“Rae, I need you to listen to me. We all make mistakes. Lord knows Clint has made his fair share of them. But you two need to talk through this. You need to tell him how you’re feeling, because I know he’ll hear you out.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Clint might be scared and hurt, but he’s not stupid.”
“I know he’s not stupid.”
“And he’s not fragile. Or weak. He can take this. He can take anything. But if you keep babying him, nothing is going to get fixed.”
I sighed. “I know.”
“I mean, I hate to say it, but there was probably some truth to what you said at the party.”
I snickered. “Are
you going to remind me what I said now?”
“There was one particular thing you said. Something I can’t shake. And it makes me feel like maybe you’re scared.”
My gut seized. “What did I say?”
“You said something to the effect of, ‘I protected myself before you, and I’ll protect myself after you’re gone.’”
“I fucking what?”
I ripped my hand away from Allison and threw open the shower curtain.
“I fucking said what!?”
She shushed me. “Hush. Everyone is sleeping.”
My eyes watered. “I said that to him?”
She nodded slowly. “You’re afraid of college right now, aren’t you?”
I shivered in the shower as tears escaped down my cheeks again.
“I’m petrified, Allison. I’m scared that when we all leave, that’s it. No more friendship. No more late nights. No more phone calls. No more surprises. No more friends, or loving boyfriend, or memories, or gift exchanges on New Year’s. I’m scared that when we leave for college, it’s all going to go away. Like it never existed. And I’ll be alone, with no one to support me, no one who believes in me, and a mother that would do anything to get me back home with her.”
Allison cupped my cheek. “I’m scared too, Rae. This is big. Moving away and doing our own thing is massive. College changes things, and you need to start dealing with that. The only constant we have in our lives is--”
“Don’t give me that shit.”
“Well, you need to hear that shit. Because if you don’t digest it, you’ll feel like this forever and keep ruining everything good around you because of your anger. Got it?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Got it.”
“What I do know is this. I love Michael. With everything I have. And all he and I can do is make the best decisions we know how to right now. In this moment. Because it’s all we have.”
I slowly looked over at her. “You love Michael?”
She smiled brightly. “More than anything. I cherish him. He’s perfect for me. And yeah, we’re scared. We don’t know what’s ahead. Our routine is about to change, and we’re about to be six hours away from home, and we’re about to be taking classes that are going to bury us alive. We know that. So we cling to one another because we do have that constant, and that comforts us.”
“Well, I don’t have Clint.”
“You do now.”
“I won’t when I go off to college.”