Page 43 of Down My Chimney

“We could get a hotel,” I said desperately. “I can use my parents’ credit card. Tell them I needed to stay somewhere quiet while I studied.”

“I think, maybe, it might be time for us to stop lying to people,” he said gently.

Another sob tore through me. He was right, of course. But I hated it.

Henry unlocked his car and tossed his bag into the passenger seat. When he turned around again, he nodded like he was trying to convince himself of something. Or maybe he was just trying to convince me. He stuck his hand out.

“We can do this,” he said. “Friends?”

Was that what friends did? Did they shake hands, after all they’d been through? Was it even possible for us to go back to being friends, now? Or was this all just something Henry was saying to get out of here as gracefully as possible?

What if this was the last time I saw him?

I nodded back. Took his hand. Squeezed it.

“Friends.”

9

Henry

How do you go back to beingjust friendswith the boy you’re in love with?

You don’t.

I mean, you try. You drive home, crying. Sneak into your house, crying. Lie in your bed, crying.

You think about all the hopes you had, all the silly little dreams that look so foolish now. Spring break together in Mammoth. Holding hands at the beach. A graduation trip up the coast to Washington, stopping in towns no one’s even heard of, late mornings in A-frame motels that smell like mothballs and cedar, the sun slanting across his body as it curves against yours in bed.

Your first jobs. Your first shared apartment. Your first fight that ends with a dramatic kiss in the rain and make-up sex, instead of this rusty wound that refuses to stop bleeding.

Your first long vacation—a road trip where you argue over directions at a truck stop in Arizona, a paper map blowing in the wind as his dogs snooze in the back of the Jeep you bought together. You get lost on your way to the Grand Canyon and find each other again in bed that night, moonlight pooling on the sheets as your bodies merge into one.

A proposal, quiet and surprising, over coffee one morning. A backyard wedding, small and intimate and perfect. A fixer-upper house somewhere in the mountains with a backyard full of prickly pears and a stray cat who looks for treats and belly rubs. Parents and sisters who might become grandparents and aunts someday.

I’d pictured a whole future, just for the two of us, and now it was gone.

I wanted to be Blake’s friend. That was what he needed right now, more than a boyfriend. But the thought of actuallybeinghis friend tore a hole through my chest all over again, because it reminded me of what I’d lost.

He’d never even used the wordboyfriend. Not once. I should have seen that as a sign, and realizing that now just made me hurt.

Lying in bed, I went back and forth about whether I blamed him or me or both of us—or maybe neither. I knew he wasn’t wrong to need more time. I knew it was his decision, whether he was ready to come out. I knew I wasn’t wrong to need more. I knew all of that, but I still hurt.

I felt so stupid, wondering if Blake had ever really cared about me at all. It didn’t matter that he’d been crying with me, just a few hours ago. Didn’t matter that he’d told me he didn’t want this to end.

The fact was, he wasn’t here right now, when I needed someone to hold me and love me and tell me it was going to be all right. He wasn’t here, and it hurt.

I hated myself for falling in love with him, and wondered when the falling even began. I thought it might have been the first time I ever saw him smile. I wanted to go back in time to my six-year-old self and tell him to run. Except that would mean missing out on years of being Blake’s friend for real, before everything got all tangled and twisted and confused, and thinking about that just made me hurt more.

I hurt and I hurt and I hurt.

I woke up the next morning, eyes gritty, throat raw, and felt like a truck had run me over. I stared at my phone. No messages from Blake. I wondered what that meant.

I tried to tell myself it was because he felt just as awful as I did, but that didn’t make the fear go away. The worry that maybe, for him, this was the first morning that hewasn’tin pain. That the thing coursing through his body right now was relief.

I tried to think of something to text him. Somethingfriendly. But what did friends even say to each other? Suddenly, I couldn’t remember.

I tried to think of something to tell my parents, but that felt even more impossible since they never knew we were together in the first place. They could tell something was wrong, but there were no words to bridge that gap.

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