I handed him his bowl of ice cream and he took a large bite, his eyes narrowed on me.
“Why?” he asked bluntly.
I didn’t lie to him.
I told him everything.
And he looked at me like I was crazy.
“Before you argue,” I looked down at my quickly melting ice cream and stirred it, making it runnier and runnier by the second. “I want you to know that I thought about this all day. And it wasn’t a decision that I made lightly.”
Bain finished his bowl of ice cream, got up, washed his bowl, then set it on the drying rack next to the sink.
He turned, leaned his hips on the counter and looked at me intently before saying, “That seems kind of stupid.”
That got my ire up.
It might be stupid, but it was my decision to make.
Which I told him in the next second.
He sighed and hefted himself away from the counter before walking toward me.
With each step that he took, my heart started to pound harder and harder.
“When you decide to allow yourself to have something good,” he said softly. “I’m here. Until I’m not anymore. If you get what I mean.”
Then, without another word—not that he needed one after that parting comment—he left.
I heard the roar of his bike all the way to the main road before it disappeared, just like him.
CHAPTER 12
Well, shit.
-Things Luce says ten times a day
LUCE
His words replayed like a metronome in my head the rest of the month.
Through my finals.
Through the meeting with his friend, Etienne, as we discussed our wants and dreams with our vet clinic.
Through the opening of my mail when I saw that my medical debt had been cleared.
Through the prep for graduation.
Through my parents coming back to town for my graduation.
Which led to now.
I was sitting in my chair, between two people I’d never met before, waiting for the next speaker at my graduation ceremony to start.
Which, thankfully, it finally did, seeing as I was in a tight dress that was a size too small. Shoes that had to have been made in the deepest pits of hell. And in a situation that made me extremely uncomfortable.
I most certainly didn’t like being in a roomful of people on a day like today.
It wasn’t a bad day, per se, for most people. But for me? I was just having an off day.
My depression didn’t make sense to me. Sometimes I would be perfectly fine, able to get out of bed with a smile on my face. And sometimes, I’d open my eyes and decide that today was the day that I would be perfectly happy spending it in bed, napping on and off, having no interaction with the world.
Today was one of those days.
It was made worse by my parents being here and being all bright and sunny and cheery now that my graduation was imminent.
Sometimes, when I felt down and exhausted and unable to face life, the best remedy was to binge-watch television shows and hide from the world.
Everything that could go wrong that day did go wrong, too.
The light in my hallway outside of my door went out, making it so dark that I couldn’t see to lock my door today without pulling my phone out.
My alarm clock went off and made this putrid, dying death rattle that I knew meant that I’d need a new one soon.
The plans on the clinic had come back, and I now had to add that to my growing list to go over when I had time.
My dress that I’d thrown in the dryer and “steam” dried had come out sopping wet, meaning I’d had to choose another one.
Which was laughable, really. Why? Because when I got outside and to my car, the bottom had opened up out of the cloud layer and a torrential downpour had occurred, proceeding to soak me.
And finally, after getting to the auditorium we would be graduating in, I found it so cold that I could barely think.
So there I was, in a tight, wet dress, in a cold auditorium, listening to students discuss their dreams. Meanwhile, I was trying to find a happy place in my fucked-up, depressed brain that would help me get through the next hour before I could go home and crawl into bed.
My parents would have to understand.
I would not be making it to dinner tonight.
I also would not be making it to brunch tomorrow like they’d hoped.
I needed a break.
One that would allow me the time to get my mind in a better state to deal with life’s demands.
“…you only have one life,” I heard the young man at the podium say. “Find that special person. Find that thing in life that makes you happy. Whether it be a person, a job, or a pet. But find it and hold on tight. And never let it go.”