Читать книгу Because You Loved Me - M. William Phelps - Страница 17

Nicole and Billy didn’t stay too long at Leda Lanes playing pool. Nor had they hung out at Bruster’s Ice Cream shop down the street for more than a few minutes. At intervals between 6:00 and 7:00 P.M., they sat in the parking lot of 7-Eleven directly behind Nicole’s house, wondering how they were going to convince Jeanne that Billy wasn’t leaving New Hampshire alone.

Two kids desperate to be together. Beneath the adolescent image of their relationship, there were perhaps frames of good intentions, yet they just couldn’t get around their own selfishness. They focused on the negative, regularly asking themselves why nobody understood the love they shared wasn’t some sort of fleeting high-school romance that could end with a simple good-bye peck on the cheek? Nicole wasn’t about to stand there like a “good girl” at the end of her driveway and wave to Billy as he left for Connecticut, not knowing when or if she’d ever see him again. Jeanne had to understand. Why was she being so darn stubborn about it all? How many kids could say they found true love? Billy had spent the past five days at the house. Besides a few arguments Nicole and Jeanne had had, Billy’s stay had been pleasant. Jeanne had even mentioned to Chris how uncomplicated the week had been. He wasn’t John-Boy Walton, but he wasn’t a bully or punk, either. Billy Sullivan seemed “OK.”

Jeanne adored Nicole and wanted only what was best for her. It was never about Billy’s attitude, behavior or goals in life. It hadn’t mattered that he was set to graduate from high school next year with honors and continue a career at McDonald’s as a line-cook manager. What mattered more than anything to Jeanne was that Nicole had two years of high school left herself—and she was going to damn-well finish them without complication or meddling from some kid living one hundred miles away in Connecticut. It was that simple.

Throughout the early part of that evening, while biding Billy’s time, Nicole was entirely confused and torn about what to do. She wanted to approach her mother one last time. Confront her and plead with her. Ask her why she was being so bullheaded. This last night together with Billy was perhaps reminiscent of the first time Nicole met Billy in person, after speaking to him online and over the phone for two months. It was August 2002. Nicole had somehow managed to convince Jeanne to drive her to Willimantic. Jeanne agreed, giving into pleas of “Please, Mom…I need to see him,” but demanded she chaperone the eight-hour visit. When they left Connecticut later that day, Nicole knew then what she had always believed: Billy was the one. There was no doubt. She was hopeless when they pulled out of Billy’s driveway. “Hysterical” during the two-hour ride home, she said later.

“I couldn’t stop crying the whole way home. I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

From that day on, because Billy didn’t have a license or a car then, Nicole and Billy rarely saw each other. But now he had his own vehicle. When he arrived the previous Friday, it was a surprise to Nicole. As far as Jeanne and Chris knew, Billy hadn’t told Nicole he had gotten his license or a car. Now, though, the surprise was over. Billy was leaving. There was nothing they could do about it. Rules were rules. Nicole was a minor. “I knew the cops would be at my door in two days,” Billy said later, “if I just took off with Nicole and brought her to Connecticut…. The way we saw it is, we could be married on the side of the street in a cardboard box with no clothes and no food and we’d be happy.”

As they sat at the 7-Eleven and talked over their options, Billy said at one point, “If I have to drive back home to Connecticut without you, I will steer my car into an oncoming truck.”

“He was saying,” Nicole speculated later, “that there’d be tears in his eyes and his vision would be blurry and he didn’t think he’d be able to see straight.”

“You’ll be OK, Billy,” Nicole assured him. “I’m so sorry you have to leave without me.”

“They say you’re never supposed to drive when you’re angry or upset,” answered Billy, “because you’re more likely to drive faster, recklessly. If you’re not with me, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

Peer pressure. Nicole seemed addicted to it lately.

Nicole stared out the window and cried. She couldn’t “fathom the thought” of ever losing Billy like that. Billy started the car and took off, out from the parking lot. He drove down Amherst Street for about a mile, turned around and headed back to 7-Eleven. The night, like their lives, was going round in circles.

“Vermont, Billy. What about our plan to take off to Vermont?” They had discussed running away. At one point, they even went to one of Nashua’s libraries, looked up directions to upstate Vermont and Niagara Falls, “or,” as Billy put it, “somewhere to get the hell out of there.”

Billy looked at Nicole. “Vermont, huh?”

“I hate that house,” said Nicole. “Hate it with a passion. Park over there,” Nicole added, pointing to a space on the side of the 7-Eleven building near Deerwood Drive. From the parking lot of 7-Eleven, they had a clear view of the back of Jeanne’s house.

As Billy and Nicole sat and talked, a Nashua police officer pulled in. There were plenty of No Loitering signs up around the outside of the store. Nicole had grown up in the neighborhood. She knew how oppressive and protective cops were of the store because of the problems with kids in the neighborhood.

The officer got out of his car and walked toward the 7-Eleven.

“Shit,” said Billy. “He’s staring at us.”

So, Billy and Nicole got out of Billy’s car and walked into the store.

“That’s a sign,” Billy whispered to Nicole. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

Nicole continued crying. “A sign. Huh!”

“Maybe we should leave?” said Billy.

“Yeah.”

As Billy pulled out of the parking lot after they left the store, the officer got into his cruiser.

When Billy left, the officer followed him.

Billy took a right into the parking lot of Bruster’s just down the road. As he did, either the cop got a call or just gave up on the fact that they hadn’t done anything illegal, because he drove by.

“Let’s go back to 7-Eleven,” Billy suggested, making a U-turn in the parking lot of Bruster’s.

“OK,” said Nicole. “Go.”