“Was this your plan? To get me into bed with you?” I tease, waggling my eyebrows.
She takes a seat next to me. “Actually, I would’ve been content with leaving you stranded on a couch somewhere.”
I sway a little, poking her in the arm. “But you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Ugh, she’s so hard to read sometimes. Did she help me out of the goodness of her heart? Did she help me because leaving her fake boyfriend alone and inebriated would reflect badly on her?
Nobody ever talks about the comedown after imbibing. Probably because it’s a minimal tradeoff for a night full of dulled inhibitions. My buzz is starting to fade, similar to logs of firewood that have been drenched by unforeseen rainfall, unable to catch fire.
The negative space of loneliness inside my chest isn’t as empty as I thought, and it dawns on me that this is the first time someone has ever taken care of me. Maybe out of obligation more than anything, but still.
“Thank you…for taking care of me,” I say with a concerted effort to enunciate, my eyes drowsy, my bones heavy in my skin, and disorientation obfuscating my mind like a heavy coating of fondant after a night of endless snow.
She freezes for a second, as if she didn’t expect me to pay my gratitude. “Yeah, of course. It’s no big deal, really.”
If only she knew how wrong she was.
I wish I could reverse-engineer our past. I made a promise to myself that I’d salvage any chance of a friendship from the ruins of my stupid mistake and inflated ego, and I won’t rest until I right my wrongs. But tonight, words are a pain.
Absentmindedly, I nudge my nose into her neck, breathing a sigh of relief at how warm her skin feels.
“I’m really glad I hit you with my car.”
“What?”
“Otherwise, I never would’ve met you,” I explain dazedly, a hunger opening in my belly despite the surfeit of attention that Staten has always given me, good or bad. I want her more than some stupid NHL dream. “And I think you’re someone worth knowing.”
Staten’s cheeks redden like twin cherries, but it reads as embarrassment more than flattery. As if nobody has ever told her that they value her as a person—a crime that should be punishable, by the way.
She releases a heavy breath, her shoulders turned inward, and then she hits me with a question that doesn’t quite load into the network of my brain.
“Why did you pay for my hospital bill?” she asks, her tone seasoned with a newfound hurt that I’ve never heard before.
My stomach plunges. Wouldn’t she be happy that she doesn’t have to dip into an emergency fund? Why does she look so sad?
The room is fucking spinning, and the guilt is stripping everything back but my burning core. “Because it was the least I could do after what I put you through.”
“You barely knew me.”
I have no idea what response reloads on my tongue, but I don’t want to pull the trigger. “I just didn’t want you to worry about anything besides your recovery.”
“Is it because you think I can’t pay my own expenses? That I’m some sad burden you took under your wing?”
I normally can’t decipher her feelings, but this time, I’m really out of my element. The alcohol is starting to lose its potency, and the only thing that’s lasting about this night is the way her accusation embeds itself into my skin like a fresh tattoo. Bloody, swollen.
“You think I did it because I view you as some burden?” I exclaim as frustration claims its foothold inside me.
“That’s why you’re still hanging around me, right? Because you pity me? The prime-time loser who can’t get her crush of two years to even acknowledge her as something more?” she mumbles beneath her breath, a shiny gloss over her eyes. They glimmer like wetlands when the sun splices through the reeds just right, bouncing off the surface of brackish water.
Fuck, I shouldn’t touch her. But she’s just sitting there, believing the worst things about herself. I know there’s a high likelihood of her running, yet I don’t have control over the hand that caresses her cheek—the thumb that’s ready to catch the teardrop wallowing on her vermillion waterline.
“Of course not, Staten. I could never pity you, and you’re not a loser. I hang around you because…”
A pause, perhaps the creation of my very own breaking point. If I say what I want to say, it has the possibility to change the future of our lives completely. I wish the truth wasn’t so painful. I wish it flayed me in one fatal slice instead of a thousand paper cuts.
“Because I don’t want to let go of the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” I finish, a thin sheen of water over my own eyes.
