Nova and Quinton: No Regrets

  When I'm finally finished, I put the pencil down and crack my aching knuckles, feeling the sting of the moment. It's been a while since I've drawn so intensely and it's almost unbearable to think that I've transferred that moment from Lexi to Nova, but that doesn't mean I regret it.

  "Can I see it?" Nova asks, sitting up with her hand out.

  I nod, then hand her the drawing, watching as she assesses it. Her eyes light up more the longer she stares at it. "What do you think?" I ask.

  She glances up, smiling. "I think it's perfect."

  Unable to help myself, I lean down and kiss her, then lie beside her, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her closer as she holds on to the drawing. "What do you want to do for the rest of the night?" I ask.

  She angles her head to the side. "I just want to lie here with you, if that's okay? Until I fall asleep."

  "That sounds perfect to me." I pull her closer, my chest tightening as I think about the times Lexi and I lay in my bed together. I glance over at the drawing of Lexi, saying a silent apology to her. I'm sorry I'm letting you go. I hope you can forgive me. I still love you. Always will. But I can't seem to choose death. I'm so sorry.

  Nova and I talk for a little bit until we start to doze. I'm a little afraid to close my eyes, fearing that when I wake up everything will have been a dream and I'll be back in the crack house in Vegas, doped up on methamphetamine. Eventually I do doze off and end up having the most peaceful sleep I've had in the last two years. But it's short-lived, like most peaceful things. That's the one thing about perfection. It never lasts.

  Nova

  I'm drifting off when I get a phone call. It's not too late, around ten o'clock Seattle time, but I get this bad feeling the moment I hear the phone ring. Maybe it's because I know what's coming; maybe I took off from Idaho so I could be here when I got the call.

  "Hello," I answer, Quinton lying to my side, his eyes open, looking tired.

  "Nova," my mom says. "Where are you? I called Lea... and she said you just took off--that you were upset."

  I rest back down on the pillow. "I was, but I'm feeling better now... I'm actually with Quinton."

  "In Seattle?" She's shocked. "Why didn't you let me know you were going?"

  "Yeah, it was sort of a spontaneous trip." A much-needed escape from life.

  "Well, I hope you're doing okay now," she says. "I've been debating for the last few hours whether or not to call you."

  Something clicks. "Mom, why did you call Lea and not me?"

  She sighs. "Because I have bad news and I wanted to make sure there was someone there for you. To make sure you were okay."

  She doesn't have to tell me what it is. I know before the words leave her mouth. "The body was Delilah's, wasn't it?" I say, and Quinton tenses beside me, his fingers instantly finding mine and holding on.

  "I'm so sorry, Nova." She's close to crying.

  "How did it happen?" I squeeze Quinton's hand, needing to hold on to something. "How did she die?"

  "She was shot," my mom says quietly. "They found her body near a ditch just outside of Vegas... they don't know who did it yet, but the police are investigating it."

  "It was Dylan," I say as Quinton scoots closer to me, his nerves buzzing off him and suffocating me. It's hard to breathe and I have to concentrate on getting air into my lungs. Breathe in. Breathe out. You'll survive this.

  "Maybe," she says. "But that's for the police to worry about. Not you." She pauses. "Nova, I don't want you doing anything stupid."

  "Like what?" I think I'm in shock. My body numb. My emotions disconnected. And I can't seem to breathe normally. I'm starting to get dizzy, the room spinning. "Go find Dylan and see if he's the one who did it? I'm not a moron, Mom."

  "But you always want to fix things you can't always fix," she says, and I glance over at Quinton, his honey-brown eyes watching me with worry. "And you always blame yourself when you aren't able to help people."

  "Well, sometimes I deserve to be blamed," I tell her, turning onto my side to face Quinton as the tears finally start to flow from my eyes. Reality sinks in and crashes down on me. Hard. More death. More weight. I can't fix this. What's done is done. Delilah is gone. I can't go back and try to help her. She's gone. I have to accept that. "I have to go, Mom," I say, and as she starts to protest I add, "I'll call you tomorrow." I hang up before she can say anything else.

