"CODY!"
The taillights come on.
“THEO!”
I start crying.
“BECKETT!”
My voice cracks on the third name, and I realize that I’m going to be here all alone.
They drive off, and I watch them roll down the gravel drive. Then they disappear into the dark.
They’re gone.
I hit the glass one more time.
It doesn't give.
I press my forehead against the cold of it while I look out at the dark, and I breathe. I breathe. I breathe. I breathe.
It doesn’t work.
I am so angry I could burn this place down.
Chapter 63: Cody
Sixweeks.
I have never been so fucking mad for this length of time.
I'm not built for patience. I don't wait for things — I get them. I have always gone and gotten them. That's the only way I know how to operate and six weeks of not operating has been eating me alive from the inside out in a way that the rink didn't, in a way that waking up in a hospital bed with the perfect memory of how I got there didn’t, in a way that sitting across from my father and accounting for every decision I've made in the last two years didn't.
None of that touches this.
This has been torture. I have to watch from a distance and call it respect.
I'm not good at respect.
I'm not going to pretend I stayed away completely.
I drove past Elm Hall eleven times. Not every day — I showed some restraint; I set limits; I told myself twice a week is not the same as every day. I held to that for the first three weeks, then it became three times a week, and then four. I never got out of the car. I just drove past and looked at her window and drove home, telling myself that was enough.
It was never enough.
I texted her.
A lot.
The first text I sent was the night of the hospital. Something simple — I need you to know I'm sorry. I watched it send. I watched it sit on delivered for approximately forty seconds before the delivered notification disappeared, and I understood what that meant. I sat in my car and stared at my phone for a long time.
She blocked me.
I sent seventeen more texts from a new number over the following two weeks. Not unhinged texts — I want to be clear about that, I was not sending unhinged texts, I was sending thetexts that needed to be said. She blocked every single one of them. Some of them were long. Some of them were one line. One of them, I spent four hours writing, deleted, rewrote, and sent at two in the morning, and I will never know if she read it.
Week three, I drove to her parents' house.
I don't know what I was thinking or expecting. I drove there on a Wednesday afternoon and sat in front of the house for twenty minutes, working up the courage to get out of the car.
