Page 141 of Between the Blue
I tilt my head at him.
“I broke a long time ago,” Ben continues, his voice barely a whisper. “And when it happened, I lost some of those pieces of myself. And I’m afraid they’re long gone. I can’t give you what I don’t have, Cherry. And I won’t give you less than you deserve.”
Ben’s blinking slows as he speaks, and when he finishes, his eyes remain shut.
I stare at him for a while. So long that I lose track of the seconds. Long enough that I notice his breathing slowing.
I swallow against the lump in my throat. “Ben?”
“Hmm?” he hums.
And I don’t know what possesses me to ask what I do next. Why it’s the final burning question that I demand to know the answer to while Ben’s filter is off. But it is.
“Why do you spend your mornings at a public gym?” I ask him.
He doesn’t respond at first, and I figure he’s fallen asleep, his eyes still closed. I press my lips together, standing back up to my full height and turning to go to my bedroom.
But then I hear his muttered voice.
“It’s quiet there. And no one expects anything of me,” he says. “Or at least they didn’t.”
I turn back around. “Are you referring to me?”
He remains silent again for a few seconds before he mumbles, “You deserve better.”
And then, moments later, the sounds of light snores fill the air, and Ben’s last bit of consciousness slips away.
thirty-eight
HIM, ELEVEN YEARS EARLIER
She was slipping away from me.
Maybe I could have tried to stop it.
But I know it wouldn’t have mattered. Because it was always going to turn out this way. It was never really in my control to begin with.
Because as hard as I tried to hold onto Jules, she wasalwaysslipping away.
Like the way smoke from a campfire disappears into the night. You watch it as it slowly pulls away from the flames, but you can never really pinpoint the exact moment it fades away.
She was my fire. And I was the moth drawn to the flame.
I knew that. That I was drawn to her, at least.
I just didn’t know she’d burn me alive.
I miss that ignorance.
I miss the summer.
Our summer together after freshman year was everything I could’ve hoped for.
We spent our days in the sun when I wasn’t training and she wasn’t working at the roller rink. And, no matter what, we spent our nights under the stars.
It was like before, but better.
Because we were older.
