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luca

“Don’t forgetart therapy is at two this afternoon. Are you planning to go?”

“Fuck no. I can’t even draw stick figures, so why should I sit around with crayons while some art teacher who took psych 101 tries to analyze why I can’t draw circles?”

“That isn’t fair, and you know it doesn’t work that way. Guided creative effort could help you see things differently.” How did she stay so calm even when I barked at her? Dr. Putnam was a redheaded woman who reminded me of my favorite aunt in Italy—friendly, kind, and willing to say what I needed to hear, whether I wanted her to tell me or not.

“Can art therapy fix me so I don’t drive away the men I care about?” Just forming the thought made me a wreck, and I practically spat the words at her. “Can it make Harper come back to me?”

“Unless I’ve misunderstood something, you never gave him a chance to say he wanted to leave you. As for ‘fixing’ you, you’re not broken. You’re a man who’s been hurt and now expects the worst.”

“I’m—”

She shushed me by holding up a finger. “Whatever happens with Harper, it’s important to focus on yourself. No one will ever make you happy if you aren’t happy with who you are, and you’ll never be what someone else needs until you can be whatyouneed.”

Tears of frustration sprang to my eyes, and I wanted to hit something. “Why am I not good enough the way I am?”

“Youare, Luca.” She smoothed one of her jacket sleeves and smiled at me. “You just don’t believe it.”

I leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling while an uneasy silence settled between us. We had an hour to fill every day, and I was in no hurry to talk more. I was lucky to be in a hospital that made such intense therapy possible, but what did Putnam fucking know, anyway? The quiet became unnerving after a while, so I broke it. “There’s a crack in the light.”

“What?”

“The light fixture. It’s cracked.” I lowered my head and looked at her. “Can I please have my phone? I’ve been here for four days, and I want to see if I have any messages.”

“From Harper, you mean?”

“From anybody.” I gave an exasperated huff. “Yes, of course I want to see if there are messages from him. The last thing I remember before they brought me here is seeing his name. If I wasn’t hallucinating, there’s at least one message there.”

“You’re lucky the paramedics brought the phone in with you. It was how they found your emergency contact. It was good of him to come, by the way.”

My college friend Adam had always been my in-case-of-emergency person because he was so level-headed. He’d come from New York to see me the day after I was admitted, but he had to leave for a business trip later the same afternoon. “I guess. We hadn’t talked for a while.”

“Has he told your parents you’re here?”

“I asked him not to. I’m embarrassed, and they’d only worry.”

Her hair, cut in a longish bob, moved when she nodded her head. It looked like it was on fire, reflecting the sunlight streaming through the window behind her desk. “If I give you the phone, will you please call someone else and tell them where you are? Visitors would be good for you. Harper might be glad to hear from you, too, and if he?—”

“Absolutely not. I’d die if he knew I was in a psych ward. Any chance I have with him would be gone if he thought I was nuts.”

“You’re depressed, Luca, and what you just said is unfair to Harper. You don’t know what he would think.”

“Didn’t you say I need to focus on me?”

“You do, but talking to Harper might settle some things. You already think about him all day, and the truth about what he has on his mind can’t be worse than your parade of horribles.” An alarm chimed on her phone, and she tapped the screen to silence it. “Honestly, if he plans to end things, it might be best to do it while you’re here. You’d have support.”

I leaned back in the chair to get another look at the cracked light fixture. It reminded me of myself. This was a place for broken things. “I’ll think about it.”

She opened her desk drawer and pulled out my phone. “Promise you’ll go to art therapy?”

She looked so pleased with herself as I held out a hand, and I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. “You drive a hard bargain.”

I powered on the phone as I hurried back to my room. The rules said I had to keep the door open, but before I looked for messages, I wedged myself in the corner behind my bed so no one could see my face. I swiped away the lock screen and… shit—no notifications. Had I imagined the texts that were there before I passed out? I opened the messaging app and covered the screen with my hand, peeling it back millimeter by millimeteruntil I saw Harper’s name at the top of the list. My heart hammered in my chest.

Since the day he didn’t message me at all, Harper had sent seven texts. The first one brought tears to my eyes.

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