Page 85 of The Golden Boy's Guide to Bipolar
Jamal sighs, caving. “Cesar.” He shifts so his whole body is facing me. “You deserve to be happy. Iwantyou to be happy. And if I don’t make you happy anymore, then fine. I can live with that. But don’t go fooling yourself into thinking you’re doing this for me. Because youdidhurt me, Cesar. But you also loved me harder than anyone else ever has.
“You were there for me when no one else was. You showed me how to be brave. How to be myself. And whether you like it or not, you made my life so, so much better. So I don’t know why you’re doing any of this, but you’re not doing it for my sake. You can tell yourself that all you want, but we both know it’s not true. The best thing you can do for me now, Cesar, is let yourself be happy.”
A lump forms in my throat again, and when I speak it weighs down my words. I want to ask him how? How the hell am I supposed to justbe happy? I don’t know how to do that. Not for him or for anyone else. So instead, I just say the only thing that makes sense right now.
“I understand.” I lie back down on the ground and close my eyes so Jamal can’t see the tears forming in them.
“As much as I want to be here for you right now, I think you need someone else,” Jamal says, and I hear him get up and walk away. That’s when I let the tears fall down the sides of my face.
Be happy.
Is that really all he wants from me? And what if I can’t give him that? What if I can never give him that?
Then the grass shifts next to me again.
I want so badly to open my eyes and throw myself into Jamal’s arms and cry into them. To kiss him out here under the stars, where no one can see but God. I want to not care about any of it. But I do.
“Hey...” I jolt upright when I realize it’s Yami’s voice, not Jamal’s that greets me. We haven’t had a real conversation in ages, so I have no idea what to expect.
“Do you really like Bianca?” she finally asks.
“What?” I ask. Not what I was expecting.
“Because if you do...” She sighs. “You don’t need my permission to be with who you want to be with—and I really do just want you to be happy. But don’t expect me to go playing nice with her.”
I let out a laugh-cry at that. Is she really saying she’s okay with me dating Bianca?
“If you really like her—”
“I don’t,” I interrupt.
She looks taken aback for a moment. A brief pained expression etches onto her features before they shift into something softer. Before she can ask my why I’m such a horrible person, I change the subject. “So did you get in?”
“What are you talking about?”
“To Whitman. The letter you didn’t want Mami to see?” I remind her, and she lets out a little laugh.
“No. But you should probably know... I did get accepted somewhere else.”
“That’s good,” I say with a nod, even though it feels awful.
She squints her eyes like she’s skeptical. “That’s good? Is that it?”
I just shrug. “You’ll be better off.”
“Yeah, but... what about you, though? What about Mami?” she asks as she nervously starts plucking grass from the ground.
“What about us?” I say, but I don’t actually want her to answer that by justifying why her needs are less important, so I keep going. “We’ll be fine. You should do what’s best for you.”
She’s quiet for a while. Eventually she stops picking grass and lets out a breath. “Thanks for understanding.”
I want to tell her I’m happy for her and that she deserves to be happy for herself. But I’m a coward who doesn’t know how to say nice things, so I just nod. We sit there awkwardly for a while before she breaks the silence again.
“So you don’t like Bianca....” She trails off. Great. I almost thought we wouldn’t have to talk about this.
“I don’t,” I admit again.
“Then why...?” she asks quietly. “Do you really hate me that much?”
