She looks at me a little strangely.
“Okay,” she says, an awkward note in her voice. “It’s—the thing is, I didn’t really mean it as a compliment?”
“Oh.”
She tugs me over to her bed. I’m so stunned from the fact that I actually cried in a dry location that she can pretty much put me where she wants me, sitting sort of sideways so I’m facing her. I have a flash of her in her dorm room in a few weeks. I hope she and Destiny sit this way together, sharing secrets. Telling each other the kinds of things it takes to make new friends.
“Jessie. What I mean is—what I mean is, when Mom left, you . . . you became what I needed. Everything I needed, that became all you needed, too. Your whole life, you gave over to me. And you kind of disappeared, you know?”
I swallow thickly, my heart suddenly thundering in my chest.
I . . . disappeared?
“When we were on the trip, I felt—sometimes I thought I was seeing you for the first time, when you were around Adam. I’d watch you watching him, and I’d think, wow, that’s how Jess looks when she’s interested in someone. When she wants to . . .knowsomeone, when she doesn’t feel responsible for someone. I don’t think I’d ever seen that before, you know? And then, when we got to Missouri, it was . . .”
She stops, shakes her head. I can’t decide if I want to know what she was going to say, or if it’ll make everything worse.
Tell me you don’t remember
“It was what?” I say, voice shaky.
She shrugs, her face flushed. “I don’t know for sure, I guess, given all the stuff we’ve talked about with Dr. Hobbs. About our backgrounds, I mean. But I think I know, in a way. I think I know that what I saw with you and Adam—that’s how love is supposed to look. That’s howyou’resupposed to look. When you were with Adam, you couldn’t disappear. He wouldn’t let you.”
Oh,God. Oh God, oh God.
“Give me the towel,” I choke out.
She waits until I have it against my face to speak again.
“When we got to Mom’s, you sort of did it again. I couldn’t really see it, in the moment, because obviously I was pretty upset, too. But now, when I think back to it—you barely said a word. And you must be so mad at her. You must have wanted to say so many things, but you didn’t.”
“I didn’t want to—”
“I know what you didn’t want. You didn’t want it to be about you. You wanted it to be about me, because I said that’s what I needed. So you shut yourself away all over again.”
“I’m sorry,” I say into the towel, but I don’t really know who I’m saying it to. I think maybe I’m saying it to myself, and to Adam, too.
Dr. Hobbs would call this a breakthrough.
“I’m always going to have your heart, Jessie. Because you gave it to me so completely, and yours taught me how to make my own. But I think—I think I need to give yours back to you now. I think you need it, because I think it’s high time you get to share it with someone else.”
I nod mutely, finally lowering the towel from my face again.
“I know you really love him. Not how Mom loved Lynton. Not even how you’ve loved me for all these years. I think you love him as yourself, you know?Foryourself. I think Hawk is the first person in a long time who could really see you. Even when you tried to hide.”
Of course I remember, I’m thinking.Of course I remember that morning in the parking lot, your hotel room in Missouri. Of course I remember the field at night and the trampoline. I remember every time I sat next to you in the van, and I remember how it always felt betweenus.
I remember everything.
“God, Tegan,” I say, wiping snot from my nose. “You’re really good at this. Is this a fifty-minute hour, or—?”
She laughs and pats my back, and I want to feel comforted, but inside me there’s a riot. Because Tegan is so good, and so right, and I was so, so wrong. Idoremember everything, including all the things I could’ve done better.
“I really hurt him, Teeg,” I admit.
“Well, you know what Dr. Hobbs says. Hurt people hur—”
I groan. It’s a choking, soggy-sounding thing.
