My Wreckage: Camp Nanowrimo (July)- In Editing

Chapter 25: Where I Found Myself (Scarlett)

Scarlett

(Present)

My feet pushed hard against the pavement. Why had I even bothered to come back. He pushed me as far away as he possibly could. I needed to. I needed to forget. I needed to move on with my life and do it also alone.

There was an ugly nagging voice in my ear. I didn't want my drunken tirade to be the last conversation with pathetically my first love.

I wasn't that girl anymore and I needed to face my past.

"What? What the hell did you want from me?"

I closed my eyes pinching my nose. I didn't look at him. I couldn't. I took in a heavy breath and pivoted around. Feeling the stung my feet. I regretted pulling off my shoes and hike up the massive hill my mother's.

"Nothing." I admitted. I let out a surrendering breath, "Troy. Look, I get it. You want to die here. You don't want to let anything destroy your little small paradise. It's fine. You're not going to have to worry anymore. I'm leaving."

"I would have given it up. I would have given it all up, Scar." He said before I had the chance to turn and walk away. He pulled me into him, making me squirm and writhed. His lips pressed into my palms disarming me. He fell to his knees his eyes looked into mine and got glassy. "Scarlett, every time I try to do something right, I get it wrong." Tears streamed down his cheeks. I closed my eyes and shook my head breathing heavily. I couldn't do this I looked up there was clouds rolling in.

"Why don't you just say it, Troy. Tell me you don't want me. Tell me didn't love me." She making out the words left a tightness in the back of my throat. "We were both hurt that summer. It was a fluke. Just tell that so I can go, Troy." My chest stung just making out the word, but it was what I had been trying to convince myself of for years. It was timing. We confided in each other. It wasn't real. I felt his hand on the side of my face soothing me. I shook my head. "It's not real." I said out loud.

"It was real for me, Scar." I opened my eyes as his blue eyes looked through me.

I sobbed. "Then why did you forget?"

"I never forgot." Placed his hand over his chest over the cottony velvet of his Santa suit where his heart beat rapidly. "I thought about you always. Letting you go was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I wanted more for you." He pulled me into him resting his chin on my head rocking me gently soothing me. "I lost a piece of me when you left. It felt like all of me. If that's what I had to do for you to live than I would do it again. Not opening that letter may have been fear, fear of remembering what I lost, but I don't regret it it." "Tell me you saw the world."

I giggled. "I traveled. When I could." He pulled my shouldered so I was looking at him. My eyes fell. "I remember someone once saying there is one place the is everywhere in the world. There's only one place that makes me feel that way, Troy."

He smiled. "Where?"

I fell into his chest pulling his arms around me, hearing the sweet music of his heart. "Here." I admitted, "The only placed I missed. This place right here. Remember you told me what to call that place, Troy?"

He held me tighter. "Home, baby."

"You are my home Troy. That's what I said in that letter."