Weak, But Not Defeated

Before Maddie knew, it was already the weekend. She had been buried in homework and this weekend she needed to catch up. She figured it would be easy. Her mom and dad had traveled to a rehabilitation center in New Mexico, and Garrett was out of town with family. She wouldn’t have any distractions.

Matt had been a very big help and they had covered two weeks worth of work. She tried calling him Saturday afternoon to invite him over, but he wasn’t answering.

She decided she would use the money her parents had left to go to the grocery store and pick up dinner. She wanted to make lasagna, her favorite.

When Maddie was at the store she ran into Matt and he awkwardly greeted her.

“Hey,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Hey I tried to call you earlier! I was thinking maybe you would come over? I’m making lasagna,” she smiled.

He looked down, “Um, I can’t, sorry.”

“Okay…” she said. “Can I ask why?”

He sighed and met her eyes, “Uh, Maddie, I don’t think I can tutor you anymore,” he said.

“Why not?” She pouted.

“I don’t think your friends like me hanging around,” he said sadly.

“Which friends?” she asked.

He hesitated, “Um… John,” he said.

Maddie narrowed her eyes and grinded her teeth. How dare he. “What did he say to you?”

“It wasn’t a big deal, he just asked me to leave you alone, and he kind of scares me.”

Maddie sighed, “Well, thanks for all your help so far.”

“No problem and I’m real sorry,” he said earnestly.

She nodded her head and walked away from him. She went to checkout and paid for her things. She sat at her empty house for the rest of the day, catching up on homework.

She was hardly ever alone, and she liked it. She threw her hair in a bun on the top of her head and wore a white wife-beater with skinny sweat pants. She didn’t put on any make-up and she blasted music through her entire house.

She started preparing the lasagna as it got dark and turned on a scary movie from the eighties. It was horribly cheesy but still terrifying. Her house was completely dark, inside and out, and she was getting scared.

After she put the lasagna in the oven she heard a sound outside. It sounded like a car door shut. She didn’t know who would be coming over. Then she heard a pot break outside. She picked up the baseball bat her parents kept in the hall closet.

Someone started banging on her door and she was frightened. She stood out of sight from the side windows as the person continued to pound on the door.

She clenched the bat and reached for the door. She opened it and swung the bat, hitting the person on his forehead. When she looked at the boys face lying on the ground, for half a second she wished she had hit harder, “John,” she said, disappointed.”What are you doing here?”

“I came to make sure you were alive! Your dad said you weren’t answering your phone.” He moved his hand from his head, showing her blood.

“It’s upstairs,” she said, embarrassed. “I thought someone was breaking in.”

“If someone was breaking in they would actually break in. Not knock on the door,” he said, aggravated.

She reached her hand out and he looked at her before he grabbed it. He pretty much helped himself up as Maddie was too weak.

“Come in. I’ll clean you up,” she turned to start walking inside.

“No, it’s okay. I’ll just go home,” he said, not wanting to be alone with her.

“John you have blood dripping into your eye. You can’t drive home,” she said.

He knew she was right and followed her into the house unwillingly. She led him to the kitchen and he sat on the counter as she got a rag wet.

She walked to him and started to pat his forehead clean. He looked into her baby blues and his heart beat sped up. Before she could look into his he grabbed the cloth from her, “I’ll do it.” He touched his head and winced in pain.

“Just let me do it, John,” she said, taking the cloth from him. She cleaned his wound tenderly, not hurting him at all. He started to get dizzy and closed his eyes to stop the room from moving.

“I think I gave you a concussion or something,” she sounded upset.

He opened his eyes. “No, I’m fine.” He was seeing double and he couldn’t pick which body was actually Maddie’s.

“You’re not even looking at me, John. You need to lie down.” She grabbed his hand and led him to the couch. He dragged his feet and fell sloppily onto the couch.

She went to the kitchen to get an ice pack and placed it on John’s head before she sat on the table across from him.