  "Are you going to be okay?" Quinton asks, sitting up and leaning over me.

  I nod, not bothering to suck back the tears as they pour out. "I'll be okay eventually, but I need a few moments." Tears stream down my cheeks and drip onto the blanket below me. I don't bother stopping them. It'd make things worse if I did. It's something I've learned over the years, that suppressing the pain will only make it worse in the long run, but letting everything out doesn't make it easier.

  Quinton

  I remember when I came back from the accident, when they revived me and I woke up. I asked my dad where Lexi was and all he said was, "She's dead." I wished he'd said more--that he were there for me. Like I need to be here for Nova now, if she needs me. But can I? Am I that strong?

  More tears pour out of Nova's eyes as her hand finds my arm and she grasps me, her nails piercing my skin. I don't draw back. I let her take out her inner pain on me.

  She chokes back a sob, her shoulders heaving as she battles not to lose control. "Quinton, it hurts so bad."

  "I know it does," I say as I wrap my arms around her and hug her so tight against me I can feel her heart beating. I want to tell her it'll be okay. That it won't hurt forever. That it'll get easier. But she won't believe me at the moment. If anyone gets that, it's me. There is nothing I can say to take her pain away or make her feel less guilty, so I do the only thing I can do. Something I wish someone had done for me in the beginning and what Nova did for me in the end.

  I hold her as she drowns in her pain, making sure she doesn't go completely under.

  Nova

  I've lost it. I can't breathe. Think. Do anything but sob. I'm letting all the pain out, just like I should, but the ache inside my body feels like it's going to kill me. Another person gone. More tears to shed. More good-byes. Coffins. Flowers. Mourning. It seriously feels like too much, but there's one thing that keeps me from breaking apart completely and that's Quinton. At first I fight it, worry he's not strong enough for me to have a meltdown, but once I let it all out, I can't seem to turn off the tears and emotion pouring out of me. And he lets me sob on his shoulder, allows me to cling to him for hours, smoothing his hand up and down my back and telling me it's going to be okay.

  "I should have done something more for her," I whisper through the tears. It's another thing that will haunt me forever. The fact that I should have said more--done more to help her.

  "You did all you could," Quinton assures me, kissing the top of my head. "Nova, you can't save everyone... and you've done more good in your life than most people do."

  I press my cheek against his chest, feeling his racing heartbeat. "It doesn't feel that way... it doesn't feel like I've done anything."

  "Look at me," he begs, and when I don't, he hooks his finger underneath my chin and tips my head back, forcing me to look at him. "It's because of you that I'm here. If it wasn't for you then I would probably be dead in a ditch somewhere, and you know what?" A pause. An intake of breath. Whatever he's going to say is hard for him. "I'm glad I'm here."

  He's admitting he's glad that he's alive. That I saved him. That he got clean. I know that has to be difficult for him. To let go of the pain and guilt enough to admit that he wants to be happy.

  "It wasn't just me, Quinton," I say. "Your dad and Tristan helped, too."

  He shakes his head, eyes burning with intensity. "Nova, you didn't give up on me no matter what. Do you know how many people would have just let me go? Hell, my fucking dad did until you got involved."

  "That was because of my mom," I explain, pushing up on my elbows and looking down at him. "She's the one that ca
lled him."

  "Yeah, because you made her get ahold of him," he says, his fingers sliding away from my chin, and he cups my cheek in his hand. "It's because of you and your refusal to give up on me that I'm here. And it's because of you that I've stayed in this place and that I want to continue to stay in this place." He brushes his lips across my forehead, before looking back at me. "You give me hope, Nova Reed. Hope that even though life is really, really hard--even if it fucking sucks sometimes--that it's worth living."

  Deep down, I know he's right. Life does suck, but it's worth living, especially for moments like the one I just experienced a few hours ago with Quinton. But it's moments like these, the ones when you have to feel the loss of life, that make it so hard to want to keep breathing.

