I flinch. His words are laced with so much disgust that they can’t possibly be directed at me. “I didn’t choose him.” My fingers tremble and I force myself to ball them into a fist so he doesn’t see.
He moves off the bed, lacing his fingers on top of his head and lets out a sardonic laugh.
“Right, sorry, you're just keeping a life-ruining secret for the guy who you swear you’re no longer in love with, because…remind me again? I don’t fucking understand.”
My lip wobbles, betraying me, but I pinch my eyes shut forcing it to stop and replacing it with anger. “He’s my best friend.” It comes out as a whisper and his eyes pinch. Defensiveness ebbs through me and I feel anger roaring to the surface. “He’s in a really dark place, Grant. Do you want me to just abandon him?”
“You can be there for someone without stooping to their level.”
My phone rings again and again I reject the call.
“Jesus Christ, just turn it off!” Grant’s frustration clashes with my own as I shakily pull my phone out of my bag. I’m about to silence it when a name catches my eye.
Will.
I scroll through the thirty or so texts, each one making the panic more apparent that courses through me.
Will
I need you
It’s been really bad the past few weeks.
Please Genny. I need you.
I don’t want to be here anymore
“Gen…who is it? Are you okay?” His voice comes out softer, the anger melting into concern and I want to dissolve, melt into the floor and disappear.
Tears spring to my eyes and I know I need to choose and it’s so obvious my choice should be Grant. I know I’m being manipulated. I know Will saw me looking at Grant the way I used to look at him.
But what if he’s serious? What if he really is back in that place? My mind flashes back to that night where the Will I knew, the one I let consume me, fell away. That sunken side of the bed where he laid for days on end. The hollow gray lacing his features. That feeling that there was nothing I could do, nothing I could say to stop the grief from crashing over him again and again, while I sat there and watched. I used to pray there was some magic spell, a star I could wish on, anything to bring him back to me. What I would give to bring him back, the boy who died the same night she did.
Grant stiffens, seeing the agony lap against me. “Tell me it isn’t him.”
“Grant—” my voice is hoarse as I feel the desperation seeping from my pores, the need for him to understand. “He needs me,” is all I’m able to get out like a plea and I suck in small short breaths, trying to keep my tears at bay. Trying not to show Grant just how much this moment is destroying us, but when I look up, I see it’s too late.
“You’re leaving…for him?” Tears line Grant’s red rimmed eyes and I want to beg the universe for more time. To explain the unexplainable, show him all the chips of my heart that are steeped in the boy I grew up with and the bigger shards that belong just to him. Even if it were possible to compare all the fragments of my love it wouldn’t matter. He wants every piece—even the ones now ground to dust, blown away into the memory of what Will used to mean to me.
“Can we just talk about this later?” I sniff, my own tears blurring my vision into a veil protecting me from seeing his pain. I force myself to blink them away.
Grant stares at me for a second and I can see it all over him—the tattered fabric of what we were to each other. I want to dive headfirst into those rips, sew them up from the inside and live in that pocket of what we were forever. The safety, the warmth—everything I wanted so badly to deserve, but deep down knew I never did.
“Just go.” His voice is filled with the same hollowness I first heard in Will’s, the one that haunts me. I realize I’m making the wrong decision as I make it, trading one shattered boy for another.
I knock hard on Will’s apartment door, the driver happily having taken the extra hundred dollars in exchange for getting me here as quickly as possible after receiving a text that said one word:bye.
There’s no answer and panic swirls in my stomach. I push down the door handle, letting myself in. It smells so much like him in here. Not this new version of him, but the one that would give me his hoodie at the movies sophomore year, identical to the smell of my bedroom after Gary divorced my mom, or the car he’d use to pick me up from ballet.
“Will?” My voice is rough as a sob forms in my throat. I haven’t even bothered to wipe the smudged makeup off, myface wet and sticky from tears that don’t feel like they’ve stopped since leaving Grant.
I left Grant. I chose Will.
The thought has me stunned, reality feeling thick and fake as I move through Will’s apartment. I open the door to his room and it’s hard to breathe. He's sitting in the large arm chair in the corner, a bottle of whisky hanging precariously from his fingers, a lazy smile pulling across his face as he sees me.
“Genny.” His voice is a whisper as he says my name the way he always has, like if it were the only word he could say for the rest of his life, it would be enough. My jaw hardens at that smile, a smile that I, at every turn, have let destroy my life.
“You said you needed me?” I say through gritted teeth, the feeling of glass in my throat as I try not to completely break down.
