Page 73 of Not Made to Last

I just wanted to say sorry about yesterday. Obviously, I wasn’t in the best mood, and I took it out on you, a random stranger, who might possibly be having a worse day than I was. So. Sorry.

He didn’t respond, and I didn’t know what to say, so I left it at that.

The contract I have hidden in the bottom drawer of my dresser states that any contact I have with Mrs. Garrett’s son should be via text only. No identifying myself. No phone calls. No meet ups. In fact, it’s stipulated that we are never,ever, to meet in person.

I figured she had her reasons, so I didn’t ask why.

All she told me is that her son had been through something recently and that they would be separated from each other for the foreseeable future. So, she needed a way to “keep tabs on him” …emotionally.

I’m not exactly sure what that means to her, or him, or me even, but then she told me what I’d get in return.

Mrs. Garrett offered me anactualjob managing a group of laundromats, and with it came a salary that far exceeded anything I could ever hope for. On top of that, she’ll cover day care for Max if I decide I need it, and she’ll also pay for me to go back to school. And not just any school, but St. Luke’s Academy, one of the most prestigious schools in all of North Carolina. The only problem is that her son currently attends there, so I’ll have to wait until he graduates. In three years. Three years seems like a hell of a long time, but it’s not as if I’m ready to go back now, and who knows what will happen between now and then? It’s a bridge I’ll cross when the time comes.

I signed off on her terms, along with a non-disclosure agreement, because I couldn’tnot. Her offer was too good to refuse.

But here’s the problem: the job, the contract, will only come into play if or when my contact with her son is reciprocated, and so far, we’re not at that stage. And I’m struggling to figure out a way to get there.

I change his name in the phone toNot Fridge Guy,then watch the cursor flash before my eyes as I try come up with something to say. I can’t cling to the whole wrong number story, and since I know nothing about him and can’t reveal too much about me, I don’t know how to slide into a conversation that I know he’ll engage in. I can’t?—

The sound of a door opening stops my thoughts. I drop the phone on my bed and make my way to the door leading to thegarage, press my ear to it. Dominic’s steady footfalls land on the concrete, drag across the floor, and I turn the door handle and pull. Dom’s standing in the middle of the garage, his hands at his sides.

My grandpa’s incomplete projects fill the garage, along with his tools and random pieces of timber he’d collected throughout the years. Once Dominic got the scholarship to Philips, my grandparents sold our old house and bought this one. When they moved, they took everything with them, along with every single piece of my grandpa’s old workshop. I’d helped with the initial move but didn’t have time to come back once they’d settled into the house.

I’d been too afraid of the memories behind the garage door… so much so that I hadn’t yet found the courage to open it.

Until now.

Emotion clogs my throat, blocks my airways. Still standing in the doorway, I ask, “You okay?”

“Can’t sleep.” Dominic picks up a plane sitting sideways on a bookshelf and moves it to the bench. It doesn’t belong there. It lives under the bench in a wooden box my grandpa and I made from an old pallet. But Dom wouldn’t know that, because he didn’t spend as much time in the workshop as I did. “Help me with this?” he asks, motioning to a toy chest.

I step foot in the garage for the first time and ignore the intense ache in my chest. “Where do you want it?”

He looks around the garage, ending on me. “I don’t know.”

We don’t move the toy chest.

We don’t do much of anything, really.

For the next hour, we sit on the cold, hard concrete floor of the garage, our silence broken only by our cries. We don’t talk. We don’t make plans. We don’t make promises. We just… sit. Together, but alone. And then Dominic stands, says, “Goodnight, Ohana.”

“Goodnight, Dom.”

I watch him enter the house, then spend a few minutes stewing in the silence before getting up myself. Before I go back to my room, I put the plane back where it belongs.

The phone’s still on my bed, right where I left it, and I grab it before lying down. Back under the covers for the third time tonight, I stare up at my bare ceiling, wondering if Dominic’s doing the same.

I check the time on the phone. It’s just after three. Thankfully, there’s no school tomorrow. Not that I’d force him to go. Not that I could.

After a heavy exhale, I unlock the phone and go back to the messages, back to the blinking cursor. And, without a single thought and even fewer fucks left to give, I let my thumbs relay my feelings.

I know you don’t know me, and I sure as hell don’t know you, but… to be honest, I don’t know a lot of people. I just moved to a new town where the only person I have is my brother, and I guess I just needed someone to talk to who isn’t him. You don’t need to respond to what I’m saying. In fact, I almost prefer that you don’t.

Do you ever feel like you’re not breathing? Like, physically, you are, because otherwise you’d be dead, but sometimes I feel like no matter how many breaths I take, no matter how full of oxygen my lungs are, I just… I don’t even know.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel like this always. Just lately. And it comes in waves. But the waves are so big, and so strong, and so powerful, and they drag me under… and I know I should gasp for air, but… lately, the feeling of drowning is the only thing that makes me feel alive.

And I know that’s a pretty fucked up thing to feel, let alone tell someone, but there it is.

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