Page 56 of Our Hearts Knew Better

“I don’t wanna be with you.” There was a tremble in these words, a final push at me, to go and accept this.

I sucked in a breath, finally expanding my lungs, aching with this deeper burn. So deep I knew it would live in me, right beside the others.

And there was nothing I could do about it.

Whatever had happened didn’t even matter anymore, because Levi waschoosingto hurt me. He was watching me break and he wasn’t doing anything to pick up the pieces. We couldn’t rewind this.

I asked myself what it was about me that made people I want not want me back.

And then, the right question, what was it about them that made them act this way?

And then I reminded myself it wasn’t my job to figure anybody else out.

Levi did want to be with me, hedid, but he wasn’t letting himself have me. And it wasn’t my job to force someone to care about me anymore.

Fuck him too.

I swiped at my face with that second “Fuck you” of my life, this one slicing at my throat more, wet, but clear. “I’m not waiting for you. I’m notwaiting,” I said, with more of the fire in me that allowed me to go, to walk away.

The tears wouldn’t stop once I was alone, my face even hurting from all my swiping, until I eventually just let them fall, this new hollow place in my heart feeling bottomless. I clenched my fist to my chest to try to fill it, like I could dig past my ribs and hold the breaks together, feeling the heat under my hand, sucking in air just to breathe, just toaccept.

The end of two worlds, crumbling like dominos, but I couldn’t accept this. All the stages and I was stuck in shock.

With each slowed, dragged step, I yearned for words on a page, wanting to be back inside my books, where pain was temporary, and the one who hurt you healed you happily ever after.

But this wasn’t the third act. It was the end. And Levi and I weren’t actually dating.

He wasn’t my hero.

He wasn’t a book boyfriend.

He was blond.

I had that thought and laughed through my cries into my hand until I was just tears again.

Levi was as real as my pain, and he wasn’t coming to kiss it better.

I’d stopped paying attention to where I was going, exhausted and restless, wanting to sleep and walk forever, feeling like I was already sleeping and walking forever.

A car approached me from behind and I was out of body as I moved out of the way.

But the car slowed beside me, and I focused on the glow of its headlights on the road as I slowed, too, and we both stopped.

“We meet again.”

Adam.

The sound of his voice was like a retreat, and I remembered I could still breathe—Iwasstill breathing, as I glanced over at him, as he smiled, leaning toward the passenger side window.

“You getting in?”

His smile faded the longer he stared at me, the longer I just stared at him, to a kind of alarm at the sight of me. I could imagine how alarming I looked. I wanted to sound every one. I wished they’d been sounded for me.

He vacated the car, leaving his door open as he rounded to a stop in front of me. He was wearing his cap, and when the shadows passed through his eyes as he studied my puffy feeling face, matching the shadow settled in me, I thought I could like this look more. This look of certainty. This look that didn’t hide.

“My dad too,” he told me with a sigh, only half right, and I couldn’t speak to explain the other half. And I was conflicted on if I should. If I should let Levi tell him himself.

All I knew was Adam was going to be here for me, as I was going to be here for him.

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