We’ve always been at each other’s throats. I never realized that a different dynamic could exist in this timeline.
“So we’re both dealing with feelings of inadequacy,” he concludes, refocusing his stare on the literature packet that brandishes the power to spare us both from a lifetime of suffering.
I never thought I’d live to see the day that Knox and I need each other. Is this even real? Am I hallucinating right now?
Guilt, my old friend, raps on my door like clockwork, visiting me in the late hours of the star-freckled evening. “I’m sorry for lashing out. I didn’t know that so much was at stake for you.”
“No, I should be the one apologizing,” Knox insists. “You had every right to retaliate. I just…I keep ruining everything.I’mthe hypocrite.”
An inglorious smile toys with the corners of my lips. My fingernails are no longer trying to rip the seams in my jeans—a first, seeing as my anxiety always has an overnight bag packed and ready to go. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m not a saint either.”
“Compared to me, you are. And I think a part of me was envious because of that. Because I’m the one constantly messing up.”
If only Knox knew how much I felt the same way.
“You shouldn’t punish yourself for every mistake you make. You can’t be expected to be perfect all the time.”
Says the perfectionist.
Knox chuffs a laugh that’s deep in all the right ways. “I wish it was that easy. My dad is the poster child for toxic masculinity.” He then lowers his voice in what I’m assuming is some crude imitation of said father. “If you don’t make the Mulligan name proud, I won’t have a son anymore. Oh, you want to cry about it? Crying is for weak little losers who have no place in this cutthroat world.”
I…I don’t even know what to say. Even though humor colors his tone, I could never imagine my mother speaking to me like that. Knox’s vulnerability—a gift amongst cruelty, I now know—wrings my body inside out, hitting me where it hurts the most: the overworked organ chugging beneath my breastbone.
“He really said that to you?” I ask quietly, almost too afraidto hear the answer. A wellspring of tears waits to disgorge behind my eyes, my nasal cavities smoldering with a heat that makes it hard to breathe.
“That’s just the abridged version. There was a lot more cursing.”
Without considering my next play-by-play of actions—or more appropriately, the consequences—my hand shoots across the table to enclose his, and the warmth from his palm is the most comforting thing I’ve felt in a long time. Funny, seeing as the last time we made physical contact I recoiled like he was an epicenter for disease.
It goes without saying that he’s shocked by my white flag of surrender, eyes wide and unblinking like he’s holding an active grenade instead of a tangible peace treaty.
“I’m so sorry, Knox.”
I’m not sure if it’s voluntary, but his fingers squeeze mine. “You don’t have to apologize. It’s not your fault my dad is the spawn of Satan.”
I expect him to retract his arm—you know, elucidate some sense—though he doesn’t, and the Leif-specific butterflies that usually occupy my belly take a turn for the worse. And by worse, I mean they metamorphosize in Knox’s presence. That fluttery indigestion feeling is reserved for Leif Kennedy only!Notthe boy I’m tutoring who just so happens to come from an equally broken family.
Apparently, I’m the one who has hit their vulnerability quota for the day because I sever contact just as Knox presses forward. When my hand falls from his, disappointment flashes across his expression like lightning in stratocumulus clouds—a burst of energy against a backdrop of dark tessellations.
“How much money do you need to cover your tuition?” he inquires.
The library’s mugginess is getting to me, and I feel like I’m sweating out water weight in the thick of an August summer.I’m aware that two thousand dollars probably seems like so little to Knox. I’m also aware that I’m suddenly worried about what Knox thinks of me.
Did he not just prove to you that he’s not the fault-finding asswipe you make him out to be?
My unmeasured words stick to the sides of my esophagus. “Two thousand.”
Knox waits for the punchline. “Two thousand and…?”
“Just two thousand.”
Telltale pity swims in the placid lakes of his irises, inching closer to my shipwrecked shore. God, I forgot how much I hate being the subject of someone’s sympathy.
“That’s it? Staten, I can?—”
I know what Knox is going to say, and I’m grateful when Leif’s ill timing finally comes in handy.
“Staten, hey!” he greets, practically appearing out of thin air and speaking at a non-library-sanctioned volume.
