Haunted

Nate took a deep breath as she tucked a lock of thick, curly black hair behind her ear and cleared the dirty dishes off the recently vacated table in front of her. She grimaced as a bit of ketchup got on her hand, letting out a disgusted sigh while wiping the condiment off on the front of her apron. Her job at the roadside diner put food on the table, but it certainly didn’t bring her any amount of joy.

But then again, it had been pretty difficult for her to find joy in much of anything in the past couple of months. They’d all been kind of hazy, caught up in a stream of the routine she’d buried herself in to ensure that she wasn’t haunted by what used to be.

Yet, no matter how hard she tried, the past made it nearly impossible to escape, and events popped into her head when she least expected them to. Or when she was least prepared.

As she wiped the table clean, the vision of the first time they met popped into her head, and no amount of begging let it escape.

Nate sighed as she inched forward in the busy traffic, running a hand through her hair, as was her habit when she was irritated. She was already ten minutes late for her Literature class at the local college, and the broken traffic light simply wasn’t helping matters.

“For fuck’s sake,” she mumbled under her breath, gritting her teeth together. “Will you just fucking move?”

As if following her orders, the car in front of her started to inch forward, their brake lights shutting off as they eased closer to the intersection. She let out a slow breath, closing her eyes as she let the relief wash over her. Because she really had to get to class if she was going to pass the final at the end of the semester, which was approaching at an alarming rate.

She opened her eyes to make sure the coast was clear, and just as she looked up, the front of her car connected with the bumper of the car in front of her, a harsh scraping and crunching noise filling the bustling street.

Nate braced back against her seat, hoping to God that the airbag wouldn’t detonate, as she pulled over to the side to the street, the car in front of her doing the same.

“The fuck’s wrong with you?!” the boy screamed as he got out of his car, slamming the door behind him. His brown eyes looked enraged as he turned around to face her.

“I’m sorry,” she snuffed back. “You think I’m happy about this? I’ll never make it to class in time now.”

“Hate to tell you, love, but you’re the one who rear-ended me.”

“And I’m sorry. I don’t understand how this happened.” Her cheeks flushed at the lie, but the stranger didn’t seem to notice, as he was too busy appraising the back of his car, inspecting the damage. There was a fairly significant scratch marring the silver paint, accompanied by a small dent, but it was nothing too major. Clearly, the noises that had been made were far more dramatic than the real effect.

To Nate’s satisfaction, her bulky SUV took absolutely no hit whatsoever. Really, it looked like she hadn’t been in an accident at all.

“Hello?!” the stranger snapped harshly, sounding ridiculously impatient. “I’m talking to you.”

“What?” Nate answered, turning to look at him, her light green eyes connecting with his.

Instantly, his features softened, and his body seemed to open up to hers. “What’s your name?”

Nate sniffled back the memory, taking only a second to squeeze the tears out of her eyes that had developed as she reminisced. This is not the time or place, she scolded herself as she brought the soiled dishware in her hand back into the kitchen, not taking the care she usually did to make sure she didn’t smack into someone on the other side with the swinging door.

And as luck would have it, she narrowly avoided crashing into Sophie, who had just finished busing her tables and was in the process of untying the back of her apron, which had always given her trouble.

“Whoa,” the tiny blonde exclaimed as she jumped out of the way. “Careful. You almost knocked me out, honey.”

“Sorry,” Nate muttered quickly as she hurried toward the back, the plates and glasses clinking together inside of the bin in her arms.

Sophie sensed the tone in Nate’s voice and hurried to catch up, her sensible flat white sneakers making little pattering noises on the tile floor. “Something wrong?” she asked, leaning up against the industrial-size sink, her dark blue eyes watching Nate carefully. “You look pissed.”

“I’m not pissed,” Nate replied robotically, continuing to pile the plates into the sink. “I’m fine. I’m always fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Sophie argued. “God, you’ve been miserable for months now! And it’s driving me nuts. What happened to the girl I used to love? Who used to give me advice on boys and go out shopping with me on Friday nights because neither of us had anything better to do?”

There was a short silence where Nate fought back the tears that were threatening to surface. She missed that girl, too. The fun, carefree, happy girl. The girl who had yet to be broken.

