Chapter 22: Goodbye Aren't Always Sweet
Lucas
When I first met Riley Matthews, you could say that I knew next to nothing about books. I know that sounds strange coming from a junior in high school, but I never appreciated how much a book could change the way you thought about the world. I never knew the impact a stranger's words could have on you. How a simple few paragraphs could brighten your day, or transport you to entirely different universes. I never thought that I, Lucas Friar, could be affected by a book. But as I packed up my room, carefully placing the ones that Riley had given me over the course of these past few months in their own special cardboard box, I realized that the words on these pages are what has changed my life. But more importantly, it was Riley Matthews who had changed my life. My mother appeared in the doorway of my bedroom, taking in the bare walls and empty drawers that I had been working on packing up over the past few days. She stepped over boxes and packing tape to make her way over to my stripped-down bed and sat down to look up at me with curious eyes.
"How's it coming?"
My mother appeared in the doorway of my bedroom, taking in the bare walls and empty drawers that I had been working on packing up over the past few days. She stepped over boxes and packing tape to make her way over to my stripped-down bed and sat down to look up at me with curious eyes.
"Slowly," I admitted, fiddling with a stubborn button down shirt that refused to come off its hanger. "But I think I should be ready to go by tomorrow."
"Well, remember that we're only going to be gone for a few months," she reminded me, crossing one leg over the other and running her hand over my old baby blanket that I usually kept at the top of my closet for safe keeping, but was now stacked on top of the pile of items still needing to be packed. "You don't have to pack everything."
"Yeah," I mumbled under my breath, crossing the room quickly to continue shoving clothes into various boxes.
"Are you going to see your friends today?"
"Zay's coming by later," I told her, wrapping up my computer chord and placing it carefully in my backpack. "And a few guys from the team."
"What about Riley?" I turned to look her in the eyes for the first time since she had walked into the room. She was raising her eyebrows at me knowingly, a sly smile plastered firmly on her lips as she waited for my reply.
"I'm going to see her tonight," I explained, opening the drawer to my bedside table and removing yet another book from inside it. "But there's something I have to do first."
My mother stood from her spot on the bed to meet me on the other side of the room in front of my closet.
"Lucas, you've been through a lot these past few months," she began, placing one hand on top of mine and giving it a reassuring squeeze. "And it's taken me until the incident at the lake last week to realize that I should have been there to help you through them."
"Mom, you had the divorce to deal with and dad-"
"No, I am your mother and I should have known something was off," she insisted, tears beginning to pop up at the corner of her eyes. "I should have been your mother first, before anything else, and I wasn't. So I want to apologize for not being the kind of parent that you needed. And I wanted you to know that things are going to be different now."
"It's okay mom," I assured her, removing my hand from her grasp to rub her shoulder reassuringly. "It's all over now. Anyway, I think some time away will do us good. We can start fresh. Get away from the demons of our past, so to speak. At least for a little while, you know?"
"Yeah, you're right," she agreed, turning her back to mine to help zip up the overfilled suitcase propped up against the dresser. "Plus it'll be good to see your grandmother. Anyway, your brother is bringing home Chinese later. Are you going to be back in time to eat with us?"
"I should be," I promised, giving the suitcase one last shake to make the zipper close all the way around and setting it carefully back down on the hardwood floor.
"Okay, good," she smiled, placing her hands on her hips triumphantly and making her way over to the door. "Last night in our apartment together, Lucas. We've created lots of memories here. And not all of them bad."
She gave me an amused wink as she stood in the doorway, and I laughed at how goofy she looked as she took a step backwards into the hall.
"I'll see you later, mom," I called to her as she rounded the corner to head into the kitchen.
We needed to move on, and to do that, there was someone I needed to visit before we left town. If I didn't settle things properly, I knew that I would always wonder what would happen if I had, so I finished packing the rest of my clothes and headed out onto the busy New York streets to do just that.
"Can I help you?"
The cheerful woman at the front desk of the mental rehabilitation facility set down her phone to greet me as I entered the building. It was exactly how I imagined a psychiatric facility to look, except with less posters displaying positive affirmations plastered all over the walls and much duller lighting.
