Chapter 3 #4
Mila turns to Penelope. “She doesn’t have the guts to break up with him.”
The words slap, and my appetite — what was left of it, what survived the hangover — vanishes in a single, clean cut. I push the plate two inches away from me on the counter, and I glare at her. I want to argue so badly that for a moment, my mouth is open, but nothing is coming out.
She makes it sound so easy, like I am simply unwilling, the way a child is unwilling to eat a vegetable, and not — not — not the deeper, uglier truth, which is that I am terrified.
I’m not the girl who looks a good man in the eye and tells him that what he is offering is not enough.
I would probably stay with him until the day I die because that is the kind of girl I’ve turned into.
I let people take care of me because being taken care of is so much easier than not getting what I want.
He’s such a good guy, and that is the part I cannot make either of them understand.
Penelope looks at me with empathy. “If you don’t want to be with someone, it’s not fair for them if you stay.”
It’s a simple concept, and it’s the one that cuts deep. Because there’s no edge to it, no anger, no impatience, or accusations. It’s just a piece of information, laid down on the counter between us, like she’s showing me a recipe.
It’s not fair to them.
To them. To him.
Mila lifts her eyebrows and nods along with Penelope’s words.
“You should’ve done it over summer, Melly,” Mila says.
“But I was living with him,” I argue.
“Yeah,” Mila says quietly, “but…”
She doesn’t finish. She lets the but hang in the air between the three of us until it is so heavy it nearly falls into the fruit bowl.
I lean over the counter and fold forward at the waist. I bury my face in my hands and just stay there, for a moment, in the dark of my own palms.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I say into my hands.
“Well,” Penelope says, gently, “you’re not living with him anymore. So —”
“You have freedom,” Mila cuts in, and her voice has changed. It’s softer now. Coaxing. “You have freedom, Melly. You have your own room. You have your own bed. You have a door you can close. You’re out of there. You did it! Do you understand how big that is?”
I don’t answer.
“And, also.” Mila pauses. “And also — I slept in your bed last night, girlie. Remember that?”
I peek at her through my fingers.
She is grinning a small, devious grin. “Wait, do you actually remember what you told me last night?”
The heat is up my neck. Oh, God. What did I tell her? My memory of last night is a black hole with little flashes of headlights at the edges. I have no idea what I said to her.
She grins wider. “You told me,” she says, “that you didn’t want to hump him anymore.”
I make a noise. It’s a horrified squeak as I bury my face back into my hands. I’m laughing now, silently, my shoulders shaking, and I cannot look up at either of them because I know if I look up at Mila, I’m going to die on the spot.
“Did he hear me?” I ask.
“No, he didn’t hear that part. He was already snoring.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“But,” she adds, slowly, “you wouldn’t stop talking about a certain color of the rainbow.”
I drop my hands, and the smile slides off my face so fucking fast that I physically feel the frown.
A color of the —
A color of the rainbow.
My brain — slow, hungover, unable to form a thought — actually tries, for one absurd moment, to picture a rainbow.
The full thing. Red, orange, yellow, green — I tilt my head, vaguely, and stare out the window and think.
If the sky is blue, does the rainbow have blue in it? Or does the blue cancel out somehow?
Then I catch up with what she just said.
She said it in front of Penelope. Absolutely no one can know the truth about Blue Golding.
For the love of everything on this earth, Mila better keep her mouth shut.
Because Blue Golding is a closed file. I have decided that I cannot do this with him anymore.
I made myself a promise after I went to his house last week.
The cocoon I have been keeping him in has to crack open.
The butterfly has to come out. I have to lift my hand and watch the thing fly away and not chase it. I’m done. I am done.
I widen my eyes at Mila, in that small, sharp, do not way. I try to keep it subtle, so Penelope doesn’t catch it.
Penelope takes a small sip of her water and doesn’t acknowledge the thing Mila just put in the room with us. Rainbow? Really?
