Confession Read online

  His beautiful brown eyes locked on mine and he confidently declared, “I think you’re my soulmate.”

  I remember thinking this was nowhere near what I thought he was going to confess, but that hearing it come from his mouth made me realize something that evening.

  “Confession,” I said back to him, smirking as I spoke. “I know you’re my soulmate.”

  A couple days later, everything fell apart.

  The day of the accident, the three of us were heading out for an epic adventure, as Lenora called it. We hitched their boat to their old suburban and headed to Ponce Inlet to get some pictures of Disappearing Island and the ocean life that lived along the inlet. Every minute of that day stands out in my mind, but what I remember most was how beautiful the sea turtles swimming by were. They were breathtaking as they glided around our boat.

  As we were wrapping up the shoot though, Bodhi and I both caught on that Lenora wasn’t feeling well. She was pale, a little shaky, and was needing to sit down and rest a lot. She kept brushing it off as being dehydrated, but as we started heading back to the inlet, we realized it wasn’t that simple.

  We were approaching a no-wake zone when Lenora passed out at the wheel of the boat. There were jet-skis and boaters passing by us and our boat was not slowing down. It was heading right towards a sandbank where people were walking around with their dogs. I remember Bodhi jumped up from his seat and jerked the wheel to avoid the crash of beaching us, but this sudden movement caused me to fly off the side of the boat. My leg hit the water at a weird angle and it broke upon impact.

  I assumed this was how I was going to die. Doggy paddling in water that was just deep enough where I couldn’t touch the bottom, one broken leg and trying to stay afloat while the waves from nearby boaters crashed over my face. Just as the panic set in though, there was Bodhi, pulling me up over the side of the boat and promising me I’d be alright.

  We made it back to the inlet thanks to him. Bodhi rode with me in the ambulance while his mom rode in another, and he sat with me in the hospital bed until my parents arrived. He never left my side. He even held my hand. I remember at fourteen, that felt so weird yet so normal at the same time. I wanted him to stay sitting next to me forever. It was at that exact moment I could see how this innocent relationship over the last two years was about to become something more, but we never got the chance to let that happen.

  As soon as my parents arrived, they forced him out. My dad pulled him right off the bed when he saw him sitting next to me. He wouldn’t listen to my pleas. I cried, I screamed, I begged. It got me nowhere. I know Bodhi could hear my parents shouting at each other, my dad saying horrible things about Lenora and Bodhi, while my mom just cried. She cried so much … I don’t remember if she even spoke to me.

  If I could have, I would’ve walked right out of that room and left my parents, staying with Bodhi, choosing him and Lenora over my own train wreck of a family, but I couldn’t move. I was stuck in that hospital bed watching the life I wanted and my relationship with Bodhi, become further and further from my grasp. I knew at that moment, my days with Lenora and Bodhi were over. The Eva I once was died that day, and when I returned home, I hated my parents. I hated myself. Part of me still does. Part of me always will.

  Losing your soulmate rips your soul right from your body, but losing your soulmate when he’s about to go through the hardest obstacle of his life, shreds your soul into a million pieces. Pieces that will never become whole again.

  Here’s the thing. This was not just the absolute worst moment of my life, where the two people I loved so much were torn away from me by the hands of my own parents, but this was also the worst moment in Bodhi’s life. The day they forbid me to see Lenora and Bodhi ever again, was also the day Bodhi’s mom was diagnosed with leukemia, and I wasn’t allowed to be there for either of them. Three years have passed since that day, and not one day has gone by where I don’t think about the two of them and cry over how everything turned out.

  “No,” my dad barks at my mom. The memory fog in my mind disappears at the sound of his harsh voice. “There’s a memorial tonight it looks like, by the pier, but that chapter in Eva’s life is over. She doesn’t even mention them anymore. No need to drag up the past.”

  That chapter in my life was never over, but he doesn’t know that because he’s never cared enough to ask me.

  I sit there on my balcony, rubbing the scar on my leg from the surgery that put it back together. It’s funny. I never look at my scar in disgust or in anger, but more in longing for the days I had before it.

