Chapter 35 Pike
Pike
The door to my room opens.
“Kal’s here,” Luis says.
“Go away.” I keep my face buried in my pillow, but when neither of them leaves, I eventually force myself to roll over. My lower back screams. I needed ice hours ago, but I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed.
Kal lets out a low whistle. “Dude, you have ink all over your face.”
“At least it’s not a dick drawing,” Luis offers.
I self-consciously rub at my cheek as Kal snorts.
“Your hands are covered too.”
“Thanks, genius. I’ve been writing.”
“No shit.” Kal picks up one of the many discarded journal pages that litter my room. “‘Dear Skylar,’” he reads in a mock-lovey voice. I jerk up as fast as my battered body can manage. But it’s not fast enough. “H?ll om mig! Jag saknar dig!”
“What?” Luis asks as I rip the paper out of Kal’s hands. “What does that mean?”
Kal rolls his eyes. “It’s Swedish for ‘this is an intervention.’”
But it’s just a crumpled-up paper with a few lines. Nothing important I actually wrote to her. “I don’t need an intervention.”
“He hasn’t left his room,” Luis says, the traitor. “He even canceled physical therapy.”
I growl at my roommate. “Do you not run low on spoons as well? I feel like crap.”
“Put some clothes on,” Kal says briskly. “And meet us outside in ten. We’re going out.”
I glance down at my boxers. “I’m not—”
“Make it twenty. You need a shower.”
I want a beer. More than I’ve wanted one in two years. And as Kal orders one, I want to be a nosy asshole and ask what his disability is and completely disregard any form of privacy. Whatever it is, he can still drink, and I’m jealous as fuck.
“A Coke,” I say flatly, then busy myself with picking out a flatbread pizza. Everything at this microbrewery has mushrooms and kale and goat cheese. Why.
I settle on sweet potato fries.
After our food arrives, Kal leans back in his chair. “Talk,” he commands.
He’s such a bossy fucker tonight. But under his unwavering gaze, I feel like the pathetic, closed-up person Skylar made me out to be.
I stare at my plate. “Everyone hates Skylar. And it’s all my fault.”
“It’s not,” Luis says.
“Kal even said it was.”
“Aw, come on.” Kal pushes his long hair back. “I just wanted you to take some responsibility.”
“Skylar’s getting hate mail. You have any idea how disgusting people are?” I crush my napkin in my fist. “She forwards me her emails. I can’t stop thinking about all the graphic things they wrote.”
Luis grimaces. “Understandable. Have you talked to her about anything other than the emails?”
“No.” I stab an unappealing orange fry into some nondairy mayo concoction thing. Misery washes over me. Skylar would love all this health food. “She said the relationship wasn’t working. And maybe she was right.”
“At least Skylar ended your drought with women,” Kal says. “Plenty of fish in the sea.”
Luis raises a skeptical eyebrow over his bacon and butternut squash pizza. “That doesn’t matter if Pike’s still into Skylar.”
“I’m not,” I say quickly. “I just feel guilty over the pain I’ve caused her.”
“Great.” Kal pulls out his phone. “I know the manager at Sensation. Let me give him a call. I can usually get a booth.”
“That new club? I don’t feel like going.”
“You didn’t feel like showering either. That was still good for you. It’ll be good for you to meet other women.”
“I’m not going.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not the same person anymore.”
“I agree.” Kal takes a long pull of his beer. “You’re not happy anymore.”
“You try breaking most of your body, asshole.”
“My point is, you’re going to be living in that body for the rest of your life, so you might want to figure out how to be okay with that.”
Luis tugs on the brim of his Red Wings baseball cap. “Pike can grieve his situation. His entire life changed in a heartbeat, and he’s done a damn good job trying to adjust.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“But I agree you might want to figure out how to be okay. I read your poem. Seems like a good start.”
My neck grows warm. “It’s something my therapist suggested.” Which I never thought my friends would know.
“Sounds like a good therapist.” Luis doesn’t seem like he’s teasing.
“It helps me get all the noise out of my head,” I admit. “Do…either of you go to therapy?”
“Nope,” Kal says.
Figures. Kal never has any problems.
“Every Thursday,” Luis says, like it’s no big deal.
“What Pike needs right now is a different kind of therapy.” Kal makes a crude gesture, and my fists curl below the table.
“I don’t want to hear any more asinine comments from you about my sex life.”
“Come on. Prove to yourself that you can still have a good time without this woman.”
“She’s not just some woman! She’s incredible, and I’d have a better time taking her to a doctor’s appointment than hooking up with twenty women at your boring-ass club.” I glare at him, but Kal grins like a little shit.
“Thought you were over her.”
“I am.”
He smacks me in the shoulder. “Quit lying.”
“Ow, what the fuck? It doesn’t matter whether I’m over her or not. She ended it. It’s done.”
Kal’s eyes narrow. “Why don’t you stop bullshitting and finally tell us what happened?”
“She broke up with me. I don’t really know what happened. I’ve filled up my notebook trying to figure it out.” I pause. Why can I write so much but never seem to find the right words when I need them most? “She wanted me to make this statement. Something publicly denouncing the article.”
“Why didn’t you?” Luis asks.
“Because I know what I’m doing with the press. If I fed them anything, it would escalate.”
He frowns. “It’s already escalated for Skylar, though. If saying something will make her more comfortable, why not do it?”
It sounds simple when he says it like that. “Water under the bridge now.”
