Page 36 of The Honor Society

I burst out laughing, then sober the minute tears well in her eyes. “You’re not serious, we just slept together last night, Charlie. Not funny.”

“I’m not trying to be funny,” She takes a step towards me. “Things were just really heavy yesterday and I went for a walk and,” she gulps, more tears fill her eyes. “I drank way too much, and hooked up with this guy and it was fun, and easy, it was all the things I wish we were but we aren’t anymore Axel, I mean when was the last time we laughed together? I know this isn’t the best time⁠—”

“—You think?” My heart twists in my chest at how easy she lies, and how right it sounds, because I’m not the man she’s describing, that was a character I had to play, easy going, invisible, that was the person I wish I could be but can’t. If anything, my true mask is the one I wear every day when I tell jokes and pretend that the world is my playground.

All this time, The Proctor felt like a mask.

All this time, it was Axel who was wearing one.

I take a step back, then another. “As much as it sounds like a crush, I did kind of just get out of the hospital, I have little to no memory of anything traumatic right now other than loving you and you’re telling me that you just…screwed another guy because my damage was too severe? Because I couldn’t just suddenly tell jokes and go back to normal after being in the ICU? Is that what you’re actually fucking saying? That you want easy?”

She crosses her arms. “I told you when we started. I don’t normally do relationships.”

“Well, you can thank my brain damage that I don’t remember that.”

She flinches.

“And last night? Was it so bad that you had to purge the memory of my face between your thighs within a few hours? Had to take a fucking walk to get the disgust? Tell me, did you scrub your body until it bled just so you wouldn’t smell like every bad decision that related to me?” Tears stream down my face. The fuck? Why am I crying? I did this! Me! So why does it feel so real?

She squeezes her eyes shut. “Axel, this is where we end things. Let’s make it clean. Easy. The way we started.”

“Nothing about being with you was ever easy, Charlie, and I mean that as a compliment. You’re hard to hold on to. I should have known that I’d be the next victim, you’re like fucking sand trying to return to ground while I grasp to hold on.”

“Axel,” she chokes out a sob. “I promise. This is for the best. For both of us. I swear it. If there was a way.” Her body trembles. She holds onto the couch like she needs it for support. “Just know, that for a while you were the best thing that ever happened to me and I would have died to protect it.

“And now?”

“Now our stories are going in different directions.” She walks up to me, I think for a minute she might kiss me, instead, she reaches behind me and opens the door. “You should go.”

My smile doesn’t feel like Axel at all, it feels like The Proctor, cruel, calculated, slightly amused. “Should I?”

Her eyes narrow.

I snap out of it.

“Fine.” I shove past her. “I can’t decide what’s more heartless…” I look over my shoulder and lock eyes with her. “Getting dumped after your girlfriend shoots you or getting dumped after your girlfriend shoots you and assumes you still lost your memory and haven’t regained it back…it’s why I was here, by the way, to get some answers, but you’re right, maybe it’s best, a clean break. After all...” I stare through her. “You. Missed.”

And just like that, I slam the door behind me.

Clean break.

The end.

So why do I feel like such shit head?

It’s the only way. It’s the only fucking way.

I walk to the elevator and jab my finger against the floor level. When the doors open, I nearly collide with Jude. He looks me up and down. “You good?”

“Walk with me.”

“But I⁠—”

“—Yeah not a suggestion.” I bark.

He follows after me. Jenner’s already waiting at the car. I get in. Jude follows.

“We broke up. Someone’s tailing her. I forced her to do it. She knows I have my memories back⁠—”