Not Your Fault

“Huh?” My head snaps up at the realization that he just said something.

Kris lowers his head, his eyes studying mine. “Who wrote that letter?”

My lips slide to the left as hesitation stops me from giving him the answer. Kris’s features become dark and concerned. “Do I know him?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so. He went to school with us but he wouldn’t have been in your crowd.”

He shakes his head as if deep in thought. “How do you have his phone number? That was ten years ago. And why would he do that? Who the fuck would ever do that?”

I take a step forward and wrap my arms around his waist, pressing my head into his chest. The warmth of his body and the feel of his hands wrapping around me brings me comfort. I mumble words just loud enough for him to hear, “His name is Nathan. And he was my boyfriend until a few days ago.”

I didn’t return to school until an entire month had passed afte

r Tyler’s funeral. Numerous phone calls from the principal and threats to fail me and make me repeat my junior year had done nothing to change my mind. As long as Kris walked the hallways of Mixon High School, I did not want to go back there.

Eventually though, I did. When I look back on those memories now, they are hazy images that have been repressed so long that it’s almost as if they never existed in the first place. I was a girl in mourning, an empty shell of a human being who used to be vibrant and full of love. But my brother was dead and my boyfriend was missing in action and the whole world felt like it had collapsed, combusting in on itself in the center of my soul.

I could not feel happiness. I could not feel anything but pain.

At least I felt something.

A short while after I had returned to school, once the condolences from teachers with sad faces had stopped, and after people who never really were my friends quit finding me in the hallways to tell me they were sorry for my loss, Nathan showed up. I knew him from my life of attending the Mixon school district, but apart from occasionally being lab partners in chemistry, we weren’t friends.

This memory isn’t foggy. Nathan and I had relived it many times over the years, but now as I think about it in Kris’s bedroom, I see the events in a different light. I was walking down the long corridor that led to the parking lot after school one day, a walk I used to make with Kris but lately had been walking alone. Nathan, tall and still chubby, appeared at my side and tapped me on the opposite shoulder, causing me to look the wrong way at first. When I did look over at him he smiled sheepishly.

“Sorry, I couldn’t help myself,” he said.

I smiled, humoring him and his stupid prank.

“It’s nice to see you smile again,” he said, adjusting the straps on his backpack as we walked. He swallowed, looking from me to the ground and back at me again. I could tell he wanted to say something, but he was too nervous to say it. I was used to seeing that look on everyone else, so said it for him.

“You don’t have to mention Tyler. It’s fine. I’m going to be okay.”

He gnawed on his bottom lip and nodded at me as we walked. “I know you’ll be okay. That’s not what I was going to say.”

“Oh?” I asked, feeling a little relieved that someone wanted to talk to me about something other than my tragic life. “What’s up?”

After no less than two minutes of walking toward our cars and gathering up every ounce of intestinal fortitude Nathan could find, he finally said, “I was wondering if you’d like to go on a date with me?”

“A what?” I blurted out in confusion. That was the last thing I had expected him to say.

“Sorry, um…it doesn’t have to be a date, date. I just-” He sucked in a breath and said the rest of this thoughts in a quick burst of words. “You’re just a really sweet girl and you’ve been through a lot and I was wondering if you wanted to hang out with me and just kind of forget about everything else. You know, maybe take your mind off things.”

I came to a dead stop in the middle of the parking lot. Students muttered crap under their breath about how I was being inconsiderate since they almost crashed into me. Nathan’s cheeks went as red as Rudolph’s nose as I watched him, trying to make sense of what he’d just said. “You want to go on a date with me?”

He nodded.

“You know I’m dating Kris Payne, right?” My stomach twisted into knots the second the words fell out of my mouth. No, I wasn’t dating Kris Payne. I mean, he never officially broke up with me but where the hell was he? He was gone. And because of that, he wasn’t my boyfriend anymore.

“Really?” Nathan said with just as much of a confused voice as I had used. “I heard y’all…broke up.”

This is where I should have realized something was off. I should have wondered how Nathan knew that fact and I should have questioned where he had “heard” that from. Because the rumors hadn’t spread through school yet—no one had any idea that Kris and I hadn’t spoken since Tyler died.

I blink and find Kris watching me with those concerned auburn eyes. Many more memories flood into my mind now. Nathan, who suddenly became my best friend at school—who was suddenly by my side after every single class, eager to walk me to my next one. I did take him up on the date offer, after the tenth time he had asked me. And three and a half years later, all of his persistence paid off when I kissed him on the lips on a Ferris wheel ride and told him that yes, I would finally be his girlfriend.

“I was never happy with Nathan,” I say, mostly to myself. “I dated him because he was there and he was nice to me, but I wasn’t in love with him. He took you from me.” My jaw shivers from the rage coursing through my veins. “I can’t even imagine what my life would have been like with you instead. I should have been with you.”

“I know, baby.” Kris sighs. “I should have never believed that fucking note.” He glances to the floor where I had dropped the note before I called Nathan. We look at it and then he bends and picks it up, ripping it into pieces and crumpling it in his fist. The creased piece of pink paper that changed our lives forever is now just a worthless ball of trash.