That’s all I feel like saying, but a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach says I’m supposed to be opening up more. I inhale my Coke, take a deep breath, and do something I haven’t done with anyone but Skylar recently.
I share.
I run through it all, including our last argument. I’m on another round of orange fries by the time I’m done.
“So, as you can see,” I finish, “I never should have said anything was bothering me. It all went downhill from there.”
Luis holds up his hands. “I feel like I’m missing something. You said you listed things that upset you?”
“Yeah.” Shame crawls down my spine. “At first, I was trying to be strong for her. Positive. But that pissed her off. She accused me of not being open, so I listed a bunch of things that upset me.”
“About how much the leak bothered you?”
“No.” I swallow. “About the relationship.”
Luis becomes the personification of a question mark GIF. “You were unhappy with Skylar?”
“No. Not her,” I explain. “But, like…the stress of it all.”
I tell them how overwhelmed I’ve been since we started dating, and how the article only made things worse. I skip any talk of sex. I didn’t even tell Skylar about that.
Kal nurses his beer. “No wonder she was upset.”
“I know,” I say. “It had all built up and I shouldn’t have exploded like that.”
The right thing would’ve been to tell her I was having trouble balancing everything from the beginning. That’s on me. Not her.
“No, man,” Kal says. “The problem isn’t the relationship. It’s you not stating your needs.”
I scowl. “All that cuddling with Analia make you a psychologist?”
“Why, want a session?”
Luis clears his throat. “Cyrus and I both have disabilities. You think we don’t need to communicate about our competing access needs?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
I squirm. I can’t think of a reason. “I was planning on telling her. But I let my pain slide because I enjoyed being with her too much. She was the best part of my day.”
“Did you tell her that?” Luis asks.
I deflate. I didn’t. I just threw my problems in her face.
“I know I said the wrong things. And I was trying to be too positive, which is what she doesn’t like about her mom, and I didn’t realize that quickly enough. But maybe she could, I don’t know, cut me some slack? I’m working on communicating more effectively. I’m trying.”
“Pike.” Luis pulls out his phone. “I don’t want to risk pushing it after my last crash, so I have to go soon, but you need to see this.” He passes the phone to Kal. “Can you read the top two comments aloud?”
“Why can’t you?”
“I don’t like repeating stuff like that, even if they’re not my words.”
“‘Bitch is a nightmare,’” Kal reads. “‘No wonder he wants to kill himself.’” My body goes rigid. It’s that fucking subreddit. “Next comment: ‘Someone better take away his opioids. I’d OD if I was saddled with a freak like—’”
I rip the phone out of his hand. “I don’t need to hear that shit.”
“I don’t either,” Luis says. “But have you noticed the trend? People think Skylar’s the reason you’re depressed.”
“I know,” I growl.
“You don’t agree with them, right?”
“Of course not.”
“She knows you don’t agree?”
I scoff. “Of course.”
Luis goes quiet. “Are you sure? You told her that specifically?”
I went into damage control mode the second I saw the article. I can think of a hundred things I did to show her that, but did I say it? Specifically?
“I thought suing those bastards made it obvious.”
Luis pockets his phone. “To Skylar, it probably feels like the entire world thinks she’s not good enough for you. That she’s the reason you’re unhappy. And then you dumped all your pent-up frustration on her?”
Kal whistles as I absorb Luis’s words.
“She thinks I agree?”
Luis lifts his hands. “From where I’m sitting. Maybe.”
But she can’t think that. I’ve told her I want to know all of her. I expressed my frustration about the article as soon as I read it.
Except.
Every time she brought it up, I focused on other things. I said everything would pass, which, looking back, could’ve come across as me dismissing her concerns. Why doesn’t all this bother you?
My fries threaten to come back up. Does she think I’m embarrassed to make a statement because deep down, I believe she’s too much, just like everyone else does?
The way Owen likely does?
The way her mother probably does, too?
“Oh, fuck.”
My phone vibrates, but it’s my dad again. He’s been calling me all week.
“Not her,” I mutter.
“Any reason it would be?” Luis asks.
“She has this important appointment. I was going to drive her because she needs another spinal tap.”
“You should definitely drive her.”
“I already asked if she still wanted me to. She said no.”
Quick, simple: No. No how are you. No thanks for offering. Just no.
“Surprise her,” Luis insists. “Be reliable. Show up anyway.”
“I don’t know.” I want to be there for her. But I also know taking her doesn’t fix anything between us.
“Pike, in all seriousness…” Kal rubs his forehead. “You should surprise her and show up. Consider it a grand gesture.” His sudden change in tone puts me on high alert.
“What do you know? What did Analia say?”
He stays quiet, though, and only fiddles with the label on his bottle.
I doubt my presence would be welcome. The last thing Skylar needs when she’s in pain is to talk about heavy things. I don’t even know, after everything, if she’d believe I’m sincere.
But Kal wouldn’t encourage me to go if Analia was telling him there’s no hope.
“I need advice,” I say.
They lean forward, but I need to talk to someone who knows Skylar. I could message Emy and Analia, but this needs a more delicate approach.
“Kal, do you think you could get Analia on the phone for five minutes to hear me out?”
His blue eyes narrow. “Are you going to get me in trouble with her?”
“How would I do that?”
“I can think of a dozen things you could say to make me look like I’m the douchebag enabling your bad ideas.”
“Texting her could enable me to run my own intervention when it comes to you and Lennox.”
“Empty threats,” Kal said. “Unfounded. Uncalled-for.”
But he’s already dialing.