  Chapter 15

  Quinton

  December 28, the day of the funeral

  I'm doing everything I can to be there for Nova, not just to pay her back for everything she's done for me, but because I love her. I make sure to give her everything she needs, whether she asks for it or not. I go to Maple Grove for her. I even insist on going to the funeral with her, even though the idea of it terrifies me to my very soul. Part of it is that I knew Delilah and it's always difficult to lose someone you know. But the other part of my fear stems from the fact that it's a funeral and represents death. I haven't actually been to a funeral before, even with how many people I've lost. I was in the hospital when Lexi's and Ryder's took place, but I'm sure I wouldn't have been allowed to go even if I'd been able to. And my grandma took care of me when my mom's went on because they didn't feel like a funeral was a place for a newborn.

  So this one will be my first. It doesn't start so well when I lose track of Nova a few hours before. I was hanging out in her room after she said she was going to go finish getting ready. Then she took off from her house without telling anyone and we found her in the car, talking to her camera and crying her eyes out. It nearly killed me, seeing her like that, but I did the only thing I could and let her cry on my shoulder, holding on to her so she wouldn't fall. It's not a lot, but all I can really do for her is be there while she works through her pain, let her know she's not alone.

  We don't go to the viewing. I'm glad. It's always freaked me out, the thought of looking at a dead body, preserved to make it look like the person is still alive and just sleeping.

  "I completely agree with you," Nova said when I'd reluctantly told her I didn't want to go to the viewing. We were sitting in her car, preparing to go inside the church. "Maybe we should just wait a few more minutes to go inside and then just sit at the back." Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, but she'd managed to pull herself together for the most part.

  "If that's what you want," I said, placing my hand on her knee.

  She nodded, staring at the church, people wandering up and down the stairs, a lot of them sobbing. "Yeah, I think it's what I want." She finally looked at me after thirty minutes of just staring ahead. "The idea of going in there is freaking me out."

  I gave her leg a gentle squeeze. "Just remember, I'm here for you." It felt strange saying it. I'd spent the last couple of years thinking solely of my pain and me. My loss. My inner agony and guilt. And now suddenly all my emotions were centered on Nova and her pain.

  After the funeral I leave her with her mom for a while to meet up with Tristan, who drove out here for the funeral with Lea, Nova's friend. I briefly saw him at the church, but he was with his parents and so I couldn't go up to him. But I want to see him before I go back to Seattle, and make sure he's okay. Make sure he's still sober and not going to crack and fall apart like Nova was worried about.

  After texting we agreed to meet up at this park we used to spend time at when we were kids. It's within walking distance of Nova's house and so I decide to make the journey on foot, despite how cold it is and that there's three feet of snow on the ground.

  When I walk up to the gated area, I find Tristan sitting on a park bench surrounded by piles of snow, smoking a cigarette, with the hood of his coat over his head, a slight flurry of snowflakes drifting down on him. I try to assess the situation as I hike through the snow toward him, pulling my own hood over my head.

  "What's up?" I ask, taking my own cigarettes out of my pocket, then lighting one up. "You doing okay?"

  "Yeah, I'm fine," he says distractedly as he gazes down at the snow with his arms resting on his knees. "I'm just thinking."

  "About Delilah?" I plop down on the bench beside him. It's not like either of us ever really got along with Delilah, but at the same time we lived with her for a while, got to know the cracked part of her, saw the ugly shit that might have eventually led to her death. I remember the time I got into a fight with Dylan over his abuse toward Delilah, when I was high and could barely think straight. It didn't end well. In fact, Delilah got mad at me for intervening. And even though the police haven't found the person who shot her, I think all of us--Tristan, Nova, me--know it was Dylan.

  "Yeah, sort of." He glances up from the snow and I'm relieved to see that he's not high. "I was just thinking about how many times we saw Dylan yell at her... we should have done more to stop it."

  I take a drag on my cigarette and slowly exhale the smoke. "I tried to intervene a few times, but she wouldn't take my help."

