Yeah, a lot.
I want to know all the things she hasn’t told me yet. I want to know what runs through her mind when she can’t sleep at night. I want to know if her palms sweat when I’m near, like mine do, or if her heart beats so loudly when she hears my voice that she can barely think.
I want to know if she thinks about the future.
Our future.
“You,” I say before I have the chance to stop myself.
Sasha laughs softly, “whataboutme, Mr. Hockey man?”
“What are you willing to tell me?”
“I’m angry. Angry that I’ve lost so much, angry that the world decided they got to tell the story of my brother before I had the chance to, angry that it took me so long to realize all the beautiful things I’ve been missing out on.” She takes a deep breath, “I missed out on years of friends and parties and memories just because I was too scared to go out on my own. I followed J and-“
She stops herself, refusing to speak about someone from her life that I didn’t even know existed. She’s only ever talked about her brother, she said she was alone —didn’t have friends— but she was going to say someone else’s name.
There was someone else.
Shaking off whatever just ran through her head, she wraps her arms around herself, “I didn’t do what I wanted because I was scared of losing the people in my life. I thought my worth was tied to theirs, and that without them… I’d fade away.”
“Pixie,” I whisper, “you could never fade away.”
She shrugs, “you don’t know that for sure.”
God, what did these people do to her?
They convinced this amazing girl that she wasn’t enough on her own. People beat down on her until shecouldn’t tell what was up or down anymore, they tore away her self-confidence until it was nothing, until she actually believed that she was nothing without them.
“I miss him, Johnny. I miss him so much it hurts.”
“I know, but it’s going to be okay.”
You have me.
“My birthday is next week,” she admits, “it’ll be the first one I celebrate without him, and I don’t know if I can do it.”
It’ll be her twenty-second year on this earth, but the first of forever that she spends without her other half. The first time she blows out her candles, and he’s not there to do it with her.
This year will be a year of heartbreaking firsts for her, a year she’ll never forget for as long as she lives. It’ll be the hardest year of her life, but if she can just hold on long enough, the pain will start to fade.
Or maybe it won’t.
I don’t know.
I’ll never be able to know for sure if the pain will ever fully go away. I don’t know the type of pain she’s experiencing, and I never will.
She’s fighting this fight alone, even if she had everyone in the world to fight by her side… she’ll still be alone.
But despite that, despite the hole that will live in her heart, I hope that the love I give her will be enough to surround that hole and make it a little less painful.
“I’m right here,” I say, wanting to reach out and touch her, but holding myself back. “I told you, I’m not going anywhere, and I mean it.”
Her smile causes a swell of emotion to climb up my throat. So perfectly broken and strong all at the same time, that’s the only thing I can think of in this moment.
Sasha Price is a star in a sea of black, endless space.
Even when her heart is broken, she fits the pieces together long enough to paste a smile on her face and be brave when she shouldn’t have to be. She’s allowed to be afraid, to let people see the vulnerability I know is creeping under the surface.
