Page 129 of If This Gets Out

I wish I knew how to get people to stick with me.

I stay in my room for hours, undisturbed, until a knock finally sounds on my door.

“Yeah?”

“Can I come in?”

I sit up as Mom walks inside, not even waiting for an answer. “I’m going to take a swing and guess something happened between you and Ruben?”

I shrug.

She comes in, and sits down on the end of my bed. “What do you need? Chocolate? Ice cream? Wine?”

“Won’t help. Nothing will.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse, probably.”

“What happened?”

“He’s sick of me.” Just saying it makes the tears prickle again.

“Oh, sweetie,” she says, throwing her arms around me and pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “Nobody could be sick of you.”

“He is.”

“Why?”

“He basically said I’m a pushover and he doesn’t know who I am.”

She pauses. I thought she was going to deny whatever it was that he said about me, but him sayingthatmade her pause. Which makes me think there’s at least some truth in what he said.

Damn. Even my mom thinks I don’t stand up for myself enough.

“Do you agree with him?” I ask.

“No, of course I don’t. I’m going to be on your side, no matter what. The thing is, though, I don’t think Ruben is a cruel person.”

“I don’t, either.”

“And you know one of the things I love about you the most is how considerate you are.”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah.”

“Ever since you were a kid you’ve put others before yourself. I still remember you’d always let the other kids beat you in athletics, even though you could’ve won, because they would’ve gotten upset and you didn’t care.”

“I thought that was a good thing. You said most people only care about winning.”

“I know, and it is. But I can see what Ruben is saying. You can’t spend your whole life trying to keep everyone happy. You need to stand up for whatyouwant.”

I wipe my eyes on the back of my hand. “I know. But it’s hard. I feel like I barely even know what I want anymore. I know I want to be with him, but he doesn’t want to be with me, so, yeah.”

“Can I ask something?”

“Sure.”

“Did he explicitly say he’s breaking up with you? Because if he did, you need to respect that, and give him space.”

---