Chapter 16
Dillon
“Last time we talked, you said things escalated quickly with Charlie. I thought we could touch on that today.” My therapist, Sandra Dulles, watches me with a patient expression, her black-framed glasses perched on the edge of her nose.
“Okay,” I say slowly. Reluctantly. I didn’t want to show up for this second session, but Gran pulled a favor with someone she knew to get me in with Sandra so quickly.
I wasn’t about to let Gran down. Not again.
Sandra looks at her tablet when I don’t say anything else, swiping her finger against the screen. “You told me that when things got tense, you said things to Charlie you didn’t actually mean. Can you tell me more about that?”
I prop my elbows on my knees, attention shifting to the half-drawn blinds shielding us from the sunlight streaming through the large window.
A minute ticks by on the clock behind Sandra.
My focus moves to the shelves lining one wall, covered in thick books with titles that may as well be in another language.
Sandra’s watching me, her head tipped to one side, a stray brown curl resting against her cheek.
“Dillon?” she prompts. There’s a beauty mark on her left temple.
Whenever I look at her, that’s where I focus, avoiding the assessing look in her eyes.
It’s hard not to feel as if she’s judging me.
Logically, I know she’s not, but the uncomfortable feeling never quite leaves.
“It wasn’t just things I didn’t mean.” The admission doesn’t sound like it’s coming from me, the voice too rough and unfamiliar.
Sandra’s eyes flare with surprise before she smooths her face into something neutral. “That’s a different answer from our last session,” she says, a questioning lilt to her voice. “Are you saying you did mean what you told her?”
I wet my lips, a pigeon catching my attention as it soars past the window. I track the animal until it disappears.
“No, it wasn’t—” My throat bobs on a swallow, feeling too tight. “I didn’t mean what I said…but I meant to hurt her. Even if I didn’t know it then. I knew exactly what to say to do the most damage, and I used it.”
Sandra gives a slow nod, looking down at her tablet. She picks up the pen, scrawling something across the glass screen, and my knee jiggles. I grind my elbow into my thigh, trying to make the movement stop.
She doesn’t look back up, even when her pen stops moving. Sandra always knows when to ease off on the pressure, giving me a moment so the tightness in my chest eases and lets me breathe.
“Why do you think you did that?”
“I felt like…” I shake my head. “God, I sound like an asshole.”
Sandra gives me a small smile. “You know that isn’t constructive,” she chides gently. “We want to move out of old patterns, break habits, and build new, healthy ones.”
I chuckle. “But sometimes, it’s the truth, right? I was an asshole.” The humor dries up faster than it came. “I reacted. I just saw Barrett—”
“Charlie’s friend?” Sandra clarifies.
I stare down at the floor. “Yeah. He’s always just been there, right from the beginning. I kept hearing this voice in my head, ‘If she has him, why does she need me?’”
“What was the answer?”
I blink, frowning at Sandra in bemusement. “Huh?”
“What did Charlie need you for?” she asks softly, prodding. “What did you give her that she couldn’t get from her friend?”
My mouth trembles slightly. “Love, I guess. He doesn’t love her like I do. Not in the same way, or as deeply.”
Sandra nods, just as a soft chime comes from her desk.
“That’s our time for today. I’d like you to think about why you only guess that you give Charlie love, Dillon.
” She leans forward, eyes earnest and intense over the rim of her glasses.
“I want you to really think about why you reacted the way you did. And not just considering your relationship with Charlie, but also your friendships and your childhood.”
“You don’t ask for much, huh?” I joke, but it falls flat.
“It’s your homework,” Sandra says firmly, and I sigh heavily, dropping my head against the back of the couch, squeezing my eyes shut. “I’ll see you in a week. We’ll discuss everything you reflect back on.”
On my way home, Jack texts me, asking to catch up. I ignore it, unable to think of anything worse right now. Not when it feels as if my stomach has been cut open and my insides are spilling out everywhere.
Instead, I go back to my silent apartment, wishing I didn’t see Charlie everywhere I look. I sit on the couch, thinking about that morning, remembering how she walked through the front door, already broken because she knew we were over, and was just waiting for me to catch up.
I try to think about what Sandra asked me to do, but my mind is blank—trying to protect itself from a hard truth.
I wanted to hurt Charlie that day.
And I succeeded.
Barrett knew it too. He’d had a front-row seat to the hell Charlie’s mother put her through, time and time again. He watched me join the ranks of people who hurt her, when she was a person who only ever deserved good.
