All This Time(12)

“Kyle, it’s almost September. Your friends are all starting to leave for college. Sam is enrolled in classes at the community college,” she says, taking a deep breath. “So, UCLA.”

I sit up and push my mess of hair out of my eyes, my fingertips grazing the raised scar on my forehead. She can’t possibly think I’m actually going. “What about it?”

“I know UCLA was supposed to be you and Kimberly. I know how much that plan meant to you,” she says, reaching out to grab my hand. “But you need to accept that the exact future you had planned isn’t possible anymore.”

My eyes find the UCLA pennant Kimberly bought me hanging on my wall, the blue and yellow taunting me. The future I had planned wouldn’t have been possible anyway. Kimberly would’ve been packing her bags to start a new adventure at Berkeley.

Without me.

I feel the tiniest twinge of anger and then a familiar wave of guilt. Kim would give anything to be going anywhere. Just to be here.

“But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a future,” she continues. “You’re supposed to leave in a week and a half, and maybe that would be—”

“I’m going to defer,” I say, making a decision. The only decision that will get Mom off my back, at least for a few more months. “For the first two quarters. It’s too soon.”

She doesn’t have to know yet that I’m never setting foot on that campus.

She blinks. This was not at all what she expected. I can tell from the set of her shoulders she was ready for a fight, but this is logic she can’t ignore, which is what I counted on. So she nods, satisfied, I guess, that I’ve made any sort of decision about my life.

“Fine. But if you do that, you need to make a new plan. If you defer UCLA, you can’t just do…” Her voice trails off, and she motions to the pile of dirty clothes. The used dishes. The overflowing trash can. “This. You have to do something.”

I look around the room. I haven’t left it all summer and it shows, but I can’t muster the energy to care.

“You’re still alive,” she says, squeezing my hand. “And you can’t stop because she isn’t. You need to keep living.”

I let out a long exhale, running my fingers through my matted mop of hair. Just having this conversation is exhausting. I have no idea what living even looks like now.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” I say honestly. Maybe if she just tells me what she wants, that’ll be enough.

“Sam wants to see you,” she offers, holding up my phone. I have no idea how she even got it. “It’s been months since you talked to him, and I know for a fact he’s hurting too. You could start with that.”

She tosses it to me, and it hits me square in the chest, my hands fumbling as they miss it. My reflexes are way out of practice. The screen lights up to reveal dozens of missed calls and texts, mostly from Sam, a few from guys I played football with through the years, though those tapered off ages ago.

Sam’s the only one still trying.

I scroll slowly through his messages, watching as they go from hey man, how you doing? to dude, it’s been almost two months since I’ve heard anything from you. call me. I’m worried about you.

I don’t know how to look him in the face after everything that went down. How can he even want to see me? Hanging out together would just be another painful reminder that our trio isn’t a trio anymore.

“You can’t shut him out forever,” my mom says, reading my mind. She pats my leg twice and stands.

“Now, call him and get up. Go to the grocery store. I’m not shopping or making food for you anymore,” she says, heading for the door. “Maybe if you get hungry enough, you’ll have to come out and join the living,” she adds.

My stomach growls loudly in response.

Traitor.



* * *




I’m dripping sweat by the time I get to the Stop and Shop. My jeans cling to my legs, my skin used to the fuzzy insides of sweatpants. It took me close to an hour to get here, limping along the winding blacktop path that passes by my high school and the library, my leg suffering without the physical therapy appointments I’ve been avoiding.

Mom subtly left her spare key out on the counter, but there’s no way I’m getting behind the wheel again.

I try to avoid looking at all the storefronts that remind me of Kim. The Chinese food restaurant where we’d always get takeout during finals week, Sam hogging all the lo mein. The coffee shop where Kim would get her seven-dollar latte with oat milk, insisting it was “better than the real thing.” The corner hair salon where she’d get highlights while Sam and I watched football on our phones in the waiting area.

So I keep my eyes on my feet until the sliding doors of Stop and Shop open with a burst of cool air. I grab a cart to take some of the pressure off my leg and roam the aisles to pick up the essentials, munching from a huge bag of Funyuns I grabbed off a shelf as I walked in.

Milk, eggs, bread. I add in a few bags of pizza rolls because Mom didn’t specify what exactly counted as a meal and I have a microwave in the basement for a reason.

And that reason is pizza rolls.

The sun is just starting to set as I walk home with my two bags, the sky turning orange and pink, slowly giving way to a deep blue. I must have been there a lot longer than I thought.