• • •
The weeks after are bad.
Not bad like a bad day.
Bad like something got into the walls of me and started rotting from the inside out.
I go to school.
I come home.
I sit at dinner and answer questions and smile when I’m supposed to smile.
My parents watch me the way they’ve been watching me since I was eleven years old and they first learned that sometimes their son’s chest just — stops working.
I tell them I’m fine.
I’m not fine.
• • •
The anxiety is different now.
Not the sharp panic attack kind.
The other kind.
The low, grey, constant kind that doesn’t have a dramatic moment — just sits on you from the second you wake up until the second you finally fall asleep and then it’s there again in the morning.
Like something you can’t see but can feel in every breath.
• • •
I replay the kisses constantly.
The bathroom one — urgent and desperate andGod, Ro— and the soft one in my room — his hand on my jaw, the exhale, the way it felt like something ending.
Two kisses.
Then nothing.
I tell myself to stop.
I don’t stop.
I stand by the front window.
And I watch.
Abby shows up every other afternoon.
Red hair flying carefree in the wind behind her.
Laughing before she gets to the door.
Easy in a way I’ll never be.
I watch him let her in.
