Until the Tide Returns

Now that I’ve had some time to think it’s not that surprising Dad lied to me. I mean he lied for 12 years and that was a pretty big lie. What surprises me and actually hurts is that Landon lied to me. That is the one thing that I never thought would happen.

I spent the rest of my first Christmas with my newfound family locked up in one of the spare rooms sulking. It was childish but I was so hurt that I didn’t care. It was bad enough Dad kept me a secret from the world, but to find out my mother kept me a secret from her own little family and made the rest of hers lie to them as well? Now it’s nearing midnight and I’m still in that room.

I decided I didn’t want to be around anyone and with Dad and Billy staying at Tyler’s it would be impossible to be left alone. I wasn’t ready to go anywhere with Gram yet, and everyone else decided to go to Maya’s for dinner after the slipup in the secret keeping. My phone buzzes every once in awhile with texts from Loraine, occasionally one from Perry, or Evie. Phoebe, Joe, and Frank were staying with Maya while they were here. It was decided that tonight Landon and Loraine would be staying there as well. I couldn’t tell from Loraine’s texts if she was trying to cheer me up or if she really didn’t like the siblings I apparently had.

20 more minutes and you won’t have a little brother any more.
OMG I’m going to kill this twerp.
Your ‘sister’ is a little know-it all psycho. I think she would die if she found out she had an older sister who is way smarter than she is. May I tell her?
Your sister looks just like her dad, but she didn’t get the pretty gene.

After receiving two of Perry’s I was starting to think she was just on a warpath.
Is Loraine always this passive aggressive?
She won’t actually punch Connor will she?

Evie’s was on behalf of Lily.
Lily would like to arrange a sleepover for the two of you when you are up for it. She announced on the way home she loves you more than the rest of us. Mark and I are trying not to take offense to this.

I faintly heard something clatter downstairs. I was here alone, if someone else had entered the house the alarm should have gone off. Perry promised to set it as it was the only way my dad would leave. I quickly texted Perry since he said he would let me know when was heading back. Footsteps could be heard on the stairs, if it weren’t for the total silence I wouldn’t have heard them, but I did. So I moved as quietly as I could and crawled under the bed. Unfortunately my brain decided at that exact moment to replay a scene from the beginning of Taken. Every cell in my body was paralyzed with fear. I could hear faint buzzing. Shit. I left my phone on the bed.

I watched as a pair of feet entered the doorway and stopped. They paused for a few moments before backing out slightly. My phone buzzed again. The feet entered the room and walked over to the bed. They were only a foot or so away from my left side now. “Beckett?” My name was shouted and I recognized the voice immediately.

“Down here.” I responded sheepishly. I watched as knees hit the ground then hands, and then his upside down face appeared.

“What’s-”

“I’m fine. I just panicked and hid.” I crawled out from under the bed. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to show up.” Except Perry, but not until later. I try not to notice how horrible he looks. Exhausted, hurt.

“I don’t think they realized I left.” I find that hard to believe. “My parents were too busy trying to shut Loraine up, she wasn’t very pleasant.”

“Oh.”

“I,” he swallows, “I, uh, didn’t want you to be alone tonight.”

“Thanks, but that was the point of me staying here. So that I could be.” He nods, telling me he knows this.

“I tried to give you space, but I just… I was at Maya’s and it felt so wrong to be there. To not be with you. I messed up, I know that. Please, you need to know I only lied to you because Maya asked me to and I thought it would be best to just keep you in the dark.” He slowly starts making his way over to me. “I know your dad lied about you and I didn’t want you knowing your mom was doing it too. I never wanted to hurt you, and you have to know I have never lied about anything else nor will I. I’m so sorry.” He reaches up towards my face but I take a small step back. He runs the hand through his hair and looks away.

“I get why you did it Landon, but it’s that you did it. You. The last person I would have ever thought would lie to me.” I pick up my phone and read the texts I got. Both from Perry. The first asks if something is wrong the second tells me it’s most likely Landon that showed up. He knows the alarm code. I put my phone on the nightstand and sit on the bed tucking my feet under me. “Right now, with everything going on, you’re the one person I am able to trust completely, and it’s going to be difficult if I’m constantly wondering if there any more huge secrets your keeping from me.”

“I swear Beckett, that’s the only thing I’ve lied to you about.”

“Anything you’ve decided to just not tell me? Lies by omission and that.”

“About me? Or your family?”

“Both, I’m pretty sure by now you know everything about me. Granted there wasn’t a whole lot going on for me before you, but, I mean, you had a life before me. Anything I should know? Juvenile record? Fears? Deep dark secrets?”