  I’ve only seen Bodhi twice since that day, and Lenora once. The first time was from the windows of my house about a week or two after the accident. My leg was still healing from surgery, and I had propped it up on a couch in the media room upstairs. I was also on some pretty strong pain medication and was dozing in and out of a drug induced sleep.

  I saw Bodhi walking up from the driveway and thought for a minute I might be hallucinating, but then my dad answered the door and Bodhi’s voice echoed up the stairs. My dad ignored me as I screamed out his name. I still wonder to this day if Bodhi heard me screaming. The sea turtle stuffed animal that I pulled out from the gift bag he had brought, still sits on my dresser. Every time I stare at it, I remember how helpless I felt as I watched Bodhi walk away from my life for the second time.

  I saw him again about a year ago, maybe a month after I started dating Porter. Hand in hand we were walking along Flagler Pier, my mind in another place as it always was. I disappear in my mind a lot, especially when I’m doing something I don’t want to do or when I’m with people I don’t want to be with. It’s a way to escape, when I can’t escape.

  I heard Bodhi’s friend Coop before I saw them all, and it snapped me out of my daze. Coop, he has this laugh that you just can’t forget, no matter how many years have passed. My anxious eyes searched for them through the crowd of people, and when I found Bodhi, he had already locked his eyes right onto mine. He had found me first. His gaze wandered to my hand in Porter’s which made my stomach start to sway. I almost threw up right there. But my eyes moved right to Lenora.

  I didn’t recognize her. I knew she was sick again. It was one of those conversations I overheard from my balcony that I wasn’t supposed to be listening to. I didn’t realize she was this sick though. She was so frail looking, so skinny, her long hair now sat right below her ears. I’m pretty sure Bodhi’s friends were holding her up while she was looking out over the pier. My heart fluttered in my chest as Porter dragged me along. I needed to say something to her, give her a hug, tell her I missed her, ask her if she was okay. But she never saw me. Her eyes stayed glued on the lens of her camera the whole time. Maybe that was a good thing?

  It’s amazing how you can live in the same town as someone else but never run into them more than once or twice. The stars rarely align in your favor. I looked back to Bodhi. He had grown, standing there in a button up flowered shirt that wasn’t buttoned, and swim trunks. His usual outfit of choice. He wasn’t just some kid learning how to be a teenager anymore, but a teenager now on the verge of adulthood, just like me. He was beautiful. God, he was gorgeous. I wished he was mine. I wanted to run to him and have him whisk me away from the life I hated right now. Bodhi raised his eyebrow in question. He knew what I was thinking and it made the situation that much worse.

  We were getting ready to pass each other. The panic set in. I couldn’t let us pass each other without doing something. I wanted him to know that I missed him, even if I couldn’t say it out loud. I stopped walking. I froze as Porter kept going with my hand in his. Bodhi smirked, watching this play out in front of him. I almost sensed that he enjoyed it. I wanted to hit him. I just wanted to touch him. My body wanted to know what it felt like to touch him again.

  My hand slipped out of Porter’s grasp, and Porter realized I wasn’t side by side with him anymore. That’s when he saw Bodhi across from us, staring, watching my every move, and that’s when Porter put h
is arm around my shoulder as if claiming me for his own. Bodhi’s eyebrow raised higher and even though the very last thing I wanted to do was leave, I let Porter guide me off the pier and away from the people I so desperately wanted to be with.

  When Porter took me home, I cried all night. I threw up because that’s how my body seems to handle stress, and I decided my world had officially ended. I curled into a ball on my bed and stayed that way for a day or two until I felt like I was dying inside. I couldn’t control what was going on around me, but I could control what I was doing to myself. Allowing myself to slip away into this bottomless pit of despair and self-destruction made me feel better.

  This dark tunnel I’ve been wandering around lost in has only been getting darker, and I’m not sure how to find the light. I’m still searching for it. I might always be searching for it, but I’m wondering if it’s hopeless and if maybe I should just give up on trying to find something I might never see again.

