Until Then Read online

“You don’t need to apologize to me, Summer,” he interrupts.

  He knows my name?

  My breath stops my thoughts, and I swallow the angst that’s building up behind my throat.

  “How do you know my name?”

  He takes a small step forward and shrugs his shoulders. “I live in this town.” He takes a noticeable breath. “I know who you are.”

  I wish that him saying those last words didn’t provoke any emotion, but the spark that just ignited in my stomach begs to differ.

  He knows who I am. I have to understand that sentence better. Because there’s a lot to know about me. And depending on what he’s referring to will decide if I want to keep talking to him or run away.

  2.

  Summer

  “How long have you lived in this town?” I ask him. Hopefully his answer will tell me what I need to know. If it’s less than two years, maybe he knows me from my father’s accident. The details went viral, and I was in most of the town’s headlines for a while. If it’s more than two years, he might know who I really am.

  I don’t want him to know who I really am. There are reasons I left this town.

  I’m noticing a pattern. He nurses a pause before he answers anything. The silence speaks volumes in my ears, filling them up with any and every detail imaginable.

  “My whole life,” he finally replies.

  Damn.

  “What’s your name?” I ask, taking a step closer to him. He seems to be about my age. Maybe I will recognize him from my brief stint in school and can thwart any preconceived assumptions. But every thought I have vanishes when I can really see his face come into the light. His jaw is soft and dusted with stubble. His light brown hair is pulled away from his face with a few long pieces falling onto his cheek. But it’s his eyes that steal my breath away. They’re brilliant green, an iridescent jade that captures my attention. And they’re penetrative. It’s not the color so much as the feeling behind the eyes that draws me in. They’re sad. The kind of sad that’s dwelled behind them for years.

  “Crew,” he finally says, exhaling loudly after holding his breath.

  Why did he pause? I didn’t think that was a particularly difficult question.

  We lock eyes for a few moments as I shift my footing. I don’t recognize his name, and I’m a bit relieved. I don’t know who he is.

  Though now I want to know. He might be cute, but his pauses are more intriguing. I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking behind them. It seems like such a struggle for him to say anything.

  Usually when people talk to me, they vomit words like bumbling idiots. They don’t know how to speak to me, what to say, or how to even be around me. And I don’t know why they even try. It’s like they’re trying too hard to be my friend. It makes everyone terribly uncomfortable and wish the whole conversation wasn’t happening.

  But Crew is different. He’s keeping those words inside, and I can’t help but wonder how he knows me. And why he’s not acting like every other idiot.

  I don’t know what else to say, and I hate small talk. So I wait for him to speak, riding out the uncomfortable silence that is strangling my stomach.

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” he finally says, rescuing me from my inclination to leave. “And I didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation. I was just walking through, and —” he pauses.

  “And what?” I ask, grounded to the floor by curiosity.

  He takes another big breath and looks down to the ground, shifting his feet, finally giving me a break from his stare. When he looks toward the street, I notice that his light brown hair is tied back in a man-bun. I’ve never really liked that style, but it’s working for him.

  I see the internal struggle he’s suffering, although I have no idea what the two arguments are. And I want to know. For some strange reason, I want to know why he’s here, pausing and struggling in front of me.

  “And….” He takes a deep inhale, like he’s rearranging his words and working too hard to spit them out. “Do you like waffles, Summer?” he finally asks, turning back to me and shoving his hands into the back pockets of his jeans.

  How the —? I love waffles. Does he really know that I love waffles? Or is he guessing?

  Please be guessing.

  “Yes, I like waffles. Why do you ask?”

  He turns his face down to his shoes and shrugs his shoulders. For the love of God, tell me what’s going on in your head.

  “I’m hungry.” His eyes find mine again. “And I’d like to get some waffles at the diner up the street. Want to join me?”

  “Why would I join you? I don’t even know you,” I shrug then drop my shoulders, tense from this entire conversation.

  He smiles a little bit.

  He.

  Smiles.

  And he just became one thousand times cuter.

  But I’m not going to get waffles with someone I met at midnight in a cemetery. That’s insane.

  “But I know you,” Crew says.

  “How do you know me?” That question not only made his smile disappear but made a scowl appear. He looks like he ate something bitter.

  I don’t understand any of this. And it’s starting to get on my nerves.

  “Do you have any idea how weird you’re acting?” I ask him. And I get exactly what I expected to get.

  Long.

  Screaming.

  Silence.

  Which is enough for me to be done with this conversation. It’s taking up way too much of my time.

  “That’s fine. If you don’t want to actually talk to me, I’ll just go,” I turn and start walking toward the street where I’ll call for a car.

  I don’t hear him following me, which disappoints me a little because I still don’t have all the answers to the questions burning in my brain. But considering that I’ve got to catch a plane and go back to New York in six hours, I’m not too broken up about it. He can stand in the cemetery and be cryptic all by himself.

  I finally reach the street and pull out my phone to call for a car. It’s warm in Austin tonight, so I don’t mind waiting on this bench and soaking in some fresh air. New York is pretty damn extraordinary, but I feel like I haven’t been able to take a deep breath since I moved there. All I inhale is exhaust fumes and garbage.

