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“It’s okay,” I murmur reflexively.
He’s shaking his head. The knuckles wrapped around the ring turn white from where the blood’s been cut off, and the bones push against his skin. At least he’s not holding it in his injured hand. I doubt he can even form a fist with how rapidly it swelled.
“Can I?” I say, coming to a stop right in front of him. I hold out my hand expectantly.
His throat dips with a hard swallow, and then he’s overturning his hand, dropping the warm ring into my waiting palm. That’s not what I meant, but I squeeze it anyway once it’s back in my possession, welcoming the dull cut of metal engraving itself into my flesh.
“And the other one,” I whisper.
He frowns, and his brows pull together in that adorably boyish way they do. Mashing my molars together, I gesture with my fingers at the hand resting loosely on his thigh.
“Oh,” he says, his frown deepening when he lifts his hand for me to look at it. He gives his head a little shake, and I wonder if he forgot what happened. If he forgot he was in pain.
Keeping the ring tucked in my fist, I use my fingers to inspect his bruised, busted knuckles, while cradling the heel of his hand in my free one.
“I don’t think anything’s broken,” I whisper.
He sniffs and shrugs like it wouldn’t make a difference if it was, and despite how numb I am to my own feelings, I feel a jolt of raw heartbreak for him.
He hasn’t touched the piano in six months. Hasn’t written any new lyrics, or touched any instrument, for that matter. If it was up to him, I think he’d ban music completely. He doesn’t even listen anymore.
It’s as if he’s…afraid. Afraid it means he’s moving on. That he’s given up.
I can’t say I blame him, seeing as here I am, emotionally paralyzed and unable to so much as cry out of fear it will pop this little bubble of ours.
The world won’t stop for Izzy, but ours sure has.
As much as I used to resent his love for music—and how it was the thing that initially took him from me, making him Izzy’s before I could even so much as hope to make him mine—my friend, my person, mine…
Now it’s just wrong. All wrong.
Mason is music.
Him without it is unfathomable…
And yet here we are, going on six months now, proving that even when confronted with such blasphemy—such impossibility—we still can’t accept what’s right in front of our fucking faces.
There’s still hope.
Bitterness gnaws at me at the thought. Who knew hope could be so fucking cruel?
I carefully lower his hand, laying it gently back on his lap. I then go to turn—to put the ring back where he must’ve found it hanging around one of the Spider-Man action figures sitting on my shelf—but a hand shoots out, clasping my wrist with a surprising amount of grace and precision for someone who was hunched over in a shower vomiting his body’s weight in vodka less than an hour ago.
I can’t help but wonder if that means he’ll remember all this tomorrow.
Or if he’s just getting better at carrying himself when he’s out of his mind. Becoming acclimated to this dismal state.
“I’m sorry,” he tells me.
“Me too.”
His eyes crease, and he goes to say something, but I quickly break his hold and cut sharply across the room, to my desk instead. Opening the top drawer, I drop the chain with the ring inside, and am just about to close it when an idea strikes me.
Behind me, I hear the rustle of blankets, and the creaks of the mattress as Mason gets settled in.
I stare unseeingly down at my desk, wondering, not for the first time, how this is my life now.
I’ve got the boy of my dreams in my bed, and all I want to do is crawl into a hole and die.
