The professor continues to rattle on, but I keep sneaking glances behind me. Not once does she look in my direction. Not once does she acknowledge that I’m sitting here. I get it. It probably hurts too much. Hell, I can feel the pain wash through my own body.
After a while, I notice that her laptop hasn’t been opened. She’s just staring straight again, rigid.
I grab my phone from my backpack, open it up, and send her a text.
Baby girl, you’re not taking care of yourself.
I can hear her phone vibrate from down here. She picks it up and glances at the screen before setting it back down. I’m used to the unanswered texts. I can deal with them. What I can’t deal with is the lack of expression, the lack of emotion. She’s blocking them off, closing herself off to numb the pain.
Nibbling on my lip, I turn back to the professor. Minutes tick by, and I hear the lecture hall door shut. I turn back around and find the seat next to Ivy vacant. Ivy catches my eye, and her lips turn down in a sympathetic expression.
Every part of me wants to chase after her. Wants to hold her. Wants to tell her that we’ll get through this, but instead, I stay seated. It would just make things harder, and I don’t want this to be any harder than it already is.
ONE MONTH LATER…
Me
I’m thinking about you today. I think about you every day.
Sitting on the couch in my apartment, homework in my lap, I stare at the screen, at the text I sent an hour ago that’s still gone unresponded to. I know she reads them, but she never responds.
Aside from Spanish, I haven’t seen her for a month. Not even in the hallway. She goes to class and stays home. I’ve talked to Ivy about it, making sure she’s eating and getting fresh air, and she always assures me that she’s taking care of her and that she’ll be like this for a little while.
Dustin comes out of his room, rubbing at his eyes. He stops in the hallway, and I look up at him. He just woke up from a nap, and his hair is in disarray. “You look like shit, dude,” he says as he takes me in.
Every day that passes, he says more and more to me. He’s even starting to go to the gym with me and Jacob again, a fact I’m grateful for. I still have my best friend even if it came at a great cost. We aren’t the same, but at least we’re headed in the right direction.
“Yeah,” I say, scrubbing at the stubble that I barely bother to shave these days. I saw myself in the mirror this morning after I showered. I have dark circles under my eyes and have contemplated finding a remedy for that, aside from sleep, just so I don’t look like such a mess.
He steps farther into the room, a look of guilt on his face, and I almost think he’s going to say something heartfelt, but instead, he points at the TV. “Want to watch some football?”
I watch him and wonder at the guilt before I shake it off and move my textbooks aside for him to sit. “Sure,” I answer. He takes a seat next to me and crosses an ankle over a knee. “You okay?”
He nods. “Yeah. You?”
No, I want to answer. But instead, I grab the remote and say, “Yeah.”
CHAPTER 29
AVERY MOORE
FOUR MONTHS LATER
Him
Happy Birthday, baby girl.
I stareat the screen while waiting in a stingy hospital office waiting room, sitting in the most uncomfortable chairs on the planet.
It’s been a few weeks since Reid messaged me, and for a while there, I was healing. I didn’t spend my nights crying. I wasn’t rereading his texts. But now the message is there, waiting. Begging for me to reply just this once. It’s my birthday, right? I can gift myself this.
Looking around the office, I scan the receptionist’s desk full of files and little bobbles as I work to not shed a tear. He remembered, and that means so much to me. Do I say something back? Should I?
I clutch my phone a little tighter. No, I shouldn’t. It would give him hope. Hell, it’d givemehope.
My brother has finally started laughing and joking with me again. It’s not the same, but we’re healing. I still have him, andI can’t have those things if I give Reid and me hope. If I start something where I shouldn’t.
Shutting off my phone, I slide it back into my purse and straighten my navy-blue pencil skirt. I need to stay focused. I have this interview and a few others over the course of the next few days for an internship for this summer. For the first two interviews I had, I didn’t have any luck snagging the internship. Ivy says the sadness in my eyes is something I can’t hide and that they pick up on it right away. No one wants a sad intern. The dark circles certainly don’t help either. I probably look like I’m not capable of enduring the long and stressful days of an internship in a hospital setting.
