CHAPTER TWENTY
Bee stared at herself on the phone screen and immediately considered turning the camera off. Her eyes were swollen. Her hair was pulled into a messy bun that had given up sometime that morning. The oversized sweatshirt she wore made her look like she had been hiding inside it for days.
She had not posted much since the accident.
At first, nobody questioned it because everyone knew she was recovering, but the longer she stayed quiet, the more messages started arriving from people asking if she was okay.
Bee knew she should probably say something.
She just had no idea how to explain that physically she was healing, but emotionally she felt like somebody had dropped her from a second-story window.
She adjusted the phone against the little stand on her dresser and checked the screen again. No angle was going to fix the fact that she looked terrible, so eventually she gave up and hit record.
“Hey, guys,” Bee said, forcing a smile. “I know I’ve been kind of quiet.”
She paused and looked at herself on the screen. Even to her, the smile looked fake.
“I’m okay,” Bee continued. “I’m still sore, still bruised, and apparently getting hit by a car is terrible for your content schedule.”
Bee tried to laugh, but the sound barely came out. She looked away from the camera for a second before forcing herself to continue.
“I’m home with Grandma, and I’m resting,” Bee said. “I just wanted to let everybody know I’m alive before people start making conspiracy theories.”
From somewhere down the hall, Grandma called out. Her voice carried clearly into Bee’s room.
“People already make enough nonsense,” Grandma said.
Bee almost smiled for real this time. She looked toward the open door before turning back to the camera.
“Grandma says hello,” Bee said.
“I did not,” Grandma replied.
Bee looked toward the door again. “You literally just talked.”
“I talked to you,” Grandma said.
Bee turned back toward the camera. “Apparently Grandma has boundaries now.”
“I always had boundaries,” Grandma called back.
Bee shook her head and looked at the screen. For a few seconds, the familiar exchange helped, but the heaviness returned as soon as she remembered why she had been avoiding her phone in the first place.
She had not checked Wes’s page that morning. She had told herself that at least six times, and then she had checked it anyway. His video was still there. In it, he looked happy, smiling as though nothing had changed.
Bee knew better than almost anyone that people could smile into a camera while everything behind it was falling apart, but seeing Wes joke about his injuries and his truck still hurt in a way she could not explain.
She had watched the video twice before, immediately hating herself for it.
When she looked back at her reflection on the screen, she realized she had been silent for too long.
“Anyway,” Bee said, trying to recover. “I’m still here. I’m just taking things a little slower right now.”
Her voice changed slightly on the last few words. Bee cleared her throat and looked down before continuing.
“I’ll be back to posting more soon,” Bee said. “Probably. Maybe. We’ll see.”
She forced another smile, but it felt even less convincing than the first one. Bee stared at the camera for another second before ending the video.
“Okay,” Bee said. “Bye.”
Bee stopped recording and immediately dropped the smile. She stared at the screen for a moment before playing the video back. She looked awful, not injured awful but heartbroken awful, and she knew it too.
She almost deleted the video. After staring at the screen for another few seconds, she posted it anyway. At that point, she did not have enough energy left to pretend she cared whether anybody thought she looked bad.
Comments started coming in almost immediately. Bee watched the first few appear beneath the video.
@melanieb14: You look exhausted. Please rest.
@sydneymarie: Glad you’re okay!
@rachaelw_22: Take all the time you need.
@taylorkayx: You don’t have to post for us.
Bee stopped reading the comments almost immediately, cutting herself off the moment she saw the first few words.
She knew that if she kept going, she would eventually run into someone mentioning Wes, and she was not ready for that yet.
She put her phone face down on the dresser and crawled back onto the bed.
Her body still hurt when she moved too quickly, but the soreness had become familiar enough that she barely noticed it anymore. What she noticed was the empty feeling in her chest, the kind that settled in and made everything else feel slightly distant.
She had not heard from Wes since she left his house, and even though she kept telling herself she should not care, Bee had expected him to text.
That was the part she hated admitting to herself.
She had walked out angry enough to convince herself she did not want to hear from him, but every time her phone buzzed, she still looked. Every single time, it was never him.
