My guitar string?
That can’t be what she means.
I asked Marcus and he said no one had been over, but as I think back, he did seem extra cagey that night. I thought I had just come home while he was watching porn again. It happened once, and I don’t think our friendship has been the same. Not since I found him pant less in the kitchen, dick in hand, eating a cupcake.
I shake my head, forcing that image out before it can ruin my life all over again.
The night I asked him about the string comes back to me instead—his shifting eyes, his hand running through his hair nervously. I should’ve caught it, but I’m not always good at reading what people aren’t saying, especially when I’m already stressed. I go quiet and shut down. It’s something that always created so much space between me and Avery.
I study her sleeping silhouette, suddenly putting it all together.
She’s been fuckingprankingme, hasn’t she?
One year Marcus filled Morgan’s car up with balloons full of confetti and cling-wrapped the doors shut. It took her hours to unwrap it, and Morgan retaliated by somehow getting one hundred pounds of glitter in Marcus’s room. Three years later, and half his clothes still have gold sparkles in them.
Confusion hits me as I stare at her ceiling fan rotating. Hands over my chest, I listen to her deep breaths.
She broke up withme, without much reason I could rationalize. She said she needed space, so that’s what I’ve been doing—giving her space. I really had thought everythingwas fine.
I can’t help but replay that night in my head, as I’ve done every night before bed, hoping something I missed before jumps out at me.
“Kane, we need to talk,”Avery says, finally breaking the silence that has lingered long enough to watch three episodes of whatever show we put on—some new TV drama she demanded we start, and I agreed because I’ve never been able to say no to her. She queued it up while I cooked for us, but then I got lost in my thoughts, the message from my father burning a hole in my pocket as we watched, distracting me from both the show and her.
I turn to face her and see tears brimming in her eyes. Panic instantly shoots through my system, wondering what I could have missed over the past two hours while I was checked out.
I reach for her but pull back quickly when she flinches from my touch. Confusion races through me.
“What’s going on?” I ask, my hands hanging awkwardly between us.
“Us. Kane. Or the lack of us, I guess,” she says, wiping a rogue tear with the sleeve of the oversized black hoodie she’s wearing—which she must have taken from my closet when I wasn’t looking.
I stare at her, unsure where this is going, hoping she takes my silence as a cue to continue. The familiar grip of anxiety slowly worms itself into my chest, tightening as my breathing begins to come out unevenly and my hands begin to tingle. I drop them back into my lap.
“Do you have anything to say?” she asks, anger replacingthe sadness on her face. She rubs furiously at her cheeks as tears spill down them, turned just enough for me to see every inch of her beautiful face filling with more and more hurt.
“I mean, I’m not sure what’s going on… I thought things were fine. It’s just been a long week,” I say, rubbing the fog from my eyes.
“And how would I know it’s been a long week, Kane? We don’t talk. You don’t talk to me. And when we do talk, it’s like you’re so mentally checked out of me and our relationship, I’m not even sure why I’m here.” She throws her hands up in anger as she stands, moving toward her bag and shoes by the front door. Frustration lines her tone as her steps quicken away from me.
I race after her, grabbing her wrist and spinning her around to look at me. “What are you talking about? We talk all the time,” I implore, not understanding what’s happening, but feeling the heaviness of panic flood my chest as I stare at her nonetheless. I grip my hair with my hands, pulling trying to loosen the anxiety that’s holding tighter and tighter in my chest, shortening my breaths. I try to grab her hand again, a way to center myself for this conversation.
She rips her arm out of my grip and takes a step back from me, my feet stuck to the cold tile floor. “No, I talk to you, but you never talk to me anymore. And now you’re not even noticing?” More tears spill over and fall down her cheeks. She can’t wipe them away fast enough before the next ones come, and she eventually gives up, letting them drip to the floor. The tears hit the ground, and my hands itch to reach over and wipe them away for her, but it’s clear from the way she pulled away that that is the last thing she wants.
“Wha—” I start but quickly cut myself off as I try to get my racing thoughts in order. The all-too-familiar edges of panic creep into the sides of my vision, rendering me speechlesson what to say, how to fix this. My brain feels like it’s scrambling, thoughts hitting me faster than I can keep up with.
You’re not good enough for your dad and now you’re not good enough for her.
See, you’re too much for her.
Quit your crying, emotions are for girls.
Before I can find the right words to say, Avery picks up her bag and looks directly at me.
“I can’t do this anymore, Kane. I can’t feel like this anymore,” she stresses, pointing at her chest as if it’s causing her physical pain to be around me. Her lips are swollen from crying, her perfect nose dotted with the softest freckles reddened, and those beautiful blue eyes are a deeper blue as her tears continue to track down her face. The star of every dream I’ve ever had, the cure for every nightmare I’ve endured in my sleep.
Until the next words come out of her mouth. “I need to think. I need space. I think we should break up,” she finishes, tears streaming down her beautiful face as my eyes track her every feature.
My ears ring. Break up?
