Chapter 35
Ren
My best friend finds me, suffocating under all that dust and debris of an almost life with Miller Colson-Burke.
“Ren?” Imani asks gently, gathering the silk skirt of her navy dress to step over the exhibit wall so she can sit beside me. “What are you doing?”
I sniff, pointing towards the triceratops. “Remember how we said we hoped they weren’t alone when they went extinct?”
She nods, folding down beside me.
“I don’t know about them, but turns out it was just me here, all alone at the end of the world.” My thumbs move across the already-worn paper—Miller’s list of reasons I should always be me—and I wipe my cheek with my shoulder when I hand it to her.
“Oh. What’s . . .” she trails off as her eyes move down the page, a quiver to her bottom lip. Her mouth shifts into a soft smile before she blinks, brows knit. “Wait. Where is Miller?”
“He left.” I dig my thumb into the back of my hand, shame pinching along my skin.
Imani folds the paper carefully, setting it down between us. “What happened?”
“Scott happened.” I drop my head against the fake rock wall of the exhibit, and my heart hurts, infinitely and forever heavy in my chest. “Actually, no.” I shake my head, dragging a knuckle under my eyes, and I hear Miller.
When are you finally just . . . going to be you?
Turning to look at my best friend, my voice cracks with a whisper. “I . . . I happened.”
Her blinks turn gentle, permission in the soft angles of her cheeks. It might be the end of the world, but I’m safe here with her.
“He was looking at me and I felt like her again. Eighteen-year-old me, with all her flaws and all her baggage that became too much and not enough. And I didn’t want . . . I didn’t want Scott to have Miller, too. I didn’t want him to take something else good, so I pretended and—”
“Ren, Scott can only take Miller if you let him.”
And I did let him.
“I got that . . . job,” I say through a wet laugh.
“But I didn’t . . . I don’t want it, Imani.
” My voice drops to a whisper, and I think, after all this time, all this work I tried to do, I’m still so scared of me and the person I used to be.
But this thing in my heart—Miller—and all the oxygen and sunlight and photosynthesis he gave me?
He’s not the scary thing. “I want . . . him.”
She gathers my hands in hers. “And what’s so bad about that?”
“I don’t want to be the me from before . . . I worked so hard and tried to be so different. I wanted to prove to myself I could . . . dream and do things for me, and I’m just . . . right back where I started, I think.” That same shame climbing across my skin drags my voice down into nothing, too.
Imani shakes her head, brows furrowed with a frown and the usual happy line of her mouth so, so sad when she says, “What was so bad about her, Ren? The person you used to be.”
“I—she—made so many mistakes and gave so much of herself up. People never chose her. Not really. She’s . . . hard to love.”
“You don’t have to love her. But I do.” My best friend shrugs, bringing the back of my hand to her chest. “She made you, after all.” Imani’s mouth quirks to the side.
“I know you . . . wanted to take back all these pieces of yourself. To take back all these things Scott took . . . and I think you should—you should take the pieces of yourself he taught you not to love, and you should learn to love them again. You should let someone help you.” She drops her head to mine.
“But . . . you’ve been scrambling to try and be this different person all at the same time.
I think, as much as it’s time to let Scott go, it’s okay to let her go, too.
The old you. Keep the parts you want, and the rest?
That’s no longer serving you? Let it go.
I think . . . after all this time . . . the person you haven’t forgiven is you. ”
My eyes flutter closed, and I concentrate on my best friend’s breathing. There’s oxygen in there for me too, I think. “It’s that easy? To let go of all your past mistakes and forgive yourself for them?”
“It can be,” she murmurs, nudging me with her shoulder.
“Miller isn’t Scott, by the way. You don’t have to paint them with the same brush.
And you don’t have to paint yourself in the same colours as the old you, either.
You’ve been so scared of making the same mistakes but .
. . Ren, no one in your life now wants to take from you like that.
They wouldn’t let you give yourself away like that again.
Do you feel like Miller takes from you?”
I think of Scott, plucking at all the new petals on the growth of me, stealing flowers before they could even bloom. I think of old me, letting him, offering them to him on this silver platter so he could grow taller and taller and taller and eclipse all the sunlight I still needed.
And I think of Miller. The sunshine that lives in the sound of his voice, all the oxygen that lives in the whisper of his mouth, and those rough, worn hands that I think would till and till and till the soil until it was exactly what I needed.
But mostly, I think of me. Of the old roots tangling with the new roots of the person I became, and how so very, very badly those roots want to grow and stretch and tangle with his.
“No.” I shake my head softly. “He doesn’t take from me.”
Her hand squeezes in mine, and she pulls to stand, a tangle of long limbs somehow more coordinated than usual. “Well, come on then. We’ve got work to do.”
“Work?” I blink up at her when she practically jerks my shoulder out of its socket.
“Work.” She nods, tugging again. “We have to see a man about the league’s sexiest shortstop.”
“I don’t think—he might not want to see me right now,” I start, but I let my best friend pick me up off the floor anyway, even though I could spend all night down here reading and rereading Miller’s list.
“Ren, if for nothing else, I’m not particularly keen on you impacting his batting average. I have money riding on the game tomorrow.” She turns, determinedly stepping over the exhibit wall.
