38. June
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
JUNE
Ilove the comfort that Dorein’s studio brings. His parents’ house is empty, the way it usually is, and we’re on the small couch tucked away in a corner. His arms are around me while a December chill presses against the windows.
I’m trying not to think. If I don’t think, I can stay here in the ochre glow, in the smell of a smokey kiln that clings to his clothes. I can pretend this is a beginning and not the end of us.
It’s been almost two weeks since Aeron overdosed.
Our prayers were answered because he came out of the coma.
The doctors said, “No brain damage,” which is the sentence I replay whenever my thoughts spiral.
His liver took a hit, though, and there’s possibly long-term scarring if he isn’t careful.
His heart needs monitoring for arrhythmia, and the cardiologist used the word “vulnerable” to describe the muscle tissue.
I thought, Yes, that’s my brother right now in one word.
But he’s alive.
Thanksgiving came and nobody celebrated it. Mom made coffee that morning and sat at the kitchen island alone. I found her there, and we looked at each other, and neither of us said anything about turkey or gratitude. Carter wasn’t home that day at all.
Somehow over the past weeks, I’ve managed to get through end-of-semester projects so now I only have a few classes left.
My grades are shit, but good enough that it won’t affect my scholarship.
And I submitted one of my pieces to the Alaria Prize.
It’s nothing I made specifically for it, just the random piece I created during a torrent of emotion—the vague painting of an ice cream truck.
I just wanted to submit something, though I’m sure I have zero chance of winning.
Aeron was admitted to a mental health facility a few days ago. He might be there through Christmas. The relief is enormous but tangled with guilt, like colors mixed on a palette until they turn to mud.
Dorien’s thumb moves in slow circles against my shoulder. I want to live inside this quiet moment with him forever.
But I can’t.
I came here today because I need to tell him something I’ve been keeping to myself.
“At the hospital,” I say, “Cinna told me she’s been behind the rumors and the texts.”
His thumb stops. His whole body stiffens against mine. “That doesn’t make sense.” He pulls back to study my face. “Why would she do that?”
I tell him everything. How Cinna hated my life, saw a perfect family she didn’t have and resented me for not being grateful enough.
How she photographed my diary entries and twisted them and sent them to Aeron, so he’d believe Mom didn’t want him and I wished he was gone.
How she planted the burner phone in Aubrey’s bag.
How she orchestrated every devastating week of this semester from right beside me, hugging me and asking me if I was okay while she set fire to my world.
Dorien doesn’t interrupt. He absorbs it, hands very still in his lap. I can tell he’s in shock because his hands are never still. They’re always running through his hair or reaching for clay. When Dorien’s hands stop, he’s somewhere far inside himself.
I give him a few moments, then I open my mouth to tell him the other reason I’m here.
“You don’t have to say it,” he cuts in. He reaches to a small table and grabs his leather gloves, pulling them on slowly.
I lean into him, and he wraps his arms around me. The studio is so quiet I can hear his heartbeat under his shirt.
“I love you,” I whisper.
“I love you too.” His voice is low, and it aches in my throat to hear it.
“But we shouldn’t be together,” I say.
“I know.”
Every time we stop fighting and let ourselves be what we really are, someone gets hurt. We both know it.
“If you’d just been with Cinna all along,” I continue, and my voice wobbles on her name, “none of this would’ve happened.”
“I’ve only ever seen her as a friend. But yeah. You’re right.”
His words sting. I said it first, but him agreeing without flinching makes it the truth instead of a dumb thing I’d been considering.
It’s clearly not a dumb idea at all. If Dorien had been with Cinna, started dating her months ago, she wouldn’t have concocted this plan, and my brother wouldn’t be in a clinic right now learning how to want to be alive.
Though it hurts to admit, Dorien and Cinna make sense together. They get along, share some interests, she’s gorgeous—even if she’s a bitch—and she’s already had a huge crush on him for years.
“I wish she could feel my pain,” I say. “Even a fraction of what I’m going through. I want her to know what this is like. I know it makes me an awful person, but I want her to hurt and suffer for everything she’s caused with Aeron.”
Dorien doesn’t respond, just holds me tighter.
We stay wrapped together tight for almost an hour. The silence has a finality I can feel swallowing my heart. We both know what this is.
Instead of leaving and getting this heartbreak over with, I look across the studio at the almost-finished sculpture on his worktable. It’s me, pulling myself up out of unfinished clay.
“The deadline is next week,” I say.
“I know.”
“How close are you to finishing?”
“A few hours work.”
I kiss him, and maybe it’s our last kiss. “Can I stay until you finish it?”
His fingers caress my hair. “And what if I never do, just so you’ll stay?”
“You need to finish it. You know that’s better for everyone.”
With a final kiss and a heavy sigh, he stands and crosses to the worktable. He takes off his gloves then picks up a loop tool.
I pull my knees to my chest and watch. His hands find their rhythm immediately, shaping and refining, coaxing the clay into contours that look more like me with every pass.
The strong lamplight catches his profile and the small curls at the back of his neck.
He’s beautiful when he works. He’s always been beautiful, but here, making something permanent out of us, he’s the saddest beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Cinna may think I take my life for granted, but I don’t. I’m grateful, right now, for this moment where I get to watch the man I love make the art that lights his soul.
I’ll carry this image forever, layered underneath everything that comes after and the distance between us we’ll never be able to cross again.