“Like you’re doing? Why don’t you open up to us? Tell me who you really are. Show us some trust.”
“Fuck. It’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No, dammit, Nate, it’s not. I’m not putting you in danger for the sake of an argument.”
“In danger, how? What are you hiding, Kash?”
“Nothing.” Man, why does my control always slip around these people? “Forget it. Look, it’s late, I’ll just—”
“Fuck this.” He puts a hand over his face, pressing the heel of his palm into his eyes, then gets up unsteadily, and I know, I fucking know it, that I have to say, do something now.
“Wait.” I scramble up and off the bed and go after him, grabbing his arm and hanging on to it as the room spins and blackness edges into my vision. “Oh shit.”
“Kash?” There’s alarm in his voice, but all I can focus on is holding on to him with arms growing numb and my vision narrowing to a tunnel.
“Don’t go,” I mumble.
He twists around, putting his arms around me, his strength anchoring me as he hauls me against him. My head falls on his shoulder and I close my eyes, fighting the vertigo.
“I’m fucked up,” he says in my ear. “I am broken. I lied.”
“So am I. So are we all. All of us, broken. Who the hell cares?”
He lets out a huff of laughter. “You’re an idiot.”
No argument there. “Don’t let go.”
“I won’t.” He holds me, and then lays me back down on the bed as my lids grow too heavy, his hand on my chest, his troubled gaze on my face.
But when I open my eyes much later, not knowing what woke me up, he isn’t there.
Nobody is.
Nothing has changed.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
West
There you have your answer, fool, I tell myself as I clean the apartment for the third time. It’s still filthy. Dirtier than ever. Nate doesn’t give a damn. He never really did.
The plastic-bristle brush screeches on the tiles, the bleach burns my bare hands, and who the hell cares?
Who cares at all? Not me. Not anyone I know, and damn, I’ll be late for school if I don’t get my ass off the floor and get out of here already.
But I don’t get up.
I’m never late. My program can’t change. Change screws me up even worse. But I can’t get up yet. I’m not done here. I can’t fucking stop scrubbing. The brush is sloshing the liquid back and forth, back and forth, between the cracks, over the smooth surface of the tiles.
To be honest, I don’t know why I’m still going to school. Going through the motions. Seeing Syd every day reminds me of how good it could be, how my mind can still when she’s around.
Like it used to do with Nate.
While Nate and Syd, and even Kash were here, I thought things would get better. They felt better. They felt right. But now nothing’s right, not anymore. I can’t see a way out.
A dead-end.