It’s the first time I’ve heard her say my name, and there’s no fucking way anyone could say the pain lancing across my forehead is psychological. She might as well have ripped the whole thing open again.
It gets worse.
She keeps talking. “I’ve gotten pretty good at it.”
I grip my jaw, shake my head, and I’m about to say something—I don’t know what, but I’d do anything to be able to fix this.
I’d go back in time to when they stitched up my head, and I’d ask them to take the string and save it to tie her back together.
But she holds up a hand.
“You made your bed, Bohdan. And it was, unfortunately, one without me.” Her voice cracks, her eyes cloud over, a solitary tear slips out, tracking down over her freckles, and I reach out to wipe it away, but I catch my hand right when she jerks backward.
I don’t think I could say anything even if I tried.
I’ve hated a lot of things over the last year and a half I’ve been without her.
I’ve hated even more things in the year before that, and they all started on the day I got hurt.
I’ve hated my brain for failing me in more ways than one.
I’ve hated my body for not being able to catch back up.
I’ve hated my lungs for depleting faster.
I’ve hated that fucking equipment company.
I’ve hated my former equipment manager for the sole fact that I ended up with a bad helmet.
I’ve hated the guy who hit me.
I’ve even hated the guy who made the play that had me close to the boards.
I’ve tried my hand at hating my two best friends, because they still get to skate.
But I don’t think I’ve ever hated myself. At least, not the way I do right now.
She gets the last word.
“Now lie in it.”
Sloan
Then - Seattle
Years can go by in the blink of an eye.
A boy can see you through scratched-up glass and change the trajectory of your whole life.
You can spend so many nights wrapped up in each other, and you can miss out on things you thought were important to you but seem entirely insignificant because they aren’t him.
If you’re lucky, you might get to watch him turn into a man: planes of his face drawing harsher lines and stubble spreading slowly across his jaw, darkening angles that only seem soft to you. Hands widening with the stretching topography of new veins, his shoulders and chest even more so, more than enough to hold you just right.
You change, too.
Your cheekbones lift, your body moves through more than one phase and it goes back again, your hair grows, but you get to grow into yourself, too.
It’s all still there—the general rot of my brain and maybe who I am underneath it all.
