“Yeah?”
“What do you need?”
I held my breath until I heard him exhale his. When he spoke again, the pain had loosened its grip on him a little.
“I don’t know. Just talk to me. I need to get out of my head for a minute. I’m so fucking scared. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, and I’m having a thousand terrible thoughts, one right after the other.”
“Pick one.”
“What?”
“Pick one terrible thought. Grab it out of the air.”
“Okay.”
“Now tell me what it is.”
“I…I hate that she’s suffering,” he said, his voice cracking. “And I can’t take it from her. But I would. I’d take all of it.”
And this time, he broke. I heard his sobs, muffled and low.
“I’m here,” I said. “I’m here, okay?”
After a few moments, he inhaled deep and let it out on a shaky exhale. “Thanks, that helped. It helped to get some of it out.”
“I’ll have to try it sometime.”
A silence descended, and Saturday night at the pool slowly crept inbetween everything we weren’t saying.
“Holden…”
“Don’t.”
“I want to. To apologize.”
“I told you, I’m not asking anything of you.”
“I know but… I’ve been a dick in class, and now I’m calling you up in the middle of the night and dumping my shit in your lap. Things are just so fucked up right now. Like trying to steer a sinking ship. My dad’s kind of falling apart, and my sister barely talks. It’s just not a good time for me to…upheave everything. The other night… That can’t happen again. Itwon’t.I was drunk…”
I gritted my teeth. “You’ve made that abundantly clear.”
“But that doesn’t change what I said.”
I’d kill them…anyone who tried to do it again…
“You said a lot of things. I don’t even remember—”
“Yes, you do.” River’s voice grew deep and solid now. “What they did to you was fucking wrong, and it means something that you told me. I just want you to know that.”
For the first time in years, my whirring, chirping brain had nothing to say. No witty comeback or barb to deflect how his words hit me hard and then sank in softly.
River mistook my silence and gusted a sigh. “Okay. So that’s all I wanted to say. Thanks for listening and…everything else. That night was just like you said. A time-out. And I needed it.”
“Will you be back at school tomorrow?” I asked and cringed at the pathetic hope in my voice.
“I don’t think so. Just trying to make it through the night.”
“The reason I ask is that you’ve missed a lot of calculus,” I added quickly. “If you want me to tutor you, just say so. No need for drama.”