  25 min.

  I can wait 25 min for a car.

  “Summer?” Crew says from behind me, startling me. I didn’t hear a single footstep. Turning around, I see him standing behind me, full of contrition. Under other circumstances, I’d be completely annoyed by someone wanting a second go-around at an awkward conversation. But I’m still wondering how he knows me. And why the hell he’s in the cemetery in the middle of the night.

  “Yeah?” I reply, turning forward and flipping through my apps.

  Crew walks around the bench and sits down on the other side away from me. He leans forward, drops his bag, rests his elbows on his knees, and sinks his head between his shoulders. He looks like he’s trying to let the weight of the world slide off his back. But instead it’s stuck in his throat.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to bother you before.” He sits up and turns to face me, resting his knee on the bench and his arm over the back. “But I heard what you were saying to your Dad, and it brought back some hard memories for me.” When I look to him, I find him twisting back toward the cemetery trees. “My mom died nine years ago, when I was 10.”

  Oh, Jesus.

  Crew’s eyes search the bench before they sweep up to me. The sadness I see fractures my heart into tiny pieces for him. There’s so much he missed out on, in ways he doesn’t even realize. I’ve had to live two years without my dad, but I am 18. I couldn’t imagine living without him when I was just a little kid.

  “I’m sorry, Crew. That must have been so hard growing up without your mom.”

  His eyes lift a fraction, and he lets out a quick chuckle to himself, as if to let me know that I have no clue what I’m talking about.

  “I could
say the same for you, Summer.”

  “I think our situations are quite different.”

  “Our situations are exactly the same,” he says without hesitation for the first time. “Maybe our experiences are different. But we’ve both lost a parent. I know exactly how difficult that is. Hearing you talk to your Dad —” he shakes his head and turns his face to the street. He pulls in his bottom lip and bites down hard on it, shaking his head “no,” as if he’s shaking away a harsh thought.

  When he looks back to me, his eyes are harder, seeing right into me. It makes me more uncomfortable than any other moment we’ve had tonight.

  “You need your father, Summer. Fathers are supposed to guide you and protect you. They’re supposed to make sure that you are capable of handling yourself in this insane world. They support you and ensure that you’re going to be successful and happy.” Crew looks away for a moment to find his next breath. “Fathers are supposed to be the voice in your head.”

  Crew has no idea he’s gutting me with his words.

  But as I’m about to unleash my resentment at the unfairness of losing my father, it dawns on me that Crew might only have a father. And I’m not about to release my agony on this poor guy for my losing the one parent he still has left.

  “What happened, Crew?” My question stuns him. He’s having trouble taking his next breath. He looks back to the street and rolls his eyes up to the heavens. His knee starts bouncing up and down, and I know I’ve hit a nerve.

  “Look,” I continue, “you came up to me tonight…twice. So if there’s something you wanted to discuss or something you want to know, then please just say it. I have a car coming in 20 minutes to take me to the airport. So…time is precious.”

  Just like that, his knee stops bouncing. His face stops searching. His breath stops flowing. It’s a little frightening, how still he is.

  Before, I thought I hit a nerve. Now I think I’ve hit all his nerves.

  Crew turns his whole body to me. He smiles and takes a deep inhale, which seems to calm the storm inside him. Whatever was just brewing has been pushed away.

  “You’re right, Summer. Time is precious. You know it. I know it. The people we love…we feel like they’re put on this earth for us. To hold us. To guide us. To laugh with us. To fight with us. To love us. But there are no guarantees of time.” Crew looks down for a moment to find his next thought. He takes a deep inhale to steady his emotions, staring at his bag on the ground. “My mother died of cancer when I was 10 years old. She was diagnosed two years before. And it wasn’t until I was 17 years old that I could actually say the word ‘cancer’ without wanting to cut out my own tongue.” He finds my eyes again and breaks my heart a little more. I can’t imagine what he’s been through having to watch someone he loved struggle for two years with that ugly disease.

  “Crew —”

  “Please, Summer. Let me talk.”

  I smile hard at him to let him continue.

  “Two years ago, I read about your dad.”

  Oh, no.

  Crew must know he’s hitting close to home because his whole face just changed from sorrow to sympathy. Which means that my whole face just changed from sympathy to sorrow.

  “I read about what happened to him. It was hard not to; they plastered the images everywhere.”

  Stop.

  “I saw pictures of the two of you together at various places.”

  Please. Stop.

  “And I couldn’t help but ask myself the same question over and over again.”

  Fucking stop.

  Crew pauses for a moment, giving me room to breathe through the urge to walk away again. But I can’t. Because I’ll miss the car that will take me away from this gut-wrenching conversation.

  He swallows hard past a lump in his throat while holding my stare. So I take a deep breath and deal with the next thing that is sure to stab me in the chest.

  “‘Is that girl happy with the last thing she said to her father?’”

  Oh no.

  I feel that question wrap itself around my neck and squeeze until I can’t breathe anymore.

  Choking.

