Title: In My Hands
Author: Courtney
Email: courtneystovall@yahoo.com
Rating: R
Category: Bella/Scout, future-fic
Disclaimer: Mine . . . send money.
Summary: When they were young, Bella rejected Scout in favor of trying life on her own. Now, after 15 years, she's tracked him down again to ask for another chance. Can things ever be the same?
Author's Notes: The lyrics belong to Fuel from the song Hemorrhage off their forthcoming new cd, Something Like Human.
------------------------------
Part 2
Oh hold me now, I feel contagious..
Am I the only place that you've left to go?
She cries that life is like some movie black and white..
Dead actors, vacant lies, Over, and over, and over again she cries..
She sat silently on his couch, playing with the beads on her bracelet and avoiding his piercing gaze. She knew that she couldn't look at him, not now. The look of hurt and of accusation that she was sure to find in his eyes was more than she thought she could handle at the moment.
Scout sat in the wing-backed chair across from her and just looked at this creature that had haunted his dreams and taken over his thoughts for so many years. He'd come to accept years ago that Bella Banks would forever be a ghost from his past whom he could never forget, but whom he would never see again. He might have hoped secretly that she'd return one day, but he had never seriously believed it. She had made her decision when they were teenagers. She'd left him behind. Why would she suddenly resurface after so long apart? What reason could there possibly be?
However, there had to be a reason, for here she sat in his living room. Of course, she wasn't quite the same; not by a long shot. She looked completely different from the girl that he remembered. The picture in his head was still of a happy, smiling, innocent eighteen-year-old girl who had loved him, once, and whom he had never been able to stop loving since. But this woman before him . . . he barely recognized her the more he looked at her.
She had bleached her hair to a white-blonde color that looked garish compared to the natural golden color that he recalled. Her eyes, though still the same color they'd always been, weren't the same either. They looked dull and lifeless. There was no longer that sparkle he'd always seen there. Had she really lived that bad a life? Could she have lost all her hope in the time they'd been apart?
He couldn't help but wonder by looking at her what it was she'd been doing for the past fifteen years. She was definitely no longer his sweet and innocent high school love. Her tight jeans, her low cut shirt, her black heeled boots, none of it seemed very in character for the Bella he had known. Then again, she wasn't really "his" Bella anymore. Maybe that was for the best anyway.
He wondered if she were ill. She didn't look well, that was for sure. Her eyes were surrounded by dark circles that could only be partially explained by her thick eyeliner. She looked tired, worn out . . . like she hadn't seen a good nights sleep in so long she'd forgotten that it could even exist. She was a little shaky, too, but that could have just been nervous energy. The silence between them was definitely getting him a little agitated. He just wanted to know what was going on, why she had come back. He had to know . . .
"So, are you going to tell me what you're doing here or do I have to guess?" he finally asked to break the silence.
She sighed. There was nothing she could say, really. She knew that she deserved his anger. "I'm not sure how to answer that, Scout," she told him honestly.
"The truth works for me," he countered.
"It's just that there is so much to say . . . so much you deserve to know . . ."
"Let's not talk about what I deserve," he said acridly. He knew when he let her into his home that he still had strong feelings for this girl . . . well, this woman, as it were. However, he also knew that he wouldn't be able to hold back his reproach for the way she had treated him when she left or for the years that had passed since that day.
"Please Scout, I don't want to fight," she pleaded.
"So, this is once again about what you want," he said. "That figures."
"That's not what I meant," she said.
"I can read between the lines. I'm not as stupid as I used to be," he said in a hostile tone.
"I never thought that," she replied. "Look, Scout, I just . . . I really need--"
"Why should I care what you need, Bella?" he exploded. "Why, after all these years and all the nightmares and heartache, why should I give a shit about what *you* need? What about what I need for a change, huh? Have you given one second of thought to that in the last fifteen years? Have you?" he boomed.
Then, his voice dropping, he said, "No, I don't guess you have. Because you were always more worried about yourself, weren't you? Well, I for one am tired of playing games with you. If you need a place to stay for the night then you're welcomed to the couch. But I'm not letting you waltz back into my life and throw it into upheaval all over again. So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed." And, with that, he turned and walked into his bedroom, effectively slamming the door in his wake.
And Bella was left watching after him, realizing at long last just how much she had hurt him all those years ago. This reunion was going to be a lot harder than she had first thought.
