Zachary

It’s true that a part of me has always suspected that Stella was Nora. I suspected it the moment I saw her in my hallway the night of the party, I suspected it when I told Brian that he made a mistake when he first met her. After she revealed to me who she was – or rather, made me admit that I already knew – I had to get out of there. Then, I knew I had to come back. Not because Nora was in my house, but because it was Nora – one of the only people I had ever loved and one of the only people to have broken my heart.

I don’t know why it took me so long to admit to myself that I knew who she was. I guess a part of me wasn’t ready to face her and the way we left things – or, at least, the way I thought we left things. When Nora explained her side of things and she saw those letters, those letters that she didn’t really send after all…it’s like everything I had ever known melted away.

My head is spinning so fast I think it may spin right off my shoulders. I told Nora that I should drive after she nearly ran the car into my house, but once we got on the road began thinking we should have taken a cab. I feel Nora steal glances at me as we approach our destination, but I don’t look back at her.

Nora is out of the car, running towards the house before I can even fully stop. I watch her barge into her former home and disappear from view as I slowly climb out of the car. I never thought I would see this place again, especially with Nora. I stuff my hands into my pockets before making my way up to the house and through the door. Nora is yelling, and I follow her voice. I wonder if maybe I should have stayed in the car, but I want to be here to protect her if she needs it. I lean against the wall outside of the room she’s in and listen to their argument.

Nora’s parents have always been cold-hearted assholes. They cared more about their image than their own daughter – they always have and from the sound of it, they always will. They don’t care when Nora tells them that Liam hits her and shortly after that, the conversation is over and Nora is storming past me.

“Let’s go,” she mumbles.

I take a couple of steps to follow her but stop, and glance back at the door she had just come out of. I enter through it, instead. Despite the extra wrinkles and graying hair, her parents look exactly like they did the last time I saw them. No, seriously, the last time I saw them I swear they were sitting in these exact seats, with these exact frowns on their faces.

“Son, I suggest you get out of our house and off our property before we call the police, and have you arrested for breaking and entering,” her father tells me.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I ask them.

“I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Saint-Clair asks, pursing her lips together.

I step closer to them. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I ask again, but this time I don’t wait for a reply. “Your daughter is the most beautiful, kind hearted person I have ever met and…you treat her like she’s scum, like she’s beneath you. Did you even hear her when she told you the man you approve of beats her? He nearly killed her! Do you honestly not care?”

“We have always wanted the best for Nora, Zachary. Why do you think we got those letters forged? Why do you think we did everything we possibly could to get her away from you?” Her mother asks me. “Our daughter has been nothing but a disappointment since she met you and started hanging out with your…gang of hooligans!”

“I loved her!” I yell back. “I have fucking loved her since I was seventeen! I let her be whoever she fucking wanted to be – I loved her more on a single day than you have her entire life! I could have made her happy! I could have given her a life she loved – and if it was money you were worried about I could have given that to her too! You just never fucking gave me a chance just like you never gave her a chance. As soon as you realized she was never going to fit the Saint-Clair mold, you just threw her away – you threw her to the wolves and she agreed to marry one of them to please you.”

“Esmerelda, call the police!” Mr. Saint-Clair shouts.

“Don’t fucking bother,” I tell the maid that’s basically shaking in the corner. I turn around and head towards the door, stopping three-quarters of the way there and turning back around to face them. I think I see them jump. “Stay the fuck away from her or I swear to God…”

“You’ll what?” Her mother asks. “That is our daughter you’re talking about.”

I shake my head. “No, it’s not. Stay the fuck away from her.” I leave the room and house as quickly and calmly as I can, but I’m fuming.

Nora is leaning against the car when I step out into the sunlight. She’s crying, and I hear her name come out of my mouth followed by her sobbing harder. “I – can’t – be-believe – th-them!” She cries into her hands.

I pull her into a hug, tempted to go back into the house and kick the asses of both of her parents. “I know. You really got the short end of the stick with parents but…I’m so proud of you for standing up to them.”

Nora pulls me closer to her and continues to cry onto my shoulder. I try to comfort her by running my fingers through her hair and rubbing her back and shoulders. It seems to work and her sobs get quieter and eventually disappear completely.

“Let’s just go. I don’t want to be here anymore,” she tells me as she pulls away.

“Okay,” I nod. Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m kissing her forehead. “Let’s go home.”

Nora is quiet on the way back to my place. I ask her if she’s hungry, but she shakes her head. We ride the rest of the way there in silence, not even the radio plays in the background. When I pull into my driveway, I look at her for a moment before getting out of the car. She follows my movements, but when I start walking to my front door, she doesn’t follow. Instead, she hesitates in front of her car.

“Zack,” she calls. “I should get going.”

“What?” I ask, taking a few steps towards her. “That’s nonsense; come on.”

She shakes her head. “It’s been a long day and…I’ve got to find a place to stay.”

I roll my eyes. “I told you that you could stay here.”

“Yeah, before all of this went down. I mean…there’s so much that has happened in the last few hours. You and I still have…so much to talk about.”

“You’re right,” I tell her. “So, come in and we can talk.”

Reluctantly, she nods and follows me inside. When I turn to face her, she’s looking around the room like she’s never been in it before. I suspect it’s nerves, I feel nervous too. I wish it would go away.

“Can I take a shower?” She asks me quietly.

“Of course,” I tell her. “You can use my bathroom – the bedroom is…”

She interrupts with a soft smile. “Up the stairs, to the left. I remember.” Of course, the night of the party when we nearly ran into each other.

“Yeah,” I say, returning her smile. “I’ll grab your things.”

