AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Okay.” She steps into the house. “Want to watch a movie?”
It sounds lame but I just want to take that frown from her face and the fact that she’s still here tells me all I need to know.
She wants a friend.
I’m attracted.
I want her.
I feel weirdly needy and possessive.
But at the end of the day, I can be a friend, I can be what she needs, at least that’s what I tell myself as I sit next to her. She’s a stranger but not, and while I always judged insta-love I kind of look at her and go, okay, I get it. I get it now.
“Let’s gooooo.” I wrap an arm around her.
It feels good.
It feels like I’m finally healing from my past.
Starting a new beginning feels like being set free, maybe all I needed was Seaside, maybe all I needed was her.
Chapter Fourteen
Chloe
We watched a movie.
Everything was fine.
Had you asked what the movie was about I might have just had to make it up. First off, he’s too hot, like literally, second, he kept rubbing my shoulder, hand, kissing my neck, but not in an aggressive way, basically he’s perfect and I don’t deserve him.
I wanted to tell him, actually I almost told him a million times last night, but how do you even begin that conversation? My own sister despises me because of my illness, my family treats me like I’m going to die any minute when everything is under control—don’t even get me started on when I’m struggling.
I’m glass.
Officially glass.
I just want to be steel.
Is that so hard to ask for?
The universe probably laughs every time I say that because there is no chance in hell I will ever be that, even though it’s what I wish for on a daily basis. My stomach kind of hurts, my anxiety is at an all-time high because of the secrets I’m keeping and I feel—funny, not like myself, which means I might be having an episode which again terrifies me. I don’t know him well enough to actually expose him to all of this.
And it’s a lot, I know it’s a lot, I get it, trust me, I deal with it constantly, but the real shit part is that even my own parents really don’t get it, they work, they check in, they travel constantly, and then when they come home and see if I’ve had an episode you’d think that I had leprosy.
One time I walked in to hear Sophie talking to my parents, it’s something I’ll never forget.
“What if I catch it? We don’t know, it could be something else. I don’t want to die! What if the diagnosis is wrong, and she’s contagious? Not even that, but you guys spend so much time just worrying about her and working, I’m left here, maybe it would be easier, right? Easier to get sick.”
She yelled the last part.
I kept waiting by the kitchen, mouth dry, a clump of hair in my hand that I was crying over, pain everywhere, fear that I’d need a transplant, fear that I was somehow alienating everyone in my world because when they asked how I was doing all I wanted to say was, welp, not great, see exhibit A! But when you’re sick you’re not allowed it, I mean maybe once or twice, but after a while even your own family gets tired of talking about it, so you suppress, you try to get better and you tell them everything is fine when you’re dizzy, nauseated, when you puke up dinner, when your muscles ache, you force a smile because how dare you be sick and fucking show me.
It’s the fear.
I believe my last boyfriend said I was baggage and damaged and that I was making everything up even when my hair was falling out in my own hands, then he told his dad who then sat me down and told me that sometimes we manifest things.
I got a little pat on my knee, and that was it. We broke up the next day and I almost ran to the store to build a voodoo doll to curse his entire family—especially after doctors did, in fact, diagnose me correctly.
