CHAPTER TWENTY
SIXTEEN YEARS OLD
· · ·
The weeks after are bad.
Not bad like a bad day.
Bad like something got into the walls of me and started rotting from the inside out.
I go to school.
I come home.
I sit at dinner and answer questions and smile when I’m supposed to smile.
My parents watch me the way they’ve been watching me since I was eleven years old and they first learned that sometimes their son’s chest just — stops working.
I tell them I’m fine.
I’m not fine.
· · ·
The anxiety is different now.
Not the sharp panic attack kind.
The other kind.
The low, grey, constant kind that doesn’t have a dramatic moment — just sits on you from the second you wake up until the second you finally fall asleep and then it’s there again in the morning.
Like something you can’t see but can feel in every breath.
· · ·
I replay the kisses constantly.
The bathroom one — urgent and desperate and God, Ro — and the soft one in my room — his hand on my jaw, the exhale, the way it felt like something ending.
Two kisses.
Then nothing.
I tell myself to stop.
I don’t stop.
I stand by the front window.
And I watch.
Abby shows up every other afternoon.
Red hair flying carefree in the wind behind her.
Laughing before she gets to the door.
Easy in a way I’ll never be.
I watch him let her in.
I watch the door close.
I stand there long after there’s nothing left to see.
This is fine. This is what healthy people do. I’m fine.
· · ·
One afternoon — four days in, maybe five, time has gone strange — I watch them come outside together.
They sit on his front steps.
She says something.
He laughs.
That laugh.
The real one.
The rare one.
The one I thought was mine.
I step back from the window so he won’t see me.
My hands are shaking.
That night I can’t sleep.
I lie in the dark and stare at the ceiling and let the anxiety do what it does — run the same loop over and over and over.
He kissed me.
He chose her.
He kissed me.
He chose her.
Two kisses and he chose her.
· · ·
By morning I’ve made a decision.
His dad leaves for work at seven-thirty.
I know because I’ve watched him leave my entire life.
Suit. Briefcase. The same cold posture Cassian has been running from since he was old enough to understand what cold meant.
Seven thirty-five, the driveway is empty.
· · ·
I wait until eight.
Then I go.
Not to the front door.
To the window.
His window.
The one that faces the side yard.
The one that’s level with the ground on his side.
I stand in front of it.
“Cassian.”
Nothing.
My voice comes out smaller than I mean it to.
I try again.
· · ·
“Cassian, I know you’re in there.”
Still nothing.
Something breaks open in my chest.
“Please.” My voice cracks on the word. “Please just — talk to me. That’s all. Just tell me what I did. Tell me how to fix it.”
The curtain doesn’t move.
I press my hand against the glass.
“Eight years, Cassian.” My voice is rising. I can hear it happening and I can’t stop it. “Eight years and you can’t even open a window? You can’t even look at me? What did I do that was so bad?”
Nothing.
“I know you’re there.”
Silence.
“You kissed me.” The words tear coming out. “You kissed me twice and now you won’t even — I don’t understand. I don’t understand what I did. I just need you to tell me what I did. Please.”
My voice breaks completely on the last word.
I’m crying.
I didn’t notice it starting.
My face is wet and I’m standing in his side yard with my hand on his window and I’m falling apart and I don’t even care anymore.
“Please,” I say again.
Quieter.
Almost to myself.
“I’m right here. I’m always right here. I’ve always been right here.”
A long silence.
And then —
the curtain moves.
My heart stops.
· · ·
He’s there.
Right there.
On the other side of the glass.
Close enough that I can see his face clearly.
His eyes.
For one second — we just look at each other.
And I see it.
I see all of it.
I see that he knows.
I see that he heard every word.
I see that his heart is breaking along with mine.
But I also see that it doesn’t matter.
He looks at me for one long moment.
Something in his expression I can’t name.
Something that looks almost like —
He turns away.
Steps back from the window.
Gone.
The curtain falls back into place.
· · ·
I stand there.
My hand still against the glass.
Still warm from mine.
Still wet from all the crying.
I don’t move for a long time.
· · ·
Then I walk back inside.
Sit on the floor.
Pick up my phone.
Force of habit.
The way breathing is force of habit.
The way thinking about Cassian is a force of habit.
I open his contact.
Type something.
Send.
Failed.
I try again.
Failed.
I go to his contact page.
Try to call him.
Blocked.
· · ·
I try three more times. Send more messages.
Nothing goes through.
He turned away from my face.
And then he blocked my number.
He stood there and looked at me — crying, begging, hand on his window — and then he went and blocked my number.
· · ·
Something in my chest just —
stops.
Not a panic attack.
Not yet.
Just — a stopping.
Like a clock.
Like something that was running and suddenly isn’t.
· · ·
I sit on the floor for a long time.
The grey closes in.
Not sharp. Not loud.
Just — grey.
Everywhere.
I don’t know how long it takes.
I don’t know what shifts.
But at some point the grey becomes something else.
Heavier.
My chest won’t open.
I try to breathe.
I can’t.
The air goes in but it’s not — it’s not right — the walls of the room doing something wrong — my hands on the floor and I can feel the floor but it doesn’t feel like enough —
I know this.
I know what this is.
But knowing doesn’t help.
Knowing never helps.
“Ro.”
My mom.
I don’t know how she got here or when.
I don’t know how she always gets here.
· · ·
“Hey. Look at me. Right here.”
Her hands on my face.
The way she’s always held me.
I look at her.
I can’t speak.
Just staring into space, hyperventilating.
I just can’t breathe.
“Okay,” she says. Steady. “I’ve got you.”
It gets worse before it gets better.
It always does.
I know that.
· · ·
But the knowing doesn’t help when your chest won’t open and the boy you’ve loved since you were eight years old just looked you in the eyes and turned away.
My dad’s voice somewhere.
Then the car.
Then the lights of the hospital.
Bright and wrong and too much.
My mom doesn’t let go of my hand.
A nurse says panic attack like it’s simple.
Like it has clean edges.
I stare at the ceiling.
· · ·
He turned away.
He stood at that window and looked at me — really looked — and then he turned away.
I press my fingers to my mouth.
They still remember him.
Both times.
And somewhere on the other side of that wall — with the curtain back in place and my number blocked —
he chose to forget me.
And I finally broke.