Chapter 31 Crystals, Confessions, And Cloudbursts, Oh My!
CRYSTALS, CONFESSIONS, AND CLOUDBURSTS, OH MY!
STATEN
Inever wanted to know what life would be like after Knox. There was never supposed to be an after.
There’s a part of me that still doesn’t believe what happened. Everything was over in the blink of an eye. In some last-ditch effort to save face, I blocked out the trauma by disconnecting from my body. It was as if I was watching everything unfold from a bird’s-eye view.
I pride myself on being equipped to handle anything, you know? I have my calming tonics and my color-coordinated schedule planner and more patience than the greater population, but this is a fight I was destined to lose. The white flag of surrender is already at full mast.
I know Knox. I know he would never hurt me. He was lying to me that entire time. My brain was a pincushion for his cruel words, and he went stab-happy with every excuse in the book.
Even now, days after the wreckage, nausea still compresses in my belly.
I trusted him with my heart, my body, my everything.
And instead of having that—albeit difficult—conversation with me about our future, he took it away within thirty minutes.
The worst part, though? I don’t hate him. I could never hate him.
Crying into my pillow late at night has become a part-time job, along with trying to talk my mother down from getting out the metaphorical pitchfork. I haven’t left my bed in days. I haven’t thought about my job or school or my friends. All of that seems so trivial now.
I subsist on Top Ramen when I’m forced to eat, and I caress my phone screen like a wartime widow reminiscing over pictures of her fallen husband.
He seemed so happy with me. Why wasn’t he happy?
The smile lines on his face have become long-forgotten, and my emotional blockade begins to shore up the longer I concern myself with the what-ifs.
The night of the tailgate, something happened after he got kicked out—something he won’t talk about. I just can’t prove it.
I never knew that loving someone could hurt so much. More than being hit by a fucking car, if you can believe it.
I’ll never know what it feels like to be held in his arms again; I’ll never get to laugh with him; I’ll never spend sleepless nights talking to him over the phone when my thoughts try to tangle around me like an illusory spiderweb.
I don’t think humans were made to withstand heartache. Physical pain, sure, but emotional? Even if we do heal, we never come back the same. Wrong. Broken. We’re a version of ourselves that had to adapt after the loss of our loved one.
I know it’s dramatic—and I know I’m delirious from only three hours of consecutive sleep—but I don’t want to live without Knox.
I don’t think I can. He kept pursuing me even when I was horrible to him, because his moral compass pointed him to make things right.
I won’t ever find another person like him.
The sky outside is still smeared in thick coats of desolate gray, and nightshade invades my nose before the first drop of rain falls, compromising the integrity of the already eroded ground and trumpeting a haunting dirge through the crying clouds.
I pocket the urge to grieve, doing everything in my power to tamp down the tears as remorse rolls in like a heavy fog, just on the tail of nature’s melancholic percussion. Every atom in my body wants me to crawl on my hands and knees to Knox and beg for a second chance.
Beg to make things right.
Hassie bursts into my room without so much as a knock, barreling into me with a forceful bear hug that disorients my equilibrium.
I can’t categorize her reason for visiting—in solidarity, in consolation, or just as a good-natured wellness check.
All I know is that I should be grateful for her company.
And don’t get me wrong, I am, but…but I’m not fulfilled in the same way I would be if Knox was the one here instead.
It’s a horrible thing to think. Fuck! I can’t get him out of my head.
He’s like an aggregation of blood and grime underneath my fingernails, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t scrape him out of stained keratin.
“Oh, Staten. I’m so sorry,” my best friend whispers, squeezing me as if the comfort will outweigh the physical toll.
I don’t embrace her back, as much as I wish I had the extra energy to expend.
Every one of my senses are heightened, inflamed by pain and its four horsemen. I fixate on the way her shirt rubs against mine, how her smell is too floral, how her arms are slimmer and less warm.
I wasn’t prepared to entertain any guests, but I guess my mother got tired of seeing me waste away in my bed.
I know that before Hassie pulls back, I have to tack on a smile and pretend like I’m okay.
For her sake, not mine. People don’t know how to handle their own agony, much less their neighbor’s.