  I’m sure you’re sitting there wondering why during these three years I never just jumped on my bike and went to Bodhi and Lenora’s. Or called them, drove over there, attempted any sort of contact. Here’s the thing. My parents spent two years not knowing I was at Bodhi’s house all that time. They were embarrassed at their lack of parenting their so-called perfect daughter. Shame on them, right?

  Wrong.

  The only way my parents would not twist this around and somehow ruin Lenora and Bodhi’s life, which trust me, they would, was if I promised I would never see them again. Never again. I still remember my dad’s exact words as I was sitting in my hospital bed waiting to go in for surgery.

  “You don’t want something happening to them, right? You don’t want Bodhi to be taken away from his mom because of what she let happen to you? They are not a part of your life anymore, do you understand? You will not mention them again, see them again, talk about them again, or something might just happen to them that’s out of your control.”

  Nothing in my life is ever in my control.

  My parents are scary. They get what they want and they don’t stop until they do. I couldn’t let them destroy the two people I cared about the most, even if that killed me. Even if that meant I would spend the next three years depressed and alone. Even if that meant I would spend every day thinking thoughts I shouldn’t be thinking. Even if that meant I hated my parents. Even if that meant I lost the person I used to be.

  That action right there, listening to my dad, is one of the biggest regrets of my life, and the second biggest regret of my life is not running to Bodhi on that pier. But as much as I just want to crawl into my bed and not move for days at the news of Lenora dying, her death opens this strange new window of hope in me. Bodhi, he’s safe from my parents now. He can’t be taken away from his mom, when his mom has already been taken away from him. This means I no longer have to sit here pretending I don’t give a damn about what happens to him.

  There’s this small, tiny glimmer of light that has appeared in my mind after hearing about Lenora. Instead of letting this news pull me deeper into my tunnel of darkness, I’m going to see if I can for once find my way out.

  This evening, I will be at the memorial by the pier because that’s where this glimmer of light is calling me. That is where I’m hoping I’ll be able to find a little of the old me I lost three years ago. The old Eva that’s wrapped up in the one person who knows me better than anyone else in this world.

  My soulmate. Bodhi.

  chapter three

  Eva

  A re you sure you don’t want to go tonight?” Porter asks me for the tenth time as we pull my boat back up to my dock. He’s standing there, staring at me as he waits for me to respond.

  I’ve spent the last three hours cruising up and down the Halifax, listening to Porter talk about the party that’s being thrown at his friend’s house tonight. He’s insistent I join him, but I’m just determined to get to the pier without him.

  I jump out to secure my boat to the dock, distracting myself before answering him. “The moon is going to be really bright tonight,” I manage to say. “I’m going to head to the beach and take some night pictures, but you go, and tell everyone I said hi.”

  Porter smiles at me as he joins me on the dock. “I love your little hobby.”

  Hobby? I cringe but hide it well.

  “Do you want me to come too? I can sit there and watch you. Sneak some wine?” he suggests, leaning in for a kiss.

  I jerk my head to avoid his lips on mine. “You’d be a distraction. For real. Go, have fun. Come by tomorrow and tell me all about who got wasted and what happened the exact moment the cops showed up. Because they’ll show up. They always do.”

  “You make it sound so horrible,” he says in a slight tone.

  “Just not feeling it tonight, that’s all.”

  Porter glares over at me. “Is everything okay? Your mood swings are now a daily event. I can’t keep up with them anymore.”

  I bite my tongue before responding. “Everything is fine.”

  We stand there for a second, in an uncomfortable silence.

  “Alright,” he sighs, pulling me into his arms. He gives me a long kiss, which makes my entire body cringe. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He gets in his rowboat and drifts off across the Halifax. Yes, Porter lives right across from me with just the Halifax separating us. It takes much longer for Porter to drive over to my house, than to boat across. As soon as we started dating, he had his dad buy him a small rowboat. I think he was hoping it would make him seem romantic or something.

  To me, he looks fucking stupid.

  I watch until he gets across and I can’t see him anymore. I take a deep breath. Days like these drag on forever, I almost feel like I need to shower the lies off of me as soon as I get home. I run along my dock as fast as I can, wanting to erase this day as quickly as possible. My body is in pure adrenaline mode and I push the patio door open with such force it whacks loudly against the kitchen wall.

