Chapter Twenty-Six: We Fight Right Here-8

Elise and I had easily gotten along since the first time we met and although we weren't particularly close, I felt comfortable enough with her to be straightforward. Whether she felt the same way with me, I was about to find out. "Luke is busy doing damage-control right now," Elise said with a casual shrug. "But the most damage-control he wants to do is with you. He's not sure how you're taking this and he's worried that you're going to bolt and run. This is not exactly the sparkling, shiny start of a relationship he's been wanting for so long." That got me intrigued. "How do you know what he's been wanting for so long?" Elise smiled. "I've known Luke for a long time. He and I talked before I moved here and trust me, his side of the conversation had 'Max' on it at every thirty-second interval. It became very easy to tell what he had stuck in his head." "So are you here on his behalf? To ensure that I don't bolt and run?" "I'm here to give him some peace of mind thinking that there's something I can actually do about it," Elise said, motioning to her left leg. "There's not exactly a lot that I can do should you decide to literally do just that." "I'm not going to bolt and run." "I know. I figured that out the second I saw you today. I must say, I'm surprised." "Why?" Elise's gaze focused on me, almost disbelieving. "Because this is ugly. This is the stuff every bad daytime soap opera is made of. A pregnancy scandal, a self-destructive starlet, a well-known millionaire playboy. It's not easy, landing smack in the middle of it. No one would wish this upon themselves." "Just because I wouldn't bolt and run doesn't mean this feels like a moment in the sun for me," I admitted. "But if this is where the fight is, then this is where you'll find me." "Luke said you were scared of falling in love." "I was scared of falling in love and landing flat on my face on the concrete, the second circumstance being the qualifier," I clarified. "Luke's the one scared of falling in love." "He's not scared of falling in love," Elise said. "He's scared of falling in love and fucking it up, the second circumstance being the qualifier." I smiled because Elise was clearly playing along. "I did try to tell him that he won't know until he tried it." "I told him the same thing," Elise said with a sigh. "Despite his impressive progress, you'll still have to go easy on him, Max. The last time he tried to make a relationship work with someone, they ended up fighting inside the car and getting into an accident and the girl losing half her leg." So it was official. Elise was definitely a part of Luke's past, of the same horrific accident that scarred him and maimed her. She was watching my face as the gears in my brain went into motion. "Don't worry, that was a long time ago. We were young and stupid then." "Why don't you tell me?" I sincerely wanted to know because I had a suspicion it would help me understand more. "I don't want you to bolt and run." "You'll have to give me a choice about it." Elise deliberated for a good long while, finally shaking her head in resignation when I refused to say anything else and just patiently waited for her to get on with it. "Fine. We were seventeen. We'd known each other for years because our families mingled a lot but we didn't date until senior high. I was in love with Luke. As you can probably understand, it was hard not to. He's charming and sweet and funny. Not a single girl could resist him, really." Her smile was ironic. "But Luke wasn't ready to be in a relationship. I was already thinking wedding bells and baby names. When you're young and in love for the first time, you look at the world a little bit differently. Luke tried to make me happy. He really did. His heart was in the right place but it wasn't with mine. He didn't love me the same way and that showed through in everything—our decisions, our actions, our convictions. It became unhealthy for both of us real fast." "We fought and one night, at a party, it got really ugly," Elise added, a grimace straining across her lovely face. "I wanted to go home and he wouldn't let me drive because I was drunk. He got into the car with me. We kept arguing and I didn't realize I ran the stop sign and another car T-boned us, hitting the driver's side. My leg got trapped. It had to be amputated from the knee down. Luke had a piece of metal slice across his side." When Elise glanced down at her leg, there was a hint of sadness but her eyes were clear, as if the memory didn't hurt as much as it used to. "Luke was all kinds of sorry. He blamed himself for a while. I blamed him for a while, too. I couldn't understand what went wrong. I left after graduation and moved to Europe. I was depressed for a while and did many more stupid things to try to fix that—drugs and all kinds of bad habits. I felt like I'd lost a big piece of myself with the leg. It took years for me to understand that Luke and I didn't work out because try as we might, you can't make something work unless you both want it badly enough to take the necessary risks and make the necessary changes." "I realized that it was foolish to live your life dependent on a love that's one-sided," she continued, her voice growing fiercer. "Sure, that's love, too, but that's not life—that's not living. I could've lost my life that night of the accident, but I didn't and it was a second chance I wasn't wasting." Despite the painful recounting, Elise smiled and my heart squeezed just a bit tighter with emotions. "I forgave Luke. When we saw each other five years ago, I told him that. And he was pretty easy-going about it but I know that despite this understanding we've come to, he probably still holds on to a bit of his guilt. It explained a lot about his many casual relationships. When I was at the hospital and he came to see me, he told me he's not cut out for this stuff. He's only going to break some other girl's heart and he's already got enough guilt to last him a lifetime. It was only when I saw him again, a few months ago, that it felt for the first time in many years, that he's starting to question that resolution he'd stuck with for so long. Because while he certainly runs the risk of hurting the woman he's fallen in love with, he also knows that he might just be able to make her happy." My lips were trembling slightly when I smiled back at Elise. "True that." "So despite all of this nastiness—and it won't go away anytime soon—you don't regret your decision to be with Luke at all?" Elise asked. "No, because while I might still be afraid of being hurt, I'm more afraid of living a life that doesn't have him in it," I answered, sure of every word that left my lips. "The only way we can go through this, the only way to make this work when neither of us really know what we're doing, is to trust each other. I was probably just as afraid as he was. I'm only less afraid of all of this because it's with him." Elise beamed. "Well, in that case, Max, while I'm glad to have had this little heart to heart chat with you, it seems like you never really needed me to talk you into staying for the fight." I laughed. "No. But it might work if you do it with Luke. I think he's the one who needs the most reassurance right now." Because if I'm staying to fight, he better do the same damn thing. ***