When we pulled up to my dorm, I knew this might be it. The last time I’d sit in her car, breathing in her perfume mixed with the vanilla air freshener she kept clipped to her vent.
“I’ll make sure you have your stuff delivered to you over the weekend,” she said, still not looking at me. “And it would be much better if we pretend we don’t know each other. I’ll reach out to Dr. Chen and sort out whatever relates to our project so she contacts you directly.”
“Marley… try to understand me, please.”
She scoffed. “I understand you perfectly. You’ve made your choice. Now live with it.”
Dejectedly, I opened the door and stepped out into the cold, clutching my phone to my chest. Before I could say another word, she slammed her door and drove away.
I stood there like a ghost in front of my dorm, watching her car disappear around the corner.
Her taillights grew smaller and smaller until they were just pinpricks of red in the distance, and then nothing.
She was gone.
Just like that, everything that had ever made me feel human vanished around that corner. Every moment of joy, every burst of laughter, every time I’d looked in the mirror and actually liked what I saw—gone.
The silence that followed was deafening. I could hear my own heartbeat, could feel it breaking with each thud against my ribs.
This was what I’d chosen. This emptiness. This nothingness masquerading as safety.
I had just torched the only real thing in my entire existence.
The only person who had shown me what life without the whole act of performance truly felt like. The only soul who had ever made me feel like I wasn’t just taking up space in the world.
The only love that I had ever felt like coming home to myself.
And the cruellest irony of all was that she would go about her life never knowing that she had been my entire universe. Never knowing that losing her felt like losing the ability to breathe. Never knowing that I loved her with a desperation that terrified me, that I loved her more than I had ever loved my own life.
I had become my own destroyer, and she would never even know why.
XX
“Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.”
— Sarah Dessen
Chapter Twenty-One
Kelechi
Nigeria,
Early April
The bathroom mirror reflected a stranger.
I stood, gripping the marble edges of the sink until my knuckles looked stretched and pale against my dark complexion as I stared at this hollow-eyed version of myself. My face was puffy and red, my eyes swollen from another night of crying myself to sleep. The expensive concealer I had ordered on Jumia could no longer hide the damage.
I reached for a washcloth, running it under cold water before pressing it against my eyes. The shock of the temperature made me gasp, but it did nothing for the ache that had taken up permanent residence in my chest.
Two weeks. I’d been back in Nigeria for two weeks, and I still felt as though I were living someone else’s life.
I had taken an emergency leave from school, filled out all the paperwork, and begged my professors to let me submit assignments online. Some agreed, two didn’t. But I promised myself I’d catch up later, that missing a few classes would be worth it.
I guess.
Booking the ticket last-minute had been a crazy experience, but the good thing was that my student visa allowed me to leave as long as I had my documents to re-enter. So, I stuffed them into my bag along with my laptop and told myself I’d be fine.
