A loud thud woke me up.

I sat up quickly, sheets pooling around my waist. My heart pounded as I looked around the sunlight-soaked dorm.

“Wake the hell up, Ace. I’m getting old out here.” The voiced sounded hollow through the door.

I groaned. When I tossed my legs over the side of the bed and stood, my head spun, my world on an axis. My clothes lay tossed all over the floor like an ugly quilt. Well, at least on my side of the room. My roommate’s side was almost clean enough to be featured in a cleaning commercial, but I attributed that to him never being there.

When I found a pair of jeans near my nightstand, I pulled them on quickly, trying not to fall over as I did.

Thud, thud, thud.

“Ace,” Danny whined.

“I’m putting some pants on. Hold on,” I called out. Danny had to be the most impatient person I knew.

When I pulled open the door and motioned for him to come inside, he rolled his eyes at me. Two piping hot cups of coffee were firmly gripped in his hands as he slipped in and looked around at the mess on the floor.

“You’re such a slob,” he sneered.

“You woke me up to bitch at me about the cleanliness of my room?”

The blue shirt in the corner near my bed looked clean enough. I pulled it over my head and took one of the coffees from Danny.

“Where’s Steve?”

Danny always said Steve’s name with a hint of annoyance. He hated Steve for some reason, which was odd because Steve was a pretty decent guy. He was never around and rarely slept in the dorm room. Apparently, his girlfriend and her friend rented a house just off campus, and he spent most of his time there.

I shrugged and sat down on the edge of my bed, watching as Danny sat in the computer chair opposite me. His focus bounced around the walls, looking at the band posters and framed pictures on my desk. When he began thrumming his fingers on the back of my computer chair, I internally groaned.

“How was your night?” He practically batted his eyelashes at me.

This time I groaned out loud. “What do you want?”

“You know what I want—you to be happy.”

That immediately shut me up.

The air in the small room changed. It turned thick and boiled with tension threatening to bubble over. After setting my coffee cup on the floor, I tipped my chin back and stared at the off-white tiles on the ceiling, forcing myself to blink.

“I’m not stupid, Ace,” Danny pressed.

“I never thought you were, Danny.”

“You can’t stay here alone over Thanksgiving.”

Eyebrows raised, I shifted my gaze to my best friend. “And your word is law?”

“It is when it comes to this.”

In that moment, I hated Danny and loved him so damn much. He was the only good thing in my life. I had no idea what I’d done to luck out with a friend like him, but I knew I didn’t deserve him. I didn’t deserve his understanding. And it was that twisting feeling in my gut that made me hate him—hate him for being one of the only reasons the pieces of me were held together.

I’d been sitting in History 101 when Hurricane Danny Patel yanked the chair out next to mine, sat down, and said, “Ain’t this a load of bullshit?”

Our friendship hadn’t been instant. Things with me never were. My father always used to tell me that I was like an onion made of glass. You couldn’t peel away my layers; you had to chisel them away, slowly, carefully.

I’d imparted my father’s insight to Danny once, and he told me that while it was true, I was more like an onion made of ice. Still, even after I hadn’t uttered a single word back to him that history class, he talked my ear off the entire hour. And then the following history class. And the one following that.

It took me almost two weeks to speak to Danny, but it had admittedly been during a hard time in my life. I hadn’t talked to anyone and refused to find a reason to. I didn’t want any excuses to keep myself rooted to the Earth.

Since those first few words I spoke to Danny, we’d formed a slow, thick friendship. Danny was hot where I was so, so cold. And it was moments like these I hated him for it.

“Danny—” I began, but he cut me off with a hand gesture.

“Stop. Just stop, okay? Do this as a favor to me. Come home with me over Thanksgiving. Come meet my buddies from high school and get drunk with me during the day. Come with me to visit my mom’s grave. Come with me to keep an eye on my dad and make sure he hasn’t grown an extra head or something. Whatever the excuse, I’ll give it to you. Just—just come with me. Please.”

His eyes sparkled but his face remained stern. I blinked at him, heart racing, head spinning. “Do I want to know why you so badly want me to go with you?”

“You know why.” His voice sounded gentle—too gentle—and I had to stare at the wall behind his head.

This was what it came down to.

The same thing it always came down to: I, Archer Hart, couldn’t be trusted to be alone because my best friend thought the moment I was, I’d pull out my father’s old Smith & Wesson and blow my brains out.

I leaned forward, head in my hands, and breathed in deeply, letting the smell of dark coffee waft around me. Danny didn’t say a word, and I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.

Eventually, when we both knew I was breaking, I nodded into my hands.

---

Every Wednesday, in the basement of a shitty hotel an hour’s drive from campus, I met with a bereavement support group.

I’d tried it all: counselors, psychologists, church, drugs. Nothing stuck. Nothing helped. Internally, I didn’t think the little handholding support group I attended every Wednesday helped either, but it had stuck. Maybe because it was easy to sit in the back and listen to stories of other people’s lives, which were much worse than my own. Maybe it was because I didn’t have to talk. Maybe it was because of the dumb smile Danny gave me every Tuesday.

