I shrugged. “Don’t forget to acknowledge Zeke.”
“Yeah, yeah … I know the rules,” Jake muttered.
As we left the lunch line of the breakfast buffet, my legs came to a standstill, and I suddenly forgot how to breathe. My heart beat in my eardrums, and the quickening of my pulse traveled down to the tips of my fingers.
Ollie stood in the entryway of the mess hall under the curved arch. My eyes scanned the outline of his silhouette of his side profile. His hands were stuffed deep in his pockets. He wore the same white tee, black jeans, and Converse. His hair was perfectly styled into his backward wave. Paralysis prevented me from dropping my tray right where I was standing, and run toward him. I couldn’t move.
Frozen.
“What’s wrong?” Jake asked, but I couldn’t respond.
I waited for Ollie to find me as he talked to another student—one I didn’t know the name of. Why wasn’t he looking for me?
Find me, Ollie. Lift your head and find me.
“Ollie’s back!” Jake called out.
Ollie turned his head at the sound of his name, and our eyes met. It was no longer the same eyes I had looked into so many times before. Now, only an emptiness resided where a wistful vulnerability used to collide with wonder. I had never seen his shade of green so dim, and it caused my stomach to fall into the same somber eclipse, spiraling faster and faster with no end, no walls—only darkness.
He didn’t even smile as I stood frozen—wasted. I waited for that smile. It seemed like forever as I anticipated in misery, but his lips never twitched. His Mia-smile was gone. I had been waiting for two weeks to see his smile. I had closed my eyes, dreaming of that smile. And now it was all a memory.
He’d warned me this would happen.
And then he averted his gaze. The walls in the room slowly caved in around me, suffocating me. The oxygen in my lungs, the blood in my veins, the flesh from my bones—all of it crumbled, breaking into small pieces yet still holding on by a thread. The thread being my heart. It still pumped on auto-pilot as if it couldn’t associate with the rest of my body. Thumping sounded in my ears, and I wished it would stop, but my heart was not ready to let go. It continued with the same steady pump, refusing to give up what was right in front of me. I was drifting, barely existing because he was gone—and that meant I was gone. We were gone. But my heart was still going, and now I hated it.
I hated my heart.
Maybe my heart believed his eyes would return to mine. Maybe my heart believed the light would shine in his eyes again. And I waited. Like I had a choice. Two seconds passed … then three, waiting as my body weakened from his disconnection, and my heart continued to pump. Four …
And then his back was to me. Whatever we’d had no longer existed, but I remembered everything clearly, and it wasn’t fair. He was detached, and it wasn’t fair. Why hadn’t he taken me with him? “Are you going to forget me or take me with you, love?” he had asked me once before. “Take you with me,” I had said, but I forgot to ask him the same question in return.
I should have asked him.
Could I ever learn to accept the hollow in his eyes over the wonder and vulnerability? Surely, anything he had to offer would be better than nothing. If only he would turn back around. Had he even noticed me? “Promise me you’ll bring me back,” he’d said to me, but I was frozen. “You have to remind me. You have to find a way.”
And then he took a step in the opposite direction. He was gone, left in obscurity, but my heart still maintained a steady beat, pumping along to a rhythm of crimson hope. “Stay with me,” he would say over and over. Who would have thought he would have been the one to take a step into oblivion? Inside, I screamed. Inside, I crumbled. Could he hear me?
Why couldn’t you stay with me, Ollie?
Even though he was only twenty feet away, I missed him, and it hurt so bad. It was quite possible he would wake up and turn back around, or I would wake up. Either way, it was a nightmare.
Each step drew more distance and less of a chance of him coming back. The darkness wasn’t better. I saw and felt his light with my own eyes and my own heart. I knew what was on the other side. He was the light. And now he was in the dark. And now I was left in the memory of it, and it wasn’t fair to be standing here alone.
The only warmth left was the water gathering in the corner of my eye, and no matter how hot it felt as it ran down my skin, I still shivered in his cold.
Dropping my tray onto Jake’s, I ran after him. My feet moved despite my inability to feel my legs. I breathed too hard, or not at all. I wasn’t quite sure, and I didn’t care. Words stuck in my throat as I tried calling out his name. His back was to me, and his shoulders were recognizable, and his stride was familiar, but he’d looked at me only moments ago like I was a stranger.
I grabbed him by the arm and turned him around, forcing him to look at me, forcing him to see me. He seemed confused as he looked down at me, and then he smiled, but it wasn’t the same smile I had grown to love. This smile was different. It was fraudulent. He ran his hands through his hair as I waited, dangling over the edge of a cliff.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said, looking past me and not at me, and there was something he was trying to hide.
“Say anything.” I grasped for hope, but he stood before me, unreachable. I grabbed his hand, but it was cold, and he pulled away before stuffing his hands into his pockets.
“You fucked my brother. I should have never allowed it to go on as long as it did.”
His words sliced through me. They cut me up, stuffed me into a blender, and he pressed the “on” button.
“Allowed what to go on?” Don’t say it, Ollie. Don’t you dare say it.
He took in a deep breath and looked at the ground as he exhaled. It was the most extended breath he had ever taken. “You and I.”
You and I.
Those were bullets. Three of them. One to the stomach, one to the heart, and one to the head. Before, when he’d said those words, it was all that mattered. A promise. Now it sounded like a past time, a regret. Another tear fell down my cheek, and I was trying to be strong for him when strong was all he was now. He still wouldn’t look at me, and my hands trembled at my sides.
“Ollie, it’s the medication. You don’t mean it. You promised me,” I held up the ring for him to see. “You fucking promised me, remember?
Ollie removed a hand from his pocket, but only to lower mine with his cold and bitter touch. “Don’t curse, darling. It’s a turnoff.”
My eyes went wide as I searched his face, but he looked at everything else but me. He exhaled, and I could tell he was about to pull away, so I stepped in front of him. “Tell me what to do, Ollie. How am I supposed to remind you?”