Page 73 of Lose You to Find Me

“What does that mean?”

Do I tell her? Make her hate Raine as much as I want to? I don’t know if that would make a difference one way or another.

“I put too many expectations on us,” I settle on. “Too much pressure.”

Mom stops what she’s doing and turns to me, reaching out to brush my arm. “Sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to, Caleb. But that doesn’t mean they don’t work out how they’re meant to.”

What does that mean though? Walking away from Raine is bad enough, but knowing I wasted seven years on her for the greater good is a little too much for me to accept. I don’t buy it.

She cheated, I want to tell Mom.

She lied all this time.

She’s a horrible person.

If I said those things, I have no doubt Mom would be angry for me. The thing is she’s already angry because of Dad. Angry our lives have been turned upside down. She doesn’t deserve me piling one more thing on her shoulders.

It’s my burden to bear.

“Well, I won’t ask if she’s with her family today then” is all Mom says, going back to prepping the rest of lunch. “Hopefully the two of you wind up happy in life whether you’re together or not. We both know it’s too short to be anything but.”

Almost as if proving her point, Dad starts coughing from the other room. Then yelling at the nurse for whatever she was trying to do to help.

He’s still in there, I remind myself.

It’s hard wondering for how much longer.

*

Matt and DJare waiting for me at our normal table in the back of the dining hall when I drag my ass over to them and drop my notebook down. They exchange a brief look before turning their gaze on me as I sit with a giant cup of coffee.

“Yes, I know I look like shit. No, there’s nothing you can do about it. Yes, Dad is the best he can be right now. No, I don’t want to talk about it.” That should cover the bases of their questions that usually come whenever I see them.

Dad is taking a turn for the worse, Mom isn’t handling it well, and there’s a growing anger inside me that keeps nipping my consciousness at every fucking turn. I’m exhausted. Stressed. Pissed off. It’s a deadly combination because I know I’m going to combust.

The question isn’t if, it’s when.

DJ shrugs, eyes moving from my face to the coffee I finish. “Whatever you say, my man.”

Matt snickers as he pops a fry covered in the nasty mayo and ketchup dip he loves into his mouth. “Does that mean you don’t want to hear about the dick that’s on your face, or…?”

I straighten. “What the fuck are you talking about?” Grabbing my phone, I turn the camera app on and turn it forward-facing. Sure enough, there’s a faded ink-drawn dick on my cheek. “How long has that been there?”

DJ clears his throat and scratches his cheek before passing me a napkin to scrub the drawing off. “You must not remember dozing off in class this morning and basically face planting onto your notebook.”

“Where DJ had drawn a dick,” Matt adds, grinning when I glare at the guy responsible. “The ink transfer is pretty solid. You can even see the little hair follicles he drew on the ball—”

“Quit it. It’s not fucking funny. I’ve been walking around campus with a dick on my face for the past two hours,” I grumble, tossing the balled-up napkin at DJ’s face. “You couldn’t have told me that it was there before we left the damn classroom earlier?”

The former wide receiver lifts his shoulders innocently. “I wasn’t exactly gazing lovingly into your eyes when we left. I didn’t even know it was there until now. Skylar was texting me about—” His eyes glimmer with mischief. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Point is, I would have said something if I knew.”

Matt, on the other hand, says, “I wouldn’t have. Didn’t you have a makeup exam today with Kroger?”

Now that I think about it, the dude who gave me a chance to take the test I missed was giving me a weird look most of the time I sat there struggling with the material. It didn’t exactly give me the boost of confidence I needed as I tried figuring out the gibberish about business analytics and financial datasets on the page.

My phone lights up with a message, pulling my gaze downward at my part-time employee’s name across the top of my screen.

Ronny:Sorry man, Sadie is still sick

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