It's Hard To Be The Better Man

My three suitcases were shoved into Garrett’s car, two of them fitting in the trunk while the third one was in the backseat. This was all rather familiar, and I had a feeling that I would never forget this arrival, much like I would never forget my first arrival back to Tempe at the beginning of the summer.

Maybe Garrett just made everything unforgettable.

He didn’t turn on any music while he navigated the yellow Chevy onto the freeway, making me feel slightly nervous. Part of me just wanted to avoid conversation for as long as I could, because I knew that we would only venture into complicated waters the minute we had the chance. And I knew that I would have to learn how to navigate said complicated waters if I wanted this time to have any chance at success, but it was still scary.

Breaking habits was hard, and Garrett and I certainly had become accustomed to our fair share of bad habits with each other.

I grew tired of the uneasy silence though, still scared that Garrett would choose to open his mouth and drag us both into another argument. I didn’t want to argue this early; I had only touched down in Tempe under an hour ago.

The first CD to begin playing was eerily familiar, and my eyebrows knitted together in confusion. It was the mix CD. The mix CD. The one I’d made him ages ago back in high school, with The Smiths and the other various songs I’d sing along to on those late-night drives with the windows down we’d so often take. The same CD we were listening to the night of the crash.

I didn’t understand.

“How, how is this in here?” I croaked, nervous. “Shouldn’t it have like… been obliterated in the, um, the crash?”

“I honestly have no idea,” he said with a small laugh of disbelief. “But apparently the stereo was about the only thing in your mom’s car that hadn’t been destroyed. Your mom got it back a couple days after you uh… left again, and she gave it to me.”

I smiled a little, lost in thought again. The fact that Garrett was listening to it again probably said a lot.

“Maybe it’s kind of like, a sign or something,” he said, his voice soft.

I just nodded, still thinking. My mind was just racing. Maybe Garrett hadn’t been lying when he came to see me the day I was leaving. Maybe he finally was ready to love me, even though I was still hell-bent on getting away from him. Maybe it was time I just stopped fighting it, especially if he said he was ready to be with me.

Our timing had never been completely in synch, but I think this was the closest we’ve ever gotten, and probably the closest we’d ever be.

Maybe the survival of the CD was a sign that the love I’d always harbored for Garrett--when I’d firstly created the CD, as well as all the times we’d listened to it--was meant to survive. I wasn’t sure how long Garrett had been in love with me, but maybe it was a sign that we were just meant to survive. No matter what we would tumble and argue and ignore each other through, our love would survive.

“Maybe it is,” I said quietly, my voice giving out on me.

We just listened to the music while he drove, his left hand gripping the wheel while his right hand rested on his leg. Slowly, ever so carefully, I reached out. I grasped his hand, bringing it to rest on the console, intertwined with my own hand.

He didn’t say anything, but from the corner of my eye I saw that tiny half-smile take over his face. And that was enough for me at that moment. It was more than enough. Those silent gestures between me and Garrett had always seemed to mean more than any words we could conjure up.

So we just listened to all of the songs play on the infamous mix CD that had survived more than any average CD ever would, with our hands holding each other on the console of the car while Garrett drove with that silly little half-smile on his face and I sat there wondering why I never wanted to give him a chance before.

The Tempe scenery passed by us, still so familiar to me. Garrett maneuvered the car through the streets of the city, driving us mile by mile closer to my house.

By the time we’d entered the neighborhood, I breathed a sigh of relief. I was here, again. And it felt good to be here. I knew I wouldn’t be leaving, which was a far different feeling than the ones I had experiences upon returning to Tempe at the beginning of the summer. Last time I’d arrived home I knew I would leave; I actually expected it. But I didn’t expect anything as horrific as the crash to be the catalyst that would push me over the edge.

I wasn’t going to let anything push me away again.

I watched as Garrett’s hand turned the music down, but not completely off. Just quiet enough so that it could barely be heard above conversation, which I assumed he was going to lead us into now. It made me nervous, of course. I knew we would eventually have to talk everything out again.

I didn’t so much want to deal with it on the night of my arrival, but I suppose the sooner the conversation came, the better. We could get it out of the way. Then we could simply be happy; simply we could be together.