The guilt and anguish over what I did have set up a permanent residence in my chest, almost making me wish that Barrett was around to punch me again.
I deserve to feel every ounce of the pain, because I know Charlie is still feeling the weight of my words. I was the last person she expected to ever lash out at her like that, which meant her guard had been down.
My mind is all jumbled and messed up—like someone dumped about twenty different puzzles with missing pieces into my head and told me to clean them up. I’m edgy and out of sorts, so I pull out my phone, ready to call her, but then freeze.
There’s no point.
Charlie doesn’t want to hear from me, and I’m not at a point that I deserve for her to listen.
I pull up the notes app, staring down at the screen for a long time, wondering what I’d say to her if she were standing in front of me.
In middle school, I had this teacher who had us scrunch a piece of paper into a ball, and then tell us to smooth it back out.
We spent ages rubbing the pages, pressing them against our desks, stomping on them.
Anything to try and get the creases out, but nothing worked.
The teacher told us that our words had the same effect on a person.
That once they landed on someone, there was no getting them out.
It’s what I did to you. I know you’ll never forget the things you heard or what I said after.
I won’t forget either.
I know no amount of remorse, no amount of I’m sorry will ever make this better for you. I want you to know that this is on me, not you.
I’m trying to do better.
Be better.
I stare at the rambling note, reading the words over and over again until the sentences blur, thinking about everything that led me to this moment, and why the poison in my life felt so diluted—so normal—that I couldn’t recognize it for what it was.
The apartment gets dark, only the flare from the phone lighting up the room.
I save the note and close out of the app, staring at the background display—a picture of Charlie.
She’s standing at the end of a wharf, the sky blue and endless behind her, the surface of the dark ocean rippling in the wind.
She’s looking at the camera, at me, her hair whipping wildly around her head and her smile wide, flashing that small gap between her teeth.
I trace her smile with my finger before darkening the screen and going to bed.
My phone rings as I step out of my car, and my heart jolts—same as every other time my phone goes off, even when I know it won’t be Charlie.
It’s been over a month since the party, and it’s never her.
Checking the name flashing across the screen, I put the phone to my ear. “Gran? What’s up?”
“Don’t you ‘What’s up’ me, boy,” she immediately grumbles out. “You’ve been avoiding me, and I know you’ve been avoiding your mother, too.”
My mouth twitches, even when the last thing I feel like doing is smiling. “Avoiding is such a strong word,” I tell her. “I prefer selectively choosing not to be in the same location as you.”
“Oh, now you’re a smart alec. Well, I’m calling to tell you that you better selectively choose to be at my house for dinner tonight. I’m making a pot roast, and you’re the guest of honor.”
I huff through my nose. “Why does that sound like a bad thing?”
“It’s not all bad. Your dad isn’t coming.”
“You gotta take it easier on Mom,” I tell her, eyes flashing to the building in front of me, grimacing at what waits for me inside. “I’ll come for dinner.”
“Gracious of you,” Gran mutters. “And I’ll take it as easy as I wanna take it. She takes enough crap and lies from him. Someone needs to give her the truth to counteract it all.” A slight breath, hitched and sad. “Even if it hurts both of us.”
“Maybe there’s another way—”
“Dinner will be served at six,” Gran cuts in. “Don’t be late.”
There’s a click as she hangs up, leaving me listening to silence, and I sigh. As much as I am avoiding her, Gran also knows where I’m going today. This was a calculated attack, the wily old bat.
Shaking off the phone call, I go inside. I’m right on time, so the receptionist waves me straight into the office.
Sandra’s standing at her desk, a polite smile on her face. “Dillon, hi. How are you?”
“Fine,” I murmur, taking a seat on the couch, watching as she grabs her tablet and takes the seat across from me. She’s wearing a gray tweed skirt today, her curly hair pinned back into its usual bun.
I lean back, hands twisting together in my lap, hating that I’m here. Knowing that I need to be, but still wishing I was any-fucking-where else.
“So,” Sandra starts cheerfully. “How has the last week been for you?”
“Same as usual, I guess. I’ve been keeping to myself. I haven’t seen any of my friends since that housewarming, though Jack keeps messaging. I’ve just been…You know, going to work, going home.” A wry smile. “Coming here.”
She nods, not giving anything away. “Did you do the homework I gave you last time?”