it never happened. My stage of grief over Sean was singular. I’d cried a lot until I didn’t.
And it was all his fault.
If Sean had been like Mom, he’d have switched his schedule at school so that we wouldn’t have any classes together. He’d have moved lockers so his wouldn’t be next to mine anymore. He’d have found a new lunch period, let alone a new table.
He’d have completely blotted himself from my life, left those shattered, splintered shards of my heart to fester whenever I thought of him.
Unlike Mom, Sean didn’t do any of that.
He kept up his attempts to talk to me, to explain something that was unexplainable. I shot him down again and again and again. How could I do anything else when at home Dad still started every time the phone rang or someone came to the door, thinking it might be Mom?
Claire didn’t help either, not the way I wanted. She’d always been Team Sean where I was concerned. She knew something had happened between me and Sean the night my mother left, but she had restrained herself—barely—from prying too much. It wasn’t a story I was eager to remember, much less tell, and even though it killed her not to know, Claire could see I wasn’t ready to talk about it. For about three weeks she left well enough alone, which was about two weeks and six days longer than I’d expected.
“I need to tell you something,” she’d said, linking her arm through mine after school one day. “You’re probably not going to like it, so I’m holding on.” She drew in a deep breath, the kind that almost always precipitated a speech of some sort, and I braced for impact.
“I don’t know all the facts, and that’s okay,” she’d added when I tensed. “I understand that you don’t want to talk about it. What I do know is that three weeks ago your mom walked out and you’ve barely been able to look at Sean since.” She let out a gust of breath and dropped her bomb. “I know there’s a connection.”
The blood drained from my face. I actually felt the sensation, and it left me light-headed, unable to protest when Claire led us to the field before tugging me down to the grass beside her. I’d been fending off Claire’s increasingly probing questions, dreading and yet somehow feeling like this moment—the moment when Claire would connect the dots—was inevitable. It was almost a relief to get it over with. Until Claire started talking again.
“I’m not going to speculate wildly here, I know who’s involved and that’s enough. On one hand, there’s your mom. I don’t want to say anything bad about her, but I’m struggling to find anything good to say. She’s made you cry a lot, I’ll leave it at that.”
My eyes were dry at that moment, but only because I’d already cried that morning.
“Then there’s Sean. He’s been the guy to pick you up when you’re hurting over her—sometimes literally—and get you past it. So if something bad happened with both of them on the same night, I’m not going to look at Sean afterward, I’m going to look at your mom. And if you can’t tell me why I should do otherwise—” she held up her hands when my head jerked to face her “—and I understand that you can’t right now—then I have to believe it was her and not him.”
Her and not him. As if it were that simple. As if I hadn’t replayed that night over and over again, looking for ways to exonerate him. Because I missed Sean, I did. Seeing him had always been one of the best parts of my day, and now that was gone.
Claire shifted onto her knees. “Think about it. Your mom has been gone all this time without a word. Whatever she did and whatever damage she caused, she doesn’t care enough to wade back in and try and fix things. Whereas Sean has done nothing but try to fix things, and I don’t see him stopping anytime soon. You of all people should see that for what it is. Something is broken between you two, I’m not denying that, but if there’s a chance that it can be fixed—and he really seems to want to—how can you of all people not try?”
To fix me and Sean.
She didn’t have all the facts, but I couldn’t argue with the ones she did. Everything she’d said about Sean and my mom was true. Historically, Mom was the one who hurt me and Sean was the one who helped me heal. But that one night had changed everything. Sean was there. He’d stayed. He’d said he was sorry.
Maybe Sean and I could be fixed. Maybe the damage could be buffed out, repainted, polished until it hid something only the two of us would ever know about. But that wasn’t the question. The question was...did I want to? Did I want to forgive him for the role he’d played in Mom’s leaving? Could I look at him and not see the ghost of her wrapped around him?
There was no going back. Despite the often-conflicting signals I got from my heart and my head, I couldn’t love Sean anymore, but I didn’t want to hate him either. I didn’t know where that left me, and I wouldn’t know until I tried.
So I did.
Sssslllloooowwwlllyyyy. And trying was predicated on one very clear but unspoken rule: Sean and I would never talk about that night.
At first he was just there, a presence floating around in my peripheral vision, a nod when we passed in the hall. When I stopped flinching every time I saw him, he moved to short conversations and even an awkward high five when I aced a test. After that, I didn’t freeze when he smiled at me—though there was a tension around his mouth that had never been there before. I didn’t move away when he sat next to me or hesitantly bumped my shoulder with his. Slowly but steadily, I was acclimating to something I never thought I’d be able to accept again, much less enjoy: him.
And when summer came and we started running with Claire, shoulder to shoulder, mile after mile, I stopped torturing myself with flashbacks. Because I decided that Sean and I could be fixed. We weren’t an us anymore; we became something else. And we did that because he was right there next to me, not giving up—never giving up. Cautious but determined to fix us.
That was the thing about me and Sean Addison: I wasn’t in love with him anymore, but if I was, it would be entirely his fault.
I kept my steps slow and even as I closed in on Sean’s car. Each time it was a little easier. I hadn’t felt completely at ease around Sean since puberty anyway, so I told myself this was just about exchanging one kind of discomfort for another.
I no longer got flustered or felt that overwhelming sense of euphoria when he was around. The one that made me say stupid things and get caught staring at his eyes. None of that happened for more than a heartbeat or two before I was thrown back to that night in my living room.
I halted several feet away and bit down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to make my face throb. I wasn’t doing this again. I focused on that pain and pushed all thought of that night into the dark recesses of my mind, and vowed for the hundredth time to finally let it die there.
I was fixing us; we were fixing us.
I chanted that with each step and was relieved when I didn’t have to force a smile as I reached the Jetta.
I approached the driver’s side door of Sean’s Jetta and saw his head tilted back and his mouth open, exhausted but there because he wanted to fix us too. Like a balloon releasing, that knowledge eased the pressure in my chest.
It was getting easier. As long as Claire was close enough to keep between us.
I slapped the window and bit back a laugh when he jumped awake, his hands flying up to the steering wheel.
Sean grunted as he got out of his car. He wasn’t smiling, so the dimple that used to spike my blood pressure was noticeably absent, but I caught a hint of it when he turned to me. “That’s low, Whitaker. I was having this awesome dream where I got to sleep without a small blonde girl yelling at me to—”
“Hurry up, you guys! Those miles aren’t going to run themselves.”