She studied his face. Despite the swollen forehead he still looked gorgeous. He opened one eye and looked at her. They stared at each other and Maddie got goose bumps on her bare arms.

“Something smells good,” John said.

“I made lasagna. There’s enough if you want some,” she suggested casually, inside hoping he would say he wanted to stay.

He nodded his head, “Sure,” he said, closing his eyes.

“Don’t fall asleep, okay?” she instructed, standing over him.

He groaned. “I’m so tired, though.”
“Do you know how guilty I’d feel if you slipped into a coma? Don’t even think about it,” she said before she walked back to the kitchen.

John almost wanted to fall asleep, so that maybe Maddie could hurt like he is. He swatted the thought out of his head; he could never be so cruel.

John didn’t understand that Maddie was hurt like he was. Their pain matched up exactly, and they were the only ones that could help the other. Maddie knew this now, as she watched the boy she would do anything for try to keep his eyes open on her living room couch.

Maddie had every right to be mad at Kennedy, but she had no reason to be mad at John.

Maddie knew that she had hurt John, and she felt guilt every time she looked into his sad eyes.

She brought two plates out to the living room and handed John his. She sat down on the floor, tucking her legs under her as she placed her plate on the low table.

John sat up slowly, using the arm rest for support. He placed his ice pack on the table and stuffed a forkful into his mouth.

They sat in silence while they ate. John finished his in record time and leaned back against the couch, reapplying the ice pack.

He wasn’t looking at Maddie, he wouldn’t look at her. She kept her eyes on his face almost the whole time. Finally she put down her fork, causing a noise that prompted John to open his eyes and look at her.

She stood up and held out her hand. “I want to show you something.”

He stared at her, confused. He stood up and didn’t take her hand as he met her on the other side of the table. She reached for his and he pulled away. She nodded her head, fighting the tears that swelled in her eyes.

She walked upstairs and opened her bedroom door. Maddie turned on the light and John walked in slowly, his hands deep in his jean pockets.

She walked over to the wall opposite of the door while John stayed near the entrance. It was covered in pictures; pictures of her childhood, of her teenage years, of her sister, her
friends, and her best friend in the entire world.

“I’ve seen this a hundred times before, Maddie,” John said to her.

She sighed as she sat on her bed, looking at every picture. “What do these mean to you?”

His tall body slumped as he walked over to where Maddie was and sat next to her on the bed. “What are you talking about?”

She looked at him, her curly brown hair falling to the side. John fought the urge to tell her how beautiful she looked without makeup.

“How can you tell me we were never best friends? Look at these pictures, John.” The two turned their attention to the wall. “Those smiles,” Maddie pointed to a picture of her perched on John’s back, both of them laughing. “Those smiles aren’t of two people that are just friends. It’s of people that are best friends.”

He studied the picture, remembering every single moment of that wonderful day. It was
Maddie’s fifteenth birthday and her parents finally let her go out on a date alone; she and John had been planning it for months.

“Do you remember that day?” she asked, reading his mind. John nodded his head. “It was my favorite day I’ve ever spent with you,” she told him.

“Why?” His voice was raspy.

“It was the day I realized you were the best friend I had ever had, and that I could always count on you, because you would be the only person that would never leave me,” she said. She was inwardly impressed with herself she was able to tell him this. It was all so important to her, and it was all so true.

“Maddie-” John began to address her but she continued her speech.

“John, that day I told myself I would never give up fighting for our friendship. I had fought for it when you told all the boys I had cooties, I fought for it when you made fun of the story I wrote for you, professing my love when I was ten, and I’m fighting for it now,” she said.

John inhaled, looking at the gallery again and thinking of the story he still kept. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Maddie.”

“I want you to tell me when we stopped being best friends,” she said bluntly.

He looked at his feet before scrunching his eyes and looking at her. “When do you think it was?”

She stared into his hazel-blue eyes, “When you stopped loving me.”

“And when did I stop loving you, Maddie?” He hated that she was exactly right.

“The moment you agreed to keep Kennedy’s secret,” she said, showing the first sight of emotion this whole time as her lip started to quiver.