My cheeks cramp from the strain of a deceitful display, and I pretend like I can’t feel my heart breaking all over again in the confines of my chest, barely beating to a passive stagnation. The only time I’m afforded silence is when somnolence mounts and my brain’s check engine light comes on.
Hassie rubs the length of my arms. “How are you doing? Shit, sorry. That’s—that’s a stupid question. You’re obviously not doing well.”
I relayed all the information to her over text. Not the best delivery, but a phone call was too personal at the time. Merit reached out to me too (guess word spread quickly throughout the team), but I didn’t want to complicate her relationship with Knox.
“I thought he was my person,” I mumble numbly, my tongue throbbing with all the words I wish I could’ve said to him.
Each passing minute is another minute I spend drowning at sea, waving my arms fruitlessly in the hopes that an outbound ship will stumble upon me. But I’m alone in this big, wide ocean, and I can only hold myself above water for so long.
“Oh, sweetheart. I know.”
My nerves crackle. “Was I just…was I just some pit stop for him? A blip on his relationship rap sheet?”
“I didn’t know him as well as you did, but it didn’t seem like that at all. He didn’t look at you like you were someone to lose,” she assures me, using the soft pads of her fingers to tamp the moisture underneath my eyes.
Ugh! Why couldn’t she just say that he’s a horrible, nasty person? The truth is, though, he isn’t. And he’ll never be the villain in my story.
Knox Mulligan softened himself for me—a man who came from broken bonds and barbed wire. A man who wore his callouses with pride until I mentioned in passing something about their toughness. Not a complaint, just an observation.
From there, he revered me with a sense of quiet devotion.
I never asked him to change—he just did.
We brought out the best in each other. Now, even in my blinding misery, I worry that he’ll fall back into his old ways.
Possessed by resentment, cowering from the outside world, cutting off any loose ends that threaten to return him to a life of solitude.
“What am I supposed to do, Hassie? I can’t—none of this feels real,” I bawl, vigorously wiping the cascades of tears from my cheeks.
Grief doesn’t step lightly. It takes hold of you and turns you into something animalistic. I’m right there on the cusp, and I don’t know how much more suffering I can take. The breakup was a bloodless crime, but the phantom pain it left behind wants to be heard, felt.
“Just breathe with me. I’m here. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Hassie looks so strange with a frown tucked into her cheeks. She’s always been the cheerleader of the group—blissfully ignorant, reckless in an endearing sort of way. Now she’s serious with her tone a shade darker, boarding a vindictiveness that I can’t quite prove.
Even as I steel my jaw to steady my lower lip, my efforts are in vain. “I can’t live without him,” I blubber, needing to fix the red thread still tethering us together.
“Oh, Staten. Please don’t say that. I know it hurts—”
“You could never know what this feels like,” I lash out, unaware of the hostility dripping down my throat.
The sleep-deprived and dehydrated part of me views Hassie’s support as pity, and deep down, I know that my outburst is unjustified.
Everything is still so raw. I want to be left alone.
And with the way that I’m treating my best friend, I’ll get that wish sooner than later.
She flinches but doesn’t say anything.
I thought I was enough for Knox. I-I imagined a future together.
Me, working right across from his hockey rink, pulling him away for a lunch date each day, then coming home to a sizable apartment where we go to sleep and wake up beside each other.
We’d probably move out of Minnesota to get the bona fide city experience.
He’d get signed to the NHL team of his dreams; I’d get employed by some large corporation.
Our lives would be elevated—more important than Lit grades or the juvenile troubles of college.
And maybe, just maybe, somewhere down the road, there’s a light pattering of feet running down the hall of our bigger home, fit for the American dream.
That dreamer part of me died with him the moment he uttered those words. Everything about that night is a sweat-drenched nightmare that will never go away.
Headlights glare off my window, but I don’t pay much mind to it.
A terrible sickness smolders in my belly, immune to breakup etiquette and set to replay a track of Knox’s and my greatest hits. Sorrow uses my loving hand as an ashtray, embossing tender flesh with a cigarette burn. I curl up into a ball.
A loud, discordant ruckus sounds from outside the house—perhaps a neighbor wheeling their trash cans to the curb. It can be heard over the batting down of rain, though I’m free-falling too fast down a rabbit hole of self-blame to pinpoint the noise.