Page 112 of We Can't Be Friends

Chloe walks into her en suite. I didn’t even know I was cleaning in here, my blinders on too tightly.

Turning on an additional light, the space is illuminated, clearer. . .or maybe that’s my head? She moves around me, bracketing me to the counter. Her tattooed hands inch closer to me till her thumbs loop my pinkies.

“Cal.” I ignore her. “Callum,” she says more firmly. “Look at me.”

Tipping my chin up, I find soft eyes—compassionate grays reflecting against my hurt and jaded blues.

“What’s going on?” she asks softly. “Talk to me, please.”

“It’s too much.”

“It’s not, Callum. I can handle it.” I’m hanging by a moment in this bathroom. What else do I have to lose? Her? “If you’ve got me, I have you.” Chloe squeezes my hand. “We have each other.”

Her words have me relinquishing my spiraling thoughts.

“Got it.” Chloe pauses for a second, silently nodding. “We’ll hide or remove my belongings, take my toothbrush to yourbathroom.” Chloe tells me precisely what’s going to happen. She doesn’t phrase it as questions, asking if it’s okay, just does. “Okay?”

“Okay.” My voice is hoarse.

“Now that that’s covered, want to tell me what’s really going on?”

The counter is cutting into my butt, but I fear moving. If I move, will I lose her proximity and touch? Will she see everything I’m not and all the ways I’d fail her if she ever allowed me to be hers?

We exhale at the same time. I quickly inhale, wanting to share air with her. Breathe in more of the life Chloe has already restored in me. She doesn’t see it or know it, but she has. Since she’s moved in, my life hasn’t felt black or white.

“Or you don’t have to. I want to be who you’ve been for me. When you’re ready, I’m here.”

My eyes shut. A neon sign that flashes,Callum Sullivan is thirty and still desperately trying to get his mother to love him, is above my head.

Does she see it?

Does Chloe know that my own mother doesn’t think I’m good enough to love?

Does she see the broken boy?

I want to tell her, but I’m scared. Chloe says she won’t judge me, but everyone always has.

Chloe hasn’t.My heart chants with each beat.

Chloe is the exception.

“People who say they don’t have a favorite child lie. I never wished to be the favorite, only enough to be seen. Loved.” I hear Chloe’s sharp inhale. “Growing up I strived to be like my older brothers. According to my mother, they were perfect, which meant I had to be too. But I failed time and time again. I didn’t look like them. I was interested in different hobbies but still participated in theirs. None of that ever mattered.

“What’s worse is that they noticed. My initial naivety spring-boarded their cruelty. I hated the way they treated me, but Ithought I deserved it because I could never accomplish what they did. That by picking on me, they were helping me be more like them. I was so misled.”

“How is it now?”

“Those pressures never went away.” Isn’t pressure supposed to create diamonds? “Do they ever when they are ingrained in you?”

“No, I can’t imagine they would.”

“They’ve never been to an opening, there’s always something more important going on. I got into Imperial College, they got into Oxford and Cambridge—I did too, in case you wanted to know.” Chloe quietly laughs and it vibrates through my chest. “If I have an idea and call to share it, my brothers already had that idea, or theirs is better.”

“They are married, aren’t they?” I nod. “That’s why you needed me.”

I needed her for that, but I didn’t realize how much my life generally needed her.

The emptiness I’ve felt for years—maybe my entire existence—was a place for her.

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