Something About Forever Read online

  Something About Forever

  Kimberly Loth

  Contents

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  (An Aside)

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Kimberly Loth

  Copyright © 2018 by Kimberly Loth

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced in any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without express permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead is completely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Dedication

  For Will

  Because you’re my forever

  Introduction

  Hi, yeah, it’s me, Lauren. I’m breaking the fourth wall. Nate would be appalled. He hates it when people do this in movies or TV shows. He won’t even watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with me for that very reason. He’s nuts, but cute, so you know, I guess it all works out in the end. Anyway, I wanted to let you in on a few things.

  I have no idea why you're here. Maybe you want to hear about my journey to find eternity. Maybe you want to know if I’ll ever speak to my dad again. Or maybe you want to know why my mother married a guy who smokes a pack a day. Or maybe you just think Nate is hot. It’s okay. I do too. (You did see Nate, right? He’s on the cover. If you missed him, or even if you didn’t, go look. Sigh. So hot.)

  Now I’m all flustered. Nate does that to me.

  Where was I? Oh yeah, why are you here? I bet it’s the music. I’m all famous on YouTube, and you wanted to see how it all started. Snort. Yeah, that was not my fault.

  Anyway, whatever your reason, I feel I must make a disclaimer. This is my story. I’m not terribly funny or clever, but I do have a lot of obscure thoughts, and I must warn you, I will break this wall again cause there are things that need to be explained.

  I’m a Mormon, so if that bothers you, you might want to stop reading now. But maybe you’re curious. That brings me to my next disclaimer. I’m not a very good Mormon. So if you’ve come here expecting me to quote the prophet or recite scriptures, you’ve come to the wrong place. I mean, I don’t even go to seminary.

  Let’s talk about that for a second. What teenager willingly gets up a whole hour earlier than they are supposed to every single day? Not only that, but to go to a class that is basically just reading the scriptures. Talk about a snoozer. They must be insane. Certifiably—we did already establish that Nate was nuts—I can’t even stay awake during Sunday School. How do people do it every stinking day of the week? Sorry, not my thing.

  I don’t remember what else I wanted to say to you, so au revoir. Enjoy my story. You’re going to be examining my every flaw and thought. I do find that rather creepy. Good thing I never have to see you again after it’s over.

  Hugs and kisses. Just kidding. I’m so not a hugs and kisses kind of girl… unless you are Nate. Which you’re not, cause I would never let him read this.

  I’m out.

  Lauren

  Chapter One

  Six Months ago

  “Lauren, we need to talk.”

  Those four words needed to be expunged from the English language. Seriously. They build some stupid dread that might or might not be warranted. Every time I heard them, my hands started to sweat, and I didn’t even know what the issue was.

  I took a sip of my hot chocolate, savoring the taste of the whipped cream before the liquid burned my tongue. I set down my mug, my lips still stinging. I knew better than to drink it that fast, but Mom had distracted me. What on earth did she want to talk about?

  Maybe she’d found out I’d been drinking. My stepdad, Steve, wouldn’t have told her, but there were a number of other ways she could’ve found out. In the last few months, she’d been a lot more aware of what was going on around her.

  “What’s up?” I asked with mock casualness. Steve sat next to my mom and would not meet my eyes. Heat crept up my neck and my face flushed. This would not be good.

  “I got a new job,” Mom said with a grin.

  Phew. “Oh, that’s good.” I let out a breath. See, she didn’t have to say, we need to talk and get my nerves up all unnecessarily.

  Mom dropped her eyes. “But we have to move.”

  Oh, yes, finally! I knew she’d been looking in the city. I’d wanted to move to New York City for years. At least twice a month, Cherise and I hit up parties there. I’d officially be cooler than she was now. I blew on my chocolate, now feeling silly for overreacting.

  “Really? That’s awesome. Will we be living in Brooklyn by Sierra?” My sister had lived in New York for the last three years, though when I went, I didn’t see her. She wouldn’t approve of my antics in the city. I only visited her when Mom went too.

  “No, love, we’re not moving to the city.” She’d dropped into her pity-mom voice—the one she always used when she delivered bad news.

  “I don’t understand.” My hands gripped the hot mug.

  “One of the restaurants I interviewed with wants me to open a new location in Tucson, Arizona.”

  Wait. What? The room went silent for several long moments. The only sound in the room was the slow drip of the coffee maker. The bitter smell suddenly assaulted my nostrils. Maybe I misheard her.

  “Excuse me? Arizona? What about Steve’s job?”

  This couldn’t be happening. I had friends here. I was content with the way things were. I had a routine and it was good. This was my life. They couldn’t just up and move me to Arizona.

