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So I blurt out the truth. “Kodiak has a girlfriend.”
Her hand stills on her stomach, and her eyes flare, which tells me I’ve shocked her with this revelation.
“Have you spoken to him?”
I can’t figure out her tone. She sounds half-concerned, half-hopeful.
I dip my fingers in the lime-green paint, desperate to do something with my hands. “No.”
“So how do you know he has a girlfriend?” Her words are careful, calculated, and yet still conversational.
Queenie is an excellent therapist. I’ve learned a lot from her over the years. She’s almost my friend. Almost, but not quite. She’s halfway to maternal, because she’s only ten years or so younger than my mom. She’s also paid to help me, though I’m aware not all of our sessions are billed, because her and her husband are friends with my parents. But I’ve been confiding in her for over a decade.
Sometimes I wonder if we’re too close for this to be as effective as it should be. Queenie is a habit, a source of comfort in a world of complete unknowns. She’s a constant in a sea of uncertainty—something my parents aren’t willing to take away from me.
I could lie and tell her my brother mentioned it. Maverick still talks to Kodiak all the time. But I don’t see the point, and all I want right now is to finally purge him out of my system. “He posted a picture on social media.”
She’s quiet a moment. “Have you two been in touch at all?”
I turn back to the sheet of paper, swirling the colors together until they’re as ugly as my jealousy. “No.”
“And how do you feel about him having a girlfriend?”
I dip my fingers into the black paint, not bothering to rinse off the other colors, and rub them together.How do I feel about Kodiak having a girlfriend?“It’s inevitable, isn’t it? That’s what teenagers do. They date, experiment, fall and get back up again, suffer their first broken heart, maybe experience other firsts.”
Robbie dated the same girl for two years, but then they got accepted to different colleges and broke up. Maverick has had a whole slew of girlfriends already and left a trail of broken hearts in his wake. River always has girls tagging after him, but he’s too into football to care.
“That all sounds very rational, but it doesn’t tell me how you’re feeling,” Queenie presses.
“I haven’t talked to him in more than two and a half years. I haven’t seen him in over two. I shouldn’t feelanything.”
“But you do,” she says softly. “And that’s okay, Lavender. It’s human. You were very close for a long time.”
I stare at the swirls and lines on the paper, at the ugliness I’ve created. “I don’twantto feel anything. I don’t want to be hurt, or jealous, or disappointed. I don’t want to feel betrayed.” I dip my pointer finger in the red paint and drag it through the mess I’ve created, splitting it in two so it mirrors my insides.
“I thought I was past all of this, but I’m not, Queenie. He was such a huge part of my life, and then he was gone.” I snap my fingers, drops of black and red splattering the paper. “Nobody understands what it was like, what it’sstilllike sometimes. And I know it wasn’t healthy. Iknowthat. But he wasmine,and then he was nothing.Isnothing.”
We talked a lot about the loss of that friendship in the aftermath, how it echoed a death. I couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to really and truly lose someone. How does a heart recover from losing someone fundamental to its existence? It gave me a new, deeper fear. I obsessed about death for a while, wanting to know where we go when we die. Does our body cease and our mind go on, voiceless and floating in the nothingness? Are we eternally alone with ourselves?
“I’m going to say something,” Queenie announces, “not as your therapist, but as someone who cares about both you and Kody.”
I still, my breath locked in my throat as I wait for words that will undo this pain. I meet her gaze and see inside her, right to the core of her uncertainty. And in that moment, I learn that adults are not infallible, that they don’t always have the answers, and sometimes they fuck shit up.
“No one ever expected things to go this way.” Her voice is soft like satin and sad like a funeral.
“Go what way?”
Queenie drops her head, her hand smoothing over her belly in rhythmic circles meant to calm—her or the baby, I’m not sure.
When her gaze meets mine, I feel her regret. “We didn’t account for Kody shutting down the way he did. You were both so young, and your bond was so strong. There was concern as to what that might look like in the future.”
These are all things I know. Things we’ve talked about.
And they were right to worry, because we were out of control. I couldn’t see it then, but I see it now. Kodiak would have tried to save me forever, and I would have drowned in my own anxiety to let him. I wanted that more than I wanted to get better.
“You did the right thing.” I press my palm against the paper. “The only way to break a bad habit is to eradicate it from your life. And that’s exactly what he’s done. Mission accomplished.” I drag my hand down and blur the lines. Everything bleeds together, my creation destroyed. So apt, considering it was me who ruined everything in the first place.
Chapter Twenty-One
