I’d laughed, and said something about her dirty sneakers, and then shoved her anyway, just to see if she’d fall. She didn’t. She squared her shoulders and walked away, the back of her neck red, refusing to give me anything more.
I wanted her to. Even then, I wanted something from her.
I wanted her to turn around and say my name.
Instead, I got nothing but the echo of my own voice, hollow and small.
That night, I’d gone home and punched a hole in the wall above my bed, then blamed it on the door slamming. My dad never asked. He just poured another drink and turned up the TV, drowning out the sound of whatever I was trying to get out of me.
I never told anyone how much it haunted me. How much it still did.
The memories were a parade now; some clear, some blurred at the edges, like they’d been run through the wash too many times.
I made it my mission to consume every cubic inch she relinquished. If she were invisible, I was going to be the sun—burning, devouring, impossible to ignore.
I thought if I could just carve enough of myself into her, she’d never forget me. That some piece of my rot would sprout inside her and we’d be tangled for life.
It was wrong, so fucking wrong. Every day was a battle, and every day the monster won. I buried that affection, I fucking cursed it and tore it apart.
I lay in the dark on Dante’s couch, every muscle knotting in memory. My childhood had been a laboratory of cruelty, and I was its most dedicated scientist. I justified it then as survival.
I had to keep everybody afraid of me so they could never see how afraid I was myself.
I thought maybe, if I lay here long enough, the years would peel off and I’d reverse-evolve into a kid who could start over. But there was no mercy in the dark. Just the parade, relentless.
Memory was a parasite that doesn’t stop feeding, even when you try to drown it in bourbon or knock it unconscious against a windshield. I saw the timeline of my own cruelty, every instance a bead on a string, taut and unbreakable.
I wanted to believe there was a reason for all of it. That maybe if I pieced together every sick day, every fight, every splintered smile, I could see the mosaic of necessity. That hurting her meant she was close enough to matter. That if I kept her orbiting around me, at least she was still in my gravity.
But the truth was, I just didn’t know how to want something that wasn’t destruction.
The moonlight angled through Dante’s kitchen window, catching on the rim of a crusted coffee mug. The ache in my head was receding, replaced by a new kind of soreness, a memory hangover.
I tried to focus on the little details of his house. It was easier to inventory other people’s lives than to think about my own.
I wondered if Amelia was awake, if she was laying on her back in some shitty motel bed, clutching her phone like a lifeline, reading and rereading my dumb, desperate text.
Or maybe she was sleeping, dreams mixing her mother’s voice with the static of my own apologies.
I wondered if she remembered any of those high school days the way I did, or if she’d sanded them smooth and buried them, just another set of bones under the floorboards.
I slept, eventually, and when I woke, the world was grey and still.
I listened for the sounds of Dante in the kitchen, but there was nothing. Just the ticking clock and the hum of the fridge, a silence too thick to outwait.
I padded to the bathroom and pissed away what little was left in me. My reflection in the mirror was a disaster. Even scrubbing at the grime and dried sweat didn’t do much.
I found Dante on the back porch, already halfway through a cigarette and reading something on his phone, thumb flicking quick, like he was trying to win a race he didn’t want to run.
He didn’t look up when I stepped outside. “There’s coffee,” he said. “Didn’t know if you wanted eggs. Figured you’d rather die.”
“Thanks.” I meant it, though my throat shredded the word until it sounded like sarcasm.
He didn’t say anything else, so I got the coffee, black and burnt, and joined him on the porch.
“What’s next in the life of Caiden Baxter?” Dante asked, a hint of curiosity and amusement in his tone.
I shrugged and stared blankly into the yard. “Don’t know. I suppose you could drop me off at my car. After that? I don’t know, man. I know I don’t want to go back to North Carolina yet.”
