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I nod some more. “Okay,” I whisper, so quiet it carries hardly any volume.
“I don’t want to feel like I’m not supposed to be here.”
I suck in a breath, and my eyes open. “Jer.”
His face bunches and he shakes his head. “Do you know what it’s like, realizing the universe fucked up?” His eyes are thick with tears he still can’t seem to let fall, despite bleeding out for me.
“Do you know what it’s like to know that deep down, it has to have crossed people’s minds, my parents’ minds, yours?”
“It should’ve been me.”
I shake my head, his words tumbling around my head. “I told you?—”
“And you lied!” he shouts over me. Nostrils flaring, chest heaving. “Whether you want to admit it or not.”
He won’t believe me.
No matter what I say…
“You’re supposed to be here, Jeremy,” I whisper instead. “You’re supposed to be here.”
A world without him in it…
Is no world I want to live in.
Maybe you should tell him that, a voice pipes up, and I go still… because it sounds like Izzy. And it’s been so long since I could remember her voice so clearly.
Jeremy stares at me, jaw ticking. The cords down his neck jump under his skin with how rigid he holds himself.
“Jeremy, please?—”
“Don’t,” he says simply, stiffly. He gives his head a little shake. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it. Nothing you can possibly say right now will make this better. So just…don’t.”
My heart thumps painfully. Lips pressed tightly together, I give him a nod.
Fight for him!
I frown.
This time, the voice in my head is all mine.
Jeremy finally breaks my gaze, and steps back, running a hand across his face.
“How can I fix this? What can I do?” I say.
He steps around me, reaching down for his forgotten jacket, shaking it out.
“I don’t know,” he says, straightening. He runs his fingers through his white, windswept hair. “Maybe there is no fixing this.”
“I don’t believe that,” I murmur, the softness in my voice a sharp contrast to the blades shredding me up inside.
His gaze flits to mine as he slowly lowers his hand. He tosses his jacket over his shoulder, and tilts his head, mouth pressed into a hard line.
It hits me all over then that I kissed him. Again.
Sober this time.
It’s only been minutes…and yet the distance between that version of me—of us—and who we are now, is greater than it’s ever been.
