“No,” Kent’s deep voice answered for me, leaving no room for argument. I cringed, knowing my relief at avoiding him at the bowling alley had all been false hope. I should have known he’d come for me.
Cassandra shrugged and left, only to be replaced by Kent. He made himself comfortable on the stool and signaled for a drink. I groaned, knowing my feeling bad for myself in silence was coming to a screeching halt.
He was kind enough to at least wait until he had a drink before laying into me. “What has you looking like a sad fucking sap?”
“Fuck off,” I grumbled. I wanted to talk even less now than I had earlier.
“Calm down, pissy panties.”
“Fuck. Off,” I repeated.
“Okay,” he said like he was talking to a child. “I’ll finish my drink while you calm down and tell me what happened.”
My head dropped between my shoulders with a heavy exhale. Unable to look up and meet his dark gaze I knew was currently penetrating the side of my skull, I muttered toward the bar top. “She told me she loved me.”
One second. Two. Three. Four.
“And?”
And? Fucking and?
What the hell did he mean, and?
My head shot up, and I glared. He was supposed to know me better than anyone. He knew I didn’t do love, and yet, here he sat, asking me and. “And, I fucking froze.”
The confusion marring his face slowly softened in understanding, and I hated it because under the understanding was concern, worry, and maybe even pity. The pity had me pulling my shoulders back and clenching my jaw.
“D…”
“Don’t fucking look at me like that, Alexander. Don’t fucking pity me like I’m some poor baby that needs to be handled with kid gloves.”
“I’m not pitying you, asshole. I’m trying to understand how I missed something from twenty years ago has such a tight hold on you still.”
“The last person that said they loved me killed herself. It’s not exactly something you let go of. It stays with you like a mark you can’t ever get rid of. It had a big enough impact that I never wanted to be in the same position again.”
“Hanna isn’t Sabrina,” he said softly.
She wasn’t, but I was still me, and there lay the biggest crux of it all. I looked away, unable to admit what really haunted me, instead staring at my thumbs sliding up and down the condensation of my glass. “What if it’s not the girl. What if it’s me? Sabrina killed herself because I couldn’t love her back. Not the way she needed. I cared for her, but it wasn’t enough. What if I’m not enough, and that’s the final straw for them?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Kent growled, leaning in close. “Sabrina killed herself because she had mental health issues she refused to get help for.”
“Maybe if I could have at least said it. She’d have stuck around long enough for me to help her. Maybe I could have eventually loved her and helped her.”
“No. Love doesn’t fix sickness. It can’t cure cancer, so how do you expect it to heal a mind?”
I didn’t have an answer. I couldn’t.
“God, is this what you’ve carried around? I knew you blamed yourself, but shit, D.”
“Of course, I blamed myself. She blamed me. She wrote a fucking note making sure I knew it.”
“Daniel, I don’t know if you’re trying to remember her as some perfect person or remember your relationship as something great because you’re trying to preserve her memory or what, but you’re wrong. She was toxic. I didn’t know her before college, but whenever I saw her with you, she took and took from you. She’d scream at you all the time and demand you drop everything for her, and when you didn’t, she always acted out to make sure you came running. She put it on you because it was easier to blame you when she didn’t want to look at herself. You tried to get her help, and she didn’t want it. You did everything you could, but this wasn’t some angel of a woman who adored you that you couldn’t love back. She tore you down so you would stay with her because you took care of her when she didn’t want to take care of herself. It wasn’t your fault that you didn’t love her. Hell, I know more than anyone, you can’t choose who you love and that it’s okay.”
I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but Kent was right. Hearing him retell the past, let other memories flood in. I remembered the times I’d begged her to talk to someone because I saw her crumbling, and I hadn’t known how to hold her together. I remembered caring for her and holding on as tight as I could, but the further we got from high school the harder she thrashed through life and left me with cuts and bruises, the less she wanted to stand on her own and clung to me, wanting me to fall with her.
She hadn’t been the same girl I’d met in high school, and I knew a lot of it had nothing to do with me. But she’d left a note letting everyone who read it know that she couldn’t go on without me and that weighed on me—it skewed my vision. You didn’t remember the worst of the dead. You remembered the good times—the best of them. Apparently, I’d slapped on rose-colored glasses of my relationship with Sabrina, of the girl I used to know, and I’d let her down. She’d been perfect in my eyes, and I’d let her down.
We’d been happy, and I’d lost it, and I never wanted to feel that pain again, so I shut it off.
“Is this why you don’t date?”
“I date,” I muttered.
“Once or twice. Mostly just for sex. If someone wanted more, you moved on.”
“It’s not like you dated.”
“I didn’t date because I didn’t want to be tied down until Olivia.”