John shook his head, looking at the ceiling, “I disagree. I stopped loving you the second I knew I would never win.”

“When did you know that?” she asked.

He chuckled to himself, finding nothing funny but everything ironic. “The day I walked in on you and Kennedy in your Calculus classroom,” he said.

“That day sucked,” Maddie sighed, breaking the tension a little bit.

John smiled lightly, “That was the last time you kissed me.”

John watched her eyes as the tears surged and as she gripped her comforter for support from falling apart. He instinctively placed his hand on her back. When he realized what he had done he almost pulled away. But when he noticed the goose bumps on the back of her neck he decided to stay.

He stroked up and down lightly as she spoke, “I made the wrong decision.”

“You don’t say,” John laughed.

“You’ve always been the right one for me, John O’Callaghan.”

He didn’t feel the need to tell her the same thing; he had made it painfully obvious in all of his desperate attempts to make Maddie his.

“I’m sorry I didn’t realize it until now,” She looked at him and his hand stopped moving, resting on her lower back.

He pulled away, “I can’t do this, Maddie.”

“Why not?” she asked, John knew she felt so rejected and he hated to make her feel any worse, but he believed it was essential.

“Think about why you can never be the same with Kennedy, and then you’ll understand,” he said, leaning back on the bed on the palms of his hands.

Maddie let a tear fall and she wiped it away swiftly. John hated seeing her confidence fall apart. “Did he sleep with you sister, too?” she laughed, wiping her eyes.

John smiled his crooked smile in a sympathetic way, “Do you understand what I mean?”

She nodded her head as more tears fell, “So we can never be best friends, ever again?”

He shook his head, “I still don’t think we were ever best friends.”

Maddie stood up in protest and jammed her finger in his face, “Don’t you dare tell me that, John. You know it’s a lie,” she said, trying to sound fierce but really just coming off as a girl in process of having her heart crushed. “If you tell me that then everything I’ve ever known for sure was a lie. Don’t do this to me, John. Not you, too,” she begged him.

John formed his lips into a straight line. His tear ducts threatening to give way only in response to Maddie’s tear stained face. “We’ll never be the same, Maddie.”

Her nostrils flared as she lay down on her bed. John walked to the other side and lay next to her. Her back was to him as she cradled her bear Gilbert, the bear John had won for her on her fifteenth birthday.

He inched closer to her as her tears became overwhelming. John knew he was the only person that could save her, but he didn’t have the heart or the will to do it.

John wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. They both got goose bumps. He softly stroked her hair.

“Will you ever forgive me?” she asked through her jagged breathing.

He didn’t respond as he thought about everything he had promised himself when she was gone. But seeing the girl that had has his heart for so many years breaking in his arms, he came up with a new resolve, “I’ll try.”

Maddie turned to face him. John rested his head on the hand of his bent arm and she put her shaking hand on his cheek. “I’m sorry, John.”

He put his hand on hers, “Me too.”

“Will you ever call me baby, again?” Maddie asked, recalling the pet name John had used since she was twelve.

A tear slipped down his cheek but he wiped it away so quickly Maddie didn’t see it. He moved her hand from his cheek, “You’re not my baby, anymore, Maddie.”

A fresh wave of tears made their way to Maddie’s cheeks, “You’ll always be my best friend, John.”

He smiled lightly, “Go to sleep.”

“”Will you stay?” she asked.

“Maddie,” he tried to pull away but she caught his hand.

“Please? Just give me this one night, for the last time,” she begged. Her whole body hurt worse than it ever had. This meant more than a broken heart. This was Maddie’s heart shattering, along with every thing she was ever sure of in her life being invalidated.

The one thing she had known would never waiver, never fault, was John. He was always there for her when she hit the ground. But now he was leaving her behind. He was abandoning her in the dust she had kicked up when she drove out of the desert of Tempe, Arizona.

Now she had lost him like she lost Carly, through lies and betrayal.

But this time, it was all her own fault.