“Stop.” She grabbed her bag, her eyes sliding past me like I wasn’t even there. “Just stop.”
I stood there, my feet stuck to the floor, as she walked past me. My brain was screaming at me to do something, say something, anything, to make her stay. But the look on her face, that blank, glassy-eyed expression, told me that nothing I said would reach her right now.
She was already gone, to some place I couldn’t follow.
I somehow managed to force my body into motion, going to the front door, to watch helplessly as she walked out to her car. She threw her bag in the backseat, climbed in, and started the engine without once looking back at the house.
Without once looking at me.
I stood there as she backed out of the driveway and drove away, her taillights disappearing into the night.
The silence that followed was absolute. Crushing. Suffocating.
I walked back to my house in a daze, my mind replaying everything on a loop. The robotic movements. The flat voice. The flinch when I told her I loved her.
Crazy talk.
I shut the front door and leaned my forehead against the wood for a long second. My heart hurt. Actually physically hurt.
I pushed off and wandered into the living room, collapsing onto the sofa where I’d been planning our weekend just ten minutes ago.
Ten minutes. That was all it took to burn everything down.
I couldn’t say how long I sat there for before a new kind of panic set in.
She’d been in shock. Disassociated. Moving on autopilot. And I’d just let her drive away like that.
What if she got in an accident?
What if she pulled over somewhere and fell apart and there was no one there to help her?
I grabbed my phone and tapped her name, barely hesitating before I pressed call.
It went straight to voicemail. No. Not even voicemail. An automated operator voice filled my ear.
“We’re sorry. The number you are trying to reach cannot be completed as dialed.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at the screen, my chest hollow, as the realization sank in.
She’d blocked me.
EMILY
Ididn’t remember driving to Mia’s house. One second I was pulling out of my parents’ driveway, the next I was standing at the front door at Mia’s.
There was some vague memory of Cam swirling around my mind that I couldn’t quite grasp.
I pressed the buzzer, then stared at my hand. Was it weird that I couldn’t feel my fingers?
The door opened and Mia’s face swam into focus. Her mouth moved but the words took too long to reach me, like sound traveling through water.
“Oh, hey. I thought you were at your mom and dad’s tonight? Maya’s here and she said… Emily, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” The words were automatic, robotic. “I’m fine.”
“She doesn’t seem fine.” Maya’s voice, sharper, cutting through the fog.
“No, she doesn’t.”