“Oh, we’re gambling now?” I follow, almost tripping as she keeps tugging me along, out of the life before extinction exhibit towards the stairs.
“My profit margin is quite high, actually.” She gives a thoughtful nod before a wrinkle draws across her nose. “These online gamblers really don’t seem to understand physics or statistics at all. They’re just not—”
“As smart as you?” I arch a brow, but I blink at her through watery eyes. “Most people aren’t, as it turns out.”
She smiles, almost shy, her fingers squeezing against mine, and the entire way down the stairs and out of the museum, she tells me everything there is to know about how to strategically bet on baseball.
“You really should have gone into finance,” I tell her when we’re pushing through the front doors towards the stone steps leading down to the street.
“I’d rather use my powers for good. Finance is full of—”
“Assholes?”
“Yes. Usually.” She gives a tiny nod, but her face falls when she sees Scott, one foot kicked up against the landing. “Oh. Speak of the devil.”
Scott pushes off the stone wall, holding out a hand for me. And I almost laugh when I catch his face and realize he thinks that after everything, we’re living in a world where I might take it. “Renny. I’ve been waiting for you. I saw him leave, and I think we should talk.”
“Sure,” I say, inhaling all of the oxygen I can from a world where I’m me and even if I’m flawed and I’ve made mistakes, I’m still someone who gets to know Miller.
I let me and him and him and me and all that we are and all that we could be fill up my lungs before I say the words I’ve said before, but I really mean them this time. “Goodbye, Scott.”
“Goodbye?” He blinks, incredulous.
“Yes, goodbye.” I nod resolutely, squeezing my best friend’s hand in mine.
“Goodbye?” he repeats with a scoff, mouth curving into something reminiscent of a sneer. “We work together.”
“Yes, and unfortunately, I will still have to see you on Monday. But I don’t have to keep you anymore.
” I give him a tired smile. “But all those old pieces of me? That you seem so desperate to hold over my head? You can have them.” Shrugging, I tip my head, assessing him the way he always did me.
I see so many things. Someone who was good and bad and good and bad again.
Not entirely unlike me when we were nothing more than kids, but mostly, I see someone I feel endlessly sorry for.
My smile turns soft, gentle with him the way he never was with me.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for, and I hope I never hear a word about it. ”
“Ren—”
“Go fuck yourself, Scott.” I lift a tired hand in a farewell I should have made years ago and finally, truly, really, walk away from him.
Leaving all those fragments and pieces sitting at his feet where they belong, I go down the museum steps, hand in hand with my best friend, towards all the reasons I have to be me and a future I want for that me so desperately.
It’s not hard to make this list.
Not like it was to scramble to try and find reasons for why I want to be me—things to like or love about myself.
This list is easy. It pours out of me onto paper, ink dotted and smudged with stray tears. So easy, in fact, I think it was the only list I was ever supposed to write my entire life.
The only thing hard about it is keeping it down to five. All the pages are too full, and they contain all these ideas of a life I think you could only dream of.
“We have a problem.” Imani drops down onto my couch across from me, a knit between her brows.
My pen pauses mid-line. “You think my list is stupid?”
“No. But there’s a . . . rumour circulating.” She wraps her hands around her coffee mug, fingers twitching nervously. “Apparently, Miller was in his GM’s office all morning.”
My heart plummets into nothing, and I feel my pulse stutter as I shake my head slowly. “He was close with Matthew. They’re just, maybe—”
“Analysts are speculating he’s waiving his no-trade clause.” Imani’s shoulders bow, and her voice wobbles. “Trade deadline is in two weeks so . . . he’d be gone . . . quickly.”
“Aren’t those sorts of things . . . aren’t they supposed to be private?” I abandon my list, scrambling to sit upright in my chair.
“Yes . . . but things get . . . leaked sometimes,” she says weakly.
“Leaked?! Leaked where?”
“Online!” She sets the coffee mug down, flapping her hands.
“Show me your phone!” I lurch across the coffee table between us, smashing my ribs against the sharp edge, but I hold out my hand, frantic anyway.
She practically throws the phone at me, the article already open on her screen, big block letters spelling out Miller Colson-Burke scream up at me, while the rest of the words blur with the burning corners of my eyes.
“No,” I whisper. “That would mean—” I’m not sure what I was going to say next. Those words fall into nothing. I start to shake my head, voice impossibly small, and still so, so scared. “I don’t want to be where he’s not. I don’t—I don’t want to be without him.”
Imani smiles gently when she murmurs, “I see someone has finally learned the difference between can’t and want. Not a moment too soon, really.”
“It’s not funny,” I sniff.
“I’m not laughing.” She slides off the couch so she’s on the literal and proverbial ground with me, and she reaches across the table, taking my hands in hers again. “Finish your list. We have somewhere to be this afternoon.”
“What if he—”
“He won’t.” She shakes her head, firm and resolute. “It’s going to be fine, and it’s going to be the start of something very, very wonderful. You just . . . have to be yourself.”
I snort. “Easier said than done.”
Imani gives me a pointed look, picks up her phone, fingers flying across the screen and making all sorts of plans.
But when I pick the tear-stained page back up, and I try again to contain the magnitude of Miller into something I can put on a page—items one through five—but when I get to the last one, I realize they might actually be the easiest things I’ll ever do as long as they’re with him.