Except that somehow, I managed to do that anyway.
I sat there on the stupid counter in the restaurant’s stupid bathroom looking at the stupid collar around my neck that wasn’t mine to keep and never had been, and I ignored it when my dad knocked on the door to check on me because I was too busy feeling utterly miserable and totally sorry for myself and completely pitiful. And even after I’d finally used up all my tears along with the bathroom’s entire supply of complementary tissues, Istilldidn’t answer Gage’s text, because if I was going to lose him anyway, I might as well get used to not relying on him the way I always had before, right?
Which would be… hard.
Oh, so I guess I’d been wrong about having already used up my whole tear supply. But the thing was, Gage hadalwaysbeen around, and if I was going to have to figure out how to get through the whole adulting thing without him from now on and start functioning like… like the independent, competent person my parents so clearly didn’t believe I ever could be—the independent, competent person I wasn’t sure Iwantedto be—then, even if the idea of doing all that on my own left me feeling lost and adrift and floaty (but floaty in a totally horrible, untethered way versus the warm, fuzzy, wonderful way from earlier, with Gage) it was probably best if I started getting used to it, since I was going tobeon my own now.
Well, okay, not now, but soon.
I scrubbed at my wet cheeks, then let out a shuddering sigh. Getting used to it meant not dumping all this on Gage by answering his text with the truth, which was that nothing was good and never would be again. And it didn’t even matter that it felt wrong not to answer him, because noweverythingfelt wrong.
My mom knocked on the bathroom door. “Noah? Honey? Can you answer me please? Your father and I are getting worried. I’m going to ask the manager to open this door up if you’re feeling sick.”
“No,” I said lurching to my feet. “I’ll… I’ll be right out.”
I splashed water on my face and adjusted my scarf to hide the collar that I should probably just take off and throw away before I got even more attached to it. I couldn’t, though. I couldn’t make myself remove it no matter how pointless I knew it was to keep it on like it actually meant something permanent, the way my heart secretly wanted it to.
Then—still without answering Gage because itwaswrong not to reach out to him, but I guess wrong was now my new normal, thanks to my parents—I went back to the booth so I could avoid having Mom send a manager into the bathroom to get me, and then listened to them rehash every failed test and bad grade I’d gotten since birth, dissect each and every one of my life choices, and commiserate with each other about the unhealthiness of my codependency with Gage before assuring me yet again that everything would be better once I was safe and sound, back within the circle of their influence and away from all the “bad” ones here at school that I was just too, too sensitive and fragile and naive to handle.
I didn’t bother trying to get a word in edgewise, because even though I knew they really did love me, and I even sort of believed them about wanting the best for me, I wasn’t at all convinced that they actually cared whether their love and all those well-meaning wants and expectations of theirs made mehappy.
So maybe they were right after all. Maybe Iwastoo immature or flighty or sensitive or whatever to actually become an independent, competent adult if left to my own devices, because even though I knew they were paying a ton of money for me to go to school here and that I really had fucked up by doing such a shitty job in my classes, at the end of the day, I didn’t… didn’t actually care about that. I wasn’t even sure that Icouldcare about things like being responsible and succeeding at life and having a solid future or whatever, if that future didn’t include being happy, too.
And now it wouldn’t, because being happy meant being with Gage, and they were taking that away from me.
I sighed, my eyes prickling again as I stared at the congealing egg yolk on my plate.
“We should really repaint your room before you come home, honey,” my mom said. “I’ve been storing some of my craft supplies in there, and I think they’ve scuffed the walls.”
“I want to switch out the bulbs in there, too,” Dad chimed in, squinting up at the fluorescents above us. “They say natural light helps with concentration, and I want to stack the deck in your favor, son.” He winked at me again. “I’ll email you a link to the article I read about the benefits of full-spectrum lighting.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
My mom turned to my dad. “And we’ll need to contact the registrar’s office here to see about getting his credits transferred, Simon.”
I pulled my phone out and woke it up under the table, glancing down at the screen.
“Should we restart cable service?” Dad asked. “Noah? Are you still watching that nature documentary series you used to TiVo every week?”
The message was from Gage, and he wanted me to come home. I mean, to come back to the dorms. Back toourdorm, which was the only place I wanted to be anyway. But I slipped the phone back in my pocket without replying—again—because I didn’tgetto go there. Or at least, not to stay there. And as my parents started talking over each other about a bunch of other stuff that they acted like they were asking my opinion on but were actually just telling me what they’d already decided—stuff that all made me feel hopeless and bleak and miserable and… andinvisible—my phone buzzed again.
And then again.
I figured all the new messages were probably from Gage, too, because I was never invisible to him, even when he wasn’t around to actually see me. But I didn’t check because I didn’t want to cry again, and I didn’t know what to say to him that wouldn’t make me feel like it was the end of the world anyway.
My world, at least.
Not answering Gage was hard—I’d never avoided him before and I didn’t even knowhowto lie to him—but I managed it anyway, because I also didn’t know how to tell him that I’d be leaving him in a few months. Or that, above everything else, I wished… wished that I was his slave for real.
That he actuallywasmy master.
That he’d meant it when he’d said that, and he wanted it the way I did, and that, when he heard what my parents had planned for me, he’d tell me I didn’t have to worry, not ever, because I didn’t have permission to leave him and he wasn’t about to let me, no matter what they said.
That he’d tell me Icouldn’tleave, because I was his.
7
Gage
