This is just a terrible nightmare, and when I wake up Adam will be gentle and kind and wonderful again. Because he isn’t cruel like this. Not to me. Never to me.
“You, of all people,” Adam says to me. He looks so disgusted. “I trusted you—told you things I never should’ve told you—and now you’re going out of your way to throw it all back in my face. I can’t believe you’d do this to me. That you’d fall for him. What the hell is wrong with you?” he demands, his voice rising in pitch. “How sick in the head do you have to be?”
I’m so afraid to speak.
So afraid to move my lips.
I’m so scared that if I move even an inch, my body will snap in half and everyone will see that my insides are made up of nothing but all the tears I’m swallowing back right now.
Adam shakes his head. Laughs a sad, twisted laugh. “You won’t even deny it,” he says. “Unbelievable.”
“Leave her alone, Kent,” Kenji says suddenly, his voice deathly sharp. “I’m serious.”
“This is none of your business—”
“You’re being a dick—”
“You think I give a shit what you think?” Adam turns on him. “This isn’t your fight, Kenji. Just because she’s too much of a coward to say anything doesn’t mean you have to defend her—”
I feel like I’ve stepped outside of myself. Like my body has collapsed onto the floor and I’m looking on, watching as Adam transforms into a completely different human being. Every word. Every insult he hurls at me seems to fracture my bones. Pretty soon I’ll be nothing but blood and a beating heart.
“I’m leaving,” Adam is saying. “I’m leaving, and when I come back, I want her gone.”
Don’t cry, I keep saying to myself.
Don’t cry.
This isn’t real.
“You and me,” Adam is saying to me now, his voice so rough, so angry, “we’re done. We’re finished,” he snaps. “I never want to see you again. Not anywhere in this world, and definitely not in my own goddamn house.” He stares at me, chest heaving. “So get the hell out. Get out before I get back.”
He stalks across the room. Grabs a coat. Yanks the door open.
The walls shake as he slams it shut.