Page 67 of On the Edge

“Hello, Atlas,” Henri greets me, smiling like he always does, his face open and warm the way it always is when he speaks to me. I want to cry, just now, at the unfairness of it all. Of being presented with someone so perfect, and knowing he deserves someone much better than me. Of knowing that every good thing comes with an expiration, and today the piper needs to be paid.

“Hey,” I mumble, wishing like fucking hell that he wasn’t here. “Come on in.”

Shoving the door wide, I watch as he carefully wipes his feet on the mat, before turning and leading him upstairs. Nate and I are the only two still here. I send up a silent, desperate prayer that he has his headphones in and doesn’t have his ear pressed to our shared wall.

“What is wrong?” Henri asks, the moment we get to my room and I shut my door. “You are looking sad.”

“Nothing,” I mutter back, desperately trying to think through my panic-disordered mind.

I need time alone to think. I need him to leave. I need him to stop being able to read me like a book, like he’s trying to do now. He angles his head and looks at me quizzically, as though he can tell I’m lying but can’t think why. As it usuallydoes, defensiveness comes to my rescue and turns my words hard and unyielding.

“What do you want?” I snap.

Henri’s eyes pop wide, and I can hardly blame him. It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to him like that. I hate myself so much in this moment, I can barely stand it.

He deliberates for a second, before carefully touching the back of my neck and kissing my lips in a silent hello. I don’t kiss him back; don’t even move until he removes his hand.

“I am wondering if we might talk about the summer,” he says, sitting down on my bed and nervously running his hands back and forth on his thighs. If he noticed that I didn’t return the kiss, he doesn’t let on.

“Nothing to talk about.” I shrug with a casualness I do not feel. “I’m going home to D.C., and you’re staying here for your internship.”

“Right,” he agrees slowly, “but I will have weekends off, and I was wondering if you might like to come visit? I have already asked Carter and Zeke, and they are happy to let you stay with us. With me.”

My heart beats frantically against my rib cage, alarm sending my pulse skittering dangerously. I’m going to faint.

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” I tell him, and watch as his face falls. “I mean…we might as well end things now, on our own terms. School is over, Henri. What’s the point?”

“The point?” he repeats, accent a little thicker the way it gets when he’s tired or nervous.

“I don’t want to pretend for half the summer, only for us to decide that we should break up. We weren’t even really together in the first place,” I tell him harshly, hating each word as I say them, but unable to stop. “We never had aconversation about beingtogether. If we had, I would have told you no.”

Henri pushes himself to standing, facing me from across the room. I’m not the only one panicking now. His eyes are wide and fearful, hurt already recognizable on his features. He holds up a hand, palm facing me, as though needing me to stop or slow down.

“Wait,wait. I do not…why are you saying this? We are not breaking up,” he says firmly. “If you do not want to visit over the summer, that is fine, but there is no reason to?—”

“We aren’t going to be in the same state forthree months, Henri.”

“And so?”

So you will realize how much better things were before I was there,I want to scream at him. But it won’t work. Not with Henri, who is both stubborn and a people-pleaser. He’ll tell me I’m wrong until he’s blue in the face.

“Iwantto break up.” Straightening my spine and squaring my shoulders, I practically spit the words at him. He flinches back, cheeks coloring and eyes wide. He look like I’ve hit him.

“I do not understand,” he says quietly. “You are not making sense.”

“I want to break up,” I repeat, enunciating each word carefully as though he’s hard of hearing and stupid. “This shit got out of control—I told you at the start that we were just fooling around. It was never supposed to be more than that.”

“But it was.”

“Not for me,” I lie, and have to clench my hands into fists, nails digging painfully into my palms, to fight the suddenburn in my chest. Henri stares at me silently, chest rising and falling beneath his polo shirt.

“You are lying,” he says.

“What the fuck do you think is going to happen?” I explode. “You don’tlivehere, Henri! You’ve got one more year of school, and what then? What happens if you don’t get a job here? Or you can’t extend your visa?”

“This is all…it’s all…” He makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and runs a hand through his hair. Unable to come up with the word, he abandons that thread and tries again. “You are saying things that may never happen. You are ruining something right now, and using the future as an excuse.”

“This”—I gesture between us—“is why Itoldyou I don’t do relationships. I fuckingtoldyou, Henri. I’m not going to sit around and wait for you to get your fill of me and leave.”

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