Present
Fissuring. My heart was fissuring, and I couldn’t breathe. I swallowed. Swallowed again and again as my stomach rolled and my heart slammed into my ribcage repeatedly.
“Daisy,” Pippa whispered, tugging on my arm.
But I couldn’t move my eyes from Quinn’s. They were stuck. As if something was keeping them there and forcing me to see this moment. To face the surprise, wariness, and sadness that filled those hazel depths in quick flashes.
“I …” I started, my lips trembling. I clamped them together and finally looked away once the shock started to wear off and made way for the stinging of tears.
Quinn’s voice hit my ears. “What are you—?”
“Quinn.” I saw Alexis place her hand on his arm, and the burn intensified, spreading everywhere.
“Nice to meet you, I guess,” Pippa said dryly, taking my hand and tugging me down the sidewalk.
My feet dragged, my head swinging over my shoulder to look at Quinn, who was talking hurriedly with Alexis. And then he was following us.
“Stop,” I croaked.
Pippa stopped. As he jogged over to us, she asked, “Want me to stay or go?”
“I don’t know.” My words were a shadow of my voice.
She squeezed my arm. “I’ll just wait down there on the bench, okay?”
I think I nodded, but then Quinn was in front of me, swallowing up my complete attention and making my hands itch to touch him.
Except I couldn’t.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, raking a hand through his hair and narrowing his eyes on mine. When I didn’t answer, he tried again, his voice softer this time. “Daisy?”
“College. I applied, got in. I’m here.” Something about his question had me feeling defensive. Or maybe it was the continuous rupturing of the vital organ in my chest as I stared at his finely chiseled jaw, his eyes, that straight nose, and the dusting of his blond brows, lowering over his brown lashes.
He didn’t respond for a long-drawn-out minute. Just stared at me. His face a tense mask of disbelief. “I didn’t think …”
“That I’d come here?” I offered when he trailed off.
He nodded, then sighed. “How are you?”
How am I? I found it insane that he’d asked such a thing when it felt like the blunt force trauma I just experienced, was still experiencing, was evident for the whole world to see.
When we hadn’t seen each other in years.
When I came here for him, and he was with my old best friend.
“What’s going on?” I shook my head, sick of trying to ignore the craziness of the situation.
“What do you mean?” He stepped out of the way for someone to walk past.
“You and Alexis?”
He openly winced, then wiped a hand down his face before looking over his shoulder at where she was standing outside the ice-cream parlor, watching us. His broad shoulders loosened with a long exhale. “Daisy …”
“It’s obvious,” I laughed out. “Really. You don’t need to sugarcoat it.”
His eyes blazed golden and green, his jaw clenching. I tensed, not used to seeing him angry, and feeling like I should be the angry one here, not him. “You left.”
“I know,” I whispered.
We stared. Voices of passersby drifted around us as we continued to stare, and when his eyes finally disconnected from mine, a piece of myself slithered into the shadows surrounding us.
“This was a mistake. I’m not doing this,” he finally said. “I’ve gotta go.”
“Quinn, wait.”
He wouldn’t look at me. “No, Daisy. Look.” He drew in a sharp breath, releasing it with his next words. “We were young, and it was a long time ago. I’m happy to see you, but”—he looked at me then, resolve filling out any soft edges of his handsome face—“I think we should maybe steer clear of each other.”
Despite agreeing that would probably be a good idea after what I’d just discovered, I couldn’t let go quite that quickly. “Why?”
“Things just … change.” He stepped backward, away from me, toward Alexis. “Take care, okay?”
Take care?
Pippa was there again, hooking her arm around mine. “Come on.”
I didn’t realize I’d been watching Alexis and Quinn walk off in the opposite direction until she tried to drag me away. Quinn looked back over his shoulder just before they rounded the corner at the end of the street, but he was too far away for me to see his expression.
Then he was gone.
Back inside our dorm, Pippa closed the door and led me to my bed, sitting down beside me as I kicked my shoes off.
