“Just tell him you love him and that no matter what, you will always be there.” The words poured out of me, they were words that I desperately wanted to say to him myself, but if Kyler knew the truth, how could he even stand to look at me. He would hate me, so I left before he could. “I just can’t be the one to help him. Not now.”
“Maddy, you’re the only one that’s ever been able to get to him,” she said, hanging her head down, her shoulders slumped, completely defeated.
“He won’t want me,” I whispered, before turning and walking away.
Chapter 28
“The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.” ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Kyler
Another glass shattered on the wall, bursting in tiny fragments and scattering on the floor. Crystal. Breaking the dishes in the pool house was showing me exactly how to differentiate between glass and crystal. Glass breaks into large chunks; glass can be glued back together. It wouldn’t be perfect but you could use it again if you wanted to. But crystal, crystal shatters into hundreds of tiny pieces with no way of putting that mess back together again. I kept wondering if Maddy and I were crystal or glass.
My phone flashed, twenty ignored texts, not one from the only person I wanted to hear from. It was as if Maddy was a mirage, a figment of my damn imagination. I’d lived in darkness since I was ten-years-old. I was used to it, it was all I knew and I’d become comfortable with it. Then she had to come into my life and fuck everything up.
I didn’t want to deal with anyone or anything. The only person I wanted in my orbit thought I was disgusting and wanted nothing to do with me. The worst part is that she’d changed me. I was used to walking around the world oblivious, fine with stepping on anyone that got in my way. Now I was holed up in my place like a little bitch, pining over a girl that shouldn’t have been worth my time. But she was worth everything. I was a pussy now, a pathetic pussy. I glanced at the floor; it was a collage of shattered crystal. It felt like my fucking heart was bleeding out on the floor along with it.
A loud knock interrupted my thoughts.
“Go away!” I shouted, lying on the sofa surrounded by pizza boxes and bottle after bottle of vodka and rum, scattered around the polished hardwood floors. It looked like a depressed junkie living in a dark cave.
“Kyler, enough is enough. Damn it, let me in.” My sister’s voice came from the other side of the front door. “Kyler, I swear to fucking god, if you don’t open this damn door right now, I’m gonna blast my way through it.”
“I think I’d like to see that,” I yelled, picking up a bottle of alcohol and drinking back the small amount that was left in it. “Just go away, Tammy.”
“Kyler, I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, Ky. Please don’t do this,” she begged, her voice defeated. I hated that I’d made her feel like that. Tammy was the only person that I cared about aside from Maddy, and here I was fuckin’ her up too.
“Tammy. I promise I’ll be fine. Just go away.”
“Let me see you,” she demanded.
I got up, staring at the tornado in front of me. I knew that if I opened the door and she saw all of this, she would be horrified, but at that point, I just wanted her to see that I wasn’t dead so she would just go away.
I flung the door open. “There, you saw me. Can you go away now?”
She pushed her way through, her eyes wandering the disaster zone. “What the actual fuck, Ky?” she said, bending down and picking up the chaos on the floor. “What happened?”
“What happened is that she found out how fucking pathetic I am,” I said, leaning against the wall and sliding down until I was sitting on the floor. I buried my head in my hands and started to tug at my hair. “She isn’t good enough for me, anyway.”
“That’s such utter bullshit. You’re both a miserable couple of cowards.”
Tammy’s words gave me some hope. Maddy was miserable? She was miserable and that made me feel a glimmer of happiness. I liked knowing she was as pathetic as I was and hoped that maybe, just maybe, she missed me too.
“Why don’t you just tell her how you feel?”
“I did tell her. I told her more than I have ever told another human being in a long time.”
“No, dummy, did you tell her that you love her?” Tamlin asked, sitting down beside me.
“She knows.”
“Tell her, Kyler. Actually tell her. Because you and I both know that you love the girl. Now help me clean this fucking mess. You’re disgusting.” She got up, offering her hands to me and helping me on my feet.
“Tam, I love you,” I said, wrapping my little sister in my arms.
“I love you too, you big dummy.”
Chapter 29
“You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.” ― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Madison
It’d been weeks since I’d seen any of the Sinclairs. After my encounter with Tamlin at the library, I even avoided her like the plague. My heart already felt heavy, I couldn’t deal with anything else.
“You’ve got a package, it’s in your room,” my mom yelled as I entered the front door.
“Thanks,” I said, and headed to my room. I glanced at my nightstand and there was a USB. I took it
