Page 51 of Seven Percent of Ro Devereux
“Why didn’t you?”
He leans his head back, winces, looks up at the ceiling. He takes a while, like he’s weighing his words, but I wait. This conversation’s been three years coming.
“A few reasons,” he says, his voice low. “I was always just this nerdy kid, right? Never anyone’s first choice. But it was different with you. It’s like you were the one place I fit, the one thing I understood about the world—that it was always me and you.” He swallows, his head still tipped back to look at the ceiling. “And that night, it just—it felt like you were telling me I was wrong. That this thing I thought I knew for sure wasn’t true after all.” His chin drops against the pillow, his eyes finding mine. “It was like you didn’t want to pick me, either. And I was so embarrassed that I’d misunderstood everything, that I thought—”
He stops, but his eyes don’t move from mine. A muscle worries in his jaw.
“That you thought what?” I whisper, scared to hear him say it.
Miller’s eyes track across mine, his chest rising with a great, shuddering breath. “I was so in love with you,” he says. The whole sentence is an exhale, like it winds him to admit it. “I had been forever. And then to watch that—”
He doesn’t finish the sentence.I was,he said. Firmly, clearly past tense.I’ve always loved Ro, Miller told Jimmy, told all of America. Something he said for this charade we’re playing—for the college tuition he’ll get from this, in the end.
“It was too hard for me to face you,” Miller says. “And the more time went on, it just felt, I don’t know—” He breaks off, searching for words. “Like it was too late, or something.”
“Too late,” I repeat, barely a whisper. I mean it as a question but it comes out flat and lifeless, like I’m agreeing with him.
“I told myself that maybe it would be easier.” Miller’s back to looking at the ceiling, and I watch his profile as his words sink through me like stones. His dark eyebrows, high cheekbones, the familiar cut of his jaw. The way he clenches his teeth when he’s nervous, like he is now. “To just not have you in my life at all, if we couldn’t be as close as I—” He breaks off again, then forces himself to finish. “As I wanted us.”
“Was it?” I ask, and he looks at me. “Easier?”
The corners of his eyes crease, like something hurts. “No,” he says quietly. “It’s been awful.”
I blink down at my hands. There’s so much I want to tell him, and no way to say it now. The pain in my chest feels skeletal, like my ribs are breaking.
“You weren’t wrong,” I say softly. “We did fit.”
It’s the closest I can get, and when I press my thumbnail into the center of my palm I feel like screaming, like folding over and over into myself until I’m small, until I’m nothing at all.Too late.
“And you weren’t just a nerdy kid,” I manage. When I look up he’s still watching me, teeth digging into his battered bottom lip. “You were smart, and funny, and kind. I hated that you felt like you needed to hide around all those stupid people at school, but I always felt so lucky I got the real you.” The words I really want to say rise in me, desperate for a way out. Miller kissing me at the lake, and Miller holding my eyes outside Vera’s hospital room, and Miller’s hand in both of mine as we rode in the ambulance. But he’s laid this bare: this thing we might’ve had died that night in Declan’s living room.
“You weren’tjustanything,” I tell him. “You were the best. I’m a monster for making you think you weren’t.”
Miller’s hand twitches toward mine on the mattress, and when he turns his palm up to the ceiling I take the invitation, curl my fingers through his.
“You’re no monster, Ro.” His voice is so soft it’s barely there at all. “And honestly?” He squeezes my fingers. “The only time I ever did anything remotely cool growing up was because you made me.”
The warmth of his hand is suddenly more than I can bear, and I pull mine away. Miller’s fingers flex instinctively, folding back against his palm. I slide my hands under my thighs.
Cool.The last four months I’ve watched Miller be so muchbetter than cool: He is steady and intelligent and honest and driven and good. He’s himself, first and always and without apology.
He clears his throat. “What ever happened with Declan?”
“Nothing,” I say, a reflex. But when he’s quiet I finally meet his eyes, and I know: Here is where I fit. I can tell him, so I do.
Miller closes his eyes while I’m speaking. When he says, “Shit,” it’s an exhale more than a word. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him curse before.
“And I left you alone there.” His eyes break open, meet mine. “Ro, I’m so sorry. You must have hated me.”
“I did, a little. But that was stupid.” I toe my sneaker into the smudged tile floor, stare down at my shoes so I don’t have to look at him. “I pushed you away, and then got mad at you for going. I was so ashamed and I—what happened was my own fault.”
“No,” he says, so firmly I look up. “What he did to you was his fault, not yours.”
My throat tightens, too aching to speak through. I think of that skirt, my favorite one, donated because it had Declan’s fingerprints all over it. Of waking up that next day and needing Miller and the bottomless, sinking knowing that he wasn’t there because of me.
“I’m really sorry that happened to you.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I whisper. I don’t know what I’m apologizing for anymore. The mess I’ve made, maybe. This thing I’ve stolen from myself—Miller, who’s been right here all along, who would’ve listened to this years ago if I hadn’t pushed him away sothoroughly that he couldn’t hear me. “But it could’ve been bad. Worse. And it wasn’t.”
