Chapter 31 #2
I feel them again, rampant inside me. The violence, raging. The anger, festering. The truth, still impossible to speak, even after all this time. How can that be? How is that possible? How can one person be such a fucking coward?
Halfway home, I debate turning right around and forcing out the words, even if it kills me.
He won’t believe you.
But what if he DOES?
It doesn’t matter anymore. You broke it.
I need to scream.
I swallow it down.
I shut myself in my room.
I skip class for three days.
I ignore my phone and lock my door. I don’t answer even for Quinn.
I have never been in a place so dark.
I lost the one thing worth living for.
Wes.
And it’s all my fault.
It’s not a conscious decision, but when I arrive at class on Tuesday, I go to the right side of the room instead of the left. I take one of the seats in the back that are empty from time to time. I stare at the wall instead of the window.
Something draws my eyes up. A magnetic force. A ray of light. The sight of him makes me want to cry, so I look down, unable to make eye contact just like that first day of class. Only this time the fear is replaced with longing. With what ifs and regret. With rage aimed only at myself.
Which is why I’m so caught off guard when the seat beside me creaks.
My head snaps up. “What are you doing?”
His gaze is focused on mine, and up close, I notice the changes in him. The scruff across his jaw. The bags under his eyes. The bloodshot whites and the crease between his brows. His rumpled appearance makes my chest ache. “I’ve been worried about you,” he says softly. “You missed two classes.”
“I-I was sick,” I mutter, tripping over the lie and averting my eyes to the desk. When I look at Wes now, all I see are the mistakes I made to lose him.
I should tell him to move. I should tell him to leave me alone. I should tell him that if he’s given up on me, then I’ve given up on him, but for the first time in five days, my heart has life.
“Quinn said you wouldn’t come out of your room,” he says, keeping his voice low, so no one overhears.
“I texted you, and you never responded. I wanted to go over there, but I wasn’t sure it was a good idea.
” He shakes his head like he’s frustrated with himself.
“Hell, maybe I should have. I have no clue what’s right anymore. ”
“I’m fine,” I lie again, but this one’s so transparent that his frown deepens.
He looks like he wants to say something else, but Markham starts speaking before he gets the chance, and the lecture begins.
All throughout class, my eyes keep drifting away from my laptop screen and onto Wes’s face.
It’s like my body hasn’t caught up to reality yet.
All I want to do is reach out and lace my fingers through his, but then I remember how badly I broke something so beautiful, and my stomach starts to ache.
By the end of the class, I’m back in the hole. I feel physically ill when I think about what I’ve lost, and all I want to do is go home and sleep.
We gather up our belongings, and Wes gives me a small smile because he’s too nice not to. Even so, I don’t miss the flash of pain behind his eyes, how much it’s hurting him to pretend. “I’ll email you the notes you missed,” he offers.
“Thanks,” I mutter. I can’t manage a smile back. I don’t even try.
He bites the inside of his cheek. Hesitates before asking, “Are you okay, Ivy? Do you need help?”
“I’m fine,” I say again, like if I keep repeating the words then maybe they will come true. His eyes search my face. He doesn’t like what he sees.
“I know we’ve put things on pause, but call me if you need me, okay? I’m always here.”
I nod. He turns to walk away. “Wes…”
He looks back. He waits for me to speak, but the words dry up as soon as they touch my lips, getting caught in my throat the way they used to. When I don’t say what I need to, he gives me a sad sort of smile, like he realizes that was the antithesis of our relationship all along.
He walks away from me, and I let him.
My room becomes my everything. My place of sleep, my place of work, my place of solace.
Well, what little I can find. The longer I shut myself away, the easier it is to forget Wes and Mason and the things that happened before.
It starts to feel like another life—the life of a girl I don’t recognize.
One I can’t relate to. One I don’t even envy anymore.
Slowly, day after day, the anger drains out of me. The rage evaporates. I deflate until there’s nothing, and then a deep, endless sorrow fills the space. A hopelessness I can’t shake.
Texts start stacking up in my phone, but I don’t have the will to respond.
The idea of typing out a message is overwhelming.
Classwork even more so. I try to study, but my brain won’t retain information.
It feels swollen. Useless. My creativity vanishes.
I barely scrape by with a B on my fourth Color Theory project. I get a C on my math exam.
And the speech…the final speech of class is the most daunting task of them all. It’s like I took one step forward, thirty steps back. Things that seemed hard at the beginning of the semester seem impossible now, and things that were easy with Wes are simply unbearable.
I sleepwalk through my classes. Sometimes Wes tries to talk to me, and in those moments, my heart starts to hurt again. He asks me if I’m okay, and I nod and tell him I’m fine. He doesn’t believe me, I can see it in his eyes, but there’s not much more he can do for me.
He’s tried texting. I don’t respond.
He’s tried calling. I don’t answer.
He’s tried knocking at the door. I don’t let him in.
He enlists Quinn to help. I don’t answer her, either.
This isn’t rock bottom—I’ve been there before—but it’s close.
It’s dark down here. Lonely. I’d be terrified if I wasn’t apathetic, but apathy is better than anger.
Anger means you’re fighting back, and honestly, I would rather sleep at this point.
Fighting is too hard. Trying to be normal is even harder. I don’t have the energy.
Like I said, I’d rather sleep.