I think about him. I let myself think about Chase. The way she leaned into his side without thinking. The way he kissed the top of her head when they walked into the kitchen. The way I had thought, the entire time he was in my house,Good. Let him love her. Let her have a good man.
She’s going to hate me. She’s going to fucking hate me and want absolutely nothing to do with me now.
Fuck, I shouldn’t have gotten into the bed last night.
I stand at the sink for a long time. I don’t know how long. Somebody flushes a toilet downstairs. The pipes thump in the wall. The house is starting to wake up around me. I rub at the smudge with my thumb. It doesn’t come off. I rub harder. The skin goes red. The ink stays. It’s set into the small lines of mycollarbone, and it isn’t going anywhere. I leave it and walk out of the bathroom.
I stand outside my own bedroom door with my hand on the handle.
The girl that I’ve been running from for years is in there. It doesn’t feel real. I don’t know how we keep coming back to each other, even after all this time. My head is too fucked up to handle her. She deserves so much better than what I can offer. What the fuck have I even offered her? A bunch ofalmosts. I should fucking know better by now. I lose all control when I’m around her, so why do I think it’d be different now?
I step back and stare at the door. She’s going to wake up and realize that I’m still the same piece of shit that doesn’t deserve her. But why does that matter? She’s already moved on. She already fucking knows this. She has a fucking boyfriend.
I could punch the wall right now. Instead, I take another step back.
The wall I built brick by fucking brick is back up. The same exact one I built when we were seventeen. The girl in my bed has my heart, and it gives her too much power over me. Without that control, I’ll lose everything. I’ve seen my mom do it over and over –– and I fucking can’t. I have too much to lose. I cannot go in there. I can’t look at her face with her boyfriend in my head and her mustache on my chest and pretend I am the same carefree man I was last night.
I go downstairs.
The kitchen is worse than I thought it would be.
Red cups on every flat surface. The dining room table covered in cups and one half-eaten plate of Rowan’s veggie tray and what looks like a wing somebody peeled off a costume and never picked back up. The pumpkin lights are sagging across the kitchen archway. There’s something I don’t want to identify in the corner of the living room. Stanley is on the couch with ablanket pulled halfway over his head and one bare foot sticking off the cushion.
Percy is at the coffee machine, mumbling in French. Posh, motherfucker. He’s already dressed — sweats and a long-sleeve — and his hair is wet from a shower. He has the small Sunday morning calm of a man who has been awake for an hour and made peace with this mess.
He looks up when I come in. His eyes go to my collarbone first. I see them go.
He doesn’t say anything. He looks back at the coffee machine.
“Coffee’s almost done.” He goes back to it. Doesn’t ask. Doesn’t even glance up again. He pulls two mugs down from the cabinet — one for him, one for me — without asking, and I love him for it in a way I don’t have words for. My head’s a fucking mess. I can’t stop the jabbing thoughts in there, stabbing from every angle, screaming at me that I’m a fucking idiot. I stand at the island and put my hands flat on the marble. I don’t sit. There’s no version of my body that knows how to sit right now.
The coffee machine hisses. Percy fills two mugs. He slides one to me across the marble.
“Drink it. You look like shit.”
I take my mug and hope he doesn’t ask. He picks up his own mug and leans against the counter across from me. He doesn’t sip his. He just holds it in both hands. He’s not looking at me directly, but he isn’t looking away either. He’s doing the Percy thing, which is to occupy a room without taking up space in it.
Then there’s a knock at the front door. We both turn our heads.
Percy raises his eyebrows.
I say, “I got it.”
I cross the living room. Stanley doesn’t move an inch on the couch. He’s still fast asleep. I step over a Solo cup. The front door has a long pane of frosted glass on the side of it, and through theglass I can see a silhouette — short, female, two coffees in a tray in one hand. I know who it is before I open the door.
Mila.
She’s in sweats. She looks like shit with no makeup and messy hair. She looks at me the way she looked at me last night. The eyes are the same. The mouth is the same. The way she is holding herself is the same.
“Where is she?”
I hate that I appreciate her tone. I hate me too. “Upstairs. Sleeping.”
She walks past me into the house, sets the coffees on the entry table, turns, and looks at me head-on for the first time.
Her eyes drop to my collarbone.
She sees the smudge. She closes her eyes for one full second. “Jesus,Blue.”
