The worst thing about insomnia wasn’t the exhaustion, or headaches, the irritation, or the lack of concentration. I could’ve at least faced those symptoms.

The worst part was the loneliness.

It was strange to be on a campus in the middle of a city, surrounded by people all day, and still feel completely alone.

I’d spent so many years hating my father, terrified of him, that I never truly grasped how deeply the loss of my mother had hurt me. The hole had always been there, but in my father’s absence, my being truly alone in the world for the first time, it’d somehow grown, along with Eli’s. Seven years of loss crashing over me, and I realized it didn’t boil down to acceptance, because who the hell could ever come to accept a death so profound?

It was about crying the exact number of tears needed to become exhausted. To be so spent with grief, there were no more tears to cry.

I’d never wanted to cry in front of my father, to allow him to make a mockery of my pain, so instead I’d pushed it away. Kept it hidden. And with his death, all that grief and misery had finally broken free, and the impact of Ty’s absence struck my heart with a crushing blow.

He’d become a beacon of hope for me. A pill to keep me blissfully numb. Something to grasp in the darkness, and with him gone, I felt as if I was adrift in deep waters.

Sure, I had Bea, but she didn’t have the power to consume me the way Ty had. To distract me from myself.

Because one thing I’d learned in the last month, was how self-destructive the mind could be when the body craved something so intensely.

Sitting in my car, I stared through windshield at his apartment building. His bike wasn’t out front. It hadn’t been for weeks. I’d even gone up and knocked on his door a couple of times, until it’d finally sank in that he’d left.

He’d really left.

The first couple of nights had been the hardest, the fleeting moments in which I’d actually fallen asleep—dreaming about him, his hands on my body, his breath on my skin, only to rouse to the cold and empty bedroom. The worst ones gave me nightmares, of him lying in a pool of blood somewhere, having killed himself, and I’d woken with a scream tearing up my throat and sweat soaking my T-shirt.

Some nights, I’d wake to my father standing in the corner of my bedroom, blood still spilling from his bullet wound. “Look what you made me do! Look at all the blood on this carpet!” he’d scream, and I’d swear those nights were real. My whole body would seize and tremble until the ghostly figure faded with the first light of morning.

But sometimes he wouldn’t disappear and I’d feel someone following me on campus, or catch a glimpse of him in the crowd. Those were the moments I felt most vulnerable. Most alone. Unbalanced.

After a month, though, things had begun to settle. The investigations into my father’s suicide, along with my statements, had reopened not only Eli’s murder, but also Shawn’s suicide case, as well. I’d agreed to assist however necessary, to ensure the man who’d been wrongfully placed behind bars was eventually set free. Computers, files, documents, all of it had been seized by the FBI, and I managed to get by on the small amount of funds in my bank account, as well as the money Ty had left, until my father’s estate and trust, for which he’d oddly named me as a sole beneficiary, had been settled.

The truth would finally be known.

I exited the vehicle and ambled across the street, before climbing the narrow stairwell that led up to the roof of the apartment, where Ty had taken me weeks before.

The city stretched on toward the horizon beneath where I cautiously mounted the ledge. Legs trembling, I hiked my foot over the edge, followed by the other, until they dangled above the street below me. Every muscle shook, urging me to safety. Instead, I closed my eyes.

I’d come to understand Ty, how danger could so easily seduce someone like him, and why he’d dare to tread where most wouldn’t. There was something oddly cathartic about immersing oneself in fear, letting go of the thin and fragile line that held an illusion of safety. The thrill winding in my stomach, with my feet slung over the edge of the building, felt no different than the split seconds before climax.

Fear was like sex.

Terrifying at times, yet exquisitely addictive.

The cool November air ruffled my hair, sending a numbing cold across my skin, and dark billowing clouds loomed overhead, promising the chilly nip of rain. I tried to imagine Ty’s eyes, so blue, like the clearest morning sky, and his eyebrows set to a brooding angle. His hollow cheeks and square jaw, those perfect lips designed for breathless kisses.

Every feature perfectly etched in my memories.

My heart was a canvas, an empty slate, upon which, he’d sketched his darkest desires. And no one would ever erase it, or draw over the parts he’d already claimed. He’d breathed life into me, while drowning me at the same time, filling my lungs as he’d pulled me under the surface. I was sinking without him, suffocating in my solitude.

Some days I wondered if I’d dreamed him.

I opened my eyes again, certain of it.

In my palm sat two pills, like two tickets to a paradise where the gloom of overcast and the ache of loneliness couldn’t touch me.

* * *

You need anything, honey?” Bea’s quiet voice carried across the bedroom, where I lay on my side, staring out the window. Friday afternoon meant she’d be packing up to go to Simone’s for the weekend.

“Bea? Does it ever go away? The pain?”

“He was your first?” she asked.

Perhaps she meant love. Or heartbreak. What I knew for certain was that Ty had been the first time I’d ever felt passion. True fire in my blood. The very thing my mother had always urged me to hang onto, no matter what.

Lifting the heavy duvet to catch the tears in the corner of my eye, I nodded.

“No. Never.” The doubtlessness in her voice hit my heart like a tack-hammer, adding another crack to the many I’d suffered over the weeks.

I didn’t know how many blows the heart could withstand before it crumbled. How many wounds it would bear before it gave out. I didn’t even know how to describe my pain. Anger? Sadness? If what I felt was love, it was a strange duality. The only thing that could simultaneously save and hurt me at the same time.

The bed dipped, but I didn’t bother to turn, knowing she’d sat down beside me, She rested her head on my folded legs. “But I promise you, it gets easier.” For the next ten, or so, minutes, she lay there beside me, neither of us saying a word, until she pushed up from the bed, kissed my cheek, and left.

I shifted my gaze to the easel at the other end of my room, from where Ty’s eyes stared back at me in the sketch I’d drawn of him from my own memory.

Only one thought had lingered inside my head for the last half hour.

I didn’t want it to get easier.