Page 68 of With You

She crosses her arms, the scissors still poking out, and I reach to take them from her as I keep talking.

“I told him so many times that I couldn’t go, that we had dress rehearsals this week. He stopped asking so I thought he’d given up on the idea, but he hadn’t.”

She doesn’t resist as I take the scissors from her, and even though my story seems completely far-fetched, I think she might believe me.

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but I swear it’s the truth.” I scramble through my pockets to find my train ticket to show her. “Look, I was on the train all day to get here.”

She takes it from me, reading over the ticket multiple times. Her expression softens for just a moment, and hope blooms in my chest. It’s quickly buried by her words.

“It’s over, River. We’re over.”

“Don’t say that.”

“What else do you want me to say? Do you want me to forgive you for abandoning me? For leaving me wondering if you were even going to come back for the showcase, which is tomorrow, if you hadn’t remembered. Maybe you want me to forgive you for making me so scared that my dream could be taken away from me, right at the finish line, just because I decided to rely on you for it? Or do you want me to forgive you for making me believe that we really could have had something together?”

The words come out in a barrage, every question punctuated with a push against my chest as she takes all her frustration out on me. There’s a glassiness in her eyes, and I hate being the reason for it.

“We do have something together,” I plead. I move closer to her, but she steps back, and it guts me. I retreat, giving her the space she wants. “We can do our own dress rehearsal. I’ll go to Madame and explain everything to her. We’ve practiced it enough times, we’ll be better than ever tomorrow. We’ll do it, and you’ll get scouted, and it’ll all work out.”

“Of course you think it’ll work out. That’s all everything ever does for you.”

My heart twists inside my chest at those words, ones she’s used against me before we knew each other properly. After everything I told her, she knows that’s not the case. As much as it hurts, I know she’s doing it on purpose, trying to hurt me as much as I’ve hurt her.

“Amelie, please trust me.”

“I already did that, and look where it got me.” She turns away from me, picks up her things, and shoves them into her bag. “Just leave me alone, River.”

“I can fix this. Please, Amelie,” I call after her, but she’s already halfway out the door.

Chapter 27

Amelie

I don’t know whether I’m more foolish for trusting River in the first place, or for believing his wild excuse for why he didn’t show up. I turn the train ticket over in my hand, inspecting every single part of it. It looks real, but maybe he made it himself to give his story some sort of evidence.

“Amelie?” a muffled voice calls through my door, but it’s not Evie or Zena.

I get up from my bed, where I’ve spent the whole night wallowing instead of sleeping, and open the door for Damien. If River’s sent him here as some kind of mediator, he’s wasting his time.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I tell him.

“Just give me a couple of minutes,” he says, and although I know it’ll probably only annoy me more, I let him in.

Damien thanks me as he enters, and he looks out of place standing in my room. I wonder if he can tell that River has spent so many nights here, whether he can see the traces of him everywhere like I can. A few of his pens and notebooks are scattered on my desk, right next to my neat piles. If Damien goes in my bathroom, he’ll see River’s toothbrush in a cup next to mine.

“He told you what happened, right?”

“That his father whisked him away to Spain without telling him? He could have at least thought of a better excuse if he wanted to get away for a night.”

“Do you really think he would do that to you?” Damien asks, a calm anger in his voice. “He’s my best friend, and I’ve barely seen him the past few months because he’s been with you. Every meeting his dad makes him attend, he complains to me that he’d rather be with you. He was fighting with him about going to this one in Madrid, trying to find any way not to go because he knew you had a rehearsal.

River has given every last ounce of his energy to this performance, to you. He’s asleep in my bed right now because he spent all night pacing around my room trying to figure out how he could make this up to you.”

I think about River staying up all night after travelling all day, how tired he must have been after that long journey, yet he came to find me first.

“I know you two haven’t always gotten along with each other, but he would never go back on his word.”

He told me the same thing after our first kiss: that he doesn’t make promises he can’t keep. I believed him then. It was impossible not to, with the way he made me feel. But I don’t know how I can do the same now.