“You mean besides the skinned cat collection I left in Arizona? I’m kidding. Yes, there are things you don’t know about me, things even Loraine doesn’t know, but I don’t think now is the best time to bring them up.”

“Bad?” He shrugs and sits in front of me, keeping his feet on the floor.

“Not bad, stupid maybe. I’ve regretted it for awhile, more when I met you.” He gives me a soft, sad smile.

“So you get to know everything about me, even how my brain works or whatever, and you get to keep your secrets. Awesome.”

“Beckett, I’m not keeping secrets, I just… I need you to trust me when I tell you now would not be the best time to bring it up. It’s going to be a pretty awkward conversation when it does happen but, right now, it won’t help anything.”

“And in the meantime I get to sit here and imagine all sorts of crazy scenarios. Because that’s so much better.” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.

“You don’t want to keep the mystery alive?” He jokes half heartedly angering me further.

“Landon, in case you’ve failed to notice the majority of my life is a mystery. Several, very crucial months of my life, are gone.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” I shake my head rejecting his apology and get up. “Where are you going?”

“I need to destroy something.” I mutter heading straight for the stairs. There are still quite a few presents I haven’t opened and the thought of ripping paper seems somewhat therapeutic. I sense him following me but choose to ignore him. The stuff I did open is all stacked neatly by my box of 3’s beside the ones that are still wrapped. I make sure to read the nametags before I rip the paper off, that way when I’m not as upset I can properly thank everyone. Mainly I open boxes of clothes from Tina, they must have all been buried this morning. I stop when I grab one in deep blue paper. It’s a thin and long box, it says it’s from Landon.

“We’ve never fought before.” I say softly running my fingers along the edges of the wrapping.

“I think it was more of a slight argument.” From the corner of my eye I see him leave the couch, he pads over quietly and sits behind me scooting forward until his legs are on either side of me. “Open it,” His voice is soft, his breath hot on my ear as he rests his chin on my shoulder. Carefully, I tear off the paper. I lift the lid and before I have a chance to properly look at it Landon reaches in and pulls it out, clasping it around my wrist. He twists it a little and points to the first charm, a little silver baseball bat, “For when we first met.” He moves to the next one, a music note, “for the day we came over after school when I gave you my number,” he kisses my shoulder, “I was worried you would think I was a creep and wouldn’t call. I’m glad you did. “This one,” he brushes his finger over a boxing glove, “is for when you assaulted the waiter on my birthday.”

“I did not assault him, I was simply defending myself.”

“It was all I could do not to kiss you when I found you. The first time we spent time alone together.” It’s an R2-D2 charm. The next charm is a stemmed rose, “The first time we kissed.” He pulls my hair back and presses a kiss to my neck.

“And then you told me it could never happen again. Such a pleasant memory.”

“I would say everything turned out for the better, excluding the past couple of weeks, haven’t you?” I shrug and he chuckles softly. “This one is for our road trip.” I smile at the little fork charm, “Our picnic,” I hear the grin in his voice as he runs his finger over the picnic basket charm. “A water drop for the first time we went to the creek.”

“Why an apple?” I ask looking at the next one.

“That one is my favorite.” I still didn’t understand it. “When you told me you love me. It was right after we got back from school, we went on our first date that night too. And the last one, the paintbrush-”

“-is for when I had my first vision, of our daughter, and our son.” I finish for him. “I love it Landon, thank you.” I lean into him and let him wrap his arms around me.

“There’s another one on it’s way, I had to order it, but you’ll just have to wait and see what it is.”

“Did you open my gift yet?” I’m suddenly embarrassed by my gift and have no idea what he is going to think of when he opens it, how he’s going to react.

“No, I wanted to wait for you. Should I open it now?” I nod as he stretches over and grabs the envelope from under the tree.

“If you don’t like it or uh, don’t want to I totally understand and we can just forget about it. Really. It won’t be a problem.” He doesn’t say anything as he pulls out the card with the white rabbit and the pocket watch on the front. “Ignore the first half of his famous quote.” I mumble. Why did I think this was such a good idea? Granted I wouldn’t have let him open it anywhere but in private but now I was wanting to run and hide. He opens the card and start reading and I feel like I’m about to break out in a cold sweat.

“Beckett…?”

“Mhmm?”

“I’m a little confused.” I reach in the envelope and pull out the business card and hand it to him, thankfully he’s behind me and I can’t see his face.

“I thought it would be romantic to uh, go stay in a hotel, like we did on our way here.”

“You booked us a room at a B&B.”