* * * * *
He woke up the following morning to the smell of coffee. A glance at his alarm clock told him that it was just after 9 o'clock in the morning. It was Saturday, so he didn't really have any place to be. Of course, knowing who was in the kitchen brewing that coffee suddenly made him wish that he had some plans to run off to. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take.
"Good morning," Bella said as he walked into the kitchen. "Coffee?"
"I'll get it," he said as he waved her away and got a cup from the cabinet himself. She stood back and let him pour his own coffee while she silently took a seat at the small kitchen table.
Scout stood leaning against the counter as he drank his coffee. He kept his eyes focused on the floor to avoid her gaze. She was beginning to think he'd said all he ever planned on saying to her when he finally spoke up again. "I'm sorry for yelling at you last night," he said.
"It's okay, I deserved it," she shrugged.
He didn't dispute this, but replied. "Still, I shouldn't let my temper get to me."
"It's fine, I've survived far worse," she assured him.
"You never answered my question last night," he said then.
She looked up from her coffee to find that he was finally looking in her direction. "Which one would that be?" she asked, though she knew exactly what he was referring to.
"Why? Why did you come here? Why now?" he asked.
She didn't answer right away, looking down to avoid his eyes as she seemed to search for the answer to his question in the beige and white tiles that lined the kitchen floor. Finally she shrugged and said, "It's kind of complicated."
"I'm fairly sure that I can comprehend," he replied.
"Will's getting married," she said.
Scout looked at her in confusion. "Excuse me?" Her answer had clearly puzzled him. "Will Krudski?" he asked.
"Yes, Will Krudski," she said.
"So, an old friend of ours from high school is getting married and that prompts you to drive all the way from . . . where is it you've been living anyway?" he asked as he suddenly realized that he didn't even have a clue.
"Atlanta," she said. "I've been living there for about five years now."
"That's, what, at least a two day drive from Atlanta to New York, right?"
"Yeah, about that," she agreed.
"So, you drove two days just to tell me that Will was getting married? After we haven't spoken so much as a word in over a decade?"
"I know . . ." she replied. "I know it seems like a weird thing to prompt me to find you. But . . . really it's not. I mean, I didn't exactly come here to tell you that Will was getting married. It was just that finding out he was getting married is what made me decide to come and see you," she explained.
"How's that?" Scout asked, still not sure where this was all leading.
"Well, Will called me last week to tell me that he was finally marrying the girl he's been dating for the last seven years since he got out of law school. And he mentioned that he'd talked to Jake when he called to invite her and she told him that she was pregnant again . . . Did I tell you that she and Hamilton got married?" Scout shook his head. "Yeah, they have a little girl who's three and Jake's due in April. Anyway, so then a few days later I talked to Grace and she said that Sean was getting divorced. I dunno, all of it was just . . . I dunno. I just had to see you."
Scout frowned as he set aside his coffee cup. "Um, Bella, I'm still not sure what you're saying exactly," he admitted. "Okay, so Will's getting married. And Jake and Hamilton are having another baby. And your ex-boyfriend from high school is getting a divorce. What does this all have to do with me . . . with us? I'm still pretty confused."
"That's why I didn't want to tell you," she said. "I knew this would happen . . ." She sighed and ran her hands through her hair roughly. "I just . . . I imagined this going differently."
"This?" he asked.
"This," she repeated as she gestured between the two of them. "Me, you, all of it . . . Scout, when I left New Rawley after high school, I never planned to stay gone. I just . . . I guess I thought I'd go off on my own for a six months or a year and experience a little of whatever I thought it was that I was missing. And then I could go back to the life I had before, to the plans that *we* had." She shook her head sadly. "It just didn't happen that way."
"You never tried to contact me . . . never let me know that you wanted me to contact you at some point," he told her.
"I know that," she nodded. "I'm not saying that this whole thing isn't my fault."
"So, tell me something," he said then. "I've asked myself this a thousand times since the last time I saw you and I'm still not sure about the real answer. Why, Bella? Why did you leave back then? What made you decide to do that?"
"Honestly?" she replied. He nodded. "Marcy Wilcox."
Scout furrowed his brow and said, "Who?"
"Marcy Wilcox . . . just this girl that I graduated with," she explained.
"What does she have to do with this?" he asked.
"Marcy was in my kindergarten class," Bella said. "We went to school together our whole lives. I had known her since I was five. And then, senior year, just before graduation, she found out that she was pregnant."
