Page 107 of Near Miss

I dig my fist into my leg before pushing to stand.

“This—loving you. Being loved by you.” I jerk my head before pointing at her, and my voice rises but the whole thing shakes. “You’ll be the only near miss I care about.”

She doesn’t say anything, but she clutches her right side again and starts to sob.

“I asked you to go.”

I do, and I catch the door right before I slam it on my way out. I let myself forget, for just a second, that the sound might hurt her.

I hate myself for that, too.

Greer

If there was anything funny about the whole thing, it might be that I asked Beckett to wait until Sunday night after the game to talk about us, real us, what we are and what we aren’t, because I wanted to talk to my dad first.

I came back from that cottage with these grand ideas that maybe I could be this healed person for him, all this courage sitting in my chest, roots and trees and beautiful flowers blooming from the soil of all those empty places.

Now there’s really no need for any of that, because my dad’s seen it all anyway, and Beckett isn’t my friend, but he did end up taking a piece of me with him when he left after all.

The creak of the front door echoes. Shadows spill along the hallway, illuminated by the one single light I left on out there, and judging by the determined footfalls, I know who it is before she peers around the corner of my bedroom door.

“This stuff doesn’t work.” I point to the eucalyptus, hanging there uselessly against the edge of the mirror.

The corners of Stella’s mouth tug down, and she places a hand against her chest. “No, I can’t imagine it would. But I brought reinforcements.”

I know who’s going to peer around the corner behind her before they do, too.

A slicked-back ponytail swings across shoulders, and a head of tumbling red waves beside her.

“Hi,” I whisper.

Willa’s fingers steeple across her face, eyes looking endlessly sad. Kate doesn’t wait for permission and crawls into bed beside me, dropping her head to my shoulder.

And then I cry.

For a very long time, actually.

Until I’m certain there’s absolutely nothing left in me.

Entirely empty, and all those wonderful little sprouts are gone.

Or maybe they’re not gone—because I’m not sure anything in me that’s been touched by Beckett Davis could ever really be gone—but they’ve shrunk back down into the soil.

They don’t mind that I don’t really say anything. I just lie there on the bed, breathing in and out, drumming my fingers along my rib cage through Beckett’s sweater, right at the precipice of my scar.

It’s one of the more beautiful things about being loved for who you are—those people who see you like that know exactly what you need.

I think my brain might be screaming too loudly for me to really talk, anyway.

See, it shouts,we warned you. This is what happens when you give yourself away.

I can’t hear my heart because Beckett took it with him, but I’m sure it’s much happier, humming away, contentedly plucking the chords of all the string instruments in its orchestra.

I wish I was with them.

Willa says nothing, but she starts folding my laundry, holding anything that isn’t scrubs up to herself in the mirror.

Kate runs her fingers through my hair, pausing every once in a while to lean down and hug me.

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