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I glance down, my face hot now. “Okay, but then why not even text me back?”
“What if he thinks you don’t care anymore? Maybe you need to be the one to say something?”
ChapterTwenty-Four
ROMAN
Ican’t stop thinking about my grandfather’s funeral.
It was only a few weeks after the initial incident that caused the feud with Etta’s family to go from bad to nuclear overnight. I can’t say I’d been pleasant to Etta before then, or that it got better afterwards, this being well into the years when I’d begun to build my obsession with her, but long before I would realize what it was.
I’d forgotten until now—lost in the intervening years of new memories—that until the day at the headmaster’s office, Etta never spoke to me. She ignored me, always, with an almost dogmatic consistency.
So why come to the funeral?
I suspect I know the answer already. Know the answer to how we ended up here after all these years, and what spark ignited it. Etta has always cared too much. Cares more if those around her are comfortable than if she is. The same instinct that makes her want to save her family when they keep proving they’ll throw her to the wolves without question has turned back on itself, twisting into an unhealthy fear of taking up too much space.
But that’s neither here nor there, I suppose, when I hardly have the right to be judging anyone. Not when the only thing I can think of, aside from the overwhelming gloom pushing in on the edges of my brain, is wanting her. Needing her to come be like the sun driving out the darkness.
It’s been twenty-four hours since our argument in the street. The argument that I still don’t quite understand but infuriates me to think about. The one I wish I could go back and do differently in so many ways.
I’m lying flat on my bed in the dark, the only light coming from the hallway and from the phone lying face up next to me.
Good Girl
How are you?
I haven’t replied, but not for lack of wanting to. It’s such a simple statement with no simple answer. How can I say that with her, I’m fine but without her I can’t breathe? That my obsession with her is unhealthy, and I don’t fucking care. I’ll never be normal when it comes to her, but none of this is normal. Maybe she’d accept that.
“Do you want something to eat?” Bennet asks from my doorway.
I have the strangest sense of déjà vu, glancing up at him, his outline only just visible. His image swims slightly. “No.”
My cousin sets his jaw and he’s quiet for a moment. “Are you just going to sit there?”
“Get out,” I bark, in sort of a disconnected reply.
He wavers, going back and forth between his feet. Bennet hates conflict, with me especially. I’ve sometimes wondered if that’s why he followed me around for our entire lives, despite the fact that I don’t particularly like other people and never wanted to be in charge of our social group.
“No,” he says finally. “Get your shit together, man. I don’t know if you broke up or—”
“We didn’t break up. We weren’t really together.”
I keep trying to remind myself of that fact because it’s easier to compartmentalize that way.
Bennet scoffs, ruining my plan. “I’m not hearing that. Just go talk to her.”
I clench my hand into a fist. He’s walking a fine fucking line right now. “I thought I told you to get out.”
“Fine,” Bennet says, backing out of the room. “Don’t do anything. Sit in here forever, but you do know that you can’t just pretend that no one else exists, right? There were other factors here.”
I glance up, and again the room spins slightly and my head pounds. I mean to speak, but can’t find the words and only nod for him to continue.
“If you don’t do anything, Etta will end up having to marry someone else.”
“If Etta can figure out how to yell in the street she can yell at her mother. I think my work might be done.”
In a way, I’m almost proud. Proud and fucking pissed.