“So uh, how did settling for second best go?” he asked, pulling up in front of my house and turning the car off.

“Well, it didn’t really go at all,” I replied, drawing in a breath. “Seeing as how I ended up back here again and all. Ended up with you again.”

“You think you’re really here for good this time?”

I sighed, smiling slightly. “Let’s just say I know I am here for good this time.”

“I like the way that sounds,” he remarked. “I like knowing that you’ll always be here.”

I turned to him, our hands still clasped together between us. Even through all of the emotions I was currently feeling, I was still aware that Garrett was in a band, and that meant he wouldn’t always be here. I knew that. And yet somehow it would still be worth it to love him and want to be with him, even if he wasn’t always around. Somehow it appeared as if he’d managed to still love me and want to be with me when I wasn’t around. Of course Garrett had issues with actually displaying those feelings when I was around, there was however a point when I realized I needed to look past all of that.

And so I did.

“Look, Piper,” he began, drawing in a heavy breath. Here it comes, the talk. “As I’m sure you found out from one of the guys while you were gone, I sort of uh, went off the deep end. To put it lightly.”

I let my eyes wander down to our connected hands. “Pat told me that they couldn’t get a hold of you the night I left.”

“Well, they didn’t get a hold of me for a good day or two, actually. I just had to turn everything off. My phone, the computer, everything. I told my mom to tell them I was staying at my brother’s when they came over. I just needed to get away without really getting away, I guess.”

I could feel Garrett’s stare on me, so I slowly dragged my eyes up to level with his. “And did that help?”

“Kind of, yeah,” he admitted. His blue eyes were still that hopeful shade I hadn’t seen for weeks. “But trying to get away from everyone else wasn’t going to bring me any closer to you. Once the guys forced their way into my room and gave me a talk, I realized that. I thought I lost you for good, Piper. I honestly did. The first time you left I thought the same thing, and when you came back there was a part of me, albeit a very small part, that believed you’d never leave again. So this time I thought there wasn’t a chance in hell you’d ever come back here.”

“You had to have known I would come back eventually,” I said with a small scoff. “I mean, I know that behind everyone else’s support they all knew I wouldn’t last up there again.”

“Well, I didn’t think that. Because I know you’re the type of girl who will get what she wants if she wants it bad enough,” he said. I couldn’t help but think of how wrong Garrett was on that one. Apparently wanting Garrett for the duration of high school and then some wasn’t enough for me to get it right away. I had to suffer through endless Hell in order to finally get him. “And boy, if I couldn’t see how badly you wanted to get away the day you were leaving.”

“I didn’t want it, though,” I whispered, my voice failing me again. “I wanted you, Garrett. But it hurt so bad to want you that I had to cover all of that up with something else.”

A few moments of silence passed between us, both of us perhaps needing to take a breather from all of these intense words we had always been afraid of.

“You know, you really know how to put me through hell, Piper,” he said, chuckling a tiny bit. The hilarity in that statement was that putting each other through hell was something we seemed to be best at.

“I could equally say the same for you, Nickelsen.”

“Does that mean we’re good for each other?” he asked, his eyebrows knitted together.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But I guess it hasn’t stopped us from trying relentlessly before.”

“Think we’ll be successful this time?” Oh, we’d better be.

“I think now that we both know what we want, yes. I think we will be,” I said with a confident smile. Garrett leaned over across the console, his lips brushing across mine only for the briefest of moments. It took every fiber of my being not to reach back across and give into my feelings in the most animalistic of ways.

“And I just want you,” he said, his voice soft. “I just want to be here with you, be here for you. I’ll always be here for you. You better know that. I’ll be here when you want to have fun. I’ll be here when you’re sick. I’ll be here when you’re crying. I’ll be here when we’re fighting, and when we’re not fighting. I’ll be here when you get pissed at me for always being around you.”

For once, I think Garrett actually made me want to cry from something other than frustration and general hatred. It was all too good. I needed a reminder that this was all real.

“I think that sounds good,” I said, my voice cracking. “I think that sounds more than good, really. It sounds better than anything.”

It sounded like love to me. And love sounded better than anything I’d ever heard.

