I've only seen someone go under like that once before. My father used to disappear the same way — present in body, gone everywhere else — and it took me years to understand that it wasn't something you could reach in and pull a person out of. You just had to stay close and wait and not make it worse.
I don't know the full shape of what Blaire has been living through. She’s given me pieces of it over the past week. But whatever I knew before and whatever just happened in this car has done something to the anger I came into this situation carrying.
I can feel it losing its structure completely.
I don't know how to feel about that yet. The anger has been integral for ten years and without it I don't know what's underneath. But I look at her sitting there with her face socarefully emptied of expression, and I don't have the mental space to keep making her life harder.
I just can't find that version of myself anymore.
I squeeze her hand, hoping she’ll squeeze back.
She doesn't, but I keep holding it, anyway.
We weren't far from the hotel when it happened, but I decided to take us back home. If she’s up for it, we’ll make the drive again. I brought her to my apartment because there was nothing in me that could leave her alone in hers.
Standing in the doorway now, watching her cross to my window and look out at the city below, I can't imagine her being anywhere else.
I set the bags down, walk up behind her and gently turn her to face me.
"Hey." I wait until her eyes find mine. "Do you want to use my shower and sleep for a bit? I'll get us some food when you wake up."
She nods, but doesn't move.
"Do you want help?" I keep my voice low. "I don't know what you need right now. I just want to do whatever you'll let me do.”
She nods again, then her eyes fill and spill over. She doesn't make a sound, just stands there with tears running down her face like she's too exhausted to even cry properly.
I pull her into my arms. She doesn't resist; her forehead just drops to my chest, and I hold her there for a moment. Deciding the shower can wait, I lift her into my arms and carry her to my bed, laying down next to her after kicking off my shoes.
I rub slow circles on her back and just hold her.
I’m not sure how much time passes, but eventually the tremble in her shoulders from crying stops. Her breathing evensout, and I thought she was asleep until she speaks. She doesn’t move from my chest, and my hand doesn’t move from her back.
"My family didn't have a lot of money growing up." Her voice is quiet and a little rough from crying. "My parents made ends meet with two or three jobs and sheer grit. That was just how things were, and I didn't question it until I was older."
I stay still. Just listen.
"Colt took a liking to me immediately. He told me he wanted a certain type on his arm and I fit the bill." A small, humorless breath. "That was his idea of romance. But then suddenly I'm meeting his parents, and a few weeks later, they hand me a credit card and tell me to use it for whatever I need, like I'm one of their own kids. They invite my parents to their country club. They give my dad a high-paying job." She's quiet for a moment. "That was just the first six months."
Her hand has found a loose grip on the fabric of my shirt.
"I became Colt Monroe's girlfriend, and the world opened up. Not just for me — for my parents, who'd been quietly struggling to keep up with my sports and my activities and everything I was involved in, all the things I hadn't even realized they could barely afford until I was much older."
She exhales slowly.
"By the time I understood the full shape of what I'd walked into, there were too many people depending on what staying inside it provided. But I didn't even like Colt. I stopped liking him only weeks after we started dating. I know that makes me a bitch. I used him for the status and the ease he brought to my family's life."
"That doesn't make you a bitch. It makes you human."
"You won't agree when I tell you who I became." She wipes her face with the back of her hand and doesn't move from my chest. "But that's okay. I never really liked me either."
I keep my hand moving on her back and say nothing.
"The boy Iactuallyliked — I knew I couldn't have him. He sat next to me at a high school first years’ welcome assembly and told me the oddest thing." I feel her smile against my chest before she says it. "He told me I had a pretty collarbone. Then said my elbows were a close second."
She laughs softly. But me?I stop breathing.
I feel paralyzed.
