Left Drowning(75)

My friend lets me fall into his arms, and he strokes my hair and tells me over and over that it’s going to be all right. “She’s just some stupid girl, Blythe. She’s not you.”

“He doesn’t want me.” I keep my face pressed into him, hiding my eyes under the flap of his leather jacket. “But I can’t be upset because we agreed we weren’t going to be anything else. I just thought that later … we would. I’m just so messed up still.”

“Chris is the one who is messed up.” Sabin holds me tighter. He is my rock right now.

“He said … he said he didn’t want a girlfriend. Sabin, that’s what he said.” I lift my head, and Sabin rubs his thumbs under my eyes. “She’s not just some girl. She’s his girlfriend, isn’t she?”

He doesn’t need to answer me.

I step away and go to the sink to wash my face. “What’s her name?”

“Jennifer.”

“I assume she’s nice?”

They don’t say anything.

I throw water over my eyes and pat my face dry with a towel. My bed is screaming my name, so I crawl past Zach and lie down. “You can say she’s nice. It’s okay.”

Zach lies down next to me. “She’s fine. There’s nothing particularly wrong with her.”

“There is too something wrong with her.” Sabin lies down on my other side. “She’s boring as shit.”

Zach laughs. “Well, there is that.”

“Good.” I sniff and stare at the ceiling. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t Chris tell me? Don’t answer that. I know why. Because you all think that I’m so f*cking fragile, and I’ll come completely unglued again.”

“No. Because we were hoping she wouldn’t be around for very long,” Sabin says.

“But she’s still around.” I fight back tears. “Is he sleeping with her? Forget it. I don’t want to know. It’s none of my business anyway.”

“He’s not, if that’s any comfort,” Sabin says quickly. “It’s not going to last, B. It’s not. She’s not enough for him.”

“Neither was I.”

“No, no, sweet girl. Don’t you get it? You were too much for him.” I realize that Sabin has said exactly what Chris said that night in my room when he left so suddenly.

“I was fine. I swear to God I was. I wasn’t ready for anything either, but I didn’t think that …” I don’t even know how to finish this sentence.

Sabin does. “That he’d run out and do something so stupid and thoughtless.” He scratches his unshaven face and smiles at me. “I’m telling you, I promise you, this won’t last. It’s not like he’s going to get married or anything.”

There is a knock at the door and my stomach knots. “No,” I whisper adamantly. “No.” I do not want to see Chris now.

Sabin nods. “I got it.” He’s off the bed in a flash. The last thing I hear him say as he storms out into the hallway and slams the door behind him is “Are you f*cking kidding me, Chris? C’mon, man, you gotta get the hell out of here. Give her a goddamn minute, okay?”

I hear their footsteps retreat down the hall. The room feels emptier without Sabin in it.

I don’t cry again, which is good. “Zach …”

“I know. This was not supposed to happen.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

I’m so stupid. I guess that it was really just sex between us. The friendship part, I know that was real, but the other stuff? I must have been the only one who felt it. There is no deeper connection between us, no larger reason for our scars, no epic romance that has yet to unfold.

Except I don’t believe that. I should, based on what Chris is doing, but I don’t. My heart is screaming something else. Maybe that’s wishful thinking.

Zach sits up and looks around the empty room. “Take it from someone who is also in love with a Shepherd brother. They are easy boys to fall in love with, but hard to really, really hold on to.”

“Eric adores you.”

Zach nods. “And Chris adores you. That’s easy to see. He does. But people like Eric and Chris? Having a relationship, trusting in that? It’s a lot harder for them than it is for most of us. You can imagine, I think, Blythe. Chris just wants safe and easy right now. It’s because he loves the hell out of you that he’s running.”

I think about Chris’s scars and what kind of harm could have possibly caused them. And I say something that makes me sick to my stomach. “I think Chris got the worst of it.”

“Yes,” Zach says. “I think you’re right.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


One for No, Two for Yes


Late March sucks. The only good thing is that my preferred running weather is finally here, because the daytime temps are sometimes reaching the mid-fifties. Being able to run outside again is a godsend. That said, I’m not f*cking happy. No, I’m not in the depressive fog that fell over me after the incident at the union, but I’m not exactly cheerful, either. I miss the hell out of Chris.

Sabin was wrong. Chris is still with Jennifer, and I do everything that I can to avoid him and especially to avoid seeing them together. It’s as though we got divorced and have shared custody of his siblings and Zach. We just can’t be around each other. I’m sure it’s made him uncomfortable the few times that we’ve all been together because I can’t act like nothing is wrong. It takes all my energy to smile and make friendly chitchat. I chose not to sit with him and the others at Sabin’s play last week. It was too hard. The best I can say is that so far I have managed to avoid being introduced to her. As far as she knows, I probably don’t exist, and I prefer it that way. I keep as far away from Jennifer as possible. Even from a distance, though, I know that she’s pretty, but not too pretty, which makes things worse. I can’t even tell myself that he’s just f*cking some hot piece of ass in a meaningless college-boy kind of way.