Page 43 of Not Made to Last

“Okay,” I chuckle, and then she’s gone, disappearing out the door that leads to the rest of the house.

I take the opportunity to glance around her room again. String lights hang above her bed, but they’re not on right now, and I imagine what they’d look like in the middle of the night while I’m lying here beside her, talking about nothing and everything and all the tiny parts in between.

There’s a nagging in my gut thatalmostfeels like guilt, like a silent reminder that I’ve had these thoughts before. Only I had them with a different girl. A girl I’ve never even met before.

Things had been a little off between me and Mercedes the past few months, and I have no idea why. Or even if it’s real or in my head. When I’ve asked if she’s okay, she says that nothing’s changed on her end. Still, the text she’d sent last night proves otherwise.

I peer over at the empty doorway before finding my phone to check my messages. My heart falters a beat when there’s nothing new—not that I really expected there to be.

I didn’t know how to respond to her last message, so I left her on read.

Just because she hadn’t experienced heartbreak in her lifetime, that didn’t mean it didn’t exist. I’ve opened the texts a few times today, ready to respond, but I didn’t want to say something I’d regret. Something like:If heartbreak isn’t real, then what caused the endless tears my mom and sister shed?

What causes mine?

“One second!” Liv calls out, throwing a bunch of pillows through the open door. A moment later, she enters with an armful of couch cushions.

I start to get up, but she stops me with a hand up between us. “Lie down! I’m going to build you the best damn pillow fort you’ve ever seen.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I chuckle, lying on my back. It’s only now I notice the posters of space, forests, and coastlines stuck to her ceiling. With a few childish grunts, Liv throws all the pillows and cushions on the bed and, true to her word, starts building a pillow fort around me.

Occasionally, she’ll pause, contemplating what to put where or swap things around, and when she’s done, she announces it to the world. “Ta-da!” she sings, arms swinging around us. A vision of her as a little kid pops into my mind, only it’s not me she’s making it for. It’s Dominic. And honestly,fuck that guy.

“What do you think?” she asks, lying down beside me.

I extend my arm and wait for her to lift her head, rest her cheek on my bicep again. I look around—at nothing but pillows surrounding us and posters above us. “I think you were right. This is the best damn pillow fort I’ve ever seen.”

She snorts/giggles, holding my arm to her chest. I switch positions and hug her to me, noting how small she feels in my arms.One wrong move, and I could break her.“The next time you feel isolated, just build a pillow fort,” she tells me.

“Won’t that make me feel more isolated?”

She nods. “That way, when you’re in there, you can just think…it could always be worse…”

I understand her sentiment, in theory, I guess. It just doesn’t really make sense. I tell her as much.

She’s quiet a beat, and just when I think I’ve offended her, she laughs, clearing my airways of the nerves that had built there. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. But you have to admit, it’s a pretty gnarly pillow fort.”

“Are you kidding? It’s the best pillow fort that ever existed. They should write books about it—deem it the eighth wonder of the world.”

She lifts her chin, looks up at me. “Maybe in the future, but for right now, I’ll accept a simple thank you.”

I press my lips to hers, linger for just a moment, before pulling away. “Thank you.” In sync, we settle back into position—me on my back with her tucked in beside me, and I’m pretty sure I could spend the entirety of my life just like this, and I wouldn’t miss a thing. “Your turn,” I tell her. “Why Wilmington?”

She’s quiet a beat, before answering just above a whisper, “It’s where I grew up. Where I learned who I was…” she trails off, her slow exhale warming my chest. “I don’t know how much you know about me and my brothers, or what happened to us,” she says, “but my mom—she’s our legal guardian now, and she works out of state a lot, so it’s just me and my brothers most of the time.”

Guardianships are court proceedings, which makes them open to the public unless circumstances deem otherwise. So, thanks to my undeniable stalking, I already knew about her mom. Though, it made me wonder… if her mom is their guardian now, where has she been the rest of Liv’s life?

I take Liv’s hand in mine, link our fingers, and kiss the inside of her wrist, just once, just to show her that I’m listening and that I’m grateful she’s saying anything at all. “That must be hard,” I tell her, even though I have no real clue.

“It could’ve been a lot worse,” she replies, shrugging, and I don’t know what she means by that, but I don’t ask. “Sometimes…” she sighs, shifting closer. And it’s almost as if she doesn’twantto say what she says next. She justneedsto say it out loud, and not even to me, but into the universe. Into the void. “Sometimes living here feels like a job. Like I wake up and I go to work, and not even for one of my actual jobs, but for my family. For my brothers. And that’s a choice I made. I know that. But I feel like I never really rest. Physically, sure, but there’s no off switch for my mind. For my worries, and—” She stops there, her eyes wide when she peers up at me. I have a feeling it’s the first time she’s admitted all this to herself, let alone to anyone else.

I kiss her forehead, keep her close, and stay quiet, giving her the space she might need to process her feelings, hertruths. I wait until she’s ready to speak—all the while replaying her words in my mind, over and over, trying to imagine a life I know nothing about.

After seconds that feel like hours, she finally breaks the silence. “Your turn,” she says.

“My turn to what?”

“Talk me off the edge—emotional, not physical.”

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