Romeo
Please don’t do this.
Let me explain properly. Not in a hallway. Just you and me.
JuJu please. Don’t leave like this.
I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.
I mute my phone and drive to my apartment with tears still streaming down my face, barely able to see the road through them.
He lied to me.
But what if Sienna’s lying? What if she’s manipulating both of us, playing us against each other?
What if I just destroyed the best thing in my life over a fifteen-minute coffee?
What if he really did hide something because he knew I’d react badly? Because I have a pattern of spiraling, of assuming the worst, of letting my experience with Garrett poison everything good that comes after?
The thoughts twist and turn until I can’t tell what’s real anymore. What’s my trauma and what’s genuine intuition. What’s protection and what’s self-destruction.
All I know is that I’m alone.
And it hurts more than anything has hurt in a very long time.
Maybe even worse than Garrett.
Because with Garrett, I realized it meant nothing. But Romeo means everything.
And now I don’t know if I can trust my own judgment anymore. Don’t know if I’m protecting myself or sabotaging myself. Don’t know if I’m being smart or being a coward.
I close my eyes and try to sleep but all I see is his face. The hurt in his eyes when I walked away.
The way he saidI’ll be herelike it was a promise.
Like he meant it.
God, I hope he meant it.
Because I think I might have just made the biggest mistake of my life.
32
RODRIGUEZ
She doesn’t writeme back.
I know because I watch my phone all Wednesday night like it’s going to spontaneously generate a message from her through sheer force of will. It doesn’t. The screen stays dark, empty, a black mirror reflecting back exactly how fucked I am.
I text her twice more before my hands start shaking too badly to type.
I’m here when you’re ready to talk.
I meant what I said. I’m not giving up on us.
At 3 AM I give up on the pretense of sleep. My apartment feels wrong without her in it. Too much like the before times when I didn’t know what it felt like to wake up with her cold feet pressed against my calves. I head to my building’s gym and run until my lungs burn, and my legs forget how to work, and the only thing in my head is the pounding of my feet on the treadmill and the ragged sound of my own breathing.
It doesn’t help.
