Page 48 of Again with Feeling

And his quietness, his reserve, the wall between us that had never been there before—it reminded me of the conversations I’d overheard between Bobby and West. West’s almost-shrewish complaining. Bobby’s mild answers.

It made me go insane.

There’s no other word for it. I can’t defend or justify or excuse what happened next.

My volume rose with each word until I was shouting: “I want you to say that you’re making a mistake!”

He still wouldn’t look at me. He stood there, breathing slowly. And then he said, “I’m sorry you feel that way,” and he turned and picked up another box.

“That’s it?” A tiny voice at the back of my head told me to get myself under control, but it was too late for that. “You’re sorry I feel that way? Because the subtext there isscrew you.”

He was transferring some of the clothes he’d taken from the dresser to the box. He dropped the rest of them in, straightened, and turned to face me. The color was high in his cheeks now. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m moving in with Kiefer because I love him—”

“You don’t love him! You don’t even know him!”

“You’re my friend, but this conversation isn’t productive—”

“No, this conversation is scary to you because I’m acting like a crazy person. Because my feelings are all out of whack. And your feelings are all out of whack, and you don’t like that at all. You’ll do just about anything so that you don’t have to feel out of control.”

For a moment, he was motionless. I wasn’t even sure he was breathing. He stared back at me, but it wasn’t like he was seeing me. Then, his voice gravelly, he said, “Fine. I’ll come back when we’ve both cooled down—”

I moved into his path. “That’s why you were trying to kill yourself with work and exercise and surfing after the breakup. That’s why you’re rushing into this thing with Kiefer, because you feel like your life is out of control, and he’s twenty years old and he’ll do whatever you want him to do, even if it means you’re making a huge mistake because you don’t want to live with him, and you certainly don’t love him, you just want not to feel like this anymore.”

“You had your chance!” The few times in my life I’d heard Bobby yell, it had been terrifying. This was no exception. Part of it was the sheer volume—he had a set of lungs on him—but most of it was watching his control snap. His cheeks were hectic, and he was breathing so hard he was almost hyperventilating. “I tried, Dash. I did everything I could to let you know how I felt about you, and you knew what I was doing. Youknew.” The hurt brought his voice to the edge of cracking. “And you found a million ways to tell me no without ever telling me no. So, you had your chance. I don’t want to be alone forever. I don’t want to—to wait, and to hope that someday, when you finally think I’m worth taking a risk for, you’ll be open to the possibility of actually going out on a date. Nobody wants to live like that. You don’t even want to live like that. But you’re so scared that you won’t even try, and I’m sorry about that because I want you to be happy.” He wiped his eyes. His next words trembled as he tried to control himself. “I’m not going to be locked into this weird limbo, where you get all the benefits of a relationship without having to take any of the risks, just because you’re scared. That’s not fair to me. It’s not fair to anyone.”

There was simply too much in those words to process. Too much, and all of it too frightening, so I latched on to the part I could wrap my head around. “You knew I was bad at relationships. You knew I was scared. And you kept pushing and pushing because you don’t like uncertainty, and you didn’t want to wait.”

“I pushed because I wanted to be with you.”

“And I didn’t want to be your rebound! You’d broken up with West, like, three months before that. You were still working through all of that. And I didn’t want to jump into a relationship either—a year ago, I changedeverything, Bobby, and that included leaving the only serious relationship I’d ever been in. Did you even think about the fact that I needed time too?”

“You told me to date other people. You told me you were going to be single forever. That you wanted to be single.”

“Because I wanted both of us to have time to build a solid foundation for our relationship!”

“Are you insane?” Bobby shouted. “This isn’t a story, Dash. You can’t plot out people’s lives and expect them to play along. I’m not a character in a book! I’m a person! I have feelings!”

“I have feelings too! And if you knew I was so scared, why couldn’t you just come out and tell me what you wanted? Why couldn’t you just say to my face that you liked me and that you wanted to try dating?”

Bobby was drawing harsh, long breaths through his nose. When he spoke, I didn’t recognize his voice, but the words were clear. “All right. How’s this for communication: I want to date you. What do you want?”

My throat closed up. One second became five. Five became ten. My eyes welled with tears, and I had to look away.

“This is why I’m moving in with Kiefer,” Bobby said. “Because you still can’t tell me how you feel.”

I stood there, blinking to clear my eyes. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t come up with words. It was like my nightmare: paralysis of body and thought, unable to move or speak or even think. But then I saw, next to the lamp, his keys. I grabbed them.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Bobby asked.

“I’m not letting you move in with him,” I said and ran for the door.

Chapter 15

I sprinted through the dark house, clutching Bobby’s keys. If he chased me, I didn’t hear him—I couldn’t hear anything over the hammer of my steps and my ragged breaths. A moment later, I was bursting out into the pleasant cool of an evening on the Oregon coast, the air sweet with hemlock and timothy and cedar and the brine of the sea. I climbed into the Pilot and started the car, and I sped down the drive. Then I was driving north, into the fog belt and the forest of spruce and fir and fern, where the trees rippled and whispered like a darker ocean.

I didn’t have a plan. I wasn’t even thinking, really. I’d gone into flight mode, and the higher-level functioning of my brain had completely shut down. But as the cocktail of hormones ebbed, clarity started to return. I couldn’t go far. I was technically committing grand theft auto, for one reason. And, for another, where would I go? Back to my parents? Was I legally required to move after—well, whatever you called that scene back at Hemlock House? A farce? A travesty? A debacle?

A fight. A horribly, ugly fight with my best friend.

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