Page 188 of Catch Me
“You’re the worst person to talk to about this.”
“Nah, I’m the best one because I call it how it is. Kai would give you a long speech that could’ve been edited down to a couple of sentences without losing any of the point, Sen will coddle you, Tilian will play matchmaker, Linc will side with Roman for some reason, and West will suggest that you head-butt him because it worked when he did it to Linc.”
“And you’ll make Lord of the Rings references and never actually say anything useful.”
“I have, actually. I read between the lines and point out the obvious, which are your feelings for Roman, specific four-letter words aside, and the fact that you want him back but are scared of getting hurt again. Maybe I didn’t say that last part, but I did now.”
This motherfucker was ungovernable. Sometimes, I thought that was me, but then I’d hang out with this group of people and realize that I was somehow pretty tame.
“You’re right,” I admitted.
“Aw, young love.”
“No. I’m afraid.”
“That happens when someone up and leaves you in the night as if you’re a temporary lover. Tilian did it to me after I finally spilled my guts about how I felt.”
“What happened?”
“I drove eighty until I got to his dorm and pounded on his door, then went back to my place so I could charge my phone and blow up his messages, but he was already waiting in the hall for me with coffee.”
“Well, I’m glad things worked out for you guys.”
“Do you know how much it didn’t work out up until that point? And after. I was the Roman in our situation, except I wasn’t having a crisis of sexuality, but it was just as earth-shattering in its own way.”
I leaned against the wall and motioned for him to go on. He grabbed a dab pen—as if he needed it—and lifted himself onto the counter.
“Once I admitted my feelings and decided I was going to act on them, nothing could keep me away from Tilian. My mom almost tore us apart, but I stepped up at the last second. We both had to continuously meet each other wherever we were. I had some really low points, and he always found me in them and kept me from drowning. Everything in life goes both ways, and the way I see it right now, Roman has been trying to show you that he’s in it just as much as he was ten months ago—morebecause there’s more of him to give now.”
“I see that. I really do. But, Brooks, what he did hurt me.”
“Why didn’t you go after him?”
I blinked a few times. “I gave him a chance—”
“But you didn’t chase him when he was scared. You gave him an ultimatum when he was already spiraling and alone. He was too scared to stay, but I think you were too scared to step up and go after him when he needed you to.”
“That’s not fair.”
“None of it’s fair, dude.”
“Look, I know that there was a lot behind it, and I can’t even blame him, so I’m notangryat him.”
“But you don’t know if you can trust him.”
“That sounds stupid when I hear it out loud, because looking at the situation as a whole, it seems simple. It was too soon, and that’s okay. It’s entirely about that feeling, though—the fear and rejection, the worry that I pushed him too far, the ache in my chest when something so new but so important was ripped away from me like that. Not a phone call, not a text, not a single word for nine days. Do you know how long nine days is when you’re counting every minute that your phone stays silent? Every time it vibrated, my heart leapt, then that disappointment struck all over again because it was never him.
“We’d barely started to build anything, but it didn’t matter because I’d already done that in my head, which is my own fault. He was struggling with something so important, but what I chose to put into it matters too. I don’t let myself open my heart to people for this exact reason. This time was worse because it felt more real than anyone else I’ve been with. I trusted him with parts of me I’ve been protecting for a really long time, and he made me a promise that made me feel like I’d be safe if I surrendered to it. Then, I woke up and...” I closed my eyes against the tears. “Suddenly, I was fifteen again, betrayed and abandoned while the person who was supposed to be there decided there was something inside of me that they couldn’t love enough to stick around for. How do I let that go?”
“You don’t,” he said simply. “You can’t erase pain, and if you ignore it, it becomes something worse. Anger, maybe.” He nodded toward the blood on my knuckles. “The only thing you can do is move past it and heal. You can do that on your own or you can choose to do it with the person who cares so much about you that he types out a message when he thinks no one is watching. He does it almost every time I see him, for the past eight months, but he never hits send.”
“What does it say?”
“It just says ‘hey.’ He’s a very unromantic person, I guess.”
My lips trembled, so I rolled them inward. I was not going to have a breakdown with Brooks. There were some things that just weren’t meant to happen.
“Thanks,” I told him. “Maybe you’re onto something with this whole reading between the lines thing.”
