Page 12 of Keep Me

I looked at the small green light of the webcam, letting my mind drift backward, away from North Haven, all the way to a memory when the air was thick and my skin felt constantly damp.

“It was sophomore year, before the stuff with Jax got really bad,” I said, my voice dropping into a flat, storytelling cadence. “I couldn’t sleep. I used to walk around at night because the house felt… off, I don’t know. I would end up in the old cemetery. Where my mom is. It was quiet there.” I paused, my thumb tracing the blue beads of the bracelet on my wrist. “He was just there one night. We just started talking.”

“What did you talk about?” Lucy asked.

“Nothing important,” I muttered my lie, though the memory felt surprisingly sharp under the surface. “Just regular things. He didn’t ask me my last name, and I didn’t ask his. He didn’t know anything about me, and I didn’t know anything about him. It was the only time in my life I felt like I was completely anonymous, but somehow… seen. Like we were just two ghosts hanging out in the grass.”

Lucy jotted something down, a quick, precise movement of her wrist. “How long did this go on?”

“Three nights,” I said. “Just three nights in a row. We would sit out there until the sky started to turn gray, and then we would go home. On the fourth night, I went back, but he wasn’t there.”

“Did he tell you he wasn’t coming back?”

“No,” I said, a small, involuntary sigh escaping my lips. “He just disappeared.”

I looked back at the screen, trying to shrug it off, trying to make it sound as incidental as I wanted it to be. “I built this whole theory in my head one night. I figured he finally found whatever he was looking for, packed up his stuff, and left town. It was a nice thought. It made the graveyard feel less like a place where things ended. The alternative was realizing I wasn’t interesting enough to come back for.”

Lucy watched me through the monitor, her eyes scanning my face over the top of her reading glasses. The hesitation I had seen in her expression a minute ago had deepened into something heavy, something almost sorrowful. “Did you ever try to find him, Seren?” she asked. “Did you ever find out who he was?”

“No,” I said, popping the word out quickly, defensive without knowing why. “Why would I? Like I said, it wasn’t a big deal. It was just a loose thread.”

“Maybe,” Lucy said. “But you did say he made you feel seen. That is important.”

“Or maybe it doesn’t have to mean anything right now,” I said, parroting her words back to her. “Maybe things are just what they present as, and there doesn’t have to be something behind it.”

Lucy’s eyes narrowed, just the slightest movement, as she recognized her own thought. But not in a way that seemed mad, or annoyed. She had a knowing smile on her lips, too.

“Maybe,” she said simply. “Our time today is almost done, Seren.”

I glanced at the clock: 4:55 PM. How time flies when you are having fun, or having your darkest thoughts laid bare to examine.

“I think,” Lucy said, less confident than she usually seemed. “I think you should try to find one. A relationship that has nothing to do with the rape. A new friend, a mentor. Someone.”

“Okay,” I said. Blankly, because I was barely entertaining the idea. I wasn’t sure how to make a friend. I wasn’t sure how to exist outside the people who were connected to the worst thing that ever happened to me.

“See you next time, Seren,” Lucy told me, and a few seconds later the screen went dark.

I sat in my bed for a moment, in that strange feeling of after. All the things we spoke about rushed through my mind. Zane, my dad, the hummingbird picture, Alex. There were so many things I did not know how to put them all away.

I shut my laptop with a soft snap, the sudden lack of glowing light plunging the bedroom back into the soft twilight of early evening. I sat there with my legs pulled up against my chest, the silence of the room rushing in to replace Lucy’s voice.

It always felt a little like decompression sickness, moving from the absolute exposure of therapy back into the regular grid of my life. My mind felt crowded. Too many ghosts, too many loose threads, all of them fighting for space under my skin.

The door handle clicked, turning slowly, and the door swung open. Zane stood in the frame. He had shifted out of the heavy dark jacket he had worn on campus, now just in a plain gray t-shirt that showed the broad, solid line of his shoulders. He didn’t say anything at first. He just looked at me, taking in the way I was huddled on the mattress, reading the room with that terrifying accuracy he had always possessed.

He closed the door behind him, the latch clicking into place. He walked over to the bed, the floorboards giving their familiar, low creak beneath his boots. He didn’t ask how it went. He didn’t do that careful routine people do when they think you’re made of glass. One wrong shift and your existence shatters beyond repair and there is a mess of broken glass for everyone left behind.

He just climbed onto the bed, his legs shifting under the quilt as he sat back against the headboard, right next to me. He smelled like the cool air from outside and the faint, clean scent of the soap he used. He reached out, his large hand sliding under my knees, gently tugging my legs down until they uncurled, stretching out flat against the mattress.

“Come here,” he murmured, his voice low in the quiet room.

I slid over, letting my head rest against the center of his chest. His heart was beating beneath my cheek, a slow, rhythmic thud that felt like a pill for my messy brain. His arm came around me, his hand settling flat against my lower back, his fingers warm through my shirt. He didn’t squeeze or hold me so tight I couldn’t move; he just existed around me.

“You’re vibrating,” he said, his chest moving against my face as he spoke. “Whatever it is, let it sit for a minute.”

“It’s just a lot of noise,” I whispered, my hand resting against his ribs.

“I know,” he said, his chin resting lightly against the top of my head. “So let it go, toss it all on the floor. I’ll watch it.”