Page 304 of Tell Me I'm Enough

I throw my head back again. “It was just supposed to be a friends-with-benefits thing…”

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you, Simone. That boy was far past friendship.”

“Yeah,” I say, sighing. “Well, I was too.”

“So…what happened?” she asks.

“So much…too much.”

She sits up straighter and pulls my legs closer. “Like…the drinking stuff?”

I look over at her, curious about what all she knows.

“From one addict to another,” she says, pointing at herself. “I could tell. And also…Bash told me.”

I just nod for a moment. “Yeah, well, that was a big part of it…of why even when it turned into more, I couldn’t let it be more.”

“Because you were scared?”

I nod.

“Because you watched me do the same thing?”

I nod again.

Her face drops. “You always have been the sun that finds the darkest clouds to hover above.”

That makes me get choked up a little.

I wipe a stupid tear from the side of my eye. “You can’t say stuff like that.”

She smiles, getting emotional too. “It’s true. If you were anything like you were with me, with him…he’s a pretty lucky guy.”

“I love him,” I admit quietly, staring at my hands. “And that’s what scares me.”

Lydia’s voice softens. “Why?”

“Because I don’t think he loves himself enough,” I whisper. “And I can’t…I can’t love someone into healing.”

Lydia nods slowly. “No, you can’t.”

“Yeah. And I just…couldn’t stay in the cycle. Too much had happened.”

“Like what?”

I start to feel emotional again, not being able to stop the other truth from coming up, too. The one I’ve been carrying like a secret I don’t know how to place anywhere.

“There’s…something I haven’t told you, Lyd,” I whisper.

Lydia looks at me. “Okay.”

“I haven’t told anyone, actually. Not even Mason. Nobody other than Lani…which she only knows because…she was…there.”

“There for what?” She pauses for a second. “And why didn’t you think you could tell me? We tell each other everything.”

“Because you had so much going on,” I rush out. “And I didn’t want to stress you out, and I didn’t want to put my crap on anyone else, and I also didn’t know how to feel about it myself, and still don’t, so I just—I just—”

Lydia looks concerned now.