So, I flirted with Lauren. Asked her what she saw in guys likehim. I said it as a joke, but I knew what I was doing. And when I saw him sketching quietly by himself in the courtyard during lunch, I walked by and “accidentally” knocked his pencil case to the ground. Kicked it out of reach and said, “Oops.”
He didn’t even flinch. Just looked up at me with those calm, distant eyes, like I’d already been erased from whatever part of him I used to live in. The quiet was worse than anger. Worse than hate. It was nothing—and I couldn’t stand it.
The panic clawed at me, sharp and wild. I had to matter. Somehow.
So I leaned down, close enough that only he would hear, and said, “Bet you regret kissing me now.”
The words hit the air before I could stop them, bitter and reckless. I didn’t wait for his reaction. I couldn’t. I walked away fast, my pulse thrumming as if I’d just set fire to something I couldn’t put out.
I thought I’d won.
After weeks of wearing him down, turning every hallway glance into a bruise, I thought he’d finally cracked for good. Until I saw him smile. It wasn’t much, a flicker, quick and small, but it was enough to know I was losing a losing battle.
He was sitting under that tree in the courtyard again, but this time someone was with him, some kid from his art class, I think. Tall, too cool to be talking to someone like Tru. And yet… he was… talking, laughing.
And Tru laughed back. I didn’t hear the sound, but Ifeltit, as if it was aimed right at me. Something cold and sick slithered under my skin. I clenched my jaw so hard my teeth ached.
I couldn’t look away.
The way he tilted his head when he laughed, the way he ducked it because he was shy. He never used to do that with me. With me, he never looked away. And now Tru was smiling for someone else.
Like I hadn’t wrecked him. Like I’d never mattered. Like he was free.
And I envied him for it. Envied him for getting better. For finding something to laugh at. For healing in places I was still bleeding.
And maybe that’s all we’d ever be now, his freedom and my regret.
I just wanted a piece of whatever he’d found. Even a crumb of it. Just enough to feel I hadn’t lost everything. I’d only hurt him to save myself, but truthfully, I wasn’t sure there was anything left worth saving.
I made it through the rest of the day with a joke on mytongue and bile in my throat. I laughed with Caleb and the guys, like everything was fine, like I wasn’t crumbling under my skin.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I sat on my bedroom floor, knees to my chest, staring at the journal I hadn’t touched in months. I had learned to write in it when I needed to make sense of my head. Now I just wanted to smash it against the wall. I opened it anyway. Thumbed through old pages and notes, memories, a few poems I’d never admit to writing.
Then I found the page with his name.
Truen Jameson.
Written and rewritten.
Crossed out.
Carved back in.
I tore it out. Crumpled it in my fist. But I didn’t throw it away. I just sat there in the dark, holding the name I wasn’t allowed to want.
And when the tears came, I told myself it was anger. I swore it was justanger.
Because I didn’t miss him. I didn’t still want him. And I sure as hell wasn’t broken over a fucking kiss in a closet.
Except I was. And I didn’t know how to stop being broken.
The mask I’d created fit better than my own skin, and that scared me more than anything.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. A text from my brother lit the screen.
How’s it going? Dad? School? Soccer?
I stared at it, thumb hovering. Then I typed back the same lie I always did.
