My jaw flexed.
I wanted to punch Dante in the mouth for saying that. But it was true, a sick, festering truth, and the urge coiled hotter than ever.
I hated her, I did. But sometimes, the pull of hatred and the lust of desire became a confusing haze in my head.
“Fuck off,” I muttered, stabbing my fork into a clotted wad of mashed potato.
Images conjured in my mind that made my pulse throb: Amelia’s mouth, parted with surprise, the soft arch of her throat when she laughed.
I forced the thoughts down, hid them beneath the layered misery that shielded me from myself.
“She’s nothing,” I spat, louder than intended. Other heads turned. I felt the heatrise in my neck.
I stood abruptly, chair scraping across the floor, and stalked out of the cafeteria, leaving the tray and my friend behind.
I didn’t stop moving till I reached the gym, its echoing dark a sterile, familiar comfort.
I ducked into the empty weight room, let the clang and grind of metal be the only sound. I loaded the bar with more than I could handle, let it pin me to the bench until my arms shook and my vision blurred at the edges.
Every rep was a red purge, a wrenching away of the weakness. I thought of Amelia. Her delicate neck, the light in her eyes when she stood up for herself.
I pictured her hands, how they’d shake when I got too close, how she would go pale and shiver even when it wasn’t cold.
I kept pushing, letting the weight crash down, black stars swimming at the edges of my vision, until I lost count of the sets and couldn’t feel my arms anymore.
After, I sat on the rubber matting, sweat soaking through my cutoff, and let my head fall back against the wall. The world pulsed with each beat of my heart.
I didn’t want to move, ever again. But even there, in my exhaustion, the images of Amelia wouldn’t leave me. They layered over the ceiling tiles, invaded the bloodshot dark when I closed my eyes.
I was fucked, and I knew it.
After the workout, I showered in the empty locker room, letting the hot water scald me until my skin was streaked red. I scrubbed harder than I needed, trying to sand away the feeling that I was unclean, that something formless and shameful was crawling just under my skin.
I caught my face in the mirror. There was no softness left in my features, only harsh lines and angry shadows. I looked older than I should, like my father in a certain light, and that terrified me more than anything.
I ditched the rest of afternoon classes, prowling the length of the football field until my legs ached and my thoughts spun out into static.
The sun was pale and useless this late in the year, but I craved its warmth like a junkie. I lay on my back beneath the homebleachers, squinting through the bars at the empty sky, and let the chill leech through my clothes.
For the first time in years, I let myself feel the thing I’d spent a lifetime beating to death. The want. It was a pure, destructive force, the untamable animal inside me, and it hurt in a way that almost felt good.
I thought of the dream again. Amelia, the swing, her hair catching gold in the sun, and the ache in my chest flared so bright it made me want to scream or laugh or both.
There was something in her that called to all the ruined pieces of myself, some echo of softness I’d never been allowed to keep.
When the last bell of the school day rang, I lingered in the empty quad, watching the slow migration of students leaving the school.
I flexed my bruised knuckles, rolling my thumb over the scabbed skin, and searched for her. Amelia.
She always cut through the courtyard at this time of day, her gait quick and stilted, her eyes locked on a point somewhere beyond the horizon. I could almost time her presence to the minute; there was a discipline to her misery, a schedule for her pain.
And there she was. A distant shape, arms cradling textbooks across her chest, dark hair streaming behind her like a flag of surrender.
I pressed my tongue to the cut inside my cheek, tasted salt and metal, and for an instant the world tunneled to just the two of us, all noise and color collapsing into a single point of gravity.
I hated how my body reacted, how the sight of her sent a current through my nerves, how my heart stuttered and then snapped into double-time.
It felt like weakness. Worse, it felt like hunger.
