Track 14 #2
“It’s everything else. This is all becoming more than I signed up for, and I shouldn’t have signed up for anything in the first place.”
“How is this becoming more?”
She looks at me flatly. “Don’t play dumb, Jake. I see the way you look at me.”
I swallow hard, alarms ringing in my head. I want to deny it if only to save face. But it would be pointless. I’m looking at her that same way right now. Like she’s the answer to every question the universe could ever hold.
“So?”
“So?” she echoes. “You want more than this.” She gestures between us. “You want more than the friendship we’re hiding behind.” We’re hiding behind.
I didn’t break my gaze. “So do you.”
A fiery desire flickers across her face. She doesn’t accept or deny my claim, so I press further.
“Am I wrong?” I take a step forward and close the space between us. “You don’t think of me like that, of us like that? You don’t want anything else?”
She licks her perfect, pouty lips, and her throat dips. “It doesn’t matter what we want. I can’t be what you want me to be. I can’t do all of that.”
“All of what?” I ask, my voice raising. “Say it, Alana. Don’t hold back now. You’ve had nothing but words and opinions from the moment I met you. Don’t silence them now.”
“You look at me like I’m some fucking angel, and I’m not!” she yells. My heart thuds loudly in my ears as panic rises in my chest. “You look at me like I could save you. Like I’m good! Like you know in your heart that I’m good, and I’m n—”
“What does that even mean? Alana, you are good. How could you possibly be anything else?”
She shuts her eyes, and when a tear slips out, I close the last of the space keeping us apart and hold her in my arms.
“Alana.” I take her face in my hands. “You think because you had some shitty childhood with some fucked up parents, you’re not good? You think because your dad’s too damn broken to fix himself, that what he says is true? You are nothing short of amazing.”
“I’m not,” she cried, her voice shaky.
“You are. You’re the most amazing person I’ll ever know.
Do you know how many people just pass by the ones who want nothing to do with the world?
Do you know how many people won’t even try and help them find their way?
All of them. No one came to save me, Alana.
No one even tried. But you did. You took one look at me and knew there was someone that needed you.
I look at you like you can save me because that’s what you did for me.
You save people every day. You’re a good person, Alana. ”
“That’s not true,” she sobs.
“Then why do you help everyone you see, huh? Why do you buy a coffee for the homeless man that sits outside your job every time you work? Why do you stop and hold the door for the person behind you, even when it’s raining?
You do those things because you’re good, Alana.
Your heart is good and bold and beautiful,” I breathed. “Everything about you is beautiful.”
A sob falls out of her, and she closes her eyes. She takes a stressed breath before grabbing my wrists.
“See this? This is what I can’t do.” She pulls on my arms and I let them fall, taking a step back only because she wants me to, which pains me even more. “I can’t have you getting in my head like this. You don’t know me, Jake. My shit is none of your business, and it’s not your problem.”
“I do know you, and I want it to be my problem. I want to be there for you.”
I want to be everything for you.
“No,” she deadpans. Her eyes close hard again, hiding her pain, but I can’t hide mine. Her words are ripping my heart out. I’m losing. I’m falling off the cliff I never wanted to climb up, and now I’m grasping at nothing but air.
“Okay, fine,” my hands fly up. “Then forget everything else. We can just be surface friends and keep things light and fun, like before. No deep talks. No feelings. There. Done. Easy.”
“It’s not that simple, Jake.” She groans. “We can’t just go back!”
“Why the hell not?!”
The air between us is thick and heavy with her silence. “Why can’t we just be friends?” I sound just as desperate as I am, but I don’t care.
“Because I don’t need a friend.”
“Then what do you need?! Tell me what you need so I can be that for you!” I say with my arm shot out to my side, my other fingers pointed into my chest. I’m pleading. More than that, I’m begging her not to let this go. Not to let me go.
I need to be there for her. I need to be that tiny sliver of hope in the darkness she once was for me. I need it more than anything. I need her and the fire she creates in me that nothing or no one else has.
Silent minutes pass over us. There is only our rapid breaths and the soft murmur of shuffles in the hallway to fill the weighted space. We stare at each other, her chest rising and falling like she’s trying to hold herself together. Finally, her lips part, voice barely above a whisper.
“I need you to leave.” she breathes.
The words smack into me like a tractor trailer carrying cinderblocks of heartbreak.
For a second, I consider I’ve misheard her, like the air itself might take it back if I just wait long enough. But the look on her face is unflinching. It’s not anger staring back at me. It’s something worse. Surrender.
My chest tightens, heat clawing at the back of my throat as I try to swallow everything I want to say. My mouth opens, but I hesitate, caught between the ache in my heart and the ache I can see in hers, the kind that lives in the hollow spaces no one else can reach.
“Fine,” I say, though it comes out broken, a word dressed up as indifference.
I step past her, every movement heavy and deliberate, like if I move too fast, the floor might give out beneath me.
My shoulder brushes hers, and for a moment, I swear she almost turns toward me, almost saying something. But she doesn’t.
The door swings open, and I let it close hard behind me. The sound travels down the empty hall in a final and definitive way.
I stop halfway down the stairwell, my hand gripping the railing with white knuckles.
My pulse is a drumbeat in my ears, drowning out everything else.
My throat is tight and my eyes sting. I want to turn back.
I want to tell her I don’t care how broken she is, that I’d take every shattered piece if it meant she doesn’t have to face it alone.
I don’t—because I knew she’d ask me to leave.
Because staying would only break her more.
So I keep walking, each step feeling like I’m losing something I’ll never get back.
By the time I hit the sidewalk, the air is thick with the coming rain. Except when the first drop hit my cheek, I realized it’s not rain at all.
I don’t slow my pace the entire way home. My head continues to spin, caught in a whirlpool of wants and brokenness and all the things it keeps you from. Stuck between a truth I don’t want to face and the pain I can’t escape.
I can’t believe I’m here, feeling like I’m losing an everything I never meant to want in the first place. The closer I get to home, the heavier it all becomes. The absence, the what-ifs, the things I didn’t say.
By the time I reach my door, I’m not sure if I want to go inside or turn around and run back to her. But the truth is, there’s nothing to run back to. I’ve already lost her.
And the worst part? She was never really mine to begin with.