Wizard punches his code in for me. “We’ll talk soon?” He tries not to sound plaintive or put pressure on me, or to let hope and other emotions bleed through, but this is Wizard and it’s all there.
It makes me wonder all over again how I could have been so oblivious.
Can this be fixed? Can I even begin to undo the damage that I’ve caused such a beautiful human?
The fluorescent lighting overhead catches all over Wizard’s face. On his granite jaw, on his pounding pulse, on his luminous eyes, fractured apart with a thousand emotions. I want to hug him. I want to tell him that I’m sorry. I want to cry into his shoulder and hold him, but what right do I have to any of that? I can’t be his breath when I stole it from him in the first place. I’m sorry, but not nearly sorry enough, and sorry doesn’t fix anything anyway.
“Yes.” It’s all I can say. A small assurance, but it reverberates through him.
I step into his room and shut the door behind me. I can’t move. I can’t sink down, I can’t throw myself onto the bed. I can’t sob, scream, punch something, or even take a breath.
We used to look for shooting stars because we really were obsessed. We’d spend hours watching and waiting for one. We never saw one. I don’t know what I would have wished then, but I know what I want now.
I want to know what the world would look like if I wasn’t so afraid all the time.
Chapter 10
Esme
I’m going crazy. I know this room isn’t a cage, but all I have is my tumbling thoughts burning a hole in my brain. I’m curled in the middle of his bed, a tight ball falling apart in the way I didn’t find myself needing to do when James brought everything crashing down. Knowing that I hurt the one person who has always been there, always solid, always caring, always so selfless, so fucking immensely, kills me.
I’ve spent all this time sobbing my heart out. I’ve cried so hard that my eyes are nearly swollen shut. The silence in the room is a roar in my throbbing head. My throat is raw, my lungs are on fire, and my stomach is so painful that even setting my palm on top of it hurts.
I can’t talk to Wizard like this.
He’s coming back. This place isn’t just a clubhouse. It’s his family and his life. It’s been all he’s had when his parents proved that they’d never understand him, when James was an asshole, when I was too oblivious to see what was right in front of me.
I peel myself off the bed and walk to the bathroom, feeling like a zombie. It’s fitting, given that it’s how I’ve stumbled my way through life.
I flick on the light and force myself to look in the mirror. I recoil, taking an actual step back. My hands grasp the edge of the sink, keeping me there. I force myself to look at theunhinged mess I am. At the dark, haunted eyes. The wild mass of knots that my hair has become. The flushed, swollen cheeks, my bloodshot eyes. I’ve been the kind of person who pastes on a smile when I’m dead on the inside. Faking it until I made it.
But I didn’t.
It’s not James that kept me in that cage. It wasn’t my parents. It wasn’t this town or anyone else. It wasme. There’s no blame. No more excuses. Just.Me.
I need to make this right.
I look myself in the eye in the mirror. Really look. “Moment one,” I breathe. This is the first moment of putting all this shit back together. I can’t change the past, can’t undo the years, can’t fix someone else’s brokenness. I can offer an apology that will be almost meaningless because words are shit, but they’re all I have. And then I can… what?
I don’t know what, but curling into an unmoving ball in here isn’t going to help.
I strip, get the shower going, wait for it to get hot like Wizard instructed.
I’ve always wanted that fire that people talk about filling them up. I want toburn. I’ve never had the right tools. The fuel, the matches, the spark, the flame. What was I waiting for? For someone to hand them to me? To do the hard work for me? To give me the answers? That’s not how life works.
By the time there’s a knock at the door, I’ve been sitting perched on the edge of the bed for a while. My hair is still damp but no longer dripping onto my clothes. My hands are sore from clenching them in my lap so tightly. My shoulders achefrom being hunched over. I’m wound so tight I could cause a low level explosion. A spark plug, not a spring.
One look at Wizard’s face and I realize that there’s more than one way to be wrecked. He’s not holding anything back anymore. The energy that radiates from him is nearly nuclear, filling every inch of the room like a bomb blast. “Do you want to get out of here?”
Wizard’s eyes are wide and green, vibrant in the hall lights. They’re shining far too intensely, and not in a good way. His hair is a mess from tugging off his helmet, though not flat like I thought it would be. Beads of sweat glisten on his forehead. He’s so fucking tall and broad that he fills up most of the doorway. His leather jacket with his patches gives him that bad boy aura that never fit quite right with all his baby faced innocence, but that seems to be gone. Stripped away in the time between us heading up onto that roof and right now. He’s still the man I know, but he’s more of a stranger than he’s ever been, brimming over with restless energy and bristling with hard edges.
I don’t know if this is a good idea, but staying in this room will suffocate us both. “Yeah,” I find myself saying, the only word that I can get out until I take a step back and try to mentally recalibrate and unstick my tongue. “Uh, should I get my keys?”
His face blanks for a second, then he tilts his chin down. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“What are we going to do? Walk?”
“Yeah. Sure. Maybe. If you want to.”