Danny was like a brother to me. Only better.

I stood at the top of the stairs and inhaled a deep breath. Even though I’d been doing the same thing, week after week, month after month, it still felt like I was heading into something I wasn’t quite prepared for. Hood pulled up over my head and hands shoved into my pockets, I descended the dimly lit staircase, keeping my eyes on my sneakers.

The basement was exactly what someone would imagine in a crummy basement below a hotel with a leaky floor. It remained unfinished, the walls haphazardly painted yellow, the fluorescent lights too bright overhead, and the walls covered in lame inspirational posters. In the center of the room sat a large circle of folding chairs, and off to the side, pressed against a wall, sat a long table topped with chronically lukewarm water and stale donuts.

There were a few people already there, chatting in hushed tones and claiming their favorite seats. Most people looked up when I walked in, but no one smiled or waved. After my first year of coming to this group without saying a single word, most people stopped acknowledging I was even there.

I walked over to the table and grabbed one of the Styrofoam cups from the stack. When I reached out to grab the coffee pot, I accidentally bumped the person standing next to me.

“Sorry,” I said, turning.

He just smiled at me. A sweet, tired smile that I was thankful for.

I recognized him from the few meetings prior. His copper-red hair and dark eyes were hard to miss. But he was just a slight thing, a few inches shorter than me, and likely a few years younger as well. The sweater he wore was too big and the polish on his nails was chipped away.

He looked on the outside how I felt on the inside.

Soon after, the room filled and everyone found their seats, the organizers of the group greeting everyone in slow calm voices and easy smiles. They welcomed the new people to the group and expressed their happiness to see the familiar faces.

A large, middle-aged man sat next to me. A few months ago, he told me he’d lost his wife of eleven years to leukemia. He cried almost every time the group met. In the past few weeks, he’d stopped crying so much and even smiled at me a time or two—even if I hadn’t smiled back.

When they asked if there was someone who’d like to speak first, I kicked my legs out in front of me and leaned back in my chair, arms crossed. The meeting always started this way. It was like one of the A.A. meetings I’d seen in movies. I wasn’t sure if all bereavement support groups went this way or not, but I’d tried a few others, which broke people into small groups, and ones where everyone went around in a circle and talked. One group I’d been to didn’t even talk about their losses—they just talked about everyday things: the weather, sports, and the newest addition to the shopping mall. Another group allowed people to bring in pictures of their families and share them, or home videos. I’d lasted about six minutes before leaving.

This meeting was one Danny had found online, likely after hours of vigorous research.

“It’s not hokey, and it’s not lame,” he’d said. “People say on this forum that it’s good and pretty chill. You’ll like it.”

“I’ll like it?” I’d asked, eyebrows raised.

He’d cringed, then grinned. “Like is the wrong word. But I think this one will suit you. This one will stick; I can feel it, Ace. Just give it a shot. I’ll come with you.”

Danny hadn’t come with me to that first support group and none following. The only thing I could think of that would be worse than going to another support group would be having him tag along. When I’d told him as much, he made a joke about me preferring to suffer in silence. I’d retorted by telling him I was suffering at all volumes. I’d meant it as a joke, but he hadn’t found it funny. Instead, a look passed over his face I never wanted to see again.

Opposite me, on the other side of the circle, the little redhead put up his hand. I watched him as he pushed his chair back and stood. He stared down at his hands, twirling the rings on his fingers as he spoke.

“My name is Bailey. It’s been six weeks since I lost my partner.”

The mere mention of it brought tears to his eyes. I had to look away.

Six weeks.

When I was at six weeks, the pain had been so raw—so fresh—I thought it possible to die from heartbreak. It was easy to see that same heartbreak molded into Bailey’s face, and it was more than I could handle. Even now, just looking at that heartbreak thrust me right back into my own. It pierced me straight through the heart.

Some people—even people who went to these groups—probably thought I was weak. I was far, far past the fresh, new sorrow of Bailey’s six weeks. For me, it had been three years since I’d lost both of my parents, and still the open wound gushed like I’d just been victim to scattershot from a blunderbuss.

“He was my everything. He—” Bailey’s voice cracked.

It was too much.

It was too much, too soon, and it would always be too soon. I would never get over this. This was what would continue to consume me and eat away at my sanity and my hope and my joy for the rest of my life. There was no light at the end of the tunnel because there was no fucking tunnel. There was a pit and in that pit was nothing but darkness. In the center, stood I.

The legs of my chair screeched loudly as I shot up. Without looking at any faces, I turned from the group and sprinted up the stairs.

When I reached the top and shoved the door open, the sky began to fall. Huge drops of rain beat down against my face. I closed my eyes and stood on the pavement, hands shoved into my pockets, praying to the sky that it would flood the entire world.