I lay back again and looked at the ceiling.
And thought and thought and thought.
About the same thing over and over.
Much longer than I should have.
It was my fault my father had become a sad, bitter man. He was right, I owed him. I owed him compensation, and I knew what it would cost: my dreams, my hopes, my longings…
Everything I had been.
Everything I was.
Everything.
Me: one simple word that defined something so complex.
And it wasn’t hard to make the decision. I should have done it long before.
I gave up. I was beaten. I had no right to take my place in the world because it never had been mine anyway. I’d occupied it unfairly, hurting other people and making them suffer. But at least I could make up for some of it, even if it would never be enough. Even if doing so meant writing myself into an unhappy ending.
My phone buzzed again. Another message.
This time I opened it. But I didn’t read it. I couldn’t.
I took a breath and held it as I typed, my heart aching with regret and guilt and most of all, cowardice—my strongest trait:
What we have can’t be. I’m sorry, but it’s best if we not see each other again. Goodbye.
I turned off my phone and threw it against the wall. I rubbed my chest, trying in vain to relieve the pressure. Then I dragged my tired body into the sheets to let my mind rest. At last I knew what I had to do. Wait to feel the pain. And soon it came. An aching all over. For Trey, for the void my mother’s sacrifice had left inside me, the desolate ground where nothing could now be built, where nothing would grow.
Because I myself was nothing.
***
Boom,boom,boom…
“Harper, are you there? If you’re there, open the fucking door. We have to talk. I promise you, you can forget about me leaving until you let me see you.”
I leaned my forehead on the door, feeling the walls close in like a pair of merciless hands. I wanted to see him, but I couldn’t.
“Fine,” he said. His voice had changed as he’d stayed out there waiting for a sign. First it was sweet, now it was hard and scared. “I’m calling Hoyt and Hayley. I don’t want to, because this is between us, but you’re not giving me another option.”
Hoyt and Hayley?Hayley was coming back that night, and Hoyt must have already been in Montreal. Neither of them knew about Trey and me or what had happened with my father. And they couldn’t find out, or things would get more complicated.
I had made my decision.
It wasn’t fair for me to push ahead, happy, thinking only of myself, as though nothing had changed when it obviously had. I slowly turned the lock and opened the door. Trey was sitting on the stairs. As soon as he saw me, he stood. He looked as terrible as I did. His hair was a mess, his eyes had deep bags under them, and I could tell he hadn’t slept. I stepped aside to let him in. He walked past me without looking at me and came to a stop in the middle of the living room, where he stood with his hands in his pockets.
I closed the door behind me. I’d been a fool to think I could get him out of my life with a mere text message. Trey wasn’t the type to give up easily. He needed to understand every single detail about how things worked and why.
We observed each other in silence. I had to leave him and try to make everything go back to how it was before. As if he’d neverexisted. As if he hadn’t come back into my life. It would hurt him, but I had to abandon him, hard as it was, especially knowing it would be forever.
I sat on the couch. He did the same, but far away from me. I felt relieved and shattered at the same time. I could feel the tension in the air. He was nervous. He took a deep breath and rubbed his face before speaking.
“What’s going on, Harper? What was that message about?”
I shook my head, looking for words that were lost.
