My whiteboard is at home. I wasn’t expecting to need it. I dig through the glove compartment and find an old gas station receipt and a Jelly pen, use the light from the outside lamp to scratch out some words.
I keep thinking about Noah.
He swallows hard. “Yeah?”
I don’t know what to do.
This applies to, like, my entire life, really, not just the Noah situation.
“I know.” Sam’s voice sounds strange. A little choked. “Andy was right, you know. What he said. I’ve been…avoiding Noah, because I’m—I don’t know. It’s too hard.”
He swallows, looking away from me. I’m suddenly, brutally struck with how much what I’ve done has hurt him, too, even though I know he doesn’t see it that way. Still, it makes the way he treats me even more baffling.
“I know I didn’t have anything to do with what happened, but I still feel all this guilt,” he says. “Like I should’ve stopped it somehow. I have no idea what to say to him.”
Maybe you don’t have to say anything, I write. Maybe just being there is enough.
“Maybe,” he says quietly. “I keep telling myself I’ll go. I just…I can’t make myself do it. I know I should be doing something to help, but I don’t know what. I’m supposed to be his best friend, and I can’t even bring myself to be in the same room as him. What does that say about me?”
That doesn’t make you a bad person, I write.
He laughs, low in his throat. “I’m pretty sure it does, actually.”
You are the best kind of person.
He stares at the words like he doesn’t understand them. “You really think that?” he says.
I reach out and cover his hand with mine so he knows exactly what I think.
“Chelsea,” he says, barely above a whisper. I love the way he says my name, like it’s something he wants to keep safe. I sway a little toward him.