An aggressive strain of guilt wraps around my heart, disregarding the fragile sticker that I haphazardly slapped on it in an attempt to preserve what’s left. Shards with hairline fractures that accept a disconnected provisional period as its new norm.
Finally, with no feelings to protect anymore, I feel fat bulbs slide down my cheeks at an unregulated speed. “Knox was the one who hit me with his car,” I blurt out, a sob punctuating every dip in my sentence.
I didn’t think it was possible, but her frown flatlines even more. Betrayal rivets to her face, and it doesn’t take long for realization to settle like pulp at the bottom of a murky glass. Miniature crystals bead throughout the canopy of her lashes.
“He…what?”
“It was an accident. He wasn’t looking where he was going, and I came out of?—”
“You brought this man into my house, Staten. Youliedto me in the hospital. Straight to my face.”
I can see the beginning vestiges of anger peek through her rigid mask, and the undercooked response nestled in my cheek is unable to tame her inner storm. “I just—I didn’t want to worry you.”
She purges all my efforts to keep her heart rate at a cool sixty, her voice a burr that obstructs her throat. “And you think keeping this gigantic secret from me was the way tosparemy worry?”
“It was in the past. I’d gotten over it.”
“Well, I haven’t! This was not your secret to keep from me. I had every right to know the truth.”
“Knox isn’t a bad guy,” I weep, still defending his character even when said character sliced me into goddamn ribbons with the negligence of a too-sharp blade.
The walls around me resemble a charnel house the longer I fight for a man who wants nothing to do with me, and gooseflesh pocks my arms in the midst of a defiant updraft.
“Even if it was just an accident, one accident is enough to take you away from me. Do you know what I would’ve done if I’d lost you that day? I can’t…I can’t imagine a world without you in it.”
My mother’s eyes are as dark as wine, eclipsed by an untamable agony that I have no chance against—even if I spent hours crafting the perfect rebuttal. Telling her the truth when tensions were high was an undertaken decision.
“I’m so sorry, Mom,” I cry, already missing the security of her arms, feeling like an outcast amongst the poorly insulated walls of a crumbling house.
There’s a greater evil breathing down my neck, whispering terrible things to me from the safety of the shadows, knowing that I have no jurisdiction where the light runs from pitch-black apparitions.
Do you expect her sympathy now, Staten? You’re a horrible person for keeping this from her. You knew what you were doing was wrong, but prioritizing your own happiness over her peace was never up for discussion.
The hiccup in her vocal cords doesn’t go unnoticed. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“I wanted to tell you so badly. I didn’t want you to have any preconceived notions about Knox at the time—because I had found it in my own heart to forgive him—but to just assume that you’d be so readily accepting holds you to an unfair standard.”
In a matter of seconds, I just…implode. Folding in violently like a star that can’t support its own mass anymore, sucking other deep-space phenomena into its collapsing orbit, and emitting a light so blinding that its own death can be seen from Earth. Supersonic.
My knees hit the hardwood floor without prelude, followed by the splattering of tears that steep into permeable material. How is it possible that I’ve disappointed the two people that mean the most to me in the matter of a single night?
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I parrot frantically, clawing at the clothing that seems too restricting, knowing that the tears won’t stop until I can hold my heart in my hands again without it breaking.
My mother kneels to my level, sweeping me back into a hug that I don’t deserve. “Shh, Buttercup. It’s okay. I’ve got you. I’m sorry that I made you feel like you couldn’t come to me with this. I just…it’s hard for me to switch off from mom mode. You’re all I have. When I saw you lying in the hospital bed—bruised and battered—the reality of the situation made me lose my mind. I wasn’t there to protect you when you needed me the most.”
“I need your protection now,” I wail. “I’m never going to be okay again.”
“You will, sweetheart. I know you will.”
It feels like my breath doesn’t belong to me. It’s unclear if my memories do either. The romantic, rose-tinted film I held over my life is curling at the edges like burnt nitrate, and a not-so-delicate reality check is in my favor.
“He’s all I had, Mom. Knox brought out the best in me. He meanteverythingto me, and he left me.”
“I might not be his biggest fan right now, but he’ll come back to you,” she coaxes, smoothing circles over my back.
I pull away just enough to give her sweater respite from my flume of tears. “How? Why? I’m not enough for him. I wasneverenough for him.”
“Stop, Staten. None of that is true.”
