Or at least hadn’t been mad about it.
He had maybe just been surprised. Or pleased.
And now he was so pleased that he was willing to… what? Be different, so she would do it again? God, it sounded like it. So much so, in fact, that she couldn’t bring herself to shrug it off or say something wholly dismissive. She had to go with something half kind, and at least somewhat accepting of who he appeared to be now.
Even if she was scared to do it.
“It wasn’t anything in particular that made me be tender. I would have done it anyway. I still want to do it, in fact. I mean, your arm continues to look incredibly gross and horrifying. I feel like something needs to be done. And hopefully before it rots right off your body,” she said.
That didn’t help, however. He just looked like he’d been electrified.
“Oh mygod. You think that’s an actual possibility?”
“Dude,you’rethe one who’s supposed to be tellingmethat.”
“Yeah, but this arm thing has never happened to me before, in all the times I’ve changed. And you were always so good at figuring stuff like that out. Remember that time I came off my bike and thought my leg was gonna fall off?” he asked, and she tried not to, she really did. But it came over her anyway. The raw-meat color it had become. The gritty feel of the asphalt under her hands. Him not wanting to look; her telling him she would for him.
But she couldn’t concede the point, she just couldn’t. Not when it meant actually talking to him about soft and loving things they’d experienced together. “I didn’t do anything about your leg falling off.”
“It seemed like you did, to me.”
She shook her head. “All I did was hold your hand.”
“That wasn’t all. You called 911.”
“Yeah, and anyone on earth would have done that.”
“Would anyone on earth have known it was only broken?”
“I didn’t know for sure. I just guessed and happened to be right.”
“You happened to be right a lot about things like that.”
His gaze was steady now. Fixed on her. Like he was trying to make her see something.
Though she couldn’t imagine thesomethingwas anything good.
So she stepped away. Casually, she thought, like she was just going to the sink. But of course she didn’t have anything to do once she got there. And she was pretty sure he’d caught the flicker of emotion that had moved across her face before she’d turned, anyway.
She could almost feel his reaction to it, before it came.
Then it did.
“I guess all that feels like a waste of time to you now, huh,” he said, and oh wow the way it hit her. Because, truthfully, she hadn’t thought he could understand something like that. Yet, somehow, he had. And now she had to face it.
Even if she couldn’t look at him, as she tried.
“Waste of time wouldn’t be the way I would put it.”
“So how would you then?”
“I don’t know. Just the way stuff goes, I guess. Things are good and then they’re not. People you love turn out to be not what you thought. Or they get tired of you and leave you behind. Sometimes you’re just not enough.”
Don’t cry, she thought at herself.Don’t you fucking cry.
But all she could manage was not letting him see it happen. Because, yeah okay, maybe he was a little better than she thought. And true, he was going through a lot now. But he was not good enough or wounded enough to have earned anything like her tears.
He wasn’t. He wasn’t. He just wasn’t safe.