"Was she a friend of yours or something?" he asked, obviously still a bit confused about where the connection was in all this.
"No, not really, I just knew her. But it wasn't about us being friends. It was just that Marcy and I knew each other because we always had a lot of classes together through school. She was smart, in all the honors courses with me. And she'd lived in New Rawley for her whole life. And she had a boyfriend who she seemed to be pretty serious about. I guess I saw a lot of correlations between the two of us.
"Anyway, I knew that she had gotten into college because I overheard her talking to one of the councilors when I went in to discuss my scholarship application with someone after school one day. And then someone told me that Marcy was pregnant and that she and her boyfriend were getting married after graduation and that's sort of when it hit me. I couldn't let that happen to me. I had to do something to make sure that it didn't."
"Bella, we were always safe," Scout protested. "There was never a reason to think that--"
"Accidents happen, Scout," she cut in. "I'm sure that Marcy didn't *mean* to get pregnant. I'm sure that she didn't want to be married with a child before she was even twenty years old; before she got to go to college or get out of New Rawley for once. You don't plan things like that; they just happen. And then there's nothing left to do but play the hand you're dealt. I just knew that I couldn't risk letting that mistake happen to me."
"So, you left me because you were afraid you'd get pregnant?" he asked skeptically.
"I didn't just leave you, Scout," she clarified. "I left all of it. I left the town and the people I'd known forever and the life I'd always lived. It wasn't because I wanted to so much as it was because I *had* to. I knew that if I stayed and I never managed to get a taste of life outside of that little scope of the universe then I would never be able to be happy. I'd never be the person you deserved."
"Oh, I see. You left me for my own good," he replied in a biting tone as a sneer crossed his lips.
"That's not exactly what I said," she replied.
"Close enough," he countered.
"Well, whatever, it was just something I knew I had to do. And like I said, I never wanted to stay gone forever. I just wanted to see the world on my own, to know that I could live without anyone before I found myself in a position of dependency."
"I think I prefer the term love to codependence," he replied.
"It wasn't about love," she said. "I never, ever stopped loving you."
"But yet you still managed to disappear from my life, despite your 'best intentions', for *fifteen* years!"
"I wanted to get in touch with you a few months after I had left, but I wasn't sure what to say. And you were in college; I didn't want to disrupt your life."
"I had breaks; there were holidays and weekends and summers . . . you never once called. I never got a letter or an email or a damned postcard even. You just dropped off the face of the earth." He was getting angry the more he rehashed all of this but she knew that this was bound to happen. She would just have to suffer through his accusations because she knew they were all true.
"The more time that went by, the harder it was," she said. "I kept thinking I'd just wait for an excuse to call you and then it'd be okay. I figured that eventually something would happen and then we'd end up getting thrown back together and sooner or later we'd patch things up . . . you'd forgive me. But then months passed; and years . . . and I knew the longer I waited the less likely that that something would ever come along. By then, though, I was ashamed to call. I'd waited so long and I knew that you'd be hurt . . . I just didn't know what to say.
"I started hoping for some catastrophe so that I'd have a reason to contact you," she admitted. "Do you know that I actually laid awake nights going over conversations in my head where I told you that I was dying of cancer or that I was a drug addict or pregnant or something else that would cause me to really and truly need you? I almost hoped that something like that would come along sometimes. I needed to see you so badly that it wouldn't have even mattered."
"Nothing bad has to happen for you to need someone," he told her. "Nothing really bad has happened to me . . . and I've still needed you for a long time." He looked solemn as he said this and she knew that it was a difficult admission for him to make to her at that point. She nodded her understanding.
"You never told me how Will's wedding and Jake's pregnancy and Sean's divorce figured into you coming here," he reminded her.
She sighed as she swirled the now cool coffee in the bottom of her mug. "It just all made me realize that . . . that everyone my age had a life. Everyone, that is, except for me. I was the only one without a husband or a boyfriend or a child or a real job . . . I've spent my time since high school being someone's secretary or cashier or waitress. I never ended up in college. I never ended up much of anywhere. I guess the truth is that in leaving New Rawley to 'see the world', I actually never got to see much of it at all. And now, the one thing I want, the only thing I've ever really wanted, is to make up for that one mistake."
"So you want to try and get back the life you gave up back then?" he asked.
"Not the life . . . the man. The man I loved . . . the man that I still love."
"Then you came here to try and get me back?"
