𝐈 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬

𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐞

Wishin' you would kindly
get out of my head about it,
tellin' myself one day
I'll forget about it
-boygenius

⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙

I show my writing to Emily. I tell her I'm not finished—I don't think I'll ever be finished writing, not really. We sit in silence while she reads. She nods, drags her index finger along my words, and she never writes anything into her notepad.

She never says anything to me, either.

Emily closes my journal, she smiles at me, and she says that I can go home. I've shared enough for one day, already. And we can talk all about what I wrote down next week.

I walk back to Pittman. It's early spring and the sun is shining. It feels like summer; I miss home—Aunt Kali and cousin Nolan. Late nights on the back patio, watching Nolie catch lightening bugs in mason jars, bare feet and moon drunk.

As soon as I open the front door, I can hear Frankie—shouting. Her voice carries me down the hall; I pause outside of Dalton and Khalil's dorm.

The door is open. Frankie has a finger pointed at Khalil's nose. He's yelling, something about her being too clingy. She's shouting back, something about everything being his fault. I poke my head in, try to call her name.

I see Dalton sat at his desk, headphones over his ears. He raises his eyebrows when he sees me. I shake my head, try to call Frankie's name again. She's too invested in her argument with Khalil, she doesn't hear me.

Frankie shakes her wild hair, storms across the floor. She nearly knocks me over as she storms into the hall. "Call one of your whores, then!" she screams, and Khalil is hot on her tail. Their voices travel down the hall, and I lean into the doorframe.

Dalton takes off his headphones; we exchange a look. He rubs his temples. "I just keep getting caught up in these couple disputes," he groans.

I frown. I picture Dalton's arm pressed against Tenny's throat. I think of my fists beating into Dalton's chest. My stomach knots. "I'm sorry," I say. "About last weekend, I should have never yelled at you—"

He shakes his head. "No, I didn't mean it like that," he says. "You don't owe me an apology. I'm just glad you're okay."

I nod. "I know you were only trying to help...so thank for, for that, and for going to look for Tenny."

"Have you heard from him?"

I shake my head. "I know where he is—but me and Tenny have never been great at talking." Not about hard conversations. Not about things that matter. Me and Tenny are avoiders, that way. More alike than we ever cared to be.

Dalton's smiling, softly. I think because he already knows this about me—that I'm not a great communicator. That I have a hard time saying what I mean.

"Well, I'm sorry," he says. "That things didn't work out the way you'd hoped."

And I believe that he means it, even though he has every right not to. He should be bitter. He should be happy I was wrong—that Tenny and me didn't work out. But that's never been Dalton.

"Thanks, Dalton," I say, and I mean it for a thousand different reasons, but I'm not sure how to say that, and I'm not sure he would understand. He nods, and I close the door behind me. The hall is quiet; I think that means Frankie and Khalil have called a cease-fire.

When I reach our room, Frankie is on her bed. Her head is in her hands, and Khalil is nowhere in sight. I sigh, situate myself beside her. She lays her head in my lap, and I stroke her hair just as she had done for me.

"It'll be okay," I say, and she sniffles.

"I can't deal with him right now," she whines. "He can be so dumb sometimes—he doesn't understand, at all, why I'm upset! He doesn't even care; he just wants to be right."

I nod, run my hands over her curls.

"God!" she groans, rolls over onto her back. I stare down at her soft jaw and dark eyes. "I need a Khalil detox, just for a few days...but that's literally impossible when he lives down the hall."

"Yeah, I know what you mean." I felt the same way after my fallout with Dalton. But with Tenny, I feel the opposite. I wish I could bump into him in the halls. I wish I could force his eyes to meet mine, because that way we couldn't keep hiding from each other; avoiding. I furrow my brows. "How would you feel about a road-trip?"

Frankie's scrambling from my lap. She sits up, a mischievous grin on her face. "What do you have in mind?"

"Want to make a trip to River Bend?" I ask, and she smiles wider. "We could stay with my aunt, and you could see where I grew up. We could leave tomorrow, after class, and stay the whole weekend—Khalil free." And Tenny, three blocks over.

"Uh, yes please." She squeals and wraps her arms around me, but then narrows her eyes. There's a stitch in my side. "Are you sure there isn't any other reason you want to go back there?"

My eyes dart to the floor. I see Tenny's brown eyes...and heavy lids, dilated pupils. My lungs tighten; I shake my head. "No, no—I just think it could be nice to get away for a while. Clear our heads."

Frankie tilts her head, she's searching my face, and I know she isn't convinced, but then she smiles. She's jumping off the bed, sprinting across the floor, already packing a bag for our weekend get-away.

There's a panic creeping up my spine; my heart feels fluttery, my body jittery. I'm standing at the edge of a cliff, toes hanging over the side like I'm really about to jump. Because this time, I'm considering it. This time, I think I might actually do what I wanted to do then.

I won't let Tenny run away from me.

⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙

May 2016,

I graduated high school, and Tenny wasn't there.

I knew that he wouldn't be; he hadn't even been back to school since his stay at the hospital. I knew where he was: at Pip's house, only three blocks away. He could've came; he could've watched me walk across the stage, could have pretended to congratulate me, but he didn't—because he didn't want to see me.

He didn't want me to see him.

And I was too scared to confront him myself. Too scared of rejection. Of painful conversation. Of the look in his eyes, knowing that I'd hurt him. I'd hurt him so badly that he almost stopped living. That, in some ways, he had—stopped living.

So I guess, in that sense, I didn't want to see him either.

...
Author's Note:

I hope the backstory
explains why things were
so intense when Vio
first saw Tenny at her college.

They had a lot of history.

Thanks for reading!
Xx