Put Me Back Together(48)

He was standing in almost the exact same spot Emily had stood in earlier, so I walked forward and took my place beside the window. I was next to him now, no longer in his line of vision, but he didn’t turn his head. He just looked down at the floor, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He was wearing a close-fitting white shirt and his hair was wet—from the rain, I had to assume. He looked so beautiful I had to look away. I’d always found it painful to look with longing at the things I couldn’t have. Instead, I looked out the window at the brown, waterlogged grass surrounding the building. It had shocked me that morning to find the first spring rain melting the snow Lucas and I had walked through. It was almost as though the entire night had never happened. Except that I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

I felt his eyes flick to my face, felt the heat of his gaze like rays of sunlight against my skin. Until he looked away.

“I was just telling the truth,” he said. “It’s a beautiful painting.”

“That’s not what I’m thanking you for,” I said, and as soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew they were the wrong ones. Because they made him turn to me, his eyes falling on me for real this time. I’d only wanted to express, that the kiss, his kiss, had meant the world to me. I’d meant it as a goodbye. But instead he was reaching for me, one hand grazing my cheek while the other nudged my hip, pulling me toward him. My hands pressed against his chest, stopping him from pulling me in any farther, but it didn’t matter. I was already in his arms.

His scent surrounded me, a mixture of laundry detergent and the woodsy smell of his cologne and something else that was just him. I breathed it in greedily, as though it was my oxygen, as though I knew that the second I turned away from him I would be unable to breathe. I had to store him up for later. I hate to take in as much of him as I could just to survive.

“Katie…” he murmured, sending a thrill through my body.

He tried to coax me to raise my eyes to his by tugging lightly at my cheek, but I wouldn’t. Instead I stared at his lips, those lovely, soft lips. I felt wobbly all of a sudden just looking at them, and a second later I realized why. I was going to cry.

“Katie, what happened?” Lucas asked me as I retreated from him, pulling my body away from his. It felt like wrenching off one of my own limbs. “Just tell me. Talk to me.”

But what could I say? How could I explain? There was no way he would ever understand that the girl he thought he knew didn’t exist. The Katie Archer he knew wasn’t real. There was just me, and I was far more trouble than he could handle.

His fingers were still caught in the ends of my hair, his body still just a hand’s breadth away. He still thought I was with him, but I was already gone.


“I’m sorry,” I said, grabbing my things and pulling away for real. My eyes were wet but the tears hadn’t yet started to fall as I looked at him one last time. Then I walked quickly down the hall away from him.





13





When the day finally came, I felt nothing.

I’d taken to sleeping on the couch, not only because I’d been staying up watching movies later and later into the night in an effort to make the days last longer, to stop tomorrow from coming, but because it was like an island in the middle of my apartment. From the vantage point of the couch, I had a good view of the two biggest windows so I could watch for intruders with ease. And since it was only five feet from the door, I could more quickly make an escape if I needed to. But I wasn’t paranoid or anything.

It had been days since I’d gotten a text from the unknown number, which didn’t fool me one bit. There was always a calm before the storm. But it had been a nice little break. A girl could only be called a “motherf*ckinglyingbitchwhore” so many times before she developed a complex. And I was already sporting a pretty big complex of my own. I didn’t need any extras.

Now, as I sat up on the couch on the day of days, I gently palmed my cell from the coffee table and took a breath before turning it on. Nothing.

Phew.

Well, no threats from the unknown number anyway. There were three calls from my mother and a call and two texts from Emily, all of which I ignored.

Lying back on the cushions, I gazed out the window across from the couch at the gray day outside and marveled at my own calm. I felt numb, really. I felt nothing. It reminded me of an article I’d read once about a Japanese man from Osaka who’d been the only person to survive the bombing of his neighbourhood during World War Two. He’d described how he’d walked aimlessly through the rubble afterwards, all alone, and that for many hours that day he’d believed that he had died while everyone else had survived. He’d thought he was a ghost.

That’s how I felt when I woke up that day. As though I wasn’t real. As though I hadn’t survived, although I had. As though I was nothing.

I walked to school through a drizzle that left my hair in a frazzled mess. I’d left my phone at home for the day, marveling that I’d never thought of this solution before. Let Mom and Em worry about me if they wanted to—I was going incognito. To someone passing me on the street I’m sure I looked like any other person rushing to get out of the rain, going about their errands and daily life, as if the day had no meaning at all, which was amazing to me. The only difference in myself I could really feel was a trembling, not of my limbs, but deep inside me. I felt as though a strong wind could bowl me right over.