How are the ducks today?
I didn’t see them today sadly
How did you survive??
There’s always tomorrow.
Titty
Sigh. Not the vibe I was going for. And he doesn’t respond, which isn’t promising.
Asher. Do you have a sec? Can we talk?
Can’t. I’m not alone.
Oh? Who you with?
He doesn’t answer, but I know.
It’s Gabriela Acevedo.
Some minor sleuthing in the L&D dictation room after Cassie dropped the bomb earned me the information. Gabriela spread it everywhere, and she wasexcited.
Rightfully so. She has no idea the gift the universe has thrown her way.
What if he sleeps with her tonight? What if he melts her mind like he did mine? It isn’t fair of me to be jealous, butthe thought of his mouth on another woman is like drawing my finger down the sharpened blade of a knife—a cut so fine and deep, it’s both invisible and excessively bloody.
I fall backward on my sofa and throw my phone to the coffee table. With my eyes shut, I retreat to the hill in my mind and lay my hand on the familiar trunk of my oak tree. My glass walls are secure about me, dulling this pain.
Asher can do whatever he wants with this girl. Maybe he needs it. Maybe if he falls in love with someone else, our friendship will reforge. The awkwardness will fade.
This is agoodthing. Gabriela can be his girlfriend, and I’ll be—
The girl who sleeps in the next room?
A growl rumbles in my chest, and I jerk away from the couch, stomping toward my bathroom. With a violent twist of the hot water lever, my shower sprays to life. I strip off my clothes and step in before it has a chance to warm.
The icy jet brings goose bumps to the surface of my skin, but I ignore the discomfort.
A girlfriend won’t let me stay in his house. She won’t let me text him at all hours of the day. She won’t appreciate my evolving relationship with his mother. And if he loves this girl, he won’t want me there, either. His time, his attention... They’ll belong to her.
It’s as if someone pushed me off a cliff, and my body has broken over serrated glass at the bottom. No matter what happens with him and Gabriela, I’m going to lose him. Someday, he will find a girl who says yes. He’ll fall in love with someone else. He’ll leave me behind.
What we had is gone. It was over the moment I said,I can’t.
Suddenly, it’s all too much. These walls are killing my every happiness. They’re barricading me from potential joy.They’re ruining relationships and giving strangers the impression I’m a poser.
It all collides on top of me, brutal and inevitable.
My knees fall to the hard fiberglass floor of my shower, the water now hot enough to scald my naked skin. Tears claw through everything. Raw, ugly tears. Sobs so deep, they hurt.
I’m standing in a glass box on my lonely hill, staring at the world as it goes by me. I’m screaming. Crying. But no one can hear me. I thought the walls would save me, that they would protect me, but it’s more torturous hiding in here alone, watching the things I want drift away, the things I could have if I’d only break the glass. This is a lovely, deceptive prison.
I’m isolated. Shredded to pieces.
Worse, a waterspout appears in this prison beside me, and my respite, my safe space, my entire world...
They begin to fill with water.