  He elevates his eyebrows, returning his attention to the snowy ground as he puts his cigarette into his mouth and takes a drag. "Well, you did better than me. I just got high and overlooked it because I was too involved with myself."

  "I overlooked it, too, for the most part," I say, frowning. "And the fact that she died that way... it fucking sucks."

  "Then why do you seem so calm?" Tristan asks, glancing up at me. "No offense, but I actually expected you to be a fucking mess over this."

  I put the cigarette up to my mouth and inhale. "I'm only calm on the outside and only because Nova needs me to be that way."

  "Are you two together, then?" he asks, grazing his thumb across the bottom of his cigarette and scattering ashes all over the snow.

  It takes me two more drags before I have enough nicotine in my system to answer. "I don't know... maybe."

  He nods, still fascinated with the ground. "Well, if you are, then good for you." There's a small amount of bitterness in his voice that makes me feel guilty, part of which is connected to Ryder's death and the feeling that I owe him for that. It's a gnawing feeling I don't think I'll ever truly be able to get rid of.

  I reach up and draw my hood over my head, before inhaling another breath of smoke and exhaling it. "Are you okay if we're together? Or does it... does it bother you?"

  He pulls a nah face as he hops off the bench into the snow. "I'll be fine."

  "Are you sure?" I get to my feet and trample through the snow after him as he heads for the gate. "Because you can talk to me if it does."

  He shakes his head, walking backward so he's facing me, with his hands tucked in the pockets of his coat. "I'm fine with you and Nova being together. You're better for her anyway." He spins on his heels, walking forward and kicking the snow.

  I'm baffled as I hurry after him, because I'm not better for her. She just chose to be with me, despite how much I don't deserve her. "I'm not better than you in any way, shape, or form."

  "Yeah, you kind of are," he says simply. "And besides, I don't think I'm going to be with anyone for a very long time."

  "What do you mean?"

  He's quiet for a while, flicking his cigarette ashes into the snow as we reach the gate, where he pauses and faces me. "You know, after I got clean again, I looked at it as a second chance." He opens the gate and then walks through it, turning his back toward me as he continues. "I mean, I fucking nearly died, for Christ's sake, and so I should be grateful I'm alive."

  "Aren't you?" I ask, closing the gate behind me.

  "I was." He stares out at the icy road as we walk up the side of it. "Until a couple of weeks ago when I found out I have hepatitis C."

  I freeze in place, stunned beyond co
mprehension. "What?"

  He shrugs as if he didn't just say something major and life-changing, eyes ahead, refusing to look at me. "Yeah, I feel like it's some kind of cosmic joke. Keep me alive just so I can find out I have some stupid disease that might complicate my life depending on how things go"

  I don't know much about the disease, but I know enough to know that he probably got it from shooting up. It doesn't really matter, though, how he got it. All that matters is his life is changed forever. "Tell me what I can do." I lean forward and catch his eye. "What do you need?"

  "There's not much that you can do for me. You and I both know that." He reaches for his pack of cigarettes, thinking. "Just take good care of Nova, if you end up with her." He opens his pack and pops a cigarette into his mouth. "She's one of the good ones--you're fucking lucky to have her." He offers me a cigarette and I take it.

  I pull my lighter from my pocket, still stunned beyond words at what he just told me. All that time we spent in the drug world and I was able to walk away from it, while it's going to haunt him forever. It feels so fucked up.

  "The roles should be reversed," I mutter, shaking my head. "You should be healthy and with Nova and I should be the one who..." I can't even say it.

  "It doesn't really matter," he replies, flicking his lighter and lighting the cigarette. "You're the healthy one. You're the one Nova wants. You're a lucky SOB, so be grateful and take it."

  He's right. I am lucky. Lucky to be standing here healthy and sober after everything I've done. Lucky to be alive with all the death in the world, when so many people aren't. Lucky I got to spend the time that I did with someone as amazing as Nova. And I make a silent vow right now to take my second chance and do something good with it. To change my life. Start doing things that matter. Stop being afraid and tell Nova I love her. Stop holding on to the past. It's time to start moving forward.