“Say it,” he demanded.
I took three shaky breaths and almost caved. Almost succumbed to the truth in my heart, the truth that was throbbing in my aching core. But then, I found them.
“I don’t.”
He hovered over me, his eyes firm on mine, and then he grinned. Satisfied. Like he had already won, even though I had denied him. He pushed himself off the truck as he watched me.
“You’re so full of shit, Syd. I don’t even think you know it.” My eyes followed his thumb as he swept it across his bottom lip.
My voice, my body, everything felt weak, but I did well to sound secure. I clenched my teeth as I swallowed.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why am I—why areyoudoing this?!” His hands flailed up and gestured between us before he ran themthrough his hair and spun around. “You’re fucking ruining me, ruiningus!”
I looked away and tried immeasurably hard to let this man believe he was alone in this. That none of it was real. That there was nothing to ruin because there was nothing to save. It was an evil thing to do—to leave him alone in his hurt. In his love. But I convinced myself I was doing it for him. I was trying to save him from me. Because he deserved better than the torture, I was putting him through, and my lack of self-control. So, I remained cold, when all I felt was warm, suffocating, overwhelming love.
“Don’t be dramatic, E.”
“It’s not dramatic, it’s the truth! But you wouldn’t know the truth if it ran you over, would you? How the hell can you be so cold? How can you sit there and act like this is nothing when you know the truth?!”
I set my jaw firmly. “Are you done yet?”
“Not. Even. Close.” He scowled.
We stood in silence, our breaths angered and quick. My teeth gritted together so hard, I was sure they’d be ground down to dust. I needed to leave.
“Well, I’m done.” I spat. I had to be. I couldn’t look at him any longer without telling him everything. Without pouring my broken heart out onto him, and then ripping it away again. I couldn’t have explained myself if I tried. I was so lost in my web of confusion, I didn’t even realize he was right—I was ruining everything I was afraid to lose, but I couldn’t stop myself.
I moved past him, determined to walk away before it was too late, but he wouldn’t let me go without one final punch.
“You know, Syd,” he said to my back. “The girl I used to know? She was solid as a rock. She knew who she was, what she stood for. But you?” He scoffed. “You’re like wet sand—fragile, shapeless. You pretend you’re so steady and strong, but the second life comes at you with a little bit of rain, you crumble. Wash away like you were never real to begin with. Just like everything else that used to hold weight in your life. An empty fucking illusion.”
The slap of his words stopped me in my tracks. My jaw clenched, and my eyes squeezed shut as the knife of them stabbed through me, gutted me, and discarded my remains.
“Now I’m done,” he said, and he walked back into the bar, slamming the door on his way in.
I walked all the way home in a daze. My heart felt like it was torn out of my body, beaten and bleeding, and left to die. I never knew a person could hurt so badly without a single physical wound. It was a new kind of pain. Deep and penetrating, and it seeped into every bone, every vein. Every nerve ending in my body felt the agonizing ache.
When I got home, I drank an entire bottle of Mom’s Cabernet and rolled around in the bed of my cold, dark basement bedroom. I tried to cry. I tried to break down. I tried to feel the weighted loss I had no doubt endured in my suffocating, drunken mess of a mind. But it didn’t come. I was sick to my stomach, and my heart had bled dry, but I couldn’t feel. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t fucking breathe.
Have you ever held your breath so long that you can feel the shape of your lungs? Feel their painful plea as they quiver for the air you forcibly deprive them of? You know that desperate feeling in that last second, just before your next breath? The moment you question if you just royallyscrewed up when your eyesight gets spotty, your head gets light, and you’re more than sure you’re about to accidentally kill yourself if you don’t breathe right that very second? That’s exactly where I was—that moment of panicked desperation before you take your next breath, knowing you just fucked yourself up, by choice.
And I couldn’t take it anymore.
After more than an hour of suffering in it, I lunged for the door and ran like a starving soul to my next breath.
It was twoA.M., and I wasn’t sure he’d be home, but I didn’t care. I was hellbent on a mission to breathe again, everything else be damned. I had no idea what I was doing but knew exactly what to do. It was like having an out-of-body experience, but being perfectly conscious during it—knowing your next move, and not caring about the consequences. I knew where this road would take me. And I had no intention of stopping.
Ren told me E had a place on Rowan in the new luxury buildings they built last year. I pulled up in a cab I still don’t remember calling and slipped in through the main door as someone else exited. I searched for his name on the mailboxes and rode the elevator up to level four.
I knocked on the door of apartment 402, and I waited for E to answer.
But no one came.
I knocked again.
No one came.
