Page 146 of Fault Lines
I wanted to argue, to push back against the cliché. But I was tired. So fucking tired.
She looked at the clock—never at her watch, always the clock on the bookshelf behind me. “We’re almost done for today,” she said. “Before you go, I want you to try something this week. Every day, when you wake up, I want you to write down three things you’re feeling. Not thinking—feeling. No qualifiers, no justifications. Just what’s there. At the end of the week, bring the list, and we’ll talk about it.”
I rolled my eyes. “More journaling.”
“Self-awareness,” she corrected, with the faintest curl of her lip. “You can do it or not. But I think it might help.”
I nodded, not because I agreed but because I needed to end the session on something that felt like progress.
As I stood to leave, she said, “You don’t have to punish yourself forever, Cameron. You just have to learn to live with yourself. That’s hard enough.”
I thanked her, a reflex, and walked out into the cold, gray light. The air bit at my face, sharp and bracing. I stood there on the curb, hands in my pockets, watching the traffic blur by. I thought about the assignment, about how stupid it seemed, and about how maybe, for once, I could just do what I was told.
I went home. I opened a new spiral-bound notebook—one that Livi had bought for me, still pristine. I wrote down the first three feelings I could name.
Empty.
Guilty.
Tired.
I closed the notebook and set it on the nightstand, beside the ugly blue bowl and the silent phone. I wasn’t sure if I’d keep going, or if it would matter. But for the first time in months, I felt the faintest outline of hope, like the shape of something slowly filling in from the inside out.
That night, I slept.
I dreamed nothing at all.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The weather had finally broken. For once, the air didn’t snap at my cheeks when I left the apartment; it just pressed gentle and cool, like the world was trying to remember how to be kind again. Nate had texted at seven a.m.:Sun’s out, Livi, let’s take advantage before it changes its mind.I’d surprised myself by actually wanting to say yes.
It had been a month since my own personal iceberg—one of those months where nothing happens, and everything happens. After I found Nate half-drowned in his own sorrow, the two of us set to work building something new, even if it was nothing more than a routine: coffee in the mornings, slow walks around the block, sharing the crossword but never the answers. We were careful with each other, like two dogs who’d both been kicked enough times to know not to bark too loud.
Still, things felt better. Not perfect, not even close, but better. And sometimes, that was enough to get out of bed.
I met Nate at the corner of his street, where the sun caught in the new leaves and threw patches of green light down onto the sidewalk. He was already waiting, coffee in hand, hair still damp from his shower, looking like someone who hadn’t slept but didn’t mind the trade.
“Nice coat,” he said. I looked down; it was Rachel’s, and the belt hung so loose around my waist it looked like I was playing dress-up. I shrugged.
“It’s what I had,” I said, tugging the collar up to my chin.
He grinned. “You make it work. Ready for a day of reckless literary consumption?”
It was the book fair weekend. Nate’s idea, obviously—he had an unhealthy love of used books and the oddball people who sold them—but I found myself looking forward to it, maybe because it was the first plan in weeks that didn’t end in an argument or the two of us avoiding eye contact for a full hour. I let him lead the way, his steps light for once, as if he believed we wouldn’t trip over our own baggage before lunchtime.
The street fair took up two blocks and a parking lot. Booths huddled against each other, tables loaded with paperbacks and hardcovers, old comic books, even antique children’s books with covers so faded you could barely make out the pictures. There was a crowd, but not a crowd that made me anxious—mostly parents with kids, college students, the odd retiree who seemed determined to touch every book on every table.
We wandered for a while, picking up volumes at random. Nate tried to find the weirdest title in every stall (“Tortoises and How to Paint Them”—a surprisingly heavy manual; “The Complete Guide to Espionage for Children”), and I got sucked into a box of old romance novels with pastel covers and lurid, hilarious taglines. We competed to find the worst sentences, reading them out in our best faux-British accents, and sometimes people around us even laughed.
We were halfway down the second block when Nate spotted a table with rare and vintage cookbooks. He stopped, scanned, and then handed me a thin, battered volume titled “Cooking for One (and How to Enjoy It).”
“Thought of you,” he said, smirking.
I rolled my eyes, but the sight of the cover—retro orange, a cartoon chicken doing a little dance—made me smile. “Thisis passive-aggressive, right?” I asked. “Like, ‘don’t forget you’re single now, here’s how to roast a Cornish hen for yourself’?”
Nate shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe I thought you’d appreciate the subtext.”
I thumbed through it, found a recipe for ‘Solitude Soufflé’ annotated in shaky pencil, and laughed. “You’re a jerk,” I said, but the word landed soft.
