Behind me, he exhales sharply.
My eyes sting.
Chapter 18. Liam
I'm alone at the workbench. I just want to stop thinking about that stupid fucker. I need a lobotomy for that. But I can’t afford even Tylenol, definitely not a lobotomy, unless I try to do a homemade one. I wouldn’t object to that. But, instead, I sand the wood. I sand it like it personally offended me. But it isn’t the wood. It’s Ethan. The block under my hands is supposed to become a birdhouse, that's my project today, a birdhouse, as if I even like stupid birds. I don’t like anything. Not anymore. Right now the wood’s just a rectangle of pine getting thinner by the minute because I can't stop dragging the sandpaper across it like I'm trying to erase it from existence. Actually, I wanted to erase my fucking self, but I can’t.
Around me, the carpentry shop is buzzing. The instructor, Bob, a big guy with a beard, drifts between tables making corrections. Saws buzz. Someone drops a hammer and swears. It's all very normal, and I am losing my goddamn mind.
I took the fall for him. Let me just say that again, slowly, so my brain absorbs it: I. Took. The. Fall. The cold shower, the humiliation of standing there in my shorts while Griff timed five minutes on his watch, water so cold it felt like needles in my teeth. I did that. For Ethan. And for Miles, but let’s be honest, especially for Ethan. Because that's what you do when you give a shit about people. You step up. He’d lose those stupid ass fuck ridiculous privileges he cares about.
And what do I get?
Focus on your meal, Marsal.
Marsal. Like I'm some random kid on his roster. Like nothing between us ever happened. Like I imagined the whole thing, invented it in my broken little brain, another hallucination.
I press harder into the wood. A splinter catches under my thumbnail and I hiss, jerking my hand back. A bead of blood wells up. I stick my thumb in my mouth and taste blood and sawdust.
What did I do wrong? I've been running it through my head like a film reel on loop, trying to find the moment where I fucked up. Was it the kiss thing? Was it too much? I thought, I mean, he was on my bed. We still haven’t fucking kissed. KISSED. Not fucked. Not even “we haven’t done a blowjob.” Kissed. Like we’re fifteen-year-old children. He touched my face. He said he didn't like seeing me hurt. And then the next morning, it's like someone reached into his chest and flipped a switch, and the Ethan who'd looked at me with those soft, complicated eyes was gone, replaced by Mr. Leader. It makes me sick. I want to punch his stupid face. He’d probably destroy me, but it would give me a split second of satisfaction.
The worst part isn't the anger. It's the hope I can't kill. This sick, stubborn little bug that keeps whispering: maybe he's scared, maybe he needs time, maybe if you're patient enough he'll come back to bed, come back to that almost. I hate hope. It's the cruelest thing my brain does to me.
I go back to sanding, gentler now because the wood is getting dangerously thin. My birdhouse is going to be more of a bird postcard at this rate.
"Hey, um… can I work with you?"
I look up. The voice belongs to a thin kid with red hair and green eyes that are a little too big for his face, like a cartoon character. Mason. I recognize him immediately, the hallway kid, the one I found having the full breakdown. With Ethan.
He's hovering at the edge of my workbench, gripping a half-carved block of wood.
"Hey, Mason. Sure," I say, scooting over. "Fair warning, though, my woodworking skills are tragic. I don't know why I'm still studying carpentry."
Mason smiles, small and quick, like he's not sure he's allowed. He sets his piece down and pulls up a stool. "I just… I wanted to say thanks. For that day in the hallway. I was in a bad place, and you were really nice to me. Most people here pretend they don't see you when you're like that."
I smile. “No worries, man. Always of service. What are you making?" I ask, nodding at his piece.
"A box. With a sliding lid. See?" He turns it, and I can see the groove he's carved along the sides, precise and even. The kid knows what he's doing.
"That's actually sick," I say, and I mean it. "Mine's supposed to be a birdhouse, but it's identifying as a cutting board."
He laughs and leans over to look at my disaster. "You're sanding against the grain," he says, pointing. "See these lines? You want to go with them, not across. Like this." He picks up a spare piece of sandpaper and demonstrates, long even strokes that follow the natural pattern of the wood. "Also, you're pressing way too hard. Let the paper do the work."
"Let the paper do the work," I repeat, mimicking his motion. "That sounds like something a yoga instructor would say."
"My uncle was a carpenter," Mason says. "He used to let me help in his shop before… before everything." The pause. I know that pause.
"Before everything," I echo, nodding. "Yeah. I get that."
We work in easy silence for a while. Mason shows me how to hold the chisel for the window cutout, how to tap it with the mallet so the wood splits clean along the line. His hands are steady and careful, the opposite of mine. Technically, I knowall of that already, but my disaster of a brain is unable to learn anything. I’ll never graduate and be stuck here forever.
"You're actually not bad," he says, watching me make a cut. "You just need to stop trying to murder the wood."
"I have a lot of aggression to work through," I say, and it comes out lighter than I expected. Funny, even. Mason grins, and I grin back.
The instructor, Bob, wanders past, glances at my work, grunts something that might be approval, and moves on. Mason and I keep going, him guiding, me following, our conversation drifting from woodworking to the cafeteria food, "the meatloaf is the worst thing I’ve ever had, and my mom once cooked goat’s meat," Mason says, and I almost choke.
When the bell rings, signaling the end of class, I look at my birdhouse and realize it actually looks like something. Not a good something, it's lopsided, and one wall is thicker than the others, but it has walls, and a roof-shaped piece waiting to be attached, and a hole that a very optimistic bird might consider.