“She’s gone,” Nate finally answered before yanking the now-empty bin off the sink and bringing it back to its proper place without saying another word to her peppy coworker.



The mocha-skinned girl threw her purse onto the kitchen table, completely devoid of any kind of energy or enthusiasm. More than anything, she wanted to collapse into her bed, wrap the blanket around her like a cocoon, and sleep for the next year or so.

But she knew that was impossible. Work had to be done in the morning, and she had a job interview for a journalist position with a local newspaper in the afternoon. It was everything she ever wanted, the occupation that was available, but Nate couldn’t find it inside herself to care enough.

She knew it was pathetic. She knew she should have picked up her life and moved the fuck on. He hadn’t been worth her pain or anguish. He wasn’t worth her mourning. Yet she still moped and sulked everywhere she went, bringing down the mood of every public place, earning the stares of strangers that wondered what was wrong with her.

Although she smelled like grease, ketchup, and overall disgustingness, Nate collapsed into her bed in a belly-flop and gathered up her pillows around her face. Within seconds, she was asleep.

They laid in bed together, her head on his shoulder, his fingers tracing absentminded patterns on her bare stomach. “I feel like we should do something,” he breathed, stirring the stray dark hairs around her face. “But I also don’t feel like leaving you here.”

She smirked and snuggled up closer to him, wrapping the sheet tighter around herself. “You can do something if you want to, but I’m certainly not going.”

He groaned good-naturedly before leaning forward and planting a kiss on her forehead. “How about this? You get off me, and I’ll go make breakfast.”

“You can cook?” she questioned with a cocked eyebrow. “Are you sure? Because I can’t afford the possibility of you burning down my apartment.”

“I swear I won’t start a fire.” And then, as if his previous promise hadn’t been enough, he put up three fingers and said, “Scout’s honor.”

“Alright, go, if you want.” She pulled her head off him and rested it back against the pillow. “But you better make a delivery.”

“Mmm, you know I will.” He leaned forward and kissed her softly before running his thumb along her cheekbone. “Just a few minutes, and I’ll be back.”

Nate jerked awake, her forehead and neck covered in a light sweat, her chest heaving up and down with terror. A dream as sweet as that never should have elicited such a violent reaction from her, but the memories ripped her apart. More than anything, she just wanted them to disappear. She wanted to grow up, to move on, to find someone new.

But Liam Payne was making it as hard as humanly possible to do that.



“Liam?” Nate breathed into the phone, her eyes squinted against the bright light of her bright green alarm clock numbers staring back at her, almost making fun of her for being woken up at three twenty-seven in the morning.

Nate was in shock. Liam had broken up with her almost two weeks previously, and she’d heard nothing from the foreign Brit since. But there he was, calling her in the middle of the night.

“Naaaaate,” he replied in a slurred, annoying tone. “Hello.”

“What are you doing?” she questioned with irritation. “Are you drunk?”

“I had to get drunk to get rid of the thought of you naked. It’s just getting in the way of everything and pissing me off. And you weren’t even good.”

The words stung Nate, but she refused to show him any weakness. “If I was so bad, then why are you calling me right now?”

“And why the fuck is your name Nate? You know that’s a fucking bloke’s name, right? Are you gender confused? Or were you a man all along? I mean, there has to be a reason you have no tits, right?”

Nate looked down at her small chest, something she’d always been self-conscious of, and she was unable to hold back the tears, though she fought to keep the emotion out of her voice. He knew where her nickname had come from, that her father called her Nate, short for Nastasia, when she was a little girl, and he had been the most important person in her life.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” she hissed. “But if you like telling yourself that I’m really a man, just remember that you’re telling yourself that you’ve had sex with a man on more occasions than you can count, that you’ve moaned a man’s name, and you’ve told a man you love him. Welcome to the gay life.”

And with that, she clicked off her phone and threw it across the room, feeling very little satisfaction when the thing smashed against the wall and broke in half, the battery popping out as the device hit the floor.

The second her anger drained out of her, merely sadness and hurt left in its wake, she dissolved into tears. Lying on her side and pulling her knees up close to her chest, she let the heaving sobs wrack her body until she was finally able to drift into a shallow, fitful sleep.

From that moment on, she was never the same.