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Because it caught me off guard—hecaught me off guard. His patience and protectiveness. His ability to make me feel seen. The way he’s always so gentle with me and my feelings.
A weary sigh rolls through me as I toss and turn, desperately trying to get comfortable. To banish the depressing thoughts from my head.
But I can’t help but think I didn’t only lose my father that night.
I lost my friend too.
* * *
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Tally asks for the third time since her and the girls turned up at my door an hour ago.
“I told you, I can’t.”
“Abs.” Liv squeezes my hand. “It might do you good. You’ve barely been out of your room.”
True.
But after the trip to Dessert Island the other day, I realised I wasn’t ready to be in the real world.
Not yet.
Everything is different now.
The colour is leached from everything. The joy. I don’t want to burden them with my grief, my pain. Not when they’re all so sickeningly happy and in love.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” I lie. “I’m going to catch up with some coursework and revision. I won’t wallow, I promise.”
Liv studies me a little too closely, as if she knows I’m lying. But to my relief, she doesn’t say anything.
“We’ll check in, every day,” Tally adds. “Yeah, you’ll be sick of us.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
The heavy weight of shame presses down on me. Shame that I’m not stronger, that I can’t shake off this utter hopelessness I feel.
They’ll go on holiday. They’ll have an amazing time. They’ll come back and be full of stories and inside jokes, and that’s how it’ll go now.
They’ll do more and more things together and gradually, I’ll fade into the shadows. I’ll become nothing more than a memory to them.
A pang of sadness goes through me.
“I just want you all to know,” my voice cracks, “that I appreciate everything you’ve done for me over the last couple of weeks.”
“Of course, Abs.” Tally flashes me a concerned smile. “You’re our friend.”
Friend, I might be.
But one of them, I am not.
Raine watches me from the chair, offering me a small sympathetic smile.
She was there that night.
The night I kissed Elliot.
It was her words that had spurred me on and given me the confidence to approach him. To take that scary leap of faith.
Does she know?