"I'm here to see Jensen Haynes," I told her, shoving my hands in my pockets and rocking back and forth on my heels uncomfortably.
"I'll check to see if he's ready to have visitors," she explained, picking up her notepad and raising her eyebrows at me expectantly. "Can I get your name?"
"Lucas Friar."
"Alright, I'll be right with you," she spun around in her chair and disappeared behind the little booth in the back of the room.
The night that Jensen pushed Riley into the lake, his parent's convinced the police that he wasn't in his right mind, so they agreed to send him here for the next few months on the condition that if his behavior didn't change, he would be sent to a juvenile detention center. Part of me agreed that he deserved to have some kind of consequence for doing what he did, but another part of me worried that this place was not the right kind of consequence. I just hoped that it was helping him return to the person he was before things got so complicated for him.
"Mr. Friar?" The woman popped her head around the corner to smile at me reassuringly, and I spun around to meet her cheerful gaze. "He's ready to see you."
"Thanks," I mumbled, taking one last look around the lobby before following her through the door she buzzed open for me and heading down a long, narrow hallway.
The woman, whose name I now knew as Eva, pushed open a door at the very end of hallway that read 'Suite 23′ and we both stepped inside. Jensen was sitting cross-legged in a chair closest to the window, staring intently at the tall buildings that met the overcast sky overlooking the upper east side of manhattan. It took him a moment to recognize the light footsteps and shutting of the door as signs that someone had entered the room, so we stood there in silence until he finally lifted his head slightly to see Eva and myself standing expectantly in front of the tiny, beat up dresser in the corner of the room.
"Didn't think I'd ever see you again," Jensen admitted, his tone much calmer than it had been a week ago. His skin was an unnatural color of pale that made the bags under his eyes much more defined and noticeable, and I couldn't help but wonder if he had gotten much sleep since he had been there.
"Yeah, well," I muttered, taking a quick look at Eva before stepping out of the doorway to make my way over to the window. She nodded and left the room to give us some privacy and Jensen uncrossed his legs to turn his body to face mine. "I'm leaving tomorrow and I'm not quite sure I'm ready to go without clearing some things up."
Jensen nodded as if he understood, and quickly averted his eyes to watch his fingernails scraping at the chipped piece of wood on the arm rest of the chair.
"How's Riley?" he asked after a moment, still refusing to meet my gaze.
"Nope, not happening," I said almost too quickly, crossing my arms over my chest defiantly. "You don't get to talk about Riley - ever. She might have forgiven you because that's the kind of person she is, but that doesn't mean I forgive you for taking advantage of her kindness in some insane effort to get back at me."
"Fair enough," he agreed, lifting his head and gesturing towards the chair next to his bed that had the same green striped cushions that his had. "Have a seat."
I did as he instructed, pushing the chair over to the window so that it was adjacent to his, and taking a seat.
"How long are they keeping you here?" I asked, settling into the cushions and placing my hands on either armrest.
"Depends on how they evaluate 'my overall state of being' over the next few weeks," Jensen rolled his eyes as he quoted what I could only assume was the line that the doctors have been feeding him all week. "My parents were willing to make the effort to get me help, but in their minds that meant tossing me into the looney bin so they wouldn't have to deal with me personally."
"This might be the best thing for you, Jensen," I tried to convince him, doing my best to keep things positive for him. I might not have liked what he had done this past year, but we were friends at one point. He deserved to have someone give him the hope he needed to get through this.
"Yeah, maybe," he muttered, pushing himself out of the chair and walking to the other end of the window, leaning against the windowsill and looking up at me. "Anyway, you mentioned you were leaving. Where is the Friar family moving to?"
"Washington," I explained. "But it's just for a few months to visit my grandmother. We just need to get away from everything for awhile."
"Wow, that's pretty far," Jensen said, crossing one foot over the other and raising one eyebrow at me curiously. "Now, where is Lucas Friar going?"
