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I want to be someone else. It’s not fair that these are the cards I was dealt. Or maybe I’m just an idiot for how I played them.
I pull the blue plaid throw tighter around my shoulders as a shiver runs through me. There’s a pile of used tissues next to me and I hate them. They’re evidence that I’m losing myself. Or maybe I’ve just been hiding all along.
The thought makes my spine prickle with yet another freezing bite.
It’s cold.
Loneliness is cold.
Regret is even colder.
As I sit in the empty house, eerily quiet and waiting for the next bout of bullshit tears to consume me, I try to think of which part of all this I regret the most. Or maybe, a more difficult question to answer: at what point did I start to feel regret?
My body jolts when the phone in my hand pings.
I have several messages from my mother to read still. I can’t bring myself to look right now. I’m so weak I’d tell her everything.
I can feel the confession on the tip of my tongue. The last time I confessed to her, it ruined me and turned me hateful. I can’t make that mistake again.
I need to tell someone.
The words are so close to escaping, I almost told Angie. A girl I don’t even know. Simply because she was there to listen.
She spoiled it, though. I could feel the weight lifting off my shoulders before I even let the truth escape. Class was over, Dean never showed, and the emptiness inside me brewed to a boil. Even though it was perfect.This is perfect.
“I think it’s best to stay away from guys like that,” she told me.
And that’s what made me keep quiet.
What kept the words deep down inside.
What if I didn’t want to stay away?
What if I knew what I was doing?
She wouldn’t understand and she’d be disgusted with me if I told her what I really wanted. More than anything else. But it’s our secret. Our promise. They won’t know why.
My phone pings again and my body shudders. I’m quick to place it on silent but then the thought of missing a text from Dean makes me change it back.
Pathetic.
I’m so fucking pathetic. Clinging to the idea of what could be.
As if it would even be possible for someone like me.
Someone so consumed with destruction.
I glance at the texts from my mom.
The first line is from me to her.
Only an apology, and a vague one at that.
I’m sorry, I told her. I couldn’t not say it. Not while I sat in that hotel room wishing she were with me. Wishing I could take it all back. If only it were so easy to pluck words from the air and tuck them into your back pocket.
The series of texts from my mother hasn’t stopped since then.
I think she thought I’d killed myself until I told her I hadn’t.