"I came here to ask you for another chance," she replied.
"And why should I even consider it after all this time?"
"Because you still love me, too," she said simply.
"What makes you so sure?"
"You're the only other person that I know of from back then who is still as alone as I am," she replied.
"I've had relationships," he protested. "I may not have one right now, but that's normal. I haven't spent fifteen years waiting every waking minute for you to call and beg me back. It's not like I've spent my entire adult life celibate or anything."
"I know . . . neither have I," she said. "It's just that neither of us has found the right one. And I think it's because we already had the right one . . . and we let each other get away."
"It was your choice, not mine. You were the one who walked away," he reminded her.
"Yes, but you let me go," she said.
Scout shook his head. "I really don't know what you think is going to happen here. We're going to start dating or something? Act like the last fifteen years never happened?"
"No," Bella replied with a shake of her head. "I'm not naïve enough to believe that will ever happen. I know I can't undo the last fifteen years. What's done is done; I have to live with that."
"But?" Scout prodded.
Bella sighed, "But . . . I would like another chance . . . to make things right. I want to prove to you that I never stopped caring about you; that I didn't just move away and forget. I still love you, Scout . . . and I don't *want* that to end."
He looked at her for a long time, just studying her face and letting her words sink in. After all of the years he'd spent wishing for this opportunity to arise, she was finally here. It was finally happening . . . and he had no idea what to do. He *could* give her the chance she was asking for. He could try to forgive her for leaving and make an attempt at rebuilding their all but lost relationship. However, the prospect of that seemed unsettling. Did he really want to risk the heartache that would come if he managed to get her back . . . only to watch her walk away again? He knew that if that were to happen he'd probably lose his mind.
"I'm sorry, Bella," he said finally. "It's not because I'm bitter or holding grudges or whatever else you might think but . . . I can't do this. I . . . I just can't. I'm sorry." And then he left.
She watched after Scout as tears formed in her eyes. She would be lying to herself if she said that she hadn't expected this. She knew that coming here and asking for his forgiveness would be the most difficult thing she'd ever had to do. And she knew that the chances of him agreeing to giving their relationship another shot were slim at best. But she still had to try. She had to know. And now she did. He'd walked away.
And all that she could do was watch him leave.
* * * * *
Author: Courtney
Email: courtneystovall@yahoo.com
Rating: R
Category: Bella/Scout, future-fic
Disclaimer: Mine . . . send money.
Summary: When they were young, Bella rejected Scout in favor of trying life on her own. Now, after 15 years, she's tracked him down again to ask for another chance. Can things ever be the same?
Author's Notes: The lyrics belong to Fuel from the song Hemorrhage off their forthcoming new cd, Something Like Human.
------------------------------
Part 2
Oh hold me now, I feel contagious..
Am I the only place that you've left to go?
She cries that life is like some movie black and white..
Dead actors, vacant lies, Over, and over, and over again she cries..
She sat silently on his couch, playing with the beads on her bracelet and avoiding his piercing gaze. She knew that she couldn't look at him, not now. The look of hurt and of accusation that she was sure to find in his eyes was more than she thought she could handle at the moment.
Scout sat in the wing-backed chair across from her and just looked at this creature that had haunted his dreams and taken over his thoughts for so many years. He'd come to accept years ago that Bella Banks would forever be a ghost from his past whom he could never forget, but whom he would never see again. He might have hoped secretly that she'd return one day, but he had never seriously believed it. She had made her decision when they were teenagers. She'd left him behind. Why would she suddenly resurface after so long apart? What reason could there possibly be?
However, there had to be a reason, for here she sat in his living room. Of course, she wasn't quite the same; not by a long shot. She looked completely different from the girl that he remembered. The picture in his head was still of a happy, smiling, innocent eighteen-year-old girl who had loved him, once, and whom he had never been able to stop loving since. But this woman before him . . . he barely recognized her the more he looked at her.
She had bleached her hair to a white-blonde color that looked garish compared to the natural golden color that he recalled. Her eyes, though still the same color they'd always been, weren't the same either. They looked dull and lifeless. There was no longer that sparkle he'd always seen there. Had she really lived that bad a life? Could she have lost all her hope in the time they'd been apart?
He couldn't help but wonder by looking at her what it was she'd been doing for the past fifteen years. She was definitely no longer his sweet and innocent high school love. Her tight jeans, her low cut shirt, her black heeled boots, none of it seemed very in character for the Bella he had known. Then again, she wasn't really "his" Bella anymore. Maybe that was for the best anyway.
