Chapter Twenty-Three – Roxy

He looks the way I feel. Angry and confused and hurting.

“But you still don’t believe in me,” I say softly.

“Jesus, Rox. I do, okay? I do.” He frames my face with his hands. “I know you can do it.”

“What if I can’t? What then, Kyle? Will this happen again and again until we finally get it?” I step back. “What if this is me now?”

“This isn’t you. We know it.”

“No, we don’t. We think we do. I don’t know who I am. Do you get that? I don’t know if I’m the old Roxy or the new Roxy or someone entirely different. Right now I think I’m the new Roxy and you hate her. You hate everything she is and everything she does and this,” I gesture between us, “This wouldn’t work.”

“I could never hate you. You know that.”

“No, I don’t.” I swallow. “You said yourself the person I was before is your Roxy. This person isn’t, is she? Maybe we’re just kidding ourselves. You don’t want this Roxy, do you?”

“Fucking hell, Rox. I want you. I don’t get how we’ve gone from a simple misunderstanding to you deciding I don’t want you!”

“But you don’t want this Roxy!” I yell, not caring there are faces pressed against the windows watching us and everyone in the yard is quiet and listening in. “This could be the person I am. It probably is. I guess…” I pause for a moment. I need to hold these tears back. Why does the truth have to hurt so much? Why does it have to break my heart even more?

Why can’t the truth be beautiful for once?

“You guess what?”

I drop my eyes to the floor. “I guess if you don’t want the person I could be, then you don’t really want me at all.”

I can’t look up. I don’t want to see his eyes as he realizes what I’m saying is true. Because it is. He said it himself – the old Roxy is his Roxy. I’ll never be her again, not even if I try hard enough.

“The Roxy I know respected herself, she respected others, and she looked down on the kind of person you are right now. The Roxy I know? She had the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen and never failed to make my day, even when she was just my best friend’s kid sister. That’s the Roxy I want – the Roxy you’re trying to hide,” he replies softly.

“I can’t be the person you want me to be.” My eyes fill and my heart cracks. Not just a little, it’s a booming crack I feel right through my body. It’s a shattering motion that could destroy my composure in seconds.

“Can’t, or won’t?”

I shake my head.

“Then I guess… I guess I’m done here.”

Now I look up.

“If you want to destroy yourself this way, Rox, I can’t stand by and watch it. I can’t spend another night across a house from you while you drink yourself into oblivion. Keep it up and you’ll be the one getting into a car because you’re too drunk to think straight. Your parents will have to bury another child.” He starts walking. Backward. Away from me. “If you wanna fall, you can, but I’m not going with you. I’m not going to watch you do this to yourself anymore.”

He’s going.

He’s really going.

“I was right. You don’t believe in me at all.”

“Oh, I believe in you. The problem is that you don’t. You don’t believe in you, you don’t believe in me, and you sure as shit don’t believe in us. If you believed in us you wouldn’t be here drinking tonight. And I wouldn’t be walking away from us.”

“Like you don’t care. You wouldn’t be walking away like you don’t care.” My voice breaks on the final word. My stomach knots and I feel sick. He’s walking away.

But isn’t this what I was trying to get him to do?

Yes.

No.

I was trying to get him to see what I see.

I didn’t think it would end this way.

I didn’t think it would hurt so much.

“I care, Rox. I care about you too much – so fucking much it hurts. You think I wanna do this? You think I wanna turn my back on you and leave you here? I don’t, but you don’t believe. You don’t believe and I can’t believe in us if you don’t.”

He turns and walks away.

“Kyle,” I call his name. No no no. Don’t go. “Kyle!”

“You’ve made it clear, Rox.” His voice is sad. Fuck don’t do this! “You said yourself you can’t be my Roxy. In fact, you couldn’t have said it any more times.”

He disappears around the corner. I hold my hands against my stomach and bend down. The tears in my eyes threaten to escape and I shake my head.

He’s right.

I said I can’t be his Roxy anymore.

I said I can’t try.

I said I don’t believe in us.

He’s right, and I’m wrong.

I’m naïve and impulsive and that’s my stupidity. I don’t think before I do things. I let my temper control me and now look at me. I’m standing here staring at a black hole where he should be.

“What the fuck are you all looking at?” I yell at the people staring at me and run away from the house. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be anywhere near here. There’s only one place I can be right now.

Cam.

I run toward the graveyard, holding my tears in the whole way, and crawl through a hole in the bushes. My feet take me to Cam’s grave and I collapse on the floor there.

I let them go. I let the tears spill over and fall to the ground, and I rest my head against the headstone.

“I fucked it, Cam. I finally got what I wanted and I fucked it all up. Now I’m worse than I was before, because I still have neither of you, but this time I have twice the broken heart.” I hold onto the cold marble. “I’ve made a mess of everything, and it’s all my fault.”

The tears are falling hard and fast. I’m alone. I’m so alone in everything, and I know it’s all my own doing.

“What am I supposed to do?”

~

It should be raining. The sky should be dark and grey to match my mood, but it isn’t. It’s blue and bright and fucking sunny.

At least it’s quiet in the café. I don’t know if I could deal with having to be all sugar and sweetness today – I can barely smile.

“Well don’t you look happy today?” My cousin’s voice travels across the café. I glare at her as she sits in front of me. “I heard about what happened.”

“No laptop?”

“Finished last night. I’m having a day off.” She shifts in her seat. “Nice try, by the way. Are you okay?”

“Fine.” I grab a mug and flick the coffee machine into action.

“Right. I get it. You don’t want to talk about it.”

I sigh and pour her coffee. “I don’t know, Lou. I don’t know what I want to do.”

She takes the mug from me and looks at me sympathetically. “Apart from go home and have a good cry?”

I swallow and nod slowly. “That’s pretty much it.”

“Why don’t you just apologize? You both made a mistake.”

“It’s not that easy.” I rest my elbows on the counter and lean forward. “I mean, yeah, we both said shit we shouldn’t have, but it’s done now. It wouldn’t work. He’s walked away and I’m okay with that.”

Louisa raises her eyebrows. “Wow. That’s what you’re telling yourself, huh?”

I have to tell myself I’m okay with it. If I don’t, I don’t know what I’ll do.

“Roxy,” she says softly. “Do yourself a favor and ask Aunt Myra if you can leave early. Just go home, cry, and go to sleep. You’re allowed to do that, you know. She’d understand.”

I shake my head. “No. I don’t want to do that. I just…”

“Roxy, baby, go home.” Mom comes out from the kitchen. “Lou, can you help out until Selena comes in later?”

“Are you paying me?” Louisa grins.

“Depends how good you are,” Mom teases her.

“Okay. I’ll take over.” She turns to me. “See? Go home.”

Mom strokes my hair. “You’ll feel better. We’ll talk later, okay?”

It doesn’t look like I have a choice. I untie my ribbon strings and hand it to my cousin.

“Okay.” I wave bye as I leave the café.

This is one of the times I’m glad Verity Point is so small. Sure, half the people that live here are probably watching me walk home right now, but at least I can get there quickly.

I close my bedroom door behind me, lean against it, and look around my room aimlessly.

Even being here reminds me of Kyle. Everything is him, from the photo on my dresser to the lingering scent of him on my pillow. I can’t stay here any longer. I can’t be in this room for another second.

I stuff some clothes into a backpack and get out of the house.

If there’s no belief, there’s no reason to stay.