Page 81 of The Beautiful Collision
My thumb hovers over send.
I look at Chloe’s face, peaceful in artificial sleep, and then back at the phone.
Send it. Just fucking send it.
But the bet crashes down on me like a physical weight. The stupid, awful, grotesque bet that I can’t escape. That I can’t win without destroying her, and can’t lose without coughing up money I don’t have. It’s a constant millstone around my neck.
To ask for her help now—her genuine, compassionate help—while that lie festers between us would be beyond manipulation. It would be evil. It would be using her goodness, her competence, and hercarewhile actively deceiving her about the most fundamental thing.
And even if the bet didn’t exist, there’s the older fear. The deeper one. The one that’s been carved into my bones since I was old enough to understand that Chloe’s needs would always eclipse mine. The knowledge that I don’t deserve help and can’t ask for it, because there’s always someone who needs it more.
Who needs me.
I look at my parents, these hollow shadows of the people who raised me. They’re drowning in their own fear, barely keeping their heads above water. To send that text is to admit I’m drowning too. To admit I need rescuing. To become one more problem in a family that’s already buckling under too many of them.
The easy kid doesn’t need help.
The easy kid handles his shit.
The easy kid makes jokes and brings coffee and holds everyone else together…
…while he falls apart in private, where it doesn’t cost anyone anything.
I’m trapped between the only two rules I’ve ever lived by—don’t be a burden and don’t be a bastard—so I do the only thingI can live with, even though I’m not sure if I can actually live with it. I hold down the backspace key and watch the words disappear.
I need you
I need yo
I need y
I need
I nee
I ne
I n
I
Letter by letter, my lifeline dissolves, before she can know I almost broke, almost asked, almost chose her over my fear. And, safely back inside the walls of my pain—my prison—I put the phone back into my pocket, take a deep breath, and let the familiar mask slide back into place.
The easy smile.
The steady presence.
The son who needs nothing because everyone else needs everything.
“She’s going to be OK,” I say to no one in particular, to everyone, to myself. “She always is.”
Dad’s hand finds my shoulder, squeezes once. “Thanks for being here, Maine,” he says.
Mom reaches over and takes my hand, her fingers ice-cold despite the pretzel bag still clutched in her other hand. And, sitting here, surrounded by the three people I love most in the world, I have never felt more completely, devastatingly alone.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and for one wild, desperate second I think maybe it’s her. Maybe she somehow felt it, that almost-text, that desperate need I couldn’t voice. Or maybe the universe or God or whatever the hell exists out there put up the bat signal, a capital M in the sky that told her I need help.
But it’s just Mike, asking if I’m coming to tomorrow’s practice.