Bee rolled onto her side and pulled the blanket higher, trying to make the room feel smaller and her thoughts quieter. She told herself she was going to sleep even though she knew she was not actually tired in the way that mattered. She was only exhausted in a way that felt like hiding.
A knock sounded at the front door less than an hour later, sharp enough to cut through the quiet.
Bee ignored it at first, hoping it would go away on its own, but it did not.
She could hear movement in the hallway as Grandma answered it instead.
A few moments later, voices drifted down the hall, and Bee recognized Maya almost immediately.
The sound of her name in that familiar voice made something in Bee shift, pulling her upright before she even fully decided to move. Maya appeared in the doorway carrying two plastic grocery bags and a fountain drink large enough to qualify as a medical emergency.
She lifted the bags when Bee stared at her. “What are you doing here?” Bee asked.
“Emergency snacks,” Maya said.
Bee looked at the bags, then at Maya. “I didn’t call you.”
“You posted your face on the internet,” Maya said.
“My face is fine,” Bee replied.
Maya stared at her. “No, it is not.”
Bee frowned. “That’s rude.”
Maya did not miss a beat. “That video looked like somebody canceled Christmas and stole your dog.”
“I don’t have a dog,” Bee said.
“You looked like you lost one anyway,” Maya replied.
Bee tried not to smile, and it almost worked. Maya walked into the room and dropped the bags onto the bed. Chips, candy, cookies, and two bottled drinks spilled across the blanket.
Bee looked at the pile. “Did you buy the entire gas station?”
“I panicked,” Maya said.
“This is your panic purchase?” Bee asked.
“I didn’t know what kind of emotional emergency we were dealing with,” Maya explained.
Bee picked up a bag of chips. “You bought three kinds.”
“Exactly,” Maya replied.
Maya kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the bed beside her. She looked at Bee for a few seconds without saying anything, which immediately made Bee suspicious.
“What?” Bee asked.
Maya shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You’re staring,” Bee said.
“I’m assessing,” Maya replied.
“That sounds worse,” Bee said.
“It is,” Maya replied.
Bee opened the chips mostly so she would have something to do with her hands. She ate one and stared toward the television, even though it was not turned on. Maya waited without saying anything. Bee could feel her waiting beside her.
Eventually, Bee looked at her. “What?”
Maya shrugged. “How’s Wes?”
Bee stopped chewing, and that was all it took. Her face crumpled before she could stop it. Maya immediately sat up straighter. Her teasing expression disappeared as she looked at Bee.
“Bee?” Maya said.
Bee shook her head and looked away. She tried to swallow, but her throat tightened so quickly that the first sound that came out of her was somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
“I think we broke up,” Bee cried.
Maya blinked. “You think?”
That made everything worse. Bee started crying so hard she could barely breathe. Maya moved the snacks out of the way and scooted closer before opening her arms.
“Okay,” Maya said. “Okay, come here.”
Bee collapsed against her cousin and sobbed into her shoulder, the kind of crying that came out of her before she could even think to stop it.
It was not pretty crying, nothing like the kind people posted online with soft lighting and dramatic distance.
There were no graceful tears sliding down her cheeks while she stared dramatically out a window.
Instead, she fell apart in place, unable to hold anything together.
Her breathing became uneven, and her nose started running. Every time she tried to calm down, another sob hit her hard enough to make her shoulders shake again.
Maya wrapped both arms around her. “Just cry.”
Bee shook her head against Maya’s shoulder. “This is so embarrassing.”
“You’re crying on somebody who used to show up to school with mismatched shoes and did not notice until lunch,” Maya said. “I’m reminding you that I have no room to judge.”
Bee tried to laugh and immediately started crying again. Maya rubbed her back and grimaced at her failed attempt to help.
“Okay,” Maya said. “Bad joke.”
Bee grabbed a tissue from the box near the bed and wiped her face, but it did almost nothing. She grabbed another one and tried to calm down, but the tears kept coming.
“I hate him,” Bee said.
“No, you don’t,” Maya replied.
“I know,” Bee said, sobbing harder.
“That’s what I thought,” Maya said as her face softened.
“He’s so stupid,” Bee muttered under her breath.
“Probably, but that doesn’t mean you have to fix everything for him,” Maya said.
“He keeps blaming himself,” Bee said.
“For the accident?” Maya asked, frowning.