Title: Caught in the Undertow
Author: Ashley
Genre: Drama/Angst
Summary: Haley discovers it's not so easy to recapture everything you once had.
A/N: This is a companion piece to Against the Tide. But you don't have to have read that to understand this.
And even when your hope is gone
...move along...move along,
just to make it through...
She keeps a picture of them under her pillow at night. The same picture she had taped against the mirror in her tour dressing room. It was of them on their wedding day. Happy. In love. A perfect moment in time, captured forever.
It feels like a lie now. The happiness the couple share in that picture. She's not that girl anymore, and he's not that guy, and they're not together...
She knows it's her fault. In the grand scheme of things she's the one to blame. She's the one that left. But she's sick of feeling so damn guilty all the time; tired of the constant pain she sees in Nathan's eyes. She wishes she could black it out, take an eraser to the past. But some things can't be changed.
Most nights she dreams that she never left. That she never married Nathan and Lucas never joined the basketball team. That things in her life stayed simple, uncomplicated, safe. The way she'd always imagined them to be at the beginning of her Junior year.
Her father used to tell her time has a way of healing all wounds, but Haley isn't sure she believes in that saying any longer. The ache in her heart never dulls. Breathing in and out is more of a job than a mere involuntary act most days.
It would all be easier to just forget. To try to move on and let go of the mistakes, because holding onto someone that doesn't want to be held is as futile as running against the wind. But it's a lonely feeling not to be wanted. To not have a place in a town you called home your entire life. When you're gone time doesn't stop, people don't quit moving forward, or moving on. Life stops for no one. It's a harsh reality Haley's come back to, and she knows it's one of her own making. Seeing the changes in everything and everyone around her, however, is hard to swallow. She doesn't know where she fits in anymore, and that's one of the scariest realizations of all.
Being with Nathan was never about the superficial benefits for her. She never cared about the popularity, the new friends, the overabundance of attention and praise, or the parties. All of those things were fake. Incredible and breakable, but never real.
Nathan...that was real. Finding him, being with him, was like discovering a home for her soul. A place where she was no longer Haley James: the best friend, the smart girl, the quiet, pretty girl, the friendly tutor, the invisible hermit, the one of many faceless students at school. With Nathan she was none of that and all of that combined. She was everything she had been and everything she could be. Once he got to know her, once he truly opened himself up to her and she let him in, Nathan never saw her as anything less or more than who she was. And that's when she knew with him she could be the person she'd always dreamed of.
Except the person she dreamed of becoming isn't exactly who she wants to be. In fact the word dream isn't something she's sure she even understands anymore. Her literal dreams came true and then broke apart her life into a million fractured pieces. Now all she has left are the dreams in her sleep. The ones that taunt her with her mistakes and the hopes of a better tomorrow.
For a change, this time she dreams Nathan's forgiven her for leaving, and when she shows up at his doorstep in the middle of the night he is happy to see her.
"I love you," she says with tears spilling out of her eyes like tiny diamonds.
"Welcome home," he says with a beautiful smile and pulls her into his arms, his face pressed into her hair, as his body wraps around her, warm and safe.
It's dreams like these that cause her to wake up at four in the morning, her face flushed and a sheen of sweat covering her forehead and neck. She rubs at the sweat with a cold wash cloth in the bathroom, and tries to calm her uneven breaths. She forces herself not to think about him in the early morning hours like this, or she's sure she won't ever be able to fall back asleep.
She ignores the wet streaks that run down her cheeks and closes her eyes, wishing for a dreamless oblivion.
Haley isn't sure how to put the pieces back together now. She's spent her entire life being the problem solver, the listener, the advice giver. Nobody needs her help now, nobody's asking her what to do. People have moved on without her and she's caught in a rip tide between the past and the present.
Does she hold on?
Does she let go?
In the end, all roads lead back to Nathan.
This is only thing she's certain of.