“Yeah.”

“You said to ignore the first half of the rabbits quote so.. ‘a very important date‘, and you wrote I’m ready. Ready for wh- Oh!”

“Yeah, see, after I lost my memory and we had that talk about erm, why we hadn’t… you know, and then there was the whole glowing kind of getting my memory back I sort of started to get an idea. And I know this may look like I’m just trying to get my memory back which you know would be nice, but it’s not I swear. It’s something I had been thinking about before I lost my memory, and along with the rest of my memories of you that came back. I want to do this, with you, because I love you. And you know things have been heading in that direction lately so I know it’s time. So I booked the room, because I figured it was like how it was on our way here, when we really got to know each other, and it’s private, we don’t have to worry about Gram or anybody. I already talked to Gram about it, well not all of it because that would be such a complete disaster, I just explained the whole road trip reminiscence idea and she helped me book the room because you have to be 18 and I’m not yet, so we put it under your name. But if you don’t want to, or you want to wait, that is totally understandable. But if you look at the card it’s for the day Loraine and everybody heads back, they leave in the morning, so we’ll have that weekend to ourselves and I just thought that would be a good time and-”

“Beckett.” Landon says softly interrupting me. “I just need to fully get this right, for my Christmas present you want to give me your virginity?” His voice is low and soft and has this slightly odd tone I haven’t heard from him before. I have no idea what to make of it.

“When you say it like that it sounds so stupid, or slutty, I don’t know. I just had no idea what to get you for Christmas, so I thought I’d give you me. I mean you have me, obviously, and you always will, I just… wanted to give you me, all of me.”

“I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear what you just said Beckett, and go straight to straight to bed.” Perry says making both of us jump. “I really hope I’m drunk enough for this all to be blacked out.” He mumbles making his way up the stairs. It’s quiet for awhile, we both sit there saying nothing. Finally, Landon is the one to break the silence.

“We should probably go to bed.” He says. I was hoping for something other than that. Anything else would have been better than that.

“Oh, ok.” He stuffs the cards in the envelope and stands up helping me up along with him. We silently walk back into my room and he shuts the door behind us. Nervously I make my way to the bed and slide underneath the covers turning off the lamp my by head. Landon sets the envelope on the nightstand and slides into the bed next to me turning off his lamp.

“You know I love you, right?” He asks keeping his voice low and slips an arm around me pulling me close to him. “More than anything.”

“And I love you.” Where is this going?

“It seems it’s time for me to come clean.” My stomach has been in knots for the past twenty minutes and it’s getting worse. “Do you remember the reason Loraine’s brother and I don’t like each other?”

“Yeah, you were dating the same girl at the same time.”

“Right, and the moment I met you none of that mattered anymore. She didn’t matter anymore. I had tunnel vision and you were the only thing I saw. There is nothing, and no one, in my life more important to me than you. I haven’t felt anything for her for a long time before I met you, but that’s not to say that she didn’t hurt me. But then you stepped onto the porch and I just didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t believe my luck that I had just been dragged along one of Loraine’s crazy adventures and it meant I got to meet the beautiful girl I had seen earlier that day.”

“Landon, I’m really not understanding why you’re telling me this.”

“Sandra, the girl I unknowingly dated the same time as Simon, I uh, slept with her.” Oh. “I found out a day or two later about her and Simon, but even before then a part of me had regretted my decision. I liked her but I wasn’t in love with her, and had already begun to wish that I had waited and found someone else. But then I found out about Simon and I was angry and chose to focus on that instead.”

“So that’s what you were talking about earlier? What you wanted to wait to tell me?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Nothing, I knew you had at least on girlfriend before me. I kind of hoped you hadn’t so that I wouldn’t be completely inexperienced with everything in our relationship but I get it kind of. If it weren’t for the raging hormones in a teenage male then I wouldn’t be here so…” I shrug. “Were there any others?”

“What? No. There was only her and it was only the one time.”

“Ok.”

“Ok?”

“Yeah, I can’t change anything and it was before you met me, so there’s no point in getting upset about it. I’m not like totally fine with it, it’s kind of making me more self-conscious about my lack of life experience, not wishing that I had already you know, done it, but just because it’s one more thing you’ve already experienced. I wonder if there’s anything I’ll be your first for since you’re pretty much my first everything, but there’s no point dwelling on it.”

“You’re my first love.” I smile in the dark and snuggle in closer to him. “And as for your present-” my breath stops, “as long as you are completely sure about this then-”

“I am.”

“Well then, for my sake I sincerely hope Perry was very, very drunk when he came home.”