I looked him in the eye, peering into those blue pools. I felt like I could just dive in and swim through his thoughts, lost forever in all of the memories. We just looked at each other, seeming to take in all of those tiny differences that never were accounted for earlier. Like the scratch on Garrett’s cheek, or maybe the scar that was forming right under my collarbone. Those would always be the constant reminders of the night that tore us apart; however now it was only an event that would unite us for the rest of our lives.

To remind us how lucky we were to have our lives; how lucky we were to have each other.

Garrett broke the silence though.

“I love you, Piper. I love you more than anything.” The way his eyes never even twitched away from mine told me everything. He meant it.

I don’t know how that look he gave me right then was so different than the single look he gave me before we nearly lost everything. But it was on the other end of the spectrum, and I was more thankful than anything that I knew he meant it. Garrett loved me, and I’d waited so long to hear those words coming from his mouth.

“And I know that I’m years too late on this, but I mean it. I want to tell you I love you everyday for the rest of forever, Piper.” His blue eyes glossed up for a moment, clearing after he averted his gaze. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long now. I wanted to tell you at graduation, when the biggest event of our lives at the time was happening. Of course I’d managed to screw up before then though, and I didn’t get the chance. Then you were gone for a year and things were weird when you came back. But once it returned to normal, us being complicated and everything again, I thought maybe I’d tell you then. Always in the back of my mind though I was scared that you’d end up leaving again I guess, and I was too chicken to tell you if you were just going to leave and break my heart again. So you did leave, and I tried to tell you before you left but it didn’t matter because I’d waited so long. So I hope that by me telling you now, you understand.”

Maybe Lindsay was right. Right down to the very last detail.

“I understand,” I told him, my voice hardly above a whisper. “And you know I love you, too. I have loved you, for quite some time now, and I don’t see myself ever being able to stop loving you.”

I gave in, leaning across the console of the car to press my lips to his. And the kiss was different now because we were both on such different grounds than we had ever been with each other. Although it may be more correct to say we weren’t even on the ground at all when we were kissing, because this felt more like cloud nine to me.

Our lips were in synch, never forgetting the rhythms of the other pair of lips. We were always familiar to each other, no matter the distance, no matter the time apart, no matter what terms we had previously been on. And I could only hope we would always be this way, because I could not imagine a day when Garrett was not familiar to me.

I ran my fingers through that familiar copper hair, my thoughts completely lost. This wasn’t just any kiss. Certainly not like any kiss we’d ever shared in the past. This kiss was love.

And then the rapping on Garrett’s window brought us both out of what we’d been waiting for. I sighed, opening my eyes. Garrett rolled down the window, Kennedy standing with his head about to protrude into the car.

“Well are you guys coming in or not? We’re all waiting for you!” Kennedy had a wide smile on his face, most likely already positive that Garrett and I had cleared things and were now celebrating, of which celebration he had so rudely interrupted.

I was confused though as to who exactly was waiting for me, and why it was Kennedy knocking on Garrett’s window, not my brother or my parents.

He disappeared though, leaving me and Garrett in the silence.

“Who exactly is waiting for me?” I asked, confusion in my voice.

“Did you really think I was going to let you come home a second time without a real welcome home party?”

I grinned, Garrett summoning up a thousand-watt smile for me.

“Well, I guess this means we have to get out of the car now,” I said, wishing that I could simply sit in Garrett’s stuffy car and kiss him until the sun went down and the stars appeared.

We both got out begrudgingly though, Garrett walking over to my side and trapping my hand inside of his. I blushed, wondering how everyone was going to react to seeing the both of us together. Especially together like this; happy and finally seeming to have our feelings in synch. That had never really happened before, because by the time we could display our feelings to other people, what we had going was ruined.

This time it wasn’t going to be like that though. We were together, for good. Just like I was home, for good. And I knew whatever was to come would surely be challenging and different for us, because the thought of Garrett and I actually being a couple was both challenging and different. All that mattered though was that we finally were ready for this, because we finally both wanted each other. This had been years in the making, and after I’d fled Tempe twice and Garrett had “gone off the deep end” a few times, it was finally coming together.

We walked around to the back yard, ready to face everyone with our renewed hearts and the new life we’d be starting together. I’d never wanted anything more than to be with Garrett, and finally I had it. Finally I knew a love that was returned.