was practically impossible for Kennedy to change his mind. He rarely had moments of weakness, and it intimidated me sometimes.

  But I had known that I never had to try and impress Kennedy. He’d been my best friend ever since we were six years old, and he never took an interest in any other human-being. He’d always make me feel special, and I’d guess I had the same effect on him.

  “Are you going to wear a pretty pink dress, Will?” he grinned at me.

  “I don’t want to. Don’t make me,” I groaned. I took a long sip from my milkshake, using both straws.

  He grinned, his blue eyes reflecting against mine. He winked, and then said, “You can wear whatever you want, Willow. As long as you’ll save all of your dances for me.”

  I nodded, smiling lightly as I swiveled in my red chair. “That won’t be a problem, Kennedy. No one else would want to dance with me, anyway.”

  People at our school hadn’t known who I was. I hadn’t had an ugly face; I just had a face that people hadn’t remembered. My dirty blonde hair was thick, straight, choppy, and just above my shoulders. I left it in a gimpy ponytail most of the time so I wouldn’t have to mess with it, and my bangs were almost long enough to cover my eyes. My skin was tan but not too tan, and that’s only because I spent most of my time outside. I was rather flat-chested. I had faded freckles that sat on the very curves of my cheekbones. My eyes were light brown.

  Kennedy had big, blue eyes that people remembered. He was also really tall. He surfaced an above average height of six-foot-three, while I was exactly one foot shorter than he was.

  “Everyone would be bothering you, Willow. They’d be lining up, especially if you wore a pretty pink dress.”

  He always said sweet things to me, and sometimes I’d forget he was just my best friend. For a split second I’d forget, but I’d quickly jump back, and listen to my subconscious. I could lose him if I let my common sense drift far enough away from me.

  “Maybe I should wear a pink dress,” I whispered, smiling at him.

  People were more familiar with Kennedy rather than me for plenty of reasons. He had heavy obstacles that everyone had heard he overcame, and when he walked through the halls of our school, he’d usually be the taller one standing around. It was incredibly easy to spot him. And as much as I hated it, I wasn’t the only one that absolutely adored his smile.

  I was usually the only one he smiled for, considering I hardly ever left his side. I just enjoyed having his full attention, though that was mighty selfish of me. I’d only let myself get selfish when it came to Kennedy, because I worried about other people taking him from me, even if it was just for a brief period of time. I wanted all of what I could have with him. I was pretty sure we were both at an agreement with that. It had been like this for years, and it was already our senior year of high school. And now we were going to prom together, and I was going to wear a pink dress.

  “I’ll wear a pink bow tie with my tux so you won’t feel left out,” he told me.

  That had made me smile a little more, and we were done eating soon. Our hefty plastic milkshake cups were empty, now, and I was twirling around my two straws in the cup.

  “You ready to go home, now, Willow?” he asked me.

  I nodded. “I was ready before we got here,” I smiled widely. I took his hand as he helped me stand from my seat. I giggled as he pulled me to his side, and ducked his head so his mouth was close to my ear. I felt his breath hit my cheek as he said, “Then let’s go home.”

  August 17th, 2006, 9:03a.m.

  Willow

  “The air feels dense today, like I want to swat at it,” I said, as I leaned up against the counter, and tried to engage in conversation with the older-and-more-experienced nurse behind the counter.

  Denise hardly looked a year over forty, but she was probably older. She took care of herself. She had light brown skin that glowed, and her black hair was bobbed. She had a medium frame, but she was in great shape. I wanted to get more familiar with my co-workers, since I’d be seeing them every day. Denise was sweet and sassy at times. Very friend-worthy.

  She smiled warmly, and then sighed. “I think you’re still getting used to that hospital aroma. It takes some adjusting,” she said to me, her voice soft.

  I nodded, because she was right. I hadn’t really liked the smell of plastic and sick people, but I’d get used to it. I was also feeling extra claustrophobic this morning before dropping Annette off at school. I hadn’t wanted to get out of the car and walk with her to her class, because the other parents and the swarms of small children made me uncomfortable to the point where I sweated more than usual. O
f course I had walked my baby to class, I just hadn’t wanted to. I had always sucked it up, and taken one for the team regarding those I loved the most. Annette was at the top of that list, now.

  The other nurse on duty for our floor arrived, and she hung her coat on the rack in the closet before sauntering over to us. She grinned at me like we had been the best of friends, but we were just nurses on the same floor. We just did similar things. She was nice, because she hadn’t wanted to do the dirty work that would be in store for us soon. Her smile would be almost convincing if it weren’t so fakely presented.

  “Oh my god,” she said, looking me up and down like I was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. I braced myself a little bit too harshly as I held my tongue, and waited for her to compliment me like she had done every day prior.

  “I love your scrubs,” she gushed, looking at me like she was waiting for me to spin in a slow circle. “Where did you get them?” she asked, and I almost laughed.

  “Wal-Mart,” I responded, trying to be casual and nice at the same time. I forced a smile, because I couldn’t smile for real.

  She nodded, grinning. “I love bunny rabbits. Very cute.”

  She oddly resembled the character Regina George from the movie, Mean Girls. She even had long blonde hair. If Regina George was plump in the face, they’d be a perfect match.

  My scrubs were a faded shade of purple, and had dozens of animated bunnies on them. They matched my stethoscope that I had hanging over my neck, and I hadn’t owned any other pair of scrubs that were this shade of purple. I thought my scrubs were pretty cute up until she told me she thought so, too. She kind of ruined my confidence about it. “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” she waved her hand in the air. She turned towards Denise, a little less smiley. “You look busy this morning, Denise.”

  Denise grinned, shaking her head at her. “I’m done with the rookie plays, Tessa. It’s about time momma got her break.”

  A chuckle caught in my throat. I hadn’t let it out, but Tessa noticed it as I had let out a small cough instead.