Page 9 of I Would Stay Forever
“It’s not your fault.”
“I’m sorry anyway.”
I chewed on my lip and kept my gaze forward, unwilling to look at him and let him see the tears that were burning in my eyes.
“You should get some sleep,” he said.
I wanted to sleep. I wanted so desperately to sleep. I wanted to be able to close my eyes and pretend, even for just a little bit, to go into a world that wasn’t this one, to pretend that this didn’thappen. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t leave it behind completely, but at least I could have a little bit of a break.
But it wasn’t that simple.
“I can’t sleep in other people’s houses. I need my bed and my own room and…” I trailed off as I realized how stupid it all sounded, even if it was true. I needed my routine. When would things go back to normal? What even was our normal anymore?
There was no option other than them getting divorced, I was sure. Mom couldn’t stay with somebody she knew was cheating on her. But then what happened to us? Did we keep the house? Did we have to move? I only had a year left of high school. I hated the thought of my whole life being disrupted in this final, crucial year. But then I felt guilty for even thinking of that because my life hadn’t been disrupted nearly as much as my mom’s had. And here I was, selfishly thinking about myself.
“I think I’d rather just stay out here,” I said softly. I glanced at Dean, expecting him to get up. Instead he just settled further into the porch, resting his elbows on the step behind him and tilting his head up like he was planning to look at the stars. “What are you doing?”
His eyes darted to mine for just a moment, but once again, I saw the pain in them. It was the same look of regret that had been on his face in the parking lot as he watched me realize the truth.
“Staying with you,” he said. “I’m the reason you’re feeling like this, so it’s my job to make you feel better, right?”
“You’re not the reason,” I said. But I didn’t tell him to leave, either. Because the person who was really the reason for why I was upset was one I didn’t want to see for a long, long time.
five
Dad’s homeoffice still looked the same. It was covered in an extra layer of dust and there weren’t any papers on top of his desk, but aside from that, he hadn’t bothered to move anything with him.
Wherever he was living now.
I sighed as I stepped inside, kicking a cardboard box of old arts and crafts projects out of my path. He kept everything we ever made for him, even if it was total crap. Case in point: the pencil holder on his desk that I gave him for Father’s Day when I was eight. It was just some crappy mug with pieces of tissue paper glued to it, and he loved it so much that he brought it with him from the UK to Canada when we moved. My stomach tightened in a familiar knot as I stared at the pencil holder, willing it to disappear. I begged my mind to forget that memory, along with every other good memory of Dad that was ruined when he walked out on his family five weeks ago.
But as I knew well, wishes were a useless waste of time designed to keep your hopes up long after you should have accepted defeat.
“Sebastian, stop it!” a giggling voice came from down the hall. I rolled my eyes. Tiffany and Sebastian had been goingstrong for a month now, probably the longest period of time they’d managed to make it, and it was driving the rest of us insane. The giggling only got louder, making me think they were coming downstairs to Sebastian’s room, which took up the other half of the basement. I debated closing the door again so they wouldn’t notice me here, but I hesitated too long. When they came around the bend of the stairs, I was standing in the doorway of the office as if I were waiting for them.
Sebastian froze as he saw me, and Tiffany walked straight into his shoulder, the smile disappearing from her face as she looked at him in confusion, then at me. Sebastian’s face was hard and Tiffany’s quickly turned into a scowl as she realized it, as if she couldn’t come up with her own feeling on a situation and felt like she had to match him instead.
“Sorry,” I muttered. I had every right to be coming into Dad’s office to get my stuff, but with everything that had happened, I wasn’t sure Sebastian would see it that way. This door had remained firmly closed since the end of July, and I was upsetting a very delicate balance by opening it.
I went to kick the door closed with my foot, figuring it was easier than an explanation. But Sebastian stuck a hand out to keep the door open, his eyes trained on me.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked. His voice wasn’t hard, per se, but it wasn’t warm either—not that I would have expected it to be. The house had felt about ten degrees colder at all times since Dad left, with all of us trying to act like everything was normal when we all knew it wasn’t. Nobody dared mention him anymore. We’d essentially eradicated every piece of him left behind in the house—taking down the family photos with him in them, chucking his old blankets and coffee maker in the bin, and pretending that this office was empty rather than being his.
“I left all my notebooks and pencils in here,” I said. “I need them before school starts.”
“We can buy you new ones,” Sebastian said.
I tried not to roll my eyes at the suggestion of buying all new things instead of just getting the ones I owned from the room I’d already stepped into. I knew he was just trying to help like he always was. As the eldest, he’d spent the past few weeks putting on a brave face, smiling and laughing and trying to act like everything was normal. But I could see the sadness in his eyes. I could see the way he looked at me, like he couldn’t believe what I’d done. Because as far as he knew, I was the one who had confronted Dad.
At first, I wasn’t sure why I didn’t correct the assumption he made. When he found me in the car right after Dad had walked in and announced the truth, he’d jumped to the conclusion that I was the one who found out about the affair. He asked me about it when he drove me back to the plaza to get my car, and I was still so in shock that I just nodded along to it. There was no easy way to tell him it had actually been his best friend, and besides, what good would it do?
I thought Dean would correct him in the following weeks, but he never did. I wasn’t sure if it was because it never came up or if Dean was just happier letting me take the blame for it all. Because in Sebastian’s eyes, therewassomebody to blame. He didn’t hate me, I could see that. But I could also see that he wasn’t happy with me, and he was trying really hard to be able to forgive me for being the catalyst that caused our family to fall apart.
Without responding, I crossed the room and opened the bottom drawer of Dad’s old filing cabinet where I’d stuck all my school supplies at the end of June. It was a few notebooks, binders, and a pencil case full of the really good pens I liked. When I stood back up, Sebastian and Tiffany were gone, his bedroom door clicking shut quietly.
I was quick to close Dad’s office door too—not allowing myself to linger, and heaven forbid, think about him again—and raced back upstairs to drop the school supplies on the desk. For once, I didn’t linger in my room either. Once my arms were empty, I went straight back downstairs, pulled on the first shoes I could find, and stepped outside, gasping in the hot air outside as if I hadn’t breathed properly in weeks.
That was a side effect of Dad moving out that I hadn’t expected, but I’d been experiencing more and more as the weeks went by. When we first came home and found him gone, everything about the house had felt wrong and I’d desperately needed to leave. To be anywhere but there. I thought it would pass, and it did for a bit, until it came back even stronger later that week. It would hit me suddenly, the pressure on my chest and the desire to justgo. There were a couple of times in the summer that I’d sprinted out of the house in my pajamas and somebody else’s shoes in my rush. I would run and run until I was gasping for breath and my legs were burning, and then I would just collapse on the ground until I felt like I could go back.
