Page 248 of Breathe Like Hell

Dakota cried a little bit, but mostly just stared at the ceiling.

Once, I tried to flip her over onto her stomach and fuck her harder, but I almost broke down right there, so I had to disappear into the bathroom and lock the door until I could pull myself together.

That was the last time we ever tried doing anything intimate.

I had no idea how I could fix it.

We weren’t surviving together.

We were drowning right beside each other.

Dakota dropped her backpack on my bed, then came out of the bedroom towards the kitchen, where I stood in the hallway, broken glass crunching under her boots. Most of it had been kicked to the sides of my apartment now, but it was still there, along with every other broken thing I’d destroyed on the day he died.

“Are we ever going to clean this?” she asked, motioning to the floor.

“Why?”

“Because we live here.”

“Barely.”

Her green eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything else before walking into the wrecked kitchen. I followed her, leaning against the non-broken part of the countertop as she got a plastic cup for water. She filled the cup, then drank all of it.

And then the apartment was silent.

She remained facing away from me for a few minutes, not doing anything except staring down at her hand holding the empty cup.

“I don’t think we’re getting better,” Dakota said quietly, more to herself than me. After a minute, she turned. “Do you?”

I couldn’t respond.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to put words to the disaster we were becoming.

She took a shaky inhale, glancing around at the ruin of my apartment.

“Do you still want me here?”

I can’t want you here.

You need to leave before I bring both of us all the way to the bottom.

“It doesn’t matter,” I mumbled.

“Don’t do this.” Her eyes were pleading. “Talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“What makes you think I would want to do that?”

She tossed her arms up. “Are we seriously going to do this again?” Her voice got louder, angrier.

“Do what?”

“This bullshit! This!” She gestured between us. “I don’t want to fix you. But I have to help you.”

“You really don’t.”

“I really do.”

“You know, if you hadn’t been screaming at us, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.” I said, before I could think better of it. The moment the words left my mouth, I wished I could take them back.