Hearing her like this…
Seeing her like this…
It is a knife, straight to the heart.
And I know, this is it. This is the moment. The chance to rectify everything that went wrong. The long-awaited peace offering. The olive branch, extended outward with a shaky hand.
It takes every ounce of strength I possess not to take it. To stand there, an immovable statue, unyielding in my apathy. Meeting her desperation with incalculable coldness.
For a suspended moment, she simply stands there, waiting for me to say something. Waiting for me to explain things to her. Waiting for even a crumb of validation.
When I don’t…
When a full minute slips by without the smallest crack in my detached demeanor…
Her gaze changes. Shifts, along with the world beneath my feet, as Josephine Valentine — a girl who has loved me longer and better than anyone on this earth — finally sees what everyone else does: that I am not even worthy of breathing her air. As she releases her hold on the last shred of hope she was clinging to that things between us might get better… and finally….
Finally…
Finally…
Lets me go.
“Fine,” she says simply. I sink a little deeper into my own self-abhorrence as the hurt on her face hardens into grim resolve. “That’s fine.”
Just go.
Just leave.
I can’t take any more.
But she’s not finished. Her voice cracks. “You know… you were always cocky, Archer. Sometimes you were a little too blunt, the way you’d phrase things or respond to certain situations. Occasionally, you’d snap and show your temper. But you were never outright cruel. You were never mean just for the sport of it.” The shuddering breath she pulls into her lungs seems to steady her a bit, but it’s not enough to camouflage the depth of her devastation when she says the last words I’m certain she will ever waste on me. “If this is who you are now... If this is the man you’ve decided to become… then you’re right. Coming here was a waste of time.”
I shrug, shouldering the disgust I feel at my own actions with a familiar facade of indifference. The smirk on my face only adds to the charade as I jerk my chin toward the stairwell behind her. “You know where the exit is.”
She physically recoils a step. I watch the shock of my callousness make impact. A flurry of emotions plays across her features, giving me a front-row seat to the exact moment she decides I’m not worth it; that her parents were right all along: she really is better off without me in her life.
Great,I tell myself, swallowing hard.I’m glad she’s finally up to speed.
“Fuck you, Archer Reyes,” she says in a stark whisper. “You can go straight to Hell, as far as I’m concerned. And you can stay there.”
With that, she drops the pie. Two seconds of free-fall, then—crash.The ceramic dish slams against the tile floor, shattering on impact with a clatter that sounds like gunfire. I don’t even look down as chunks of flaky crust and cinnamon-coated apples fly in all directions, covering the walls around us like blood spatter at a crime scene, flecking my bare feet and sweatpants with crumbs.
I just watch her go.
Watch her pivot on her heels in an angry whirl, hair flying around her slim shoulders in a curtain of gold. And when she’s gone, when the sound of her stomping down the stairs has faded, when the slam of the front door echoes up to me on the landing… I sink down beside the ruined remnants of the pie she baked especially for me, put my head in my hands, and try to breathe around the black hole of misery yawning inside me. Try to remain conscious as it widens from my chest to my limbs to the top of my skull. As it stretches to fill the air of the dingy stairwell. The apartment beyond. The building itself. As it reaches up into the sky, blackening the horizon in every direction. Encompassing everything, until the whole damn world goes dark.
And in that unending darkness…
I feel the last bit of light inside of me sputter out and die.
NINETEEN
josephine
I hate him.
I thought I hated him before, last summer, when he left me behind with a broken heart. But then, my rage was tempered by heartbreak, dampened by despair. In retrospect — and in comparison — that anger is the palest of flames. A flickering ember, next to the raging inferno that blazes through me as I drive away from Archer’s apartment.