Page 91 of The Baby Dragon Bakery
“Wait!” he cried, grabbing her hand. “What are you saying? Lavinia, what are you doing?” She wouldn’t look at him, her cheeks wet with tears.
“We don’t work like this,” she said, voice defeated as she stared at her shoes. “We should go back to how it was.” Her body was shaking.
“Don’t do this,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she ran.
Theo went after her, calling her name as she ran down the hallway toward the stairwell, but she didn’t stop. He didn’t want to force her to talk to him, not when she was so clearly in pain.
Pain thathehad caused.
She had finally caught on to what a dead weight he was and was swimming free while she still could. The realization made Theo stop in his tracks.
He went back to his apartment, searching for his phone. It was in his bedroom, and he dialed her number.
She didn’t pick up.
His stomach turned; he was going to be sick. Tears pricked his eyes, and he tried to blink them away, a strange taste in his mouth.
It was over.
A heavy weight pushed against his sternum, and he gasped for breath. It felt physical in a way he had never experienced, his heart breaking. Like something was pushing and pushing, and his heart was splintering and splintering then . . .crash!It shattered.
He fell back onto his bed, trembling, and then he cried. The tears came down fast, and his bedroom blurred.
In the dim white light of his bedside lamp, he curled into a tight ball, utterly alone. He pressed his hands against his chest, as if that could keep the pieces of his heart together, but it did nothing.
Everything hurt.
Chapter 34
Lavinia cried herself to sleep, then slept for hours and hours. She finally woke around one in the afternoon the next day, by which point she had missed most of her classes for the day, but she would worry about that later.
She pried her eyes open. She had been hit by a cab once while crossing the street, but this felt even worse than that—like being hit by a truck. Her body felt embedded in her mattress, as if last night she had slept in softened clay that had hardened come morning.
Lavinia attempted to move, but nothing happened. Perhaps she would be fossilized like this. She could end up in a museum with a tag: “Local Girl Lost Will to Live After Breakup”.
She tried to get up a few more times, her limbs stiff, but she couldn’t manage beyond pushing up to lean against the headboard. She grabbed her phone from the side table.
Releasing a long breath, Lavinia scrolled through the endless notifications she had, not reading any. She could hear her heartbeat very clearly, like someone was playing the drums right into her ears.
She had done the right thing, she reminded herself. Theo never would have done it; he would have stayed with her and been unhappy, just so he wouldn’t have to hurt her feelings, and she loved him too much to allow that to happen.
Staying with him would have meant success for her—she would have met her self-imposed deadline—but she didn’t care about any of that if he was miserable. She would rather be alone and dejected herself than see him unhappy.
With a whimper, Lavinia threw herself out of her bed, nearly falling. When she looked back, she half expected a mold to appear where she had lain, but of course, the mattress only held a small indent from where her body had been.
She grabbed her water bottle, downing half of it, then took a deep breath. Tears sprung in her eyes, and she swore, then started crying again. It hurt, all of this hurt. She loved him. Her heart could be so stupidly stubborn.
“Fuck’s sake,” she muttered, wiping her cheeks, which were starting to feel rough to the touch and not baby smooth as they usually were. She grabbed tissues and cleared her eyes and nose, trying to get it together.
There was no convincing herself she was fine—she wasn’t, she absolutely wasn’t—but she needed to keep going.
After about three tries, Lavinia made it out of her bedroom. Alfie was at school, while her parents were at work, and Biter was with Famke’s caretakers. The entire house was quiet, swirls of dust shifting in the shafts of sunlight.
Lavinia went to the bathroom, and she was afraid to look in the mirror, but it was unavoidable. She caught a glimpse of her own face, and watched as her features broke into a sob once more, like a marble statue, crumbling.
“You’re okay,” she tried to tell herself, but her voice was rasped from sleep and crying.
