Page 49 of Into the Light

“No, Raf, you don’t have to explain, we’re not like, official or anything, and you can see whoever you want, and I know you said you were just friends, so I trust you—”

“El,” I interrupted, reaching for her hand and putting it in between both of mine.

She laughed. “I’m sorry. I guess I do feel a little awkward.”

“First of all, if you don’t think we’re official, then I have some work to do. You’re my girl. You’re myeverything.So get that straight.”

She smiled and leaned forward to press a soft kiss to my lips. I cherished it, but needed to get all this out before I changed my mind.

“I do want to talk to you about my past some more.”

“Okay.”

“Annie hadn’t been a part of my life since I moved away from Boston. So when I ran into her the night of my birthday, it was a huge shock. It was nice seeing her, but there’s a reason I left that part of my life behind.”

Ellie scooted closer to me, so that our legs touched. The proximity gave me strength.

“I ran around with Annie and our friend group starting when I was eighteen. We’d gotten close fast. Partied a lot, did things we shouldn’t have, like drugs, street racing. Stupid shit. I thought it was better than the neighborhood gangs I grew up around, but the truth is, it wasn’t. We were just as irresponsible, just as dumb. None of this really matters to the story, I just needed you to know, we weren’t mature by any stretch of the imagination.

“A couple years later, I started dating Melissa, one of the girls in the group. We got pretty serious pretty fast, but like I said, we weren’t mature. I didn’t know what ‘serious’ meant back then. I just knew she took it more seriously than I did.”

“Uh oh. Did you break her heart?”

I sighed. “Yes, but there’s more to it than that. One day, Melissa and our friend Nico were messing around with coke. Too much coke. I’d been working, so I wasn’t there. But Nico had a heart condition.”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah. He collapsed and died. Melissa was a wreck. And I didn’t handle it well. I’d already started to hate the party scene, the same shit we’d been doing over and over. But Nico dying… It was like something broke in me.

“I’m ashamed of the way I blamed her. I tried not to, but I did. And I broke up with her. I couldn’t handle her anymore and she wasn’t using it as a wake-up call, she was slipping more and more into bad shit. I remember being so disgusted with her. And I still feel guilty about that. Nico made his choices, it wasn’t Melissa’s fault, but I blamed her and hated to see what she’d become.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Maybe. But after the break-up, she spiraled even further out of control. She called me every day, begging me to take her back and I wanted nothing to do with her. Things at home started to suffer, because my mom was disappointed in the way I was living. It didn’t matter that I was trying to get away from it, she was heartbroken that I’d fallen into a bad pattern to begin with.

“I felt so lost. My mom was my everything, and now we were arguing all the time. I’d lost one of my best friends, I’d dumped my girlfriend, everyone was at each other’s throats over it all. And then Melissa started dating one of our friends, Heath.

“At first I was relieved. She was someone else’s problem now. But she didn’t stop contacting me. It was incessant. I was sick of it. Annie had told me how badly Melissa was doing. Still on the drugs, her mental health was spiraling. But I didn’t want to hear it. I knew she and Heath were toxic with each other. I knew they weren’t doing well, but I didn’t want anything to do with it.

“She called me, begging me to pick her up one night. She was incoherent, she sounded so out of control. I told her to fuck off. That I couldn’t help her.”

Ellie reached for me, and it was only then that I realized my eyes were full of tears.

“She uh, killed herself that night.”

“Oh Raf. I’m so sorry.”

“The guilt I felt… The guilt Istillfeel about it… It’s consumed me for years. If only I had listened to her that night. If only I’d helped her. All of it replayed in my head for months.

“My mom was so disappointed when she found out. So heartbroken. She had her issues with Melissa, but knew that she was troubled and felt sorry for her. To my mom, I’d become someone unrecognizable. Not just from this, but from years of me fucking up by that point. She never looked at me the same way again after that, and her heart gave out a few weeks later. She died in her sleep and I found her the next morning.”

“Oh my god. Raf, I’m so sorry.” Ellie climbed into my lap and wrapped me in her arms. I let the tears flow. I cried for my mom, for Melissa, for the guilt I’d had inside me all these years. I’d never let myself feel it, only ever bottled it up. And now the stopper had come off and I was freeing myself from it.

I held on to Ellie so tightly. She was my lifeline. And she didn’t say a word, just held me as I let it all out.

Eventually the tears stopped and I looked into Ellie’s eyes. The calming ocean blue eyes that held me steady.

“Thank you.”

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