I stood there with my hand braced against cinderblock, breathing hard, and realized my face was wet.
I was crying.
I hadn't known I was crying.
The sobs came out of nowhere—ugly, gasping things that shook my whole body. I pressed my hand over my mouth to muffle them, but they kept coming.
A joke. They want to make you into a joke.
My legs gave out. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold concrete, knees drawn up, hand clamped over my mouth, trying to make myself smaller. Trying to disappear.
I listened for footsteps.
Nothing.
Adrian wasn't coming.
That's what you wanted, I told myself.You gave him a choice, and he made it.
Except it wasn't what I wanted.
I wanted the romcom moment. Adrian running around that corner, hands out, saying, "Wait, stop, let me explain everything."
I wanted to be worth running after. I wanted, just once, to be enough for someone to fight for.
I wasn't. I never had been. And now there was documentary footage to prove it.
I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for the sobs to slow. Long enough for the cold to seep through my jeans and settle into my bones. Eventually, I made myself stand.
The janitor's cart lay on its side, mops splayed across the floor like drunk friends who'd given up on getting home.
I could have fixed it. Righted it. Put everything back where it belonged.
I left it where it fell.
The exit was twenty feet away. Red glow. Metal bar.
Keep walking. Whatever happens next, you did the right thing. You asked for honesty. You set a boundary.
I pressed the cold metal, pushing the door open. My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I didn't check it. If I did, and it was Adrian with ten more words that explained nothing, I'd break all the way. If it wasn't Adrian, I'd break differently.
The cold hit me hard. Late October in Thunder Bay—the air coming off Lake Superior had that particular northern sharpness that hurt your lungs and cleared your head whether you wanted it cleared or not. I stood on the loading dock and let the wind find all the places where I was still raw.
The parking lot was half-empty. Streetlights cast orange pools on wet asphalt.
The talent is yours, Hog had said on the bus.Nobody can take that from you.
He was wrong. People could take everything. They could take your worst moments and score them with cartoon music and let strangers decide you were pathetic. They could take your love and your trust and file them under research.
They could make you into a joke, and there was nothing you could do about it.
My phone buzzed again.
I pulled it out. Two notifications.
Jake:epic game dude. where'd you disappear to