  I wasn’t sure I could even locate that on a map, let alone fathom living there. I’d never been out of the northeast. They didn’t have snow in Arizona.

  Nope. This was not happening.

  “Steve can work from anywhere,” Mom said. I thought back on the last several months. I should’ve seen this coming—the whispered conversations between her and Steve, her sudden trip out west to visit her sister, mom packing up the guest room. I missed all the signs. It was like sleeping until noon and realizing you missed the sunrise.

  I clenched my fists, thinking through all the implications. I didn’t like change, and there had been altogether too much of it lately. “But we don’t need the money, right? Steve makes enough.”

  “Sure he does. But this is a great opportunity for me to get back into the business. I miss working.”

  I couldn’t go. I was horrible at making new friends, and I liked partying. What if the kids in Arizona didn't like me? I blinked away tears. “But, Mom, you could get a job at Denny’s. I don’t want to move.” S
he was a chef. A good one too, but after Dad left, she sank into a deep depression and lost her job. After that, she only worked odd catering jobs. She’d been looking for something better for months.

  Her lips formed a tight line. “I’m sorry. The decision has already been made.”

  I met my stepdad’s eyes. He loved the snow as much as I did. We hadn’t even had a good snowfall yet this year. “Steve, help me out here.”

  He took my mom’s hand. “I’m ready for a change of scenery. This is a good thing. A fresh start. Your mom deserves this.”

  “When are we moving?” Given enough time, I might be able to talk her out of it. Show her that I couldn’t move. Maybe I could just move in with my bff, Cherise. Her mom liked me well enough. Yeah. That’s what I’d do. Besides, mom wouldn’t move me in the middle of the school year. That was like GPA suicide. Not that my GPA was any good anyway, but that didn’t matter.

  Mom let out a breath.

  “Please don’t get upset. We have to move midyear. But it will be okay.”

  I knew better than to think we could stay for another six months.

  “Maybe Steve and I can stay here until the end of the school year.”

  Steve gave my mom a look. “No. I don’t want to be away from her that long.”

  My chest tightened. “When?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Two weeks?” I shrieked. That was before Christmas. I had plans. Big ones, including watching the ball drop in Times Square on New Years Eve. I’d never been allowed to go by myself before, but this year, Cherise and I had an elaborate plan to go anyway. It included a lot of lies, but they’d always worked before.

  Two weeks? This was impossible.

  I stormed out of the room, grabbed my coat, and stomped outside. I blinked in the blinding winter sun. I took deep breaths and let my eyes adjust. I trudged out to the forest, ignoring the birds chirping as a warning to the others that a stranger was there. As a child, I often spent hours wandering among the trees, especially after a snowstorm. There was nothing more peaceful.

  It’d been nearly two years since I’d lost myself in the snow. Peace wasn’t something I could find very often, so I stopped looking for it.

  Fun was easier, so I found that instead.

  I marched through the woods, wishing the ground was covered in white. Instead, it was an ugly brown. This wasn’t fair. I liked my life. Well, not always, but at least it was what I knew. Just when I was getting comfortable again, someone took the rug and pulled it out from under me.

  The tears came quite unexpectedly. I hadn’t cried in a long time. What was I going to do? How would I manage? I’d never moved in my life. Arizona? What was in Arizona?

  Heat. Rattlesnakes. Scorpions.

  I found my favorite tree and sat on the cold ground. I leaned against the rough bark. The branches above me swayed in the wind.

  My entire life was here. I had friends. I went out all the time. I couldn’t go somewhere else. I didn’t know how to make new friends.

  The waterworks turned on full blast. I no longer just had tears quietly streaming down my face. Within seconds, great heaving sobs overtook me, and I didn’t even understand why.

  The light filtered down through the trees, and I could almost imagine God in that light. A God that had abandoned me long ago. “Why is this happening? What did I ever do to you?” I screamed up to the sky, cursing Him.

  I couldn’t blame my mom. She did deserve this job, so I blamed God even though I wasn’t even sure He was real. I continued to curse the light. “First you let my dad destroy our family, and now you want to take away my life. This isn’t fair. I don’t deserve this.” I hadn’t spoken to God in a very long time.

  I curled into a ball underneath a tree and let myself cry.

  Be at peace. Change is good. My sobs stopped instantly, and my heart stilled, warmth flooding my veins. That thought was not my own. I sat up and wiped away my tears, my hands cold on my face. I froze and listened, but the thought, or voice, or whatever it was, was gone.

  The peace that descended was palpable. I took a couple of deep breaths and focused on the feeling, but as fast as it had come, it was gone.