“I really hope I didn’t say anything else stupid,” I mutter, dragging the conversation back to safer ground. “Because Chase didn’t have much to drink last night. He’ll remember everything.”
“Chase,” Mila says, “is obsessed with you, Melly. He will forgive and forget anything you do. You could have projectile vomited all inside of his truck last night, and he would have forgiven you by dawn.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“You know I’m right.”
I know she is. Chase loves me with a steady, uncomplicated, infuriating constancy that I do not deserve and have not earned, and the worst part of that love is how easy it makes everything. He will forgive me for just about anything. Mila is right.
Penelope looks at me from across the counter. Her head is tilted, just slightly. “You’re quite the catch, Melly.”
I turn pink, then red, then almost certainly purple. She thinks I’m a catch.
“He’s never going to let you go,” Mila says forcibly, “unless you walk away.”
“I can’t just walk away.”
“Why?”
“Because — I —”
“Why?” Mila says again. “Because you have history? Because you’ve already given him two years? Because you’d rather waste another two than admit the first two were a mistake? Do you remember the first thing you ever told me when you started dating him?”
Don’t say it.
Mila, please don’t say it.
“You told me,” she says, “that he was the perfect boy to get over you-know-who.”
My whole body flinches. I remember saying it.
Three months, I’d told her. I gave her a timeframe for when I’d break up with Chase.
I was convinced it was what I needed. I had been so hurt.
The boy I had chased for years and years went to Camden U without a backward glance.
He never texted me back. He didn’t talk to me after graduation.
I had lost a big piece of myself that summer, so when I met Chase, I clung to him.
And Chase was the perfect boy. That’s not the part I cannot say out loud.
He healed a part of me that I couldn’t do myself.
Mila shakes her head. “We’re not going to talk about that right now,” she says quietly. “We’re not. That’s a different conversation, but as for Chase, Melly — it’s not fair. You let it go on for too long. It was supposed to be like a three-month thing. You said.”
She’s right. And I start spiraling in my head. I knew I should have come to Camden right away. I shouldn’t have done the community college first.
“Fine,” I say. I exhale. I look up at her. “You’re right. I just —”
“I don’t want to be right, Melly.” Her voice cracks, just a little.
Just enough that I look at her properly.
“I want you to stick up for yourself. That’s all.
I want you to stop going with the flow. I want you to stop letting your life happen to you.
I want you to decide what you want and then go and get it.
” She gestures, almost angrily, at the air between us.
“Last night you were drunk, and you wanted nothing to do with your own boyfriend. Nothing. You wouldn’t even look at him for the last hour.
You don’t see it because you live inside it, but I was watching it.
We were all watching it. You don’t want him. ”
I nod. I have nothing left to argue with.
Mila exhales. She waves the tension in the air away with one hand.
“You’re going to figure it out,” she says.
“Sooner or later. You will. Look —” she gestures at the kitchen, at the apartment, at the soft music coming in from the next room, and Penelope’s calm presence at the counter.
“Look how much has changed in a week, Melly. A week. Look at it.” She’s looking at me with an enormous amount of love.
“We’re the kind of friends,” she says, “you’ve needed these last two years.”
Something in me cracks down a fault line I didn’t know was there.
She’s exactly right. I haven’t had my best friend for two years because she went straight to Camden U after high school graduation.
I’ve been a lost cause without her. My feet shuffle around the counter, and I hug her.
I wouldn’t be who I am without her. She’s the person who’s going to encourage me to grow a backbone, teach me to be brave, and live my best life. I hug her hard. I’ve missed her.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“Of course. I love you, Melly. You’re my sister.”
I nod, agreeing. She really is like family. I pull away and look at Penelope, feeling my chest become lighter. I needed that hug.
Penelope smiles when we both look at her. She looks down at her phone and then at us. “Who’s ready to study?”
“Me,” we say at the exact same time, in the exact same tone, and the three of us laugh, and the moment ends, and the morning resumes.
Something has moved in me. I can feel it as I reach for my plate, and I don’t know yet what I’m going to do with it.