"What are you talking about Jensen?" I muttered, shaking my head at him in confusion.
"We've known each other for a long time, Lucas," Jensen stated. "You might argue with me for saying this, but I've gotten a pretty good idea of the kind of person you've become over the years. And these past few months, you've lost little pieces of the Lucas Friar you used to be. I mean, you put the girl you care about more than anything else in this world, in danger just by letting her into your life. The old Lucas wouldn't have done that. You're lost. And if I were in your position, I'd go off on my own to find myself again because that girl doesn't deserve to be with someone she doesn't know. And how could she truly know you if you don't even know yourself anymore."
"You don't know what you're talking about," I muttered, ready to brush Jensen off without another word about it, but there was something in his eyes that told me he was being more sincere than he had ever been in his entire life. So I let him continue.
"Before I left school to go to Dalton, you were miserable," Jensen continued, his tone neither arrogant nor taunting the way it would have been only a week ago. "After I left you were miserable. Then you met Riley Matthews and your misery kind of disappeared for a while. But then I went and screwed that up for you and now you're back in the same place you were before. I can see it in your eyes - that look of confusion and uncertainty. That's my fault. So the least I could do is to tell you to go find the person you're meant to be once and for all. Because I could tell just by watching you two, that Riley saw a glimpse of him before that night at the lake. Now you owe it to yourself to prove that you truly are that person."
I hated to admit it more than anything, but Jensen was right. I was exactly the person I was meant to be with Riley Matthews, but the incident at the lake and everything that happened with Jensen made me question that. Was Riley safe with this person that let her get pushed into a lake and almost drown? Is this who I had become? I owed it to her to try and figure that out. And I couldn't do that in New York City, where the noise and the lights reminded me of everything that has happened to cause that uncertainty that Jensen was referring to.
"You know, I think being in here is actually helping you, Jensen," I admitted, my lips curling to a small smile - the first smile I had shared with Jensen Haynes in years.
"Yeah well, let's hope so," Jensen muttered, moving from the window to pick up the tray of food sitting sloppily on his nightstand. "I don't think I can handle another month with the food in here. Cardboard would be a luxury compared to the stuff they're serving in that cafeteria."
I stood from my chair to meet him in front of his bed and he set the tray back down and raised his eyes to meet mine.
"I might not forgive you for what you did to Riley, but I forgive you for everything else. And that might not mean much coming from me, but I just wanted you to know that I'm ready to move on from it if you are," I told him, taking a step closer and holding out my hand for him to shake.
"It means a lot," Jensen said in almost a whisper, taking my hand and shaking it firmly.
"I'll see you around," I promised, dropping my hand and taking a step backwards to head out of the room.
"Hey Lucas," Jensen called back to me once I was already halfway to the door. "I'm sorry."
"I know."
I gave him a reassuring smile before turning my back to him and walking down the dark hallway that led to the lobby. Jensen Haynes and I had gone through a lot together, and I knew that we could never be friends. But maybe we could not hate each other anymore. That would be something new and different that I so desperately needed in this new life that I was trying to find. That was something I could work towards.
"I can't believe you're leaving me to deal with the team by myself, man," Zay complained, closing one of the last boxes to be packed up in my bedroom and motioning for me to hand him the packing tape.
"Zay, the season's practically over anyway. It's not like we made the championships this year with me leading the team," I reminded him, passing the tape over to him and picking up another box from inside the closet. "I think you should be fine."
"Still, what am I supposed to do without you for 5 months?" Zay asked, finishing up with the box he was working on and tossing the tape onto the bed. "You're my best friend, Lucas."
"Aw, come here," I smiled, gesturing for him to come closer. I pulled him into a quick hug and patted him on the back reassuringly. "I'll miss you too, Zay. But I don't think you're going to need me. I've seen you smiling all goofy-like at the back of Maya Hart's head in history class so I think you're going to be a little busy next semester. I would practically be invisible to you anyway."
"Whatever, man," Zay brushed me off, but I could see the slight smile beginning to form on his lips at the thought of this. "Are you going to see Riley tonight?"