“That was him, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“But now, he’s with her.”
“Apparently.”
Her hand made circular motions on my back. “Well, fuck.”
That night, we laid in silence, me glaring at the ceiling with tears brimming my eyes. Everything felt different now. I felt no excitement as I laid on this bed, in this room. No, now I saw it for what it was. Old and outdated.
Much like I was.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Pippa asked when the silence started screaming.
I didn’t. I did, but I didn’t. “I think I’m still in shock.”
“She was your best friend?” Her voice was tentative, hesitant.
“Was, yes.”
More silence, followed by the howling of my heart and thoughts. How could he? He’d moved on. With her. He’d been kissing her, touching her, loving her, having sex with …
I jumped out of bed and raced out into the hall, careening into the wall outside the bathroom and shoving a hand over my mouth as I stumbled inside, almost slipping in my fuzzy socks.
I retched into the first toilet I saw, hurling until tonight’s pizza was a gory mess staring back at me, and my stomach started to convulse again.
“Ew, you okay?” someone asked.
“She’s fine,” I heard Pippa inform them. “Ate some bad pizza for dinner.”
Laughter. “Oh, totally. Stay away from the Chinese place on Waymen Drive. Hilary, my roommate, spent like two days puking everywhere.”
Standing on shaky legs, I flushed the toilet and grabbed some toilet paper to wipe my chin.
“Thanks, noted,” Pippa said, then helped me out of the stall and to the sinks. “Here.” She passed me my toiletry bag, and I gave her a grateful smile.
“What a waste of twenty dollars, huh?” I tried to laugh it off, but then the tears well and truly came. Thankfully, we were alone by that point.
“Shh, come on. Let’s get your teeth brushed, then you can cry all you want back in the room.” She squirted some toothpaste onto my toothbrush, ran it under the tap, and passed it to me. Somehow, I managed to keep the tears to a slow trickle as I rinsed, brushed, rinsed again, and then walked back to the room.
Once back on my bed, lying on my stomach, the tears became a torrential downpour that seemed to never end.
Take care.
His departing words felt like knives, piercing the flesh of my breastbone and plunging beneath, causing my heart to bleed instantly.
Pippa sat beside me for a while, passing me tissue after tissue until I finally suggested she should get some sleep.
“Only if you try to do the same.”
I reluctantly agreed, and her weight disappeared from the bed. The sound of her sheets swishing as she got comfortable in her own bed filtered through the room, and my eyes closed.
I didn’t think I could sleep; I had no idea how I was supposed to do anything but try to wake up from this nightmare.
It was one thing for him not to want me anymore or to get sick of waiting. Both things would still destroy me, force me to crumble and reevaluate what the hell I’d been doing all this time.
Except he didn’t just do that.
He’d moved on with the only other person I’d ever considered a lifelong friend. Someone I’d known almost as long as I’d known him.
The hours that ticked by as I stared at the wall with my back to Pippa seemed to make the memories swim into each other, blending then separating, making me question everything.
Was this what he wanted all along? To be with her?
It’d make sense. Alexis was the kind of beautiful you rarely encountered. Yet I still couldn’t bring myself to believe he’d always wanted her. It had never felt that way. There’d never been any doubt he’d wanted me once we finally took that next step.
Things change.
They did. Oh, my fucking God, how they did.
Her eyes stared back at me in the dark, glowing like twin beacons of blue triumph.
I couldn’t think the same of Alexis, and it made me feel stupid. It was obvious now.
She had always wanted him. But he was all I saw; I never saw anything else.
I don’t know if I could ever exist without you.
Well, he clearly could.
I squeezed my eyes shut once more, forcing the tears to stop. Eventually, sleep slithered into my body, turning my tense limbs soft. Like iced water over a burn, I welcomed it, wanting desperately to slip away.
Turned out, it offered little respite, thanks to the dreams that insisted on tormenting me further.