Aeron was admitted to a mental health facility a few days ago. He might be there through Christmas. The relief is enormous but tangled with guilt, like colors mixed on a palette until they turn to mud.
Dorien’s thumb moves in slow circles against my shoulder. I want to live inside this quiet moment with him forever.
But I can’t.
I came here today because I need to tell him something I’ve been keeping to myself.
“At the hospital,” I say, “Cinna told me she’s been behind the rumors and the texts.”
His thumb stops. His whole body stiffens against mine. “That doesn’t make sense.” He pulls back to study my face. “Why would she do that?”
I tell him everything. How Cinna hated my life, saw a perfect family she didn’t have and resented me for not being grateful enough. How she photographed my diary entries and twisted them and sent them to Aeron, so he’d believe Mom didn’t want him and I wished he was gone. How she planted the burner phone in Aubrey’s bag. How she orchestrated every devastating week of this semester from right beside me, hugging me and asking me if I was okay while she set fire to my world.
Dorien doesn’t interrupt. He absorbs it, hands very still in his lap. I can tell he’s in shock because his hands are never still. They’re always running through his hair or reaching for clay. When Dorien’s hands stop, he’s somewhere far inside himself.
I give him a few moments, then I open my mouth to tell him the other reason I’m here.
“You don’t have to say it,” he cuts in. He reaches to a small table and grabs his leather gloves, pulling them on slowly.
I lean into him, and he wraps his arms around me. The studio is so quiet I can hear his heartbeat under his shirt.
“I love you,” I whisper.
“I love you too.” His voice is low, and it aches in my throat to hear it.
“But we shouldn’t be together,” I say.
“I know.”
Every time we stop fighting and let ourselves be what we really are, someone gets hurt. We both know it.
“If you’d just been with Cinna all along,” I continue, and my voice wobbles on her name, “none of this would’ve happened.”
“I’ve only ever seen her as a friend. But yeah. You’re right.”
His words sting. I said it first, but him agreeing without flinching makes it the truth instead of a dumb thing I’d been considering. It’s clearly not a dumb idea at all. If Dorien had been with Cinna, started dating her months ago, she wouldn’t have concocted this plan, and my brother wouldn’t be in a clinic right now learning how to want to be alive.
Though it hurts to admit, Dorien and Cinna make sense together. They get along, share some interests, she’s gorgeous—even if she’s a bitch—and she’s already had a huge crush on him for years.
“I wish she could feel my pain,” I say. “Even a fraction of what I’m going through. I want her to know what this is like. I know itmakes me an awful person, but I want her to hurt and suffer for everything she’s caused with Aeron.”
Dorien doesn’t respond, just holds me tighter.
We stay wrapped together tight for almost an hour. The silence has a finality I can feel swallowing my heart. We both know what this is.
Instead of leaving and getting this heartbreak over with, I look across the studio at the almost-finished sculpture on his worktable. It’s me, pulling myself up out of unfinished clay.
“The deadline is next week,” I say.
“I know.”
“How close are you to finishing?”
“A few hours work.”
I kiss him, and maybe it’s our last kiss. “Can I stay until you finish it?”
His fingers caress my hair. “And what if I never do, just so you’ll stay?”