  I felt my eyes well up again, but this time for a very different reason. I’d wanted to find that peace for a long time, but it had eluded me. I had not felt that peace in forever. Two years, three months, and seven days to be exact. That was the day my dad ruined my life, and I vowed never to set foot in church again.

  I’d been chasing the peace that could only come from the Spirit, and I didn’t even know it. It was so faint, yet so powerful, and I craved more.

  Something new had awakened in me. A desire for change that had very little to do with my mom and the move.

  There were things I could never quite adequately explain to my non-Mormon friends, no matter how hard I tried, like how the Spirit feels. There was no way to express how you could feel so close to God that you know he’s sitting right next to you, and seconds later forget what it felt like.

  It was like Christmas morning mixed with the most beautiful song you’d ever heard, all while watching the sunrise from a gorgeous mountain. The Spirit was warm and soft and peaceful. Every worry you’d ever had disappeared. Nothing seemed important anymore, except that feeling. It was a bit like crack. Once you’d felt it, you’d spend the rest of your life chasing it, wanting desperately just to find that feeling for a few seconds again.

  There were different intensities of the Spirit, of course. Not every time was like that. But I always knew when I felt the Spirit because the peace descended like soft snow falling into my soul.

  Sometimes drinking can mimic the feeling. But alcohol was a fraud and rewarded me with headaches, memory loss, and the tendency to do things I regret. But I stuck with alcohol for a long time because it was the closest I could get to that feeling.

  Kissing worked too. That feeling of butterflies in the stomach was so similar to the feeling of the Spirit—so I kissed a lot of boys. But since I mixed that with alcohol, those butterflies had turned into dead worms. For months, I spent most of the time with my stomach in knots, living for only those fleeting moments when I would get that fraud feeling of peace again.

  All I wanted to do was feel the Spirit. I wanted my soul to have peace. I was done with the dead worms.

  I wanted butterflies once again.

  Chapter Two

  The phone rang, and my stomach tensed.

  I knew who it would be.

  I didn’t want to answer it, and yet, I did. I’d deliberately left my phone on the other side of the room because I knew she’d call. She’d been calling me every hour the entire day. A whole day, I’d spent in my room packing up. I answered it every time and reassured her I’d be ready to go at seven. But here it was, six-thirty, and I still wore my jeans and a dusty t-shirt. She wouldn’t be happy. She seemed to think we needed hours to prepare, which was dumb. I could get ready in thirty minutes flat.

  I made my way around the sea of boxes, the incessant sound of Taylor Swift playing out of my phone. Cherise picked that artist so when my phone played, Shake It Off, I knew to be ready for her. Personally, I thought she was more of a Kesha girl, but she fancied herself a Taylor Swift girl.

  I should’ve just let it go to voicemail.

  But I couldn’t. If I did, Cherise would still show up in fifteen minutes and drag me out of the house anyway.

  I tripped over a shoe and scrambled for the phone. It slipped from my fingers and landed face first on the fake wood floor with a crack. Taylor mercifully stopped singing. I took a deep breath.

  Please don’t be broken. Please.

  I reached for it and my door flew open.

  “Are you finished packing?” Mom’s hair was up in a messy ponytail, and I was a little jealous that she could still look so amazing with zero makeup.

  I shook my head, but I didn’t look at her. I just stared at my phone. I couldn’t pick it up with her standing right there. She’d kill me if I shat
tered another screen. It’d been replaced four times in the last year. Mom just thought I was clumsy, but actually, all four shatters happened when I was drunk. If it was busted now, while sober, that would be a first.

  “I know Cherise is planning on a goodbye party for you, but you have to be done with your room first. The movers will be here first thing in the morning, and you’ll be at Cherise’s. I still need you home by noon.”

  She’d told me this a thousand times already today.

  “I know, Mom. I’ve only got one more box.”

  A sick feeling settled into my stomach. The second Cherise found out I was moving, she started planning the party, and I was a wreck about it. I knew what I had to do to find that feeling again, and going to a party with Cherise was not it. I wanted to change, I really did, but I could never tell Cherise, “No.” That word meant nothing to her.

  Besides, there was a part of me that liked partying. The sheer escape alone was worth it. The nerves I had right now would be gone with that first drink. But I knew that wasn’t real and at some point I’d have to wake up and face myself.

  Mom nodded, her eyes roving over my room. Very little clutter was to be found, just mountains of cardboard boxes. “Okay. Okay. Sorry, I’m just frazzled.”

  “It’s alright. I get it.” We hadn’t ever moved. Mom didn’t know how to do this. Of course she was nervous.