Page 81 of True Blue

Beg on your knees.

Crawl on broken glass.

But just get the fuck up.

Move!

Pulling myself off the grass, I storm past my mother back into the house.

“What has gotten into you?” She hisses as I brush by, grabbing for my arm. I yank away from her grip before she can get hold of me. I don’t care about being gentle with her anymore. Not when Indie is gone.

“I did not raise you to be disrespectful—” she tries to reach for me again.

I snarl right in her face, not bothering to temper my tone.

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

She squawks, but I ignore her and head up the stairs, taking them three at a time. She huffs behind me, trying to keep up, and I don’t wait for her.

Not when Indie is out there somewhere.

I’m not losing her without a fight.

“And you should have fought for her when she was still here, Teddy. You’ve got a mountain to climb. I’m talking Everest, little bear. Up and down.”

“I know, Nana,” I mutter out loud, her voice so sharp and clear in my head it feels like she’s standing right beside me.

“Theodore James—” I slam my bedroom door shut behind me and click the lock.

Hurrying to my own bag, I grab a pair of jeans and a fresh t-shirt, and yank them over my head. Balancing on one foot, I pull on my socks and tripping over my own feet, falling and stubbing my fucking toe again, pain radiating up my leg.

“Goddamnit!” I growl.

Mixed with the pounding in my skull, it sends my patience over the edge. Roaring, I punch the hardwood enough to leave a dent, and again, and again. My knuckles open and sting, and I want more.

Anything to flood out this agony as my heart shreds itself raw—Indie, Indie, Indie.

My phone lights up on the side table with a notification, and I practically dive for it before seeing that it’s just a social media notification—a photo tag from Lily on her social media.

Cursing, I press the notification, and it opens to a photo of Lily and me at the park yesterday. It’s a shot of us waiting in line for a ride, burning under the sun.

The caption makes me feel sick.

He’s the grumpy, I’m the sunshine.

“Fucking Christ…”

Grumpy doesn’t even begin to cover my expression in the photo. I look completely empty—my eyes dead, my mouth set in a hard line, my shoulders slumped. I looked as bad as I felt, guilt tearing me open for leaving Indie behind.

And still, I convinced myself that if I kept the peace for one more day, I could fix everything later.

Always later.

I've told myself that for months; now it feels automatic. Meaningless too, because later never came, and never will.

I quickly remove the tag from the photo, and then, for good measure, I remove myself from every single photo my Mom tagged me in, including the ones from fucking Easter.

“Looks like you had a good dinner,” Indie had told me the next day when I came to Indie’s apartment from work.