He raked his fingers through his hair, trying to process. He was going to cry the unforgivable tears. Maybe they weren’t so unforgivable.
“You’re such a fucking coward,” he said, watching me angrily. It was sad anger (see: depression anger). “You’re so terrified of being left that the second something good happens to you, you destroy it. This”—?he motioned to the two of us—?“this is real. I’m not Bree. I’m not Alex from geometry. I’m standing here promising you that I’m not going anywhere, and you won’t let yourself believe it. You won’t be satisfied until you’re alone. What, do you think loss is easier when you choose it?”
“We could have never made it work,” I whispered, the sun beginning to rise over the houses across the street. A beam glowed behind Snake’s head, the tips of his hair lit orange. “We’re too much alike. All we would have done was prolong each other’s unhappiness.”
“I never believed in happiness, but I was wrong.” One of those newly forgivable tears escaped from his eyes. He bowed his head so I wouldn’t see. “It’s not only for stupid people. I was happy whenever you were around. And whenever you told me you hated me. And whenever we kissed. I was non-Prozac, fully aware, smart person happy.” He looked at me with an intensity that was disarming. I thought I was breaking up with him, but I wondered whose heart I was breaking. “I was happy because you were unapologetically you, no matter how much it hurt me. You probably never knew that hating me would make me fall in love with you.”
It was the stupidest thing he’d ever felt. The absolute greatest mistake he would ever make. There was no defending it. And by the aching sincerity in his eyes, I knew he wouldn’t try.
I felt it too. I was in love with him. In love like fireworks and lightning and drunken desire. In love like windows and Ferris wheels. In love with the obligation to want love. In love with the beautiful futility of humanness.
But above it all, I was in love with the idea that I was the only one he ever needed. The only one he ever would.
“I’m not the first girl you’ve said that to, Snake,” I whispered. The sun was fully shining, reflecting off the hood of the cars. “I’m not the first girl you’ve loved, and I won’t be the last.”
“Carla? That’s what you were talking about yesterday on the ride, wasn’t it?” He shook his head in frustration. “Yes, I told her I loved her. Yes, at the time I thought that maybe I meant it. I wanted to mean it. I wanted her to be the one I felt this way about. She’s having my baby, the least I could do is try to fall in love with her. But I couldn’t. I can’t. Is that what you need to hear? I don’t love Carla.”
“You don’t love her now,” I said, knowing that I needed to end this before I broke down. Before he did. Before the wreckage was unsalvageable. “But she’s your family, whether you like that or not. And you’re going to have a baby to take care of. Together. You could easily fall in love with her, and where would that leave me? Where is any of this going to get us? I can’t be with you, Snake. I’m sorry. I just can’t. The truth is, we have too much on our plates. And we’re too young. And we’re too depressed to hurt each other any further. So why don’t we leave it at that, all right?” I took a step away from him, succeeding in creating a world of distance in the asphalt between us.
He stared at me, all of the needing and wanting and Snakeisms I’d come to love crushed and tarnished behind his eyes. He nodded like he was giving up, like he’d done everything in his power to repair the damage and was being forced to leave it unfixed. I wished I could have told him. Not everything was meant to be mended.
He ducked into his car, fumbling for his keys with shaking hands. He turned the ignition key, revving the engine. I backed up, unable to watch him drive away knowing it was the last time, knowing this absence was the permanent kind. I hated a world where absence was permanent and nothing else.
“Reggie,” he called. I glanced over my shoulder as I was heading back to the building. He was preparing to drive off, one hand on the wheel. “I think I finally have a trigger.”
Chapter Twenty-One
I DIDN’T GO TO SCHOOL THAT week. By the time Wednesday rolled around, I’d missed two tests, one Spanish project, and a horrendous choir sing-off that proved to be the sole benefit of being hospital-bound. Work wasn’t much of an obligation, either. I called Peyton to tell her I wouldn’t be able to make it in that week. She grieved my unthinkable situation, promising to help via praying and fruit baskets (see: phony concern).
My days were rubber spaghetti platters in the cafeteria, my drooling nephew spitting milk gunk on my lap, and afternoon talks with a dad who couldn’t hear me. It almost made the stages of depression seem like warm-ups for the real depression, the overpowering sense of being wholly, inescapably alone.
I hadn’t talked to Snake since our rom com–style breakup in the parking lot. That’s not to say it wasn’t the only thing I thought about, even when I tried to imagine happier unhappy memories. It was always his eyes. His pained eyes, half sparkling in the sun, half hidden in the shadow of his hair. His eyes were all I saw when I looked at Killian’s chubby cheeks or stirred the gross hospital coffee in my Styrofoam cup, or listened to my mom read Bible passages aloud to my dad as the bars on his machine arched and fell.
I saw Snake’s eyes and imagined rain. It should have rained. There should’ve been a drenching downpour and begging pleas and a sappy goodbye kiss that left the audience inside our minds weeping at what could have been, grasping at hope for that notorious happy ending.
But it was a cool day. It was cool and sunny, and the weather was pleasant. The birds still sang in grating pitches, and the cars still drove by, paying our slow deaths no mind. It was like every other day. It was no respecter of its victims, of the nonliteral hells we suffered in and the very literal pain of being nothing. Nothing to anyone but ourselves.
Therapy was rescheduled for Friday. The start of the weekend. The day nondepressed teenagers hung out with their friends at the movies or threw sketchy parties that ended in police visits and wasted vomiting. Friday wasn’t the ideal day for my version of vomit, for rehashing old feelings on a green couch while a woman with two PhDs scribbled self-destructive and emotionally unavailable in my evaluation file.
When I got there, I sprawled out on the couch like I did every week. She started with the simple questions. How did my week go? Where was I on the theoretical emotion scale? What was I doing to bridge the communication gap between myself and others?