She opens her mouth like she’s going to protest but then closes it before she begins to climb the stairs. “Zack,” she says, turning slightly. “Thank you.”

“It’s not a problem,” I tell her, turning and heading out to her car.

She only has a few suitcases in the back of the vehicle. I pull them all out and struggle to get them up the sidewalk and inside the house in one trip – anything to avoid making a second trip, right? Before I can begin the trip up the stairs, my phone begins to ring in my back pocket. I dig it out, pressing accept before bringing it to my ear.

“Hey, dude.”

“Dude, what the hell? You said you were going to tell me what was going on when you got back home.” At first, you’d think he was concerned or worried, but if you know Brian as well as I do, you’d know he’s just being a nosey son of a bitch.

I rub my face with my free hand. “Fuck,” I breathe into the phone. For the first time in the last several hours, I realize how much tension I’m holding in my back and shoulders. “Her fucking parents, dude. Long story short, they paid a lot of money to split us up. They hired a forger to write those letters I got – remember those? And apparently, her grandmother was in on it and – I don’t know – I guess she threw away the letters Nora wrote me. Oh, and they told her they paid me to stay away from her; the check was another thing they forged.” It was one thing to hear it – but to actually say it out loud…it seemed unreal.

“What?” Brian is half laughing. “What is this? The fucking Notebook? I knew we should have cashed that fucking check.”

I never thought I would hear my brother reference The Notebook. I silently wonder how many times he’s seen it. “I fucking guess,” I reply.

“So, what, they told her they paid you off and she just believed them? She actually believed that you would choose money over her?” Brian asks, slightly heated.

“No,” I answer quickly. “I mean, yeah. I guess. I don’t know.”

Brian scoffs. “Sounds shitty to me.”

“Yeah…” I trail off. “Hey, I’ll call you tomorrow. She’s upstairs and –”

“She’s still there?” Brian asks.

I run my hand through my hair. “Yeah, she doesn’t have anywhere else to go and…I don’t know. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

I hang up the phone before Brian can say anything else. After hearing Nora’s side of the story, I kind of regret going to Brian’s and ranting to him about Nora being, well, Nora. He doesn’t think I should trust her, and maybe he’s right.

I begin to climb the stairs with one of Nora’s suitcases. My bedroom door is wide open, but I can’t hear the shower running. I assume Nora is waiting for her clothes before she gets in the shower and walk into the room.

“Hey, so I was thinking –”

I stop as my eyes fall onto the figure laying on my bed. Nora laying on her back, with her legs bent, dangling along the side of the bed. Her chest moves up and down in a steady rhythm and she snores lightly. I slide the handle of her suitcase down and let it rest against my bedroom wall. Quietly, I approach the bed. It’s been a long couple of days for her, and I want to let her sleep. Hell, even I want to sleep. I’m careful to touch her; I slide my arms beneath her body and lift her, gently, so I can reposition her more comfortably in my bed. She doesn’t wake, but nuzzles her head deeper into my pillow, turning slightly once I lay her down. I tug at the blankets around her and then cover her up.

I wouldn’t let myself admit it before, not even to myself – but Nora is just as beautiful now as she was in high school. Of course, the reason why I wouldn’t admit it before was because I thought Nora was Stella and it was creepy to think of Stella as Nora. I shake my head – fuck, that’s confusing. When Nora was Stella, I wouldn’t let myself admit that she was beautiful. I wouldn’t let myself think of Stella as anything more than one of Gena’s friends because, in all honesty, before I knew Stella was Nora, there were tiny moments – mere seconds when I forgot that Stella wasn’t Nora. Before I knew Stella was Nora, I found myself thinking of Stella as Nora. When I was with Stella, I would forget and pretend it was Nora sitting across from me. I guess I can admit now that, I was a man slowly falling for a woman that looked like my ex. I was a man slowly falling in love with an idea instead of a person.

But now, that’s not the case at all. Now, I realize that I was falling for a person after all. The idea I loved wasn’t an idea at all. I stare down at Nora – studying the dark bruises that line her cheekbone and the necklace of fingerprints around her neck and the split that ran vertically down the left side of her bottom lip. Through all of this mess, through eleven years of secrets and lies, engagements and breakups, Nora and I somehow found our way back to each other.

And I still fucking loved her.

I turn on my heel, closing my bedroom door behind me and finding my way to the couch. As I turn on the television, Brian’s voice resounds in my head. Why did Nora and I have to go through so much before we got where we are today? Why did we have to go through the heartbreak and all the shit when we could have just stayed together? We could have spent these eleven years together instead of apart – we could have been happy together instead of trying to build a life of happiness with people we never truly loved.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she didn’t really love me. Perhaps, when her parents told her that I was gone, the reason she didn’t fight them or try to find me was that she was happy to be rid of me. After all, while her parents were telling her I had left with all their money to help kick-start my band, we were traveling city to city on a cramped bus, starving on most days so we could afford gas. Hell, we could have used that money and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider it once or twice.

Even if I would have cashed the check, I would have never let it come in between Nora and me. To know that she thought I would, that I would sacrifice my relationship with her for money…

Maybe our relationship was never what I thought it was. Maybe I was in love with an idea after all.

Notes

Hey guys! Sorry for not updating in the last two weeks - Saturday I visited the ocean for the first time ever this past weekend. I would have also been seeing the Avenged show Saturday if the tour hadn't been cancelled so it was pretty bittersweet. But I'm glad Matt is resting his voice and all that. Anyway. Thank you for reading! Don't forget to subscribe so you can read the ending that's coming up and rate the story! and comment, of course!

Thank you Kimmie and megan20089 for commenting on the last chapter.

Title credit: Avenged Sevenfold "Afterlife"