Page 93 of Blitz

Micah maneuvers us to a couch. He pulls me against his side and lets me cry on his shoulder until I’m a snotty, sobbing mess. He doesn’t care. We’ve been here before, him and me. Somehow, I think we’ll be here again.

“What do you want to do, Mase?” My brother tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. Tucker used to do that. I sniffle. “Do you want to drink or do you want to talk about it?”

Neither. Both. I don’t know.

“I don’t want it to be over,” I admit to the sanctuary of his arms.

“I think he’s pretty adamant that it is,” he says. I tighten my arms around him and he curses. “Mase, I didn’t mean it like—”

“No, no, you’re right. I don’t—I can’t—” I struggle to get breath into my lungs. “He doesn’t want to do this. I can’t give him what he wants. There’s no way to move forward. We’re at the end of the road.”

“He’s a dick,” Micah says.

“Yeah, but he’s my dick.”

He doesn’t even gag at the insinuation that we have sex. “If you really want to be with him—if you want to prove to him that you’re ready for this—”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know that I am,” I tell him. “We’re too different. We want different things. We live our lives in completely opposite ways. He wants to stay in all the time. I don’t want to be locked away on the couch for the rest of our life together.”

“That’s bullshit.” He shakes his head. “He’s trying. He’s showing up to parties you and I both know he wouldn’t be caught dead at. He’s putting in the effort. And you’re not even meeting him halfway, you’re not showing up. You know he has issues with dealing with sex. You know he has problems with drinking. And you getting blitzed and not talking about anything—”

“What do you mean, problems with drinking?” I blink at him. “He doesn’t have any issues.”

Micah stares at me. “His mom is an addict. Both of his grandfathers died of alcoholism. Don’t you remember going to his Grandfather Kingsley’s funeral in ninth grade?”

My breath catches in my throat. I do. It’s a vague memory, hazy from time and the tequila I’ve had tonight. We had only been dating for about five weeks, not doing much more than holding hands and occasionally kissing on the cheek. He was a stoic rock while his Mom sobbed during the funeral. Jamal was holding his Mama, who refused to cry for her father.

He doesn’t drink. I don’t know that I’ve seen him with anything stronger than Gatorade at one of the handful of parties we’ve been to the last few weeks. He didn’t touch the wine I brought him. He doesn’t drink.

And I got drunk and called him because I was sad and lonely. I got drunk and called him from the track party at the last away meet. My decision to go out and drink with my friends is hurting someone that I care very much about.

“Clearly he loves you,” Micah says. He touches my shoulder and I curl into my brother. “You have to decide if this is fixable.”

I swallow. “I—I want it to be. I want to be with him. He drives me crazy, and I hate half the decisions he makes, but…” I sigh.

“But you love him,” he says quietly.

“I do, yeah.”

“Are you ready to spend the rest of your life with this guy? Because he’s serious. He knows what he wants, and what he wants is you.”

“The rest of my life is a real long time.”

“He’s sure,” Micah tells me. “He’s ready to lay it all down on the line for you. So you have to decide if you’re willing to do the same for him. Because otherwise, you need to walk away. Don’t play him around. One way or the other, you have to be sure.”

Chapter thirty-nine

Tucker

I walk home in the bitter cold. My heart isn’t broken. I’m devastated, yeah, but a part of me is resigned. There was no way Mason and I were ever going to work out. We had too many problems. It wasn’t simply the sex and her negative reactions to it. It wasn’t only her overindulgence in alcohol. It’s a lot of tiny little fissures, things I could chalk up to personality differences. When I’m honest with myself, I can admit they’re incompatibilities. We’re too different.

Besides, there’s no guarantee we would have made it through college and then grad school. Maybe it’s better that we break up now. I can try to actually get over her this time. I can try to actually move on this time.

This time will be different.

Wes is sitting in his armchair when I get home from the party. He grunts at me. It’s only ten.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”