  I have to stand up to make sure I’m still alive. Because Crew has no idea that the last thing I said to my father has slowly eaten away pieces of my soul for the last two years. I thought I was a mess when he was alive. These last two years have been the most excruciating so far.

  I walk away from the bench to gather up my nerve to tell the truth. Chances are I’ll never see Crew again. Why not confess?

  3.

  Summer

  “I hate you.”

  Standing in front of the gate that surrounds the cemetery, I look between the bars in the direction of my father’s grave. It feels like a prison for my heart. All the pain from that terrible night starts to creep its way back into my body.

  It burns.

  It stings.

  It suffocates.

  It’s a pain I wouldn’t wish for anybody.

  It’s the only words that have made me want to end it all.

  I hate you.

  Turning back to Crew, I explain. “That was the last thing I said to my father before I went up to my room and locked the door.” Walking back to sit on the bench, I have Crew’s full attention. “I was 16, and it was one of the rare moments that we were arguing. I wanted to go out to a movie with one of my few friends. He asked that I finish my work first. It would’ve taken another 90 minutes to finish, and I didn’t want to wait.” I shove my phone back into my bag, suddenly angry at it. Then I look Crew straight in the eyes. “It escalated. I got upset. He wouldn’t let me have the keys to the car. So I said, ‘I hate you.’ Then I walked away.”

  Remembering those moments threatens tears. I never said those words to my father. I loved him more than anyone in the whole world. Even more than my mother.

  They both knew it.

  My heart feels like it’s been charred by the flames of hell from saying those words.

  Crew looks at me like I’ve just punched him in the gut. He pauses for a few moments. “What was the work he wanted you to finish?” he finally asks with trepidation seeping through his words.

  Time is precious. Crew already knows who I am, but maybe this is my chance to set my own record straight.

  “I had a show the next day, and I had to finish practicing,” I inform him, but I’m well aware I’m not giving too much away. In the past, people have judged me based on my talent. So I’m trying to be more humble to avoid repetitive mistakes. Oftentimes people would mistake “quiet” for “smug.” I’ve been trying harder to find a happy medium.

  “What was the show for?” Crew asks softly.

  Taking a deep breath, I get ready to go through my history. Because people always want to know my history.

  “I had a piano recital,” I reply, and wait for his reaction.

  But I’m waiting in vain because it doesn’t come. He’s just looking at me stoically like he did before.

  “It wasn’t so much a recital as it was my concert.” I pause. Still no reaction. “I finished a dress rehearsal that afternoon at the venue hall. My father wanted me to run through the music one last time before the show the next day.” I shrug, as if having a solo piano concert at 16 years old isn’t a big deal. “I wanted to shake off the pressure and go see a movie. But he thought I should put in a little more time on the keys.” I shrug my shoulders again and try not to cry. “I didn’t do either,” I choke out. The look of disappointment on my father’s face will forever exist in my mind’s eye. I’ve been trying for two straight years now to atone for my fateful choices.

  Crew nods his head, as if he could possibly understand the emotional tornado I’ve had brewing inside of me for years. I appreciate his empathy, but he really doesn’t have a clue.

  “Do you still like to play the piano?” he asks with a sparkle in his eye.

  Do I still like to play? What a loaded question. Because the truth is that I love to play. I’ve always loved to play
. My earliest memories are of me and my father sitting at the piano playing with the keys and hearing the different sounds and pitches they can make. I understand a piano better than I understand anything else.

  It’s even more important now that I play. I’ve been playing since I was 2 years old. I could read notes before I could read letters. I’ve been composing since I was 7 years old. I started performing in solo concerts when I was 10 years old. My parents even called me a “prodigy” and got me the best instructors to cultivate my talent. Then I was offered a place at Julliard to continue my studies so that I could learn and experience more.

  But I don’t play the piano for the love of the music. I play because I feel so much in the music. Certain songs provoke visceral memories, and I find that my body reacts strongly to certain pieces. My heartbeat rises and falls with the tempo. My lungs fill and empty with the staccatos. My mind blanks, and all I see, hear, and feel are the sounds and vibratos from the keys. Playing is my therapy. Playing nourishes my soul. I play because I have to, not because I simply want to.

  Since my father’s passing, I play because I need to. I feel his presence in the music. I hear him laugh in the keys. I see his smile in the notes. I stay connected to him sitting on the bench.

  There’s no way I can’t play.

  I smile at Crew and nod my head. “Yes,” I reply, thinking of the times my father and I would play on his birthday. “I still like to play.”

  Crew nods his head, happy with my answer.

  “My father and I used to play all the time,” I tell him. “He introduced me to the piano when I was little, and it’s always been this special bond we had together.” I smile at how my father used to play off-key just to make me laugh. “I play because it reminds me of him.” I shrug.

  Crew reaches over and puts his hand on my shoulder, gently squeezing it. Then he smiles warmly. The combination of those two gestures sends my heartbeat racing after my breath because I’ve just lost control of both.

  I can’t remember the last time I felt such an authentic gesture, one without an agenda. Just one person reaching out to another in empathy.