  “Shit,” I mutter, grabbing at the door handle.

  “How was boating?” I hear my mom’s voice.

  I jump, not expecting her to be home. She’s never home on Wednesdays during the day. She’s had a standing chiropractor appointment every Wednesday for the last couple years, followed by drinks with her friends. She can’t be home today of all days. I was going to sneak out before she even got back.

  “It was fine,” I reply.

  “Just fine?” she questions, throwing her long black hair up into a messy bun. How does she make it look so perfect with a quick spin of her hand?

  I shrug my shoulders, twirling my own black hair around my fingers. I not only got her hair but also her piercing green eyes. We actually look a lot alike, or at least I’m told this every time we’re seen together.

  “Something going on with you and Porter?” she questions.

  Does she seem hopeful? Why is she acting hopeful?

  “No,” I say a bit too fast. “He’s great.”

  She stares at me with raised eyebrows. It’s clear she won’t question me anymore, but it’s also obvious I’m lying about something and she’s well aware of it.

  “Uh huh,” she says, but then she drops it. “Your dad left today for another business trip and I’m taking your brothers out to dinner. Want to join us?”

  I’ve realized over the last seventeen years, there’s two sides to Audrey Calloway. The side I see most is the one when my dad is home. She’s put together, elegant, everything’s in an orderly fashion. She agrees with everything he says and always brings him his drinks and meals, even though he’s more than capable of getting them himself. I hate this side, it’s the side I never want to become.

  Then there’s the side I envy. The one I wouldn’t mind being like when I’m older, the side she is when my dad isn’t home. The mom who throws her hair up in a messy bun and takes my four-year-old brothers out to dinner in a bright yellow sundress, instead of having a gourmet meal on the table precisely at six o
’clock. The mom who wears flip-flops with jewels on them and is up eating ice cream on the couch watching mindless home improvement shows when I come home late at night.

  I guess we both have two sides to us. Maybe I inherited that from her too.

  I almost say yes. Almost. But the pier. Lenora. “I’ll pass tonight,” I say.

  She looks disappointed. “Well, if you change your mind …”

  I head upstairs and strip out of my clothes, get in my shower and rinse away the day with Porter. I wonder what my parents would think if they realized how much I despised being his girlfriend? I can’t say there was ever a time where butterflies swarmed my stomach, or I had the desire to wait out on my balcony and watch him make his way to my house from across the Halifax. Maybe I enjoyed the attention a little, just a little. Or maybe I was just trying to get myself to feel that way towards him, the way everyone thought I did.

  It only took a couple months of dating Porter for me to realize there was no way he was the boy I was going to spend the rest of my life with. I was only dating him because being his girlfriend was expected of me, but I wanted out. I still want out and much to my disappointment, breaking up with Porter isn’t as easy as it should be. Breaking up with Porter will also jeopardize the relationship my dad has with Mr. Channing, and sometimes a work relationship trumps a father-daughter relationship.

  Right after I saw Bodhi on the pier, after I peeled myself out of my bedroom and my downward spiral of misery, my dad made a terrible deal with some investors. He lost his company a lot of money. How much? I don’t have exact numbers but enough for him to worry about getting fired, losing the house, the boat, the country club membership … everything that mattered. It was a rough couple days in our house. I hid in my room, waiting for the storm to blow over. This wasn’t the first time my dad had made a bad deal, but it was the scariest.

  This was also the same time I realized that Porter and I would never work out, and I couldn’t deal with having him around anymore. We had a fight. I was stressed, upset about seeing Bodhi and how it turned out, and angry with how my dad was behaving. I blamed Mr. Channing for being too hard on him. I stuck up for my dad, which did not go over well with Porter. He threw a shoe at me, because that’s what any sane person would do when having an argument with their girlfriend, right? I remember telling him after the shoe whizzed past my face, that I thought we should break up. That idea did not work for Porter Channing. He went home and took a golf club to his dad’s Mercedes.