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I sobbed with the ugly cry again, shoving my face into her shoulder as she held me. She said something soothing, but I couldn’t make it out. We stood there for much longer than we should in small-town, nosy Macon. But I didn’t care. The gossip would travel about our fight, and then they’d add in this little bit about me falling apart in Nora’s driveway, and they’d know I was the one dumped.
“Come on, let’s get you inside.” Nora put her arm around me and pulled me into her house. Once she closed the door, I sat on her couch, recounting what Davis said through a few gasps and hiccups.
“What an idiot! Why would he think this is your big plan? You resisted and rejected the guy for weeks when you got here. He had to chase you down, not the other way around.”
“Thank you!” I held my hand out, a wad of tissues was tucked between my fingers. “And he wouldn’t even let me fight with him. I think that was the hardest part; he wouldn’t hear me…he just acted like I was still that girl in the library. The annoying child that he would always look past and ignore. He treated me like a disease, or like something he was ashamed of. Not like he’d just asked me to move in.”
How could he go from loving me so wholly to hating me so intensely?
“We need to get out of here, Rae. Let’s just go on a trip.”
She didn’t need to convince me; I was completely and entirely on board.
“I’m already packed.” Except for the things I had left at Davis’s house.
“I’m going to pack. Why don’t you go lay down in the guest room for a while, and I’ll let you know when I’m ready, okay?” She stood and marched down the hall.
I headed to the guest room, where just the day prior, I’d been with Davis.
I fell apart again.
It was like visiting a tomb, the echo of when he said he loved me was loud in my head and battered at my heart, but tangibly, there was nothing there. It was empty.
I ripped off the comforter we’d laid on and threw it in the corner. Then I wrapped in the sheets and curled into a tiny ball and let more of my heartbreak through.
35
DAVIS
Dealingwith emotions that seemed too big for my chest wasn’t a new sensation for me. When Timothy was in his accident, I felt like my heart would combust completely. It rammed against my chest as though it wanted to burst through it. It felt the same now—except different.
The wound in my heart wasn’t the same. Because I had given this stupid fucking thing over to Rae, and now I wasn’t sure what the fuck to do because it wasn’t as though she gave it back. It was as though she had just uncovered that she’d had it the entire time, carefully holding it, waiting for me to realize that it was in her hands.
Protected.
Cared for.
Maybe that was why it was so easy for me to love her…maybe because she’d loved me first for so long.
Fuck.
Didn’t matter, she had lied.
There was no hope for a relationship of any kind, not on the level I was hoping for, where she fucking lived with me—not when she couldn’t even find it in herself to be honest.
This was shit she should have told me when we first met.
Although…
“Hey, dumbass,” Gavin yelled over my head, walking out onto the patio. “You weren’t answering your phone, so I just came over, hope that’s okay.”
Misplaced rage simmered under my skin, making it pop. “No, it’s not fucking okay. What if Rae had been here? You can’t just walk in. She lives here now.” The words felt like dust in my mouth, making something strange happen in my chest. It felt as though something had gotten caught there and wouldn’t budge unless I let some of these fucking tears free.
“Sorry, man…you’re right, I wasn’t thinking,” Gavin said remorsefully. “Is she here? I just mean, I didn’t see a car out front.”
That made the burning in my chest worse. “She usually parks in the garage, unless she gets in late and she doesn’t want to walk that far in the dark.”
I was rambling, like an idiot. I knew I was, but I couldn’t seem to stop.
