“It’s always there…but just, not as suffocating.”
“Same,” she says. “Not easy. Just…less impossible.”
“Progress,” I say.
She hums. “What were they like…holidays with your sister?”
I close my eyes and go there. Isabel stealing dessert off the table before dinner and pretending like she didn’t even when you could see the evidence. The time we tried to deep-fry a turkey and Mom almost divorced Dad. Flour fights in the kitchen, jumping on beds when we were little with our cousins, sneaking out to see the lights on the rich side of town, and sharing a hot chocolate on the curb.
“Fun,” I say, smiling into the memories. “And even more chaotic. We always ended up in trouble together. She’d start it, and I’d make it worse.” I pause for a second. “I can say all of that now without…it killing me.”
“I’m glad you can,” she says, voice soft. “I wish I could’ve met her. I feel like I kinda know her a little. Through you.”
I don’t know why that makes my heart feel so full and my eyes slightly sting. “I love that.”
We talk for a while, and I don’t mean to slide into the heavier thing, but it happens by accident when your guard is down.
“Sometimes it’s stilla knife to the chest when I walk past her room and think about how the dark moments now overshadow the good ones that used to fill that room. I still don’t know how to hand off the guilt that sits on my chest some days.”
“Why do you feel guilty?” she asks quietly. I hear the genuine care in her voice.
I pause, trying to figure out if I can say out loud the hardest part I hold with her death. “I had this best friend,” I start. “Growing up. He was like my brother. He was always with me. We did everything together. He was basically a part of my family. I found out after Isabel died that he…he had raped her.” I have to pause because the words still physically hurt when they come out. “I didn’t know. I should have, right? I saw her changing. More quiet, jumpier even. People at school would say things about her, and I’d fight them and tell myself they were just idiots. And the whole time—” I stop and swallow. “The whole time, it was actually allhim,the person I brought home. He had access to hurt her that badly because of me. I feel responsible for not seeing what had to be so obvious.”
Lydia lets out a heavy breath.
“Bash,” she says, slowly finding the right words to give me. “You were just a child. You cared about your sister. You cared about your friend. Those things aren’t crimes. The only person who did something unforgivable and is to blame is him.”
“I know,” I say. “I do. In my head, I know that.”
“I know you know,” she says. “But guilt is a stubborn liar. It wears many masks. ‘You should have seen’ is one of his favorites. But not seeing isn’t the same as looking away. And loving someone—two someones—doesn’t make you complicit. It makes you human. A good one. One who cares…a lot. It isn’t your fault, none of it. Sometimes really messed-up stuff happens in life…things we can’t control, and things you can’t keep carrying around as if you could have.”
Ihear her words, the same words I’ve tried to tell myself, but a part of my brain still loves to try to reject them.
“Also,” she adds, “he counted on you not seeing. That’s what people like that do. They take advantage of opportunities and look for the weak spots.”
“For so long after, it was all I could think about. All I thought about was what I would have done differently if I could go back in time. And then I started to drink to stop thinking. But no matter how hard I begged my brain to stop, it continued the endless loop of thoughts of what she went through and different outcomes if I had done something.”
“You were drowning,” she says. “People who are drowning don’t swim pretty. They fight. They grab whatever’s closest.”
“I still wish I could go back,” I admit. “Make different choices.”
“Me too,” she says, and the way she says it makes me think of all the things she carries too. “We can’t, but wecandecide what we give to the people we care about now. You’re doing that. With your mom, with your dad, with…me.” The last part is almost a whisper. It wrecks me a little.
“I’m grateful for you,” I tell her, feeling a wave of something new I can’t name, and want to keep.
“I’m not that special,” she says softly, and I hate the doubt in her words.
“That’s far from the truth, Lydia.”
“I don’t really understand what you see. Most days, I see…just a mess, a bunch of emotional baggage, a lot of trauma attached to my forehead like I’m a walking billboard that says, ‘Stay away, this one isn’t worth it’.”
I hate the way she says it, the way I know she actually believes that.
“I seeyou,” Isay. And the words come easy because they’re true. “The girl who laughs with her whole face when something finally gets her. The girl who has no idea how amazing she is, how bright she is, even when she’s the only thing shining in a dark room. I see somebody worth taking my time for, somebody worth being afraid of losing, someone worth being careful with.”
There is a faint noise on the line that sounds like a mix of laughter and tears. “You know…you’re the only one who has ever said things like that…and I didn’t immediately question if you meant them. You almost…make me believe them myself.”
“Good. You need to know they’re true,” I tell her.
