I could barely focus during Monday morning’s meeting because Aubrey’s phone’s still off and she still hasn’t called. Even when Dad called me into his office halfway through the morning to tell me he was proud of my work lately, it still didn’t take the edge off. My mind is scattered. Lost. I mismeasure three times. Garray cracks a joke about how I should’ve finished high school. The glare I give him lets him know that it’s the last time I’ll let him get away with it. I’m an asshole to everyone, and I know it. I just can’t help it. I watch the seconds tick by, but they feel like minutes, and as soon as lunch break comes along, I’m out of my tool belt and into my truck and making my way to her shop.

Still closed.

I drive to her house, knock on the door.

I came home Saturday morning. I wanted to leave within an hour of getting to Mom’s place, but unfortunately for me, the buses had stopped running. When I left, I was sure to make it look as though I hadn’t been there at all.

I didn’t go to work on Saturday. I didn’t have it in me to plaster on a smile, talk to the two, maybe three people who might walk through the door. Besides, I didn’t want him to know I was home. Hence why I never answered the few times he came knocking and why I haven’t bothered to switch on my phone. But I’m answering now, because I should, because I deserve to have my say, and because it’s time.

I don’t let him step foot in my house.

“Where the hell have you been, and why didn’t you call me? Did something happen to your phone?” I imagine the hint of worry in his tone. “Aubrey?” He rarely calls me Aubrey. “Why won’t you look at me? Is something wrong? Did something happen?”

I shake my head, but I keep it lowered, because looking at him is like looking at the sun: pure agony. “I don’t want to do this anymore.” My voice wobbles, and I hate that it does.

“What?” He steps forward, tugs on the end of my sweatshirt. “I couldn’t hear you.”

I look up now, my eyes focused on his shoulder. I’m weak. Pathetic. I force eye contact. Blue-blue eyes stare back at me. I think I’ll miss them the most. “I said ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’”

“Do what?” he asks, his eyes narrowing, head cocked to the side.

“Whatever it is we were doing.” My voice is stronger, more certain, mirroring how I feel on the inside. “I don’t want to do it anymore.”

His eyebrows rise. “What the hell happened over the weekend? Did you get back with your ex or something?”

“Definitely no.” If I were that desperate, I’d simply continue to have meaningless sex with the boy in front of me.

Logan takes a step forward, and I take a step back. “Don’t.”

“Red, what’s going on?”

I drop my gaze, stare down at the rings covering my fingers. I clear my throat, ready my words. “I added you on Facebook.”

“So?”

When I’d thought about this moment, all the things I would say, I ran through every single response he might possibly have. “So” was on top of that list.

“So” meant “So what?”

“So” meant that he didn’t care.

“So” meant that I was doing it all over again: falling for a guy who didn’t feel the same.

“So, Cambodia was fun, huh? Building those houses and sleeping with Casey Allen?”

He sighs, rubs his hands across his face. “Jesus. That’s what this is about? We weren’t even—”

“And Bella with the Boobies?”

His eyes widen now. “That was before—”

“Before what, Logan? Before you gave me the excuse that you were jet-lagged? That you were going home to crash? Before you left me alone in bed and you went back to the party you dragged me away from and spent the night with someone else?” I’m fucking crying. I’m crying and he’s watching me, watching every single emotion pass through me, watching me wipe away every single tear. I hate myself for feeling this. I hate him for making me.

“When did…?”

“People talk. Girls talk. Girls walk into my store and touch my shit and talk about fucking a guy the night before…” I choke on my words, my pain. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” I repeat.

His eyes drift shut, his hands balling at his sides. “Aubrey,” he whispers. “This is—”

“Nothing,” I finish for him. “This is nothing. We are nothing. And it’s my fault for thinking that it was more, just like I did with my ex. It’s like history repeating itself.”

“Don’t compare me to him,” he grinds out.

“But you are. You’re just like him. Maybe that’s why I fell for you. Maybe that’s why…”

He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Why what? Say it.”

I swallow my nerves, my pride, and lean back against the door, the weakness of my knees unable to hold me up. “Maybe that’s why I saw you first.”

Logan’s head moves from side to side, but his eyes stay on mine. “What are you talking about?”

“That night,” I finally admit, tears threatening to fall again. My heart’s racing, thumping, beating on the walls of ribs. “The first night you and Joy hooked up… I saw you first. I pointed you out to her, and when you noticed us watching you, you didn’t even… it’s like I was invisible to you. And I let all that go because, I swear, sometimes…”

Sometimes what?

Sometimes he looked at me as if… as if… as if nothing.

“You can’t be mad at me for that,” he says, his voice so quiet I barely hear him.

“I’m not mad at you for that. I’m not even mad about the girl in Cambodia. I’m mad because you…” You made me feel wanted when you didn’t want me at all. “I’m not mad, Logan. I’m just… just sad. God, I’m so sad,” I cry out. “And I’m allowed to feel that way. I’m allowed to want out of this mess, and I’m allowed to want to be with someone who sees me first.”

He shakes his head again, his eyes boring into mine. His jaw clenches. His brow furrows. Right before he says, breaking me completely, “Later, Red.”

I cut out of work as soon as it’s time and head right for my shack where I let Mary fuck me over the way Aubrey did. Before I know it, day turns to dusk, turns to darkness. Mary is a part of every inhale, every reluctant exhale. I consume enough of her to make Aubrey’s words disappear, make the vision of her crying get lost in the jumbled puzzle pieces of my mind. I let Mary fill every nerve, every vein, every heartbeat until the world begins to spin, just how I like it. I hate it when everything is still, frozen in time, like memories.

I hate it as much as I hate silence.

I grab my headphones from my truck, plug them into my phone, and then I drown out the silence the only way I know how. I lie down on the bank of the lake, Chicken next to me, and look up at the stars again.

I wonder if I’m broken.

I laugh at the thought.

Of course, I am.

But Mary fixes me. She’s my glue, putting the right pieces back in their designated place. She rewires my insides until nothing works, and everything is how it should be.

I put out the glowing embers of her soul and light up a new version of her. Then I close my eyes and hope sleep gets me before It does.

Minutes pass before I feel the affects:

I am weightless.

Buoyant.

I am high, high, high above the surface.

I am floating on clouds the color of scarlet.

I am nine years old, and the leather cracks beneath my weight. The car still smells new, even though I’ve been in it for months…

My body goes limp, and Mary becomes sleep’s ally: they work together, fighting to scare my demons away.