He wondered if she were ill. She didn't look well, that was for sure. Her eyes were surrounded by dark circles that could only be partially explained by her thick eyeliner. She looked tired, worn out . . . like she hadn't seen a good nights sleep in so long she'd forgotten that it could even exist. She was a little shaky, too, but that could have just been nervous energy. The silence between them was definitely getting him a little agitated. He just wanted to know what was going on, why she had come back. He had to know . . .
"So, are you going to tell me what you're doing here or do I have to guess?" he finally asked to break the silence.
She sighed. There was nothing she could say, really. She knew that she deserved his anger. "I'm not sure how to answer that, Scout," she told him honestly.
"The truth works for me," he countered.
"It's just that there is so much to say . . . so much you deserve to know . . ."
"Let's not talk about what I deserve," he said acridly. He knew when he let her into his home that he still had strong feelings for this girl . . . well, this woman, as it were. However, he also knew that he wouldn't be able to hold back his reproach for the way she had treated him when she left or for the years that had passed since that day.
"Please Scout, I don't want to fight," she pleaded.
"So, this is once again about what you want," he said. "That figures."
"That's not what I meant," she said.
"I can read between the lines. I'm not as stupid as I used to be," he said in a hostile tone.
"I never thought that," she replied. "Look, Scout, I just . . . I really need--"
"Why should I care what you need, Bella?" he exploded. "Why, after all these years and all the nightmares and heartache, why should I give a shit about what *you* need? What about what I need for a change, huh? Have you given one second of thought to that in the last fifteen years? Have you?" he boomed.
Then, his voice dropping, he said, "No, I don't guess you have. Because you were always more worried about yourself, weren't you? Well, I for one am tired of playing games with you. If you need a place to stay for the night then you're welcomed to the couch. But I'm not letting you waltz back into my life and throw it into upheaval all over again. So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed." And, with that, he turned and walked into his bedroom, effectively slamming the door in his wake.
And Bella was left watching after him, realizing at long last just how much she had hurt him all those years ago. This reunion was going to be a lot harder than she had first thought.
* * * * *
He woke up the following morning to the smell of coffee. A glance at his alarm clock told him that it was just after 9 o'clock in the morning. It was Saturday, so he didn't really have any place to be. Of course, knowing who was in the kitchen brewing that coffee suddenly made him wish that he had some plans to run off to. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take.
"Good morning," Bella said as he walked into the kitchen. "Coffee?"
"I'll get it," he said as he waved her away and got a cup from the cabinet himself. She stood back and let him pour his own coffee while she silently took a seat at the small kitchen table.
Scout stood leaning against the counter as he drank his coffee. He kept his eyes focused on the floor to avoid her gaze. She was beginning to think he'd said all he ever planned on saying to her when he finally spoke up again. "I'm sorry for yelling at you last night," he said.
"It's okay, I deserved it," she shrugged.
He didn't dispute this, but replied. "Still, I shouldn't let my temper get to me."
"It's fine, I've survived far worse," she assured him.
"You never answered my question last night," he said then.
She looked up from her coffee to find that he was finally looking in her direction. "Which one would that be?" she asked, though she knew exactly what he was referring to.
"Why? Why did you come here? Why now?" he asked.
She didn't answer right away, looking down to avoid his eyes as she seemed to search for the answer to his question in the beige and white tiles that lined the kitchen floor. Finally she shrugged and said, "It's kind of complicated."
"I'm fairly sure that I can comprehend," he replied.
"Will's getting married," she said.
Scout looked at her in confusion. "Excuse me?" Her answer had clearly puzzled him. "Will Krudski?" he asked.
"Yes, Will Krudski," she said.
"So, an old friend of ours from high school is getting married and that prompts you to drive all the way from . . . where is it you've been living anyway?" he asked as he suddenly realized that he didn't even have a clue.
"Atlanta," she said. "I've been living there for about five years now."
"That's, what, at least a two day drive from Atlanta to New York, right?"
"Yeah, about that," she agreed.
"So, you drove two days just to tell me that Will was getting married? After we haven't spoken so much as a word in over a decade?"
"I know . . ." she replied. "I know it seems like a weird thing to prompt me to find you. But . . . really it's not. I mean, I didn't exactly come here to tell you that Will was getting married. It was just that finding out he was getting married is what made me decide to come and see you," she explained.
