WHEN ROWAN ENTERS our apartment a few minutes after I get home, I’m sitting on our couch with my head in my hands. I look up at her through tear-filled eyes, and she frowns at me.
I didn’t break down during the ride home from Joel’s mom’s house. I didn’t break down when I saw his beat-up car sitting empty in Adam’s parking lot. I didn’t break down during the drive back to my own place. And even at home, in the privacy of my own living room, I haven’t broken down.
I don’t deserve to cry. Even though I do it—almost every day—I don’t have any right to.
“They told me what happened,” Rowan says, taking a seat on the coffee table across from me. “Dee, this has got to stop.”
My expression hardens, and I blink away unshed tears before they have a chance to fall. “What are you talking about?”
“Joel looks miserable. He is miserable. And you’re sitting here crying . . .” She puts her hand on my knee, her voice soft but insistent. “You need to tell him how you feel.”
“And how do I feel, Rowan?”
“You love him.”
A tear escapes the corner of my eye, and I shake my head.
“Really?” she challenges. “Then why are you crying?”
Another tear, and another. I’m crying because he drove off with no shirt and no shoes, because he never should have been there in the first place, because when he asked me why I came to get him, I should have told him how horrible this week has been without him, how I miss his smile, his laugh, the way he used to kiss me goodnight. How I still sleep in his T-shirt because I miss his arms around me, how I can’t even bring myself to wash it.
“Just drop it, Rowan.”
“No,” she argues. “This is ridiculous. I’m your best friend, and I know you’ve never been in love before but—”
“Stop,” I warn, feeling all the hurt inside me burn into anger, which feels more familiar, more safe. I cling to it.
Rowan sighs. “He loves you back, Dee. No one’s breaking your heart here but you.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I snap. I get up and walk down the hallway toward my room, but she follows me.
“Oh really? Why did you go to his mom’s tonight? And don’t give me the same bullshit reason you gave Joel.”
I close the door between us, but Rowan throws it open.
“Why the fuck do you care?” I shout at her. “Your life is perfect! You have a perfect guy and a perfect family and everything’s so goddamn fucking easy!”
“Oh, excuse me while I cry you a river, Dee,” she snaps back. “Joel is a GREAT fucking guy. And he ADORES you. So let’s all cry about it! Because that makes ANY sense.”
I head into my bathroom, but Rowan jams her foot against the door before I can close it. I turn around and glare at her, my cheeks hot with tears.
“I’m trying to help you,” she says, everything about her stony and uncompromising.
“You can help me by minding your own fucking business.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Leave. Me. The fuck. Alone!”
She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from lashing out at me, and I already know I shouldn’t have said what I said. But I don’t take it back, not any of it, and she finally says, “Fine. You want me to leave? I’m leaving. Call me when you’re ready to stop lying.”
“Lying to who?” I yell at the back of her head when she gets to the front door.
“Yourself!” she shouts back, and then the door slams behind her.
That night, when I cry in the shower, it’s not just because I miss Joel. It’s because I miss my best friend. Because I miss my old self. Because I miss a time that never really existed—a time when I was happy.
I change into pajamas and wrap my hair in a towel, not bothering to dry it before I crawl into bed with Joel’s T-shirt, breathing in his scent and wishing he were here with me to hold me close and tell me I’m not broken.
The closest I ever got to happiness was when I was on the receiving end of his smiles, his kisses, his secrets. When we held hands and made each other laugh. When he loved me.
Tears soak into my pillow when I remember him standing barefoot in his mom’s gravel driveway asking me why I came to get him. Rowan asked me the same question. I didn’t give Rowan an answer, and I gave Joel a lie.
Because I wanted to make sure you went home with Adam, I said.
But what I should have said was, Because I love you.
A heavy sob breaks free from some locked-away place inside me, and I hug Joel’s T-shirt tighter, letting myself say the words, even if they’re only in my head while I sob into my pillow.
I tell him I love him on Easter at the pool. I tell him I love him while we’re cooking dinner with my dad. I tell him I love him when he crawls in my bedroom window.
I say it while he cries in my arms on his birthday. I say it while I lie on his chest on the bus.
I cry myself to sleep, knowing it’s too late but saying it over and over and over again.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.