That inevitability is the electric current running beneath all our encounters this summer. My good old anxiety-brain, finally stepping up and protecting me.
I thought we were so different from who we were last year, but maybe we haven’t learned at all.
“Quinn,” he says, but I’m not done.
“You don’t know what it was like when my parents separated. How fucking lonely those six months were. Half a year, Tarek, and it didn’t ‘heal with time’ or any of the things people say about shit like that.”
This seems to only make him angrier. He tugs at the tight sleeves of his uniform, shoving them up so he can scratch the dry skin on his wrist. “You think you can avoid being hurt just because you don’t put a label on it? Because I have news for you. We’re in a relationship. We have been all summer. You can call it whatever you want or you can call it nothing”—he puts a sharp emphasis on that word—“but that doesn’t make you exempt from getting hurt. We’re all hurting, Quinn. In different ways, some that we can treat with medication and therapy and some only with time. And some in ways that might never heal. Sometimes the good outweighs the bad. Sometimes those great times are so fucking great that they make the bad times a little easier to handle.”
“Or they make them worse.” I’ve hunched back down, my shoulder blades wearing grooves in the wall. “Did you know that even after my mom moved back in, I couldn’t sleep at night for months? But I guess you wouldn’t be able to relate since your perfect parents have their perfect little story.”
“My parents are far from perfect.”
“I’ve never seen them fight.”
“Oh, just because you don’t see them do it when they’re at work, that means they don’t?” he says. “I’m sorry about your parents. I can’t imagine what it was like to go through that, and it’s shitty they never talk about it. But couples fight. You and I did.”
I scoff at that. “You can’t pretend that’s some sign we’re meant to be together.”
“No, but it doesn’t mean we’re doomed, either. Sometimes couples fight. It doesn’t mean they’re not right for each other—it means they’re trying to work something out. Together.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” I say. Even with as much conviction as I can muster, it’s only a whisper. I make myself stronger, urging certainty into my voice. “I don’t want to try.”
At that, his face just… shatters. That’s the only way to describe it. It shatters, and I’m the one holding the sledgehammer.
“Okay,” he finally says, all the feeling drained from his voice. “Okay. I get it now. It should have been clear to me before, but I guess I was too much of a fucking optimist to see it. There’s no way we can make each other happy.” He breaks off, takes a deep breath, as though working to keep his emotions at bay. When he speaks again, there’s a roughness to his voice. “If you were doing this to save yourself from being hurt, well, congratulations. Let’s just end it right now so you don’t have to suffer any more than you already have.”
I’ve broken him.
This sweet, romantic, optimistic boy, and I’ve broken him.
He turns to head down the corridor, and I have to rush to catch up.
“Tarek, wait—that’s not what I—” I try to reach for him, but he shrugs me off. I was supposed to be in control here.
“What did you say it was? Inevitable?”
I did. I did say that. “Please,” I whisper to his back, unsure how this went so wrong and how to make it right. I don’t even know what I’m pleading for, only that I don’t want to be alone right now, and I’m scared of what that means. “Tarek. Please.”
He just walks right into the kitchen, leaving me in the silent corridor with my brain the quietest it’s ever been.
26
For the next three days, I don’t leave the tower, except to sneak down to the kitchen when I’m positive my parents are out of the house. On day two, even Edith gets fed up and goes in search of someone who will do something other than cry into her fur. I listen to Cat Power on repeat, though it only makes me sadder.
I can’t even bring myself to talk to Julia. Her most recent text says, hey hi making sure you’re alive, and I manage to type back, yep, just busy, sorry.
It’s too similar to Tarek’s text from last year, which of course only sinks me deeper into this mess I’ve made. I hate how similar I am to that girl I was last year: weepy, hollow, half of myself. The last time I couldn’t control my emotions around Tarek. The last time I let someone get close enough to leave a mark.
This was supposed to be the easy way out. It was what I wanted since our first kiss, but it’s getting harder and harder to remember why.
It’s not just Tarek I’ve lost this time. Somehow, I managed to wreck all my relationships in a single day. It aches, imagining my parents downstairs, ushering couples into their office, my dad scratching things out and scribbling over the kitchen calendar. It took a lot of apologizing, but they should manage to get past this nightmare unscathed. They offered every guest at the wedding discounts for their services and for some of their vendors. Victoria even seems to have moved beyond caring what people think about her and Lincoln, since they’re letting Streamr move forward with it next month.
I’ve seen the trailer. It promises to deliver just as much drama as the show
