Page 145 of What Should Have Been Ours

Gabrielle

I can’t breathe. I’m tired of breathing.

My hands shake at my side as Kinsley zips up the back of my dress, her touch is soft and hesitant as if I might break under her fingers.

My mom watches from the doorway, her eyes filled with so many unspoken emotions—grief, worry, helplessness.

This is the first time I’ll be leaving the apartment since Cam died. The weight of it, the finality of it, presses against my chest like it’s trying to physically crush me.

Today is the last time I’ll get to see him, touch him, or feel him.

That realization slams into me so hard that my knees nearly buckle. My throat closes. My vision blurs. I start to feel nauseous.

I can’t do this.

I stumble back, my breath hitching, and before anyone can stop me, I’m running into the bathroom and locking myself in, collapsing onto the cold tile floor.

My dress—this stupid black dress—it feels too tight, too suffocating. Clinging to my body like it’s trying to claw its way inside of me. My breaths come in sharp, shallow gasps, my chest rising and falling too fast, my heart hammering from the pain I feel inside.

knocking.

“Gabrielle. Babe, open the door.” Her voice is trying to be calm and soothing, but I can hear the worry underneath it.

I can’t move.

I can’t make my body respond.

Today feels too real. And I’m not ready for that.

Today I have to say goodbye for the last time.

Anger surges through me, swallowing the panic whole.

None of this is fair.

The world is so cruel for taking him from me when I had just gotten him back. I hate it so much.

I push myself up, grabbing the first thing I can reach—a glass soap bottle on the counter—I throw it as hard as I can against the wall. It shatters, a violent crack against the tile. But it’s not enough.

I grab a candle next. Then my perfume bottles. Then the stupid framed photo of sunflowers that’s hung on this bathroom wall, like some cruel mockery of life in a room that now feels like a tomb.

I throw all of it.

I know I’m screaming. I can feel the screams coming out, the raw ache in my throat from the force, but I can’t hear myself. I can’t hear anything. I don’t even know what I’m saying, or if I’m saying anything at all. I just keep going, breaking everything in sight, until my body forces me to stop—until I collapse, my back sliding back down the wall next to the door, my limbs shaking from the sheer force of my grief.

My fingers fumble for the lock.

Kinsley is still there.

As soon as I unlock the door, she’s beside me, sinking to the floor and pulling me into her lap.

Neither of us speaks.

She just holds me, lets me fall apart in her arms, lets me cry until my throat hurts so badly I have to stop, and my body is too exhausted to keep fighting itself.

Finally, after what feels like forever, because every second feels like eternity without him, I whisper, “How much longer?”

Kinsley’s hand smooths over my hair. “Maybe twenty minutes.”