"How's that?" Scout asked, still not sure where this was all leading.
"Well, Will called me last week to tell me that he was finally marrying the girl he's been dating for the last seven years since he got out of law school. And he mentioned that he'd talked to Jake when he called to invite her and she told him that she was pregnant again . . . Did I tell you that she and Hamilton got married?" Scout shook his head. "Yeah, they have a little girl who's three and Jake's due in April. Anyway, so then a few days later I talked to Grace and she said that Sean was getting divorced. I dunno, all of it was just . . . I dunno. I just had to see you."
Scout frowned as he set aside his coffee cup. "Um, Bella, I'm still not sure what you're saying exactly," he admitted. "Okay, so Will's getting married. And Jake and Hamilton are having another baby. And your ex-boyfriend from high school is getting a divorce. What does this all have to do with me . . . with us? I'm still pretty confused."
"That's why I didn't want to tell you," she said. "I knew this would happen . . ." She sighed and ran her hands through her hair roughly. "I just . . . I imagined this going differently."
"This?" he asked.
"This," she repeated as she gestured between the two of them. "Me, you, all of it . . . Scout, when I left New Rawley after high school, I never planned to stay gone. I just . . . I guess I thought I'd go off on my own for a six months or a year and experience a little of whatever I thought it was that I was missing. And then I could go back to the life I had before, to the plans that *we* had." She shook her head sadly. "It just didn't happen that way."
"You never tried to contact me . . . never let me know that you wanted me to contact you at some point," he told her.
"I know that," she nodded. "I'm not saying that this whole thing isn't my fault."
"So, tell me something," he said then. "I've asked myself this a thousand times since the last time I saw you and I'm still not sure about the real answer. Why, Bella? Why did you leave back then? What made you decide to do that?"
"Honestly?" she replied. He nodded. "Marcy Wilcox."
Scout furrowed his brow and said, "Who?"
"Marcy Wilcox . . . just this girl that I graduated with," she explained.
"What does she have to do with this?" he asked.
"Marcy was in my kindergarten class," Bella said. "We went to school together our whole lives. I had known her since I was five. And then, senior year, just before graduation, she found out that she was pregnant."
"Was she a friend of yours or something?" he asked, obviously still a bit confused about where the connection was in all this.
"No, not really, I just knew her. But it wasn't about us being friends. It was just that Marcy and I knew each other because we always had a lot of classes together through school. She was smart, in all the honors courses with me. And she'd lived in New Rawley for her whole life. And she had a boyfriend who she seemed to be pretty serious about. I guess I saw a lot of correlations between the two of us.
"Anyway, I knew that she had gotten into college because I overheard her talking to one of the councilors when I went in to discuss my scholarship application with someone after school one day. And then someone told me that Marcy was pregnant and that she and her boyfriend were getting married after graduation and that's sort of when it hit me. I couldn't let that happen to me. I had to do something to make sure that it didn't."
"Bella, we were always safe," Scout protested. "There was never a reason to think that--"
"Accidents happen, Scout," she cut in. "I'm sure that Marcy didn't *mean* to get pregnant. I'm sure that she didn't want to be married with a child before she was even twenty years old; before she got to go to college or get out of New Rawley for once. You don't plan things like that; they just happen. And then there's nothing left to do but play the hand you're dealt. I just knew that I couldn't risk letting that mistake happen to me."
"So, you left me because you were afraid you'd get pregnant?" he asked skeptically.
"I didn't just leave you, Scout," she clarified. "I left all of it. I left the town and the people I'd known forever and the life I'd always lived. It wasn't because I wanted to so much as it was because I *had* to. I knew that if I stayed and I never managed to get a taste of life outside of that little scope of the universe then I would never be able to be happy. I'd never be the person you deserved."
"Oh, I see. You left me for my own good," he replied in a biting tone as a sneer crossed his lips.
"That's not exactly what I said," she replied.
"Close enough," he countered.
"Well, whatever, it was just something I knew I had to do. And like I said, I never wanted to stay gone forever. I just wanted to see the world on my own, to know that I could live without anyone before I found myself in a position of dependency."
"I think I prefer the term love to codependence," he replied.
"It wasn't about love," she said. "I never, ever stopped loving you."
"But yet you still managed to disappear from my life, despite your 'best intentions', for *fifteen* years!"
