“Tell me where you—the other you—is going and we’ll take her home.”
“No,” I say. I know I’m falling apart somewhere, lonely, but I need to keep Myles away from Mallory more. “I’ll be fine. I get back home fine on my own.”
“You can’t be serious. Where is the bus going?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Past me is on a bus heading home. It took me all day to get back because of how many stops and transfers it made. Then I spent another two hours walking to our house, passing the Oakland bridge just after five.
But I don’t want him to go that direction. I don’t know what will happen if I cross paths with myself. This is safer. He’s here. He’s away from Mallory, and that’s how I’m going to keep it.
“So that’s it? You’re just not going to answer my questions?”
I quiet down, sinking into the seat and wishing it would swallow me whole. I don’t say a word.
“You’re still stubborn,” he mumbles.
“Who cares?” I say it like it’s less of a question and more of a statement. I’m talking into a void, not expecting to hear anything back.
“I do.” His words are so soft I almost don’t hear them.
My hands grow clammy, balled into fists. I look at him, wanting to see the trace of a lie.
There is none.
But I want there to be one.
“You don’t mean that,” I say.
He shifts his weight. “Like you’d know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Forget it.” He shakes his head. “We’re stuck together so let’s try not to fight.”
I cross my arms, stewing in frustration. He’s the one who started this fight and he won’t even finish it. How is that fair? “You don’t care. You hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Yes, you do.” I don’t know why I’m drawing this out when it doesn’t matter right now. He’s cooperating, so why am I bringing this up? Why do I have an insatiable need to argue with him? Or maybe it’s because I need to prove to myself I made the right decision all those years ago.
His chest rises and falls. A beat of silence as I wait for his reply.
“I hate who you became,” he whispers. “It’s not who you are.”
The car shrinks in on me, and I stop breathing. I didn’t become anything. I was always this person. The person who couldn’t help but make mistakes at every turn. That’s who I am. It’s the reason I’m so hard to love.
21
MYLES
“I’ve always been this way,” she mumbles.
“No, you haven’t.” My eyes roam over her, following her frown and downcast eyes to her clenched hands.
She wasn’t always this rude, closed-off person. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but she started pulling away from me even before Duke. She went from being the one person I thought would never hurt me to being the person who hurt me the most.
My heart tugs as I think back to how she used to smile. When we first met, I was painfully shy and I didn’t have friends because we’d just moved into the area. But talking to her was easy. She loved to talk, and when she talked, the world felt exciting. We weren’t going to the park; we were going on an excursion to a hidden island in the Pacific. She didn’t have a tree house in her backyard. It was a castle. Every moment was an adventure.
