Page 113 of Blindside Me
As I write again, the ink smears under my palm, my handwriting deteriorating with each line.
I wasn’t supposed to fall. You weren’t supposed to see the messy parts. You definitely weren’t supposed to kiss me like I was breakable and still worth holding.
My throat tightens around a swallow. That first kiss, not at the club, but the one in my dorm, after our emotional voiceovers. The way his hands trembled slightly, moving to my waist. How he backed me against the wall, overcome with desire. How I wanted more, but he had enough sense to back away.
I rub my eyes, smearing ink on my cheek without caring. If anyone could see me, I’m sure they would say the shadows under my eyes match my haunted look.
You said I make you feel like you don’t have to be perfect. But now you’re gone. So maybe perfection was easier.
The pen digs deeper, threatening to tear through. I thought we were different. Thought maybe he saw something in me worth staying for. But they never stay, do they? My mother taught me that lesson repeatedly. My uncle reinforced it. And now Drew, with his silence that feels like a scream.
I close the journal, grab my sketchbook, and flip to an empty page. My fingers itch for something tangible, something I can shape and control when everything else feels like it’s slipping away.
The pencil moves almost without thought. Sharp, precise strokes outline Drew’s hockey skates. Those worn, frayed skates with scuff marks along the sides and laces he’s knotted and reknotted so many times they’re permanently creased. The ones he refused to replace, even when Coach Howell insisted, because “they work just fine.”
I shade in the deepest creases, remembering how he methodically laced them before each practice. Those ridiculous rituals: left skate first, three loops through each eyelet, double knot with precisely one inch of lace remaining. Control in every movement.
My pencil hesitates over the right skate. Then, deliberately, decisively, I draw a crack running from the toe up the side. It’s not dramatic or jagged. It’s just a single, clean fracture in the armor.
At the bottom of the page, I label itKlaas’s Armor.
I study the drawing, feeling the weight of what I’ve created. The vulnerability of the object matches my own. We both present hard exteriors, but the cracks show what’s beneath. The difference is I know my cracks are there. I’m not sure Drew’s ready to admit his.
I used to think cracks meant something was broken. But maybe they’re just places light can get in. If you stop pretending, they don’t exist.
The clock reads three twenty-two A.M. now. I should sleep, but my mind keeps churning and replaying the moment he didn’t follow me back into Barton’s. The moment he chose fear over whatever was growing between us.
I flip to the sketch I did last night. The piece is different from the others. It is darker, raw, and vulnerable. It’s him, but in fragments and metaphors.
On a fresh page, in handwriting so small it’s almost a whisper, I write:
I should’ve fought harder for you.
But that’s the lie I always tell myself, isn’t it? They would’ve stayed if I’d just been a little more and done a little more. My mom. My uncle. Now Drew.
I close the sketchbook with a snap and press my palms against my eyes until colors burst behind my lids. The truth sits heavy in my chest: I’m tired of fighting for people who won’t fight for themselves. Tired of being the one who cares and risks more.
I’d open the door if he knocked right now. Even at three-thirty A.M., with ink on my cheek and regret under my nails, I’d let him in.
And that terrifies me more than him walking away. Because I don’t know how many more times I can open the door and still survive the silence that comes after.
The dining room at Uncle Rick’s house reeks of overcooked roast and tension. Our new norm since he started this weekly ritual. Istab at a potato, the tines of my fork scraping the plate, while he sits across from me, slicing his meat with the kind of precision that says he’s got something to prove. The silence is louder than the clatter of cutlery.
“You gonna eat or just murder that potato?” Howell grunts, not looking up from his plate.
I shrug, pushing the food around. “Not hungry.” My stomach’s twisted up, not from the roast, but from years of him not showing up. Postcards instead of visits. Calls that always ended too soon.
He sighs, sets his knife down. “Jade, I’m trying here. You can’t keep shutting me off, acting like you’re all alone. About Klaas?—”
“Don’t,” I snap, my fork clattering against the plate. “You don’t get to play dad now. Not after you bailed when I was eleven.” My voice slices through the quiet, sharper than I mean, and I hate how it shakes, how it gives me away.
Howell’s jaw tightens. His hands freeze. “I took the job at Cessna to build something, Jade. For you, for?—”
“For you,” I cut in, my eyes burning. “You left me with Mom, who was too busy ‘finding herself’ to care. Don’t pretend this was for me.”
He flinches, just barely, but I catch it. “You needed stability,” he says, voice low, almost broken. “And your mom?—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” I shove my plate away. “Stability? You sent birthday cards with twenty bucks inside. That’s not stability. That’s guilt.”
