That would be clean, almost.
I lost the rhythm of him.
The texts.
The lunches.
The late-night study sessions.
The coffee runs.
The Sunday morning breakfast he’d bring when he knew rehab had wrecked me.
The easy way he fit into the shape of my days until I stopped noticing where I ended and habit began.
He was my steady companion.
My almost-lover.
My best friend disguised as a maybe.
And then all at once, none of it was mine.
I step out into the rain before Kane can say anything else.
The cold hits instantly.
My hoodie soaks through in seconds.
Water drips down my face and neck and soaks the ends of my hair. The boot makes every step heavier, clumsier, more humiliating as the wet brick slicks under me and my backpack drags at one shoulder like a punishment.
At least the rain hides the tears.
That’s something.
I keep moving.
One ugly step.
Then another.
Then another.
My face is hot even in the cold. My chest feels peeled open. Every breath scrapes. Every thought is a blade.
I fell in love with the ‘it-guy’ and paid the price.
The thought comes clean and vicious and humiliatingly true.
Isa Calloway, who has never in her life not been chosen first.
Who has never stood in a room and wondered if another girl was more compelling, more inevitable, more impossible to forget.
Who has never had to watch a boy look through her toward somebody else and know she lost before she knew there was a real game.
I don’t know what to do with rejection this complete.
Not just no.
