Page 180 of We Can't Be Friends

Her shoulders rise and fall, her movements tight at first. She’s moving with anger, rage, and every negative affirmation she’s told herself. Chloe says she’s empty, but I don’t see a girl who’s empty. I see a girl who feels everything.

Chloe starts completing a series of jumps. Each one is steadier and more beautiful than the next.

“Stunning,” I say to myself, completely taken aback by how she skates.

My eyes follow her, unable to look away.

Halfway through the song, she falls. I pause the music, lunging forward onto the wall. “Chloe!”

There’s silence coming from the ice.

“Chloe! Are you okay?” I ask again two more times, moving to her when crying filters into my ears.

When I reach her, I sit on the ice, picking her chin up with a finger. Streaming down her face are tears.

“Play. The. Song.”

I retrace my steps, hitting play on my phone. She rises and starts moving again. It’s different this time. That fall did something to her. Shattered something within her.

Chloe completes a triple-jump thing that I add to the running list of moves I need her to explain later.

We all have markers in our life. Moments that build us. Change us. Shape us. Some far larger than others. Some filled with light, some with darkness. But those markers are the ones that we look at as before and after.

Chloe’s is the accident.

She’s mine. There is now before her and after her.

I keep watching her. Watching as a new marker is taking its spot.

She moves with fire and sparks, an unshakable freedom. There is a ferocity to her that is being set loose. The girl she was before is on that ice.

52

CHLOE

Itake my time in the shower, scrubbing away the sweat and massaging out the soreness consuming my body. My legs tingle and are limp in the best way possible. I have to lean against the shower stone to stay upright.

Cal told me to be ready by 6:30 before taking Tucker on a run. How his legs don’t have him horizontal after skating for the first time ever reminds me of the male specimen that he is.

Wrapping the heated plush terry cloth towel around me, there is a haunting sensation of when Cal did this. I close my eyes, bathing in the memory of his touch.

He holds the lighter that can ignite the candles of my fear in one hand. Instead he distinguishes them when I light them myself.

No one’s cared for me how Cal does.

No one’s held me how Cal does.

No one has ever made me feel as Cal does.

My chest tightens, heart straining against my rib cage. There’s a burst, an explosion, a switch flipped. All the emotions I’ve been sitting on finally make sense.

The person I’ve been completely ripped at the seams. No longer overflowing and oversaturated with the fear of loving someone and losing them.

There’s a chance I could lose Cal every day, but I don’t want that to be the reason I don’t love him. Because I do.

I love Callum.

SOS! Help!

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