Nova and Quinton: No Regrets

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 comprehension. “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.

Nova

The funeral was harder than I thought. I cried more than I wanted. Delilah’s mother was a wreck, barely able to walk into the church without falling down. My mom cried, too, and so did Quinton a few times. I hated seeing him so sad and I’d subtly tried to talk him out of coming, even though I wanted him there with me. But he came anyway and I think I might have fallen in love with him a little bit more because I knew how hard it had to be for him.

While I was there, I heard whispers among the people who attended the funeral. There were rumors of Delilah’s having being beaten. Raped. Some even said that Delilah’s mother was lying about her being shot and that she’d simply OD’d. But Quinton, Tristan, and I have our own theory. We saw how Dylan was with her—they knew he had a gun, which is what we told the police. Whether her death will ever be solved, I don’t know. But regardless, it’s a tragic story, one that I wish would never happen again.

After it’s all over, I can feel that familiar burn inside me, the one that wants to do something instead of sitting around and watching all the bad that surrounds me. I realize I need a change. Need to do the things I want to do in life and stop worrying about the what-ifs. Life’s too short to constantly be worrying about everything that could go wrong. And it’s time to start chasing my dream of helping people instead of thinking about it so much. But I wonder if I can do it. Give up school. My friends. My band. My job. Quinton.

This is what I’m thinking about as Quinton walks up the path to my house, bundled in his coat, his nose and cheeks reddened from the cold. I’ve been sitting in the porch swing for about an hour, chilled to the bone, yet I can’t seem to bring myself to go inside, frozen in place until I make the decision about which path I’m going to take in life.

“Hey,” he says as he reaches the steps. “How are you doing?” He shakes his head as he trots up the stairs, removing his hands from his pockets. “Never mind. Stupid question.”

“No, it’s not a stupid question,” I say as he takes a seat beside me and the swing sways beneath us. “I should talk about how I feel, and I feel like shit.”

He places a hand on top of mine as he rocks the swing back and forth. “Tell me what I can do to make you feel better. I want to make you feel better.”

“Build me a time machine,” I say with a sigh. “So I can go back and pull her out of that house.”

“Nova, you can’t torture yourself over this,” he says in an uneven voice, gripping my hand. “Trust me. It’ll ruin you.”

“I already feel ruined.”

“But this isn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it is.” I shake my head, sliding away from him. “You don’t get it. I knew Dylan was wrong for her since they first started dating a few years ago. Knew that he probably was abusive to her, and I didn’t do anything to stop it.”

“You can’t stop everything,” he says. “Sometimes things just happen.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t make it any easier not to feel guilty.” I watch snowflakes swirl down from the sky and dance around us.

“I get that.” His voice softens, but I feel him stiffen beside me. There’s this long pause when it feels like maybe I should say something, but ultimately he’s the one to start talking. “That night… the night of the accident… Lexi was sitting up in the window of the car.” He pulls his hand away from my leg and folds his arms, staring straight ahead. “She was kind of crazy like that. Always pushing her limits and being way too adventurous.”

I’m not sure what to say. I don’t think he’s ever talked about this aloud before and I fear that if I speak at all, I might ruin this moment for him as he lets out what’s been trapped inside him for years.

“I tried to get her back in… that was actually what I was doing when the other car came around the corner.” His brows furrow as if he’s confused by the memory. “Whenever I think back to it, I just keep wishing I would have pulled over the car the moment she stuck her head out the window… but we were late and I didn’t want to get us into trouble. But we never even made it home… or Ryder and Lexi didn’t, anyway.”

“Quinton, that’s not your fault,” I say, putting my arm around him and hugging him close to me. “What happened… that was just a tragic accident.”

He looks at me, his eyes glistening with tears, so heartbreakingly beautiful it nearly knocks the wind out of me. “Accident or not, it’s something that will always haunt me.” He uncrosses his arms and turns to face me, placing his hand on my cheek. “But you make it easier to deal with it… and I want to be there for you like you’ve been there for me. It’s important to me. So please tell me what I can do, because it’s killing me seeing you like this.”

Shutting my eyes, I rest my head on his shoulder. “I actually do have a favor to ask you,” I say.

He wraps his arms around me, alleviating a small amount of pain. “You name it and it’s yours.”

Snowflakes whisk around us and sting my cheeks. “I need you to tell me you’re going to be okay if I decide to take off for a little while.”

“Where are you going?” he wonders, confused.

I open my eyes and look up at him. “Remember that project I told you about? The one my professor is working on? Well, I think I want to do it.”

He’s silent for a while, snowflakes spinning around us so thickly I can’t see any of my surroundings but him. “I think you should do it,” he finally says. “In fact, I’m going to make you do it.”

I laugh for the first time in the last few days. “Oh yeah?”

He kisses my forehead, just a light graze of his lips. “Yeah, and you want to know why?” he asks, and I nod. “Because I think it’ll make you happy, and if anyone deserves to be happy, it’s you, Nova.”

“But what about you and Tristan?” I ask. “Will you be okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” he says reassuringly. “Wilson has a shit-ton more houses for me to work on and he’s even been trying to talk me into going on the road to help build.”

I still worry. About him. About Tristan. About everyone in the world who is struggling. “But what about Tristan? I worry that he’s going to get into trouble.”

“Tristan will be fine,” he says, but I detect a slight bit of sadness in his voice. But before I can say anything, he turns us around so we’re facing my yard with his arm around my shoulder. “Maybe I’ll talk him into joining Habitat for Humanity and hitting the road with me and Wilson. In fact, I think it might be good for him.”

“You think he should drop out of school?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know… but it’s an option, right? To keep him busy and out of trouble.”

I want to tell him that it’s a great idea. I want to believe that everything will be okay. That we’ll go our separate ways and everything will work out in the long run. But I’d be naïve to think that, no matter what, everything will turn out perfect. All I can do is hope and start living my life.