I took a step backwards, dropping my head to avoid his gaze and quickly began lugging everything I could into the hallway to be transferred to the moving truck.
"We should go ahead and start loading everything into the back now, so we don't have to do it all in the morning," I muttered, setting down the boxes and turning to grab some more from the bedroom.
"You didn't answer my question," Zay hurried to catch up with me and placed a firm hand on my shoulder to prevent me from leaving his side again. "Lucas, stop."
"Remember when my father sent me to Texas for football camp in 3rd grade because he was having a hard time with the company and he didn't want to deal with me whining a complaining all summer?" I asked, adjusting the luggage in my hands and turning to raise a curious eyebrow at Zay.
"Yeah," Zay muttered, the confusion beginning to settle into his expression. "But what does that have to do with you going to see Riley before you leave?"
"I had just gotten that pet turtle, remember?"
"Mortimer," Zay answered, nodding as the memory of that summer came back to him. "Yeah, I remember. You asked me to take care of him because you didn't want him to think that you didn't care about him by leaving just after you got him."
"And you did. You took better care of him than I ever could, and Mortimer turned into the best pet I ever had," I told him, slowly letting the suitcase drop from my hands to land carefully on the hardwood floor in the hallway.
"Okay, you're losing me here, man," Zay furrowed his brows together and I placed one hand on his shoulder and turned him to face me so that I was sure he was looking me right in the eyes.
"I need you to take care of Riley," I announced. "Believe me, I know she doesn't need anyone to take care of her, but would you just look after her anyway? If she needs anything - if she wants you to read a book that she's really excited about or needs help reviewing an article for the paper, would you do it? I want her to know that someone is always going to be there for her, even if it's not me."
"Of course I will," Zay promised, and I sighed in relief as I dropped my hand from his shoulder and began heading back into the bedroom. "But why does this sound like you're going to be gone a lot longer than just a few months?"
"Just watch over her," I repeated, avoiding his question as I turned off the light to the now empty closet, and shut the door. "And if she asks - tell her that I'm sorry."
"Lucas," Zay started to say, but I cut him off before he could say anything more.
"Riley deserves to be with someone she knows she can trust," I explained, taking a look around the room for anything that I could have forgotten to pack. "But she also deserves someone who can trust himself to be around her without putting her in harm's way."
"Lucas, you know that wasn't your fault-"
"Just promise me?" I asked, my eyes pleading with him. "Please?"
"I promise," Zay agreed, sliding the last box off the surface of the dresser and carrying it out of the room.
"Good," I said. "Now, let's get this stuff loaded into the truck."
I turned back to take one last look at the room I had lived in my entire life, wondering if I would ever be back to see it again. As I flicked off the light, and turned to shut the door, the click echoing loudly in the bare hallway, I couldn't help but think of that sound as a final goodbye to the place I had called home for so many years.
The letter felt heavy sitting in my back pocket, like it was more than just a piece of paper and an envelope weighing me down and refusing to let me move. The early signs of morning were starting to show as the sun made its way up and over the buildings sitting along the horizon. Riley was sound asleep, and I could hear faint snoring through the shut bedroom window from where I was standing on the terrace. If I was going to do this, there was no looking back.
I carefully propped the envelope against the glass so that the side with her name was facing into her room. She would be sure to see it as soon as she woke up, and the thought of that made my heart sink a little in my chest.
I couldn't face telling her goodbye, because I knew that if I saw her in any way that was more than just a glance through a bedroom window, I would never leave. And I also knew, that if I truly loved Riley the way I thought I did, I needed to go. I had a feeling that would make no sense to her or to anyone else in my life, but it was what I thought I needed to do for both of us right now.
"Goodbye, Riley," I whispered to her closed window, touching the glass quickly before standing up straight and turning my back to her.
With one last glance, I took a deep breath, climbed down the terrace using the fire escape, and walked away from everything that I could have had with Riley Matthews. Maybe I still would one day, but I knew that right now, this was the right decision. This was goodbye. And it was the hardest thing I had ever done.