Nova and Quinton: No Regrets (Nova #3)(25)
Author: Jessica Sorensen

After getting into my pajamas, I decide that before I go to sleep I’ll make a recording. I do it lying on my back, with the camera above me, the good one my mom gave me, because the clarity is always better. Plus, it’s right there on my nightstand.

After I hit record, leaving the iPod on so there’s music in the background, I sort of just lie there for a while. I wonder, if anyone actually watches this, if they’ll think I’m nuts. Probably. But maybe that could be my point. Maybe one day I’ll put every video I’ve ever made together and title it Diary of an Erratic, Over-Thinking, Do-Gooder Madwoman. Definitely not a life-changing video.

I summon a deep breath and pull myself together before I speak to the camera. “You know, a while ago I kept having that dream about Quinton jumping off the cliff. I think it was my subconscious letting out its fear of him falling back into drugs again. The dream stopped, thankfully, after I started talking to him regularly, and I can hear the clearness in his voice—the soberness. But now I’ve started having these weird dreams where he’s standing on one side of a long stretch of land and I’m on the other and we’re just waving to each other. When I first started having it, I wondered if it was a representation of us reuniting soon, but now I’m starting to speculate if it really just means that we’re going to remain long-distance friends forever. If maybe we’ll never move forward in our relationship.” I press my lips together, gathering my thoughts. “You know, when I first met Quinton, I was in a strange place. One filled with confusion and memories of Landon. Stuck in the past and I didn’t know what I wanted for my future. Then there was this summer where all of my thoughts were consumed by the urge to save Quinton… which I didn’t really do, but he’s getting better and that was the whole point of going to Vegas. Now I really don’t have too much to think about other than if Quinton’s doing well, so I can feel my future out there, flashing before me, like a stupid neon sign that’s reminding me that I’m going to have to go somewhere with my life. And I’m not talking about career-wise. I’ve already got sort of a map for that with college and my part-time job at the photography shop. And while it’s in no way what I want to do with the rest of my life, I know that I want to do one of two things. One, make a career of helping people, like I hope I’m doing when I help at the suicide hotline, or two, do something in film, which is why I’ve been taking film classes… although I wish I could just get the balls to take a break and go help with the documentary…”

I daze off momentarily, thinking about how many people I know who have stories to tell. Then I blink back at the camera. “But anyway, that’s not the point of this recording. The point is that I’m headed somewhere with my career, but when it comes to relationships, I’m not headed anywhere. I haven’t gone out on a date since the end of my sophomore year. I’m twenty, veering toward twenty-one, and I’m still a virgin, which is just plain weird. I almost got there with Landon once, but I waited too long and then he was gone. And then I was going to let Quinton take my virginity when I was high out of my mind, but he was too good of a guy to take advantage of me.” I recollect the time in the lake, when he nearly slipped inside me, but then backed out and left me there. It was the moment the memory I’d been suppressing finally broke through. The moment I remembered finding Landon hanging from his ceiling by a noose.

“But I think the really strange thing is that I don’t even think about dating. I’ve been asked out a couple of times this year but declined. I used to do this because I was still hanging on to my love for Landon, but now… well, I think it’s because my feelings are caught up in someone else… and sometimes I have to wonder if I’m in love with Quinton, but I’m not sure where that’s going to get me since I’m pretty sure he doesn’t love me back. Yeah, I know he cares for me, but love… I’m not sure. And what really scares me is, what if he never does?”

Chapter 5

Quinton

December 9, day forty-one in the real world

My support group’s okay, I guess. For the most part, I just sit by myself in the back and listen to everyone talk. Although Wilson, the guy who’s in charge of the meetings, has cornered me a few times and asked me to share my story. I told him I wasn’t ready, though. That I’ve only been out for a month—well, forty-one days to be exact—and I’m not ready to share what’s going on inside me yet, not even with myself, let alone a whole roomful of people. He told me he gets it and I actually believe that he does, considering what he’s been through. What’s surprising to me is how normal he seems, despite what happened. Like right now. I’m listening to him talk about the accident and his guilt over it and it’s the strangest thing to me because, for starters, he can talk about it sober. And also because he doesn’t look like he’s going to break down.

“You know, I remember right after, I was sitting in the hospital, getting a few cuts stitched up, which was pretty much the only thing I had from the accident.” He sounds calm, but I can see it in his eyes, the remorse, existing, yet it’s not eating away at him, like it feels like it’s doing with me. “And I kept thinking, why me? Why did I survive?” He adjusts his tie, something he always does whenever he’s speaking. I think he might even wear the tie for the sole purpose of having it to fidget with. “Why couldn’t I have been the one to die in the car accident instead of the other way around?” He pauses there, loosening the tie as he glances around at the ten to twelve people sitting in the fold-up chairs, staring at him. All different ages, heights, weights. Male. Female. So different, yet we all share the same thing. Guilt.

He starts to pace the room, taking short, slow strides, even though his legs are long, like he wants to take his time. He’s thirty-five years old and told me the other day that the accident happened almost ten years ago. Ten years on March seventeenth, to be exact, which is his birthday. I thought it was totally f**ked up when he told me that, that something like that happened on his birthday, and he replied that it would be f**ked up no matter what day it happened on.

He suddenly stops pacing and faces the group. His choked-up demeanor has changed into one of what looks like anger. “For the longest time I kept asking myself, why me? And there were a lot of people who were asking the same thing, especially the children and the grandchildren of the people I killed when I ran the red light. They blamed me—still do. And I don’t blame them. It’s my fault. I know that, and for the longest time I thought I had to suffer for it. Pay for what I did.” He crosses his arms, the anger switching to passion. “And you know what, I should… pay for it, but not by having a pity party for myself.” He shakes his head. “But let me tell you, I did have a pity party. A huge one, where I jacked up my body with about every drug I could think of, and you know what? It made me feel better, and I guess that was the most f**ked-up part of it all—that I was feeling good. Getting high, while people hurt because they lost a loved one, all because I couldn’t put down the damn phone while I was driving.” He pauses, lowering his head, and I think he might be crying.