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In This Moment(86)



“It was awful. What do you want me to say? I know that you were upset over your mom and everything was a mess, but when I saw you with that girl I-I couldn’t even breathe.”

“Aimee, I told you—”

“I know, and I said that I believe you and I meant it. But that doesn’t change the way that I felt. Cole, I was obliterated. I had just opened up to you and when you pushed me away and turned to someone else… I-I felt like I was coming apart—disintegrating into so many bits and pieces. Afterward, when I started to think about that, I realized that it’s no wonder I felt that way because the truth is that I’m already shattered. I have been all along. I’ve been using you and what you give me like a glue to keep all the parts of me in place and…” She hesitates. “And that’s not okay. I’ve been counting on you to save me when I should have been figuring out a way to count on myself. Do you see that?”

If words could be a black hole, that’s what this conversation would be. A hole I’m falling into. A vacuum sucking all the light out of existence.

My eyes are burning. It hurts to blink. “I hear what you’re saying, but you can’t sit there and expect me to agree with you. You can’t ask me to clear your conscience. I want to be with you, Aimee. It’s all that I want. Anything less than that sucks.” I push my hands through my hair and pull at the ends. “So say what you have to say but don’t ask me to understand or see things your way. You don’t get my permission to break my fucking heart.”

“Cole…” Her eyes are red and shiny. “If we can’t get our own lives straight then we’ll do worse than break each other’s hearts. We’ll tear each other apart. And maybe I could risk myself, but I can’t risk you. I just can’t”

“In math don’t two negatives make a positive?” It’s lame and I know it before I say it but I can’t help myself. My whole world is going to shit and I need something… anything to hold on to.

Aimee gives me a sad kind of smile. “This isn’t math, Cole. This is my life and this is your life and that means something. It means something to me.” She chokes on that last part.

I need to be touching her, connecting the two of us by a solid line when I say what I have to say so I pick up her hand again and I stroke the tender part of her wrist where the thin blue veins cross over each other like road lines on a city map. “What would you say if I told you that I love you?”

She looks away but I don’t have to see her face to know that she’s crying now. Her shoulders are shaking and her fingers curl over mine so hard that her nails bite into my skin.

My voice is raw but I keep going, pressing my words inside her. “What would you say?”

Aimee lifts her head. She pulls her hand back and touches her scar with the tip of her middle finger. She won’t look me in the eye. “I’d say that loving me is a bad idea.”

So that’s that.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE





Aimee



Do you hear that sound?

The sound of muffled voices carrying over the patio wall. The soft shuffle of bare feet against cement. The crack of a door closing.

Do you hear it? It’s the sound of the world ripping apart.





Cole



I’m not my dad. Being depressed isn’t my style.

What’s my style?

Being pissed.

So that’s what I am. I’m pissed. I’m a lump of barely contained hostility. I can’t see straight, can’t think right. And deep down, I know that means that even if I’m not crying or playing dead, I’m just like every other schmuck that ever handed his heart to a girl and had her squeeze it between her fingers until it burst in a grotesque explosion of blood and torn up tissue.

Hour one: “Let me know if you’re gonna upchuck,” Daniel says. And he’s being serious. I want to laugh and tell him to go fuck himself, but the thing is that I actually might throw up.

Hour three: I punch a hole in a wall at the house. Daniel goes to Home Depot to get a plaster repair kit.

Hour six: Adam leaves and comes back with a case of Natty Light. He puts the whole goddamn thing on my lap and tells me not to worry about getting him back because it was on sale.

Hour seven: I work up the nerve to look at my phone. There are four missed calls from Sophie and one from my mom’s number. Oh, and I have a text from Kate. She’s just checking on me. Fuck that shit. I smash the phone. I guess it’s a good thing that I saved my contacts to the cloud or whatever.

I haven’t counted time like this since my mom left us. It’s like my balls are connected to the minute hand on the clock and with each passing second, they get twisted just a little bit tighter.