Page 36 of Someday Not Soon

“Yes, nothing more.” I try to reassure her, but internally I’m screaming at myself to tell her the truth, to stop with the panicked lies. I should be telling her that I’m absolutely in love with her brother. That I can see a future with him, can picture what our life together would look like, and how effortless our love story could be.

I know Madi, and she’d be cool with it—eventually. After the knife I’ve selfishly stuck in her back healed, of course.

“This whole thing just feels too weird. What if you end on horrible terms? I love you both too much, I don’t want to have to choose sides.” Her eyes well with tears.

While I feel defensive about my relationship with him, I also hate that I’ve made her feel this way. She’s one of the few people I trust with my life. The one that took me in when my living situation with my parents became too suffocating. She’s been a constant for the last several years, and it feels like I’m dangerously close to losing it all.

“Madi, listen to me. I’m sure it’s over, okay? He’s leaving. We’re on good terms, but it could never be anything more.”

The sound of his footsteps padding along the floorright outside the room send a wave of panic over me, cold and sudden as a bucket of ice water.

He had to have heard everything.

And suddenly I have that premonition that this is the beginning of the end.

After spewing all those worried lies to Madi, I go down the hall to speak with Jude. To repair whatever damage I’ve caused.

His door is closed, and cracking the door open, I find the light off and complete silence.

More than anything, I want to go sit on his bed and tell him everything he heard wasn’t true. That this summer meant everything to me. That I can’t imagine a day going by without talking with him. Hearing his thoughts on the new novel he read. Or the key points of the TED Talks that I find boringly fascinating.

Also, that I’m completely, and stupidly, in love with him.

I decide the best course of action is to let him sleep. That in the morning we’ll talk it out. Maybe time will lessen the hurt that my words inflicted. If I had been the one hearing that we were ‘nothing’ I would be destroyed. That word feels like a stab in the gut, when you know what you have isn’t nothing—it’severything.

It takes me hours to fall asleep, and when I finally do, the pit in the hollow of my stomach grows even heavier.Until I awake a few hours later, with a sixth sense that something has gone from bad to worse.

Opening my door, I find his own wide open. The house is quiet besides the creaking of the floorboards as I tiptoe across the hall, right into his room.

His empty room.

Half of his clothes are gone. His backpack and laptop are gone. The Whitman book is gone.

He’s fucking gone.

My legs don’t feel like my own, but they carry me towards the front porch to see if his car is still here. Deep down, I know it’s not, but I need to see it for myself.

Barefoot on the cool cement, I step outside and find the driveway empty. He’s disappeared like some sort of cruel magic trick.

The realization seeps in like a receding tide, slowly pulling away everything we had built together. Without a word, without an explanation, without a goodbye.

Maybe I was right all along.

Maybe wearenothing, because to him, we never mattered enough to even talk this through.

The hours tick by, and I’m sitting in the front room like a sick little puppy waiting for their owner to return. I despise myself for it, but every minute I’m beginning to hate him more and more.

He wasn’t supposed to leave for another six days, and then he went and ran away before the sun rose.

I can admit I fucked up by saying those hurtful things, and for not telling the truth to my best friend when asked point blank. When I saw the betrayed look on her face, Ipanicked. Then in an effort to lessen the hurt I had dealt her, I couldn’t stop the spew of lies.

What I also know is that I didn’t deservethis. I have no idea if I’m more hurt or pissed off that everything, this entire summer, built up and then boiled down to this mess.

With him, I felt like I belonged. I felt like I wasn’t alone, for once in my messed up life. Now, here I am, by myself—again.

After hours of feeling sick and pretending to watch some trashy reality dating show, I come to the conclusion thatonetext is okay. One text can be an olive branch of showing that at least I’m trying here.

I erase and type out what to say at least one hundred and twelve different times. Nothing truly seems to capture everything I want to convey, feel, or ask.

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