July 12
Dad,
I’m mad. I’m mad at me, I’m mad at Brooklyn, I’m mad at Nikki, and I’m mad at you.
I know that sounds childish, but I don’t care. You left, and now every time someone starts to leave, I lose my mind trying to stop it. It’s like my brain hits some panic switch that screams not again, not again, and suddenly I’m holding on so tight I start to hurt myself.
I don’t know what to believe anymore about Brooklyn.
You’d think I’d consider walking away now. Any rational person probably would. But I can’t. I won’t. Because every time he comes apart, I see that same grief I’ve been dragging around since you died. The kind that settles in your bones and makes everything heavy. I can’t abandon him in it. Not when I know what that kind of aching bullshit feels like.
Maybe that’s my punishment for still missing you. I find pieces of you in broken people and call it caring about someone. I tell myself I’m saving them, but maybe I’m just trying to save myself from feeling all these awful things. I’m self-fulfilling prophecies that aren’t even mine.
I feel like I’m being torn in two. Half of me knows I should leave before it gets worse, but the other half firmly believes that I can hold someone together if I never let go.
So I’m staying. For now. Because I still believe, deep down, that if I keep holding on, maybe one day someone will stay for good.
Nat
Twenty-two
“Hello? Earth to Nat! Are you even paying attention?”
Nikki’s voice pulled me from my daze. I shook my head and blinked a few times, letting my eyes adjust to the bright fluorescent lighting of Reformation. A sweet lavender and vanilla scent wafted through the air, and it was enough to put me to sleep. I rubbed at my tired eyes, feeling my head sit heavy on my neck. The image of Brooklyn’s plastic bag of little pills flashed in my mind every time I tried to close my eyes, and my stomach ached even at the thought of it. It had had me tossing and turning for the past few days, my head swimming like a small boat lost at sea.
“Do you like this or not?” Nikki waved a mustard-yellow sundress embroidered with flowers in my face.
“Um.” I scrunched my nose up. “I think that would look better on you.”
Nikki frowned and tossed the dress back on a rack. “We’re supposed to be shopping foryou, remember? You’re the one who needs more cute clothes.”
“I’m fine, I can borrow some ofyourvery cute clothes,” I said as she shuffled through racks of more dresses, occasionally picking one up only to put it back.
“No, you need your own clothes, so you can look good for your boyfriend,” Nikki said with a nonchalant shrug. She pursed her lips and waited for my response. After a moment of my silence, she groaned and shoved my arm.
“Come on, you’ve barely told me anything about your date and stuff,” she prodded. “This is the first time I’ve seen you all weekend.”
I put on a thin smile, feeling the very act of trying to keep it together stretching me thin too. “We had a nice time this weekend. He took me for tacos one night, and we ate dinner at his house with his parents. That’s all.”
I felt words I couldn’t say well up in my throat, and they stung hard as they scratched against my insides. I wanted to tell Nikki that he’d taken me to a secluded beach to watch the sunset, and that the way he held me set fire to my insides, and that he smiled at me with his gleaming white teeth like I was the only person in the room. Like I was the only person who even mattered.
But something so literally small—six little blue pills no bigger than my pinkie nail—loomed figuratively large over my head, like dark clouds about to unleash a hurricane.
“Natalie Ray Owens, my goodness gracious,” Nikki called out in singsong, causing me to drop the dress I had picked off the rack. “What is your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem,” I said, hyperaware of how hard I had to try to keep my hands steady. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
I kept it all in, realized exposing the good also meant exposing the bad. It was better to pretend none of it had happened at all. For both of our sakes.
“Fine.” Nikki groaned. “I need you to focus. I refuse to leave this store with nothing.”
“So, thenyouget a dress,” I quipped. “And I’ll borrow it later.”
After a beat, we laughed at each other. I finally studied the dress I had pulled from the rack. It was floor-length and a silky pale green, with a high neckline and splashes of white flowers that looked like they were painted in watercolors directly on the fabric. It felt like almost nothing in my hands.
“Wow,” Nikki chirped. “You have to get that. You’d give Brooklyn a heart attack in that dress.”
I bit down on my lip hard. I felt dizzy and was just about ready to reveal everything to Nikki in the middle of our shopping trip when my phone buzzed in my pocket.