"I wanted to get in touch with you a few months after I had left, but I wasn't sure what to say. And you were in college; I didn't want to disrupt your life."
"I had breaks; there were holidays and weekends and summers . . . you never once called. I never got a letter or an email or a damned postcard even. You just dropped off the face of the earth." He was getting angry the more he rehashed all of this but she knew that this was bound to happen. She would just have to suffer through his accusations because she knew they were all true.
"The more time that went by, the harder it was," she said. "I kept thinking I'd just wait for an excuse to call you and then it'd be okay. I figured that eventually something would happen and then we'd end up getting thrown back together and sooner or later we'd patch things up . . . you'd forgive me. But then months passed; and years . . . and I knew the longer I waited the less likely that that something would ever come along. By then, though, I was ashamed to call. I'd waited so long and I knew that you'd be hurt . . . I just didn't know what to say.
"I started hoping for some catastrophe so that I'd have a reason to contact you," she admitted. "Do you know that I actually laid awake nights going over conversations in my head where I told you that I was dying of cancer or that I was a drug addict or pregnant or something else that would cause me to really and truly need you? I almost hoped that something like that would come along sometimes. I needed to see you so badly that it wouldn't have even mattered."
"Nothing bad has to happen for you to need someone," he told her. "Nothing really bad has happened to me . . . and I've still needed you for a long time." He looked solemn as he said this and she knew that it was a difficult admission for him to make to her at that point. She nodded her understanding.
"You never told me how Will's wedding and Jake's pregnancy and Sean's divorce figured into you coming here," he reminded her.
She sighed as she swirled the now cool coffee in the bottom of her mug. "It just all made me realize that . . . that everyone my age had a life. Everyone, that is, except for me. I was the only one without a husband or a boyfriend or a child or a real job . . . I've spent my time since high school being someone's secretary or cashier or waitress. I never ended up in college. I never ended up much of anywhere. I guess the truth is that in leaving New Rawley to 'see the world', I actually never got to see much of it at all. And now, the one thing I want, the only thing I've ever really wanted, is to make up for that one mistake."
"So you want to try and get back the life you gave up back then?" he asked.
"Not the life . . . the man. The man I loved . . . the man that I still love."
"Then you came here to try and get me back?"
"I came here to ask you for another chance," she replied.
"And why should I even consider it after all this time?"
"Because you still love me, too," she said simply.
"What makes you so sure?"
"You're the only other person that I know of from back then who is still as alone as I am," she replied.
"I've had relationships," he protested. "I may not have one right now, but that's normal. I haven't spent fifteen years waiting every waking minute for you to call and beg me back. It's not like I've spent my entire adult life celibate or anything."
"I know . . . neither have I," she said. "It's just that neither of us has found the right one. And I think it's because we already had the right one . . . and we let each other get away."
"It was your choice, not mine. You were the one who walked away," he reminded her.
"Yes, but you let me go," she said.
Scout shook his head. "I really don't know what you think is going to happen here. We're going to start dating or something? Act like the last fifteen years never happened?"
"No," Bella replied with a shake of her head. "I'm not naïve enough to believe that will ever happen. I know I can't undo the last fifteen years. What's done is done; I have to live with that."
"But?" Scout prodded.
Bella sighed, "But . . . I would like another chance . . . to make things right. I want to prove to you that I never stopped caring about you; that I didn't just move away and forget. I still love you, Scout . . . and I don't *want* that to end."
He looked at her for a long time, just studying her face and letting her words sink in. After all of the years he'd spent wishing for this opportunity to arise, she was finally here. It was finally happening . . . and he had no idea what to do. He *could* give her the chance she was asking for. He could try to forgive her for leaving and make an attempt at rebuilding their all but lost relationship. However, the prospect of that seemed unsettling. Did he really want to risk the heartache that would come if he managed to get her back . . . only to watch her walk away again? He knew that if that were to happen he'd probably lose his mind.
"I'm sorry, Bella," he said finally. "It's not because I'm bitter or holding grudges or whatever else you might think but . . . I can't do this. I . . . I just can't. I'm sorry." And then he left.
She watched after Scout as tears formed in her eyes. She would be lying to herself if she said that she hadn't expected this. She knew that coming here and asking for his forgiveness would be the most difficult thing she'd ever had to do. And she knew that the chances of him agreeing to giving their relationship another shot were slim at best. But she still had to try. She had to know. And now she did. He'd walked away.
And all that she could do was watch him leave.
* * * * *