Page 30 of Shade
Mila takes the money from me and shoves it down her dress. I fight a smile. I’ve always liked her. “Have a good night, Shade.”
I don’t say a goddamn thing to her. I won’t have a good night. How can she say that?
Well, she can because she has no idea what’s happened. She doesn’t know the devastation rooted in my heart. No one understands the way I destroyed myself to save Rhya, and now what? I couldn’t save her.
She could save me?
Here’s a number for you. Thirteen. That’s how old I was when I broke my arm. I missed a jump and greased the landing. My radius bone cracked in half and broke through the skin. I remember that sensation, the numbness, the pain that eventually followed when the adrenaline wore off. It’snothingcompared to this, but it feels like that, like my bones are trying to tear from my skin.
A wave of rage hits me, intensely and I twist, driving my already bloody fist into the wall. “I can’t fucking breathe!” I scream to no one, staring at the blood smearing the white wall in front of me. “How could you fucking do this?”
Backing up against the wall behind me, my hands shake, my heart pounding so hard it hurts, scrambling for an answer I’ll never get from her. With my fists drawn up against my face cradling my head, I clench them harder until I physically can’t any longer and drop to my knees.
For so long I’ve tried to save her, so why would she do something she knows would destroy me?
And sadly, I have a sense of relief. It’s small, but I hate myself for feeling it at all. I knew she’d die young. I just didn’t think it’d be this way.
No one could have saved her. This was a path she chose when we were young. She had a choice whether to live or give up, and she chose to give up.
Despite knowing this would happen, it doesn’t stop the grief surging with every expelled breath I take, always reaching higher peaks, never sufficiently soothing by my long intakes of air.
12:07 a.m.
Fireworks explode above, vivid colors to ignite the otherwise black sky.
Do you see the grief in me? Do you see it? Did this break you too?
You know that feeling when the world around you feels like it doesn’t exist? It’s like you’re floating away, but not in a good way?
There are no tears. Just pure silence. My throat and tears have since dried up. There’s nothing else to say. Nothing else to feel.
The absolute worst part about Rhya killing herself?
Just maybe if I hadn’t said those things to her, hadn’t told her I quit, had held on a bit longer, I could have saved her, and she’d still be here. I resent myself, Jaime, her dad, her uncle, all of us who played a role.
At some point, everything I’m feeling and doing becomes robotic. I want the pain to stop. Then again, Iwantto feel the pain because it’s something, at least.
Do you see me there in the room? I’m unmoving, physically, but my mind won’t stop moving through memories of us together. Even the ones where she fucked me over time and time again.
I’m in the bed, pulling at my hair, and before I know it, I’m on the floor.
Hours pass and I’m on top of the sheets, in the bed. Then I’m on the floor, soaked in sweat and shaking.
I try to calm myself down. I take a shower.
I smoke a cigarette, but I don’t smoke. It makes me sick.
I throw up.
I pass out.
I’m wide awake and realize I never slept.
I’m hungry but can’t eat.
I feel better, then again, I feelso muchworse.
I throw my phone because it won’t stop ringing. I want to set it on fire. Don’t need the fuckin’ thing anymore. Don’t the people calling know my state of mind? But then again, how could they? I kept everything I ever felt for Rhya inside, afraid of their judgmental theories on our unhealthy bond.
