“I don’t believe that.”

“Then you’ve lived a very privileged life, Spence.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?” I ask, quickly adjusting my posture. Relaxing my rigid shoulders. Moving my fists into open palms and resting them on my thighs.

“Like you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

And she’ll never understand.

And she’ll never understand.

And she’ll never understand.

And she’ll never know to listen to every intonation. And she’ll never realize that with her, no words are casually tossed into our created atmosphere like rocks into a still pond, returned so easily to what shaped them to begin with. Starting over to be worn away again and again. Sometimes I mean what I say to her so deeply that it makes me feel insane. I’ve never been so desperate to communicate. And she’ll never understand.

“Sometimes you look at me like you’re angry that I’m not more fucked up or something.”

“Well, I don’t meant to.”

“I know.”

She sits up, leaning against her headboard and staring. I meet her eyes, because the last thing I need to show in the moment is fear. Or sincerity. And no, I couldn’t reconcile my fear of falling for her with my fear of losing Rebecca’s control over me. Who would I be without her? Who would take care of me? Who would stay when the pain that I feel made me someone who couldn’t be loved?

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she says with a smile, and for a mere second, I think she could be right.

And then like a curtain being drawn in the stage of my mind, I see the plan unfolding. I see the moment I realized she liked me and the night I told Aiden at the bar downstairs. I see Rebecca hesitantly admitting that this plan could be better. I could make her love me. I see myself wishing I had never said any of my suspicions aloud. Wishing that for once, I had kept something nice for myself without offering it up for her twisted approval.

“We all have something to be sorry for.”

“I don’t agree with that. People fuck up, Ashley. It’s what we do best. But we’re the only animals that punish ourselves forever. We live a beautiful life. And yeah, it’s not the life that someone else would choose for themselves. It might not be the life that our parents would choose for us. But it’s ours. No one needs to be forgiven for simply living.”