Page 45 of Until The Lights Go Out

She nodded.

“No,” I said. “I think you’re just trying to sound deep.”

Her mouth dropped open in mock offense. “Excuse me?”

I smirked. “You’re excused.”

She shoved my shoulder hard enough to make me laugh. There it was: that feeling, the one I never had words for. The ease of her, the way my chest always seemed lighter when she was around... It was different from being with Seb—different from being with anyone.

Maisey turned to look at me, studying my face in the moonlight. “You’re quiet.”

“Maybe I just like the stars.”

“No,” she said, nudging my knee with hers. “This is ‘broody Theo’ quiet.”

I groaned, “That is not a thing.”

“It absolutely is a thing.”

“Sounds made up.”

She grinned. “Everything’s made up.”

I tried not to smile back but failed miserably.

“You okay?” she asked after a minute of us staring at the stars, quieter this time, her voice with a soft edge to it. I stared up at the sky, at a star I’d been pretending to track. Leave it to Maisey to notice the smallest shift. No one asked me that except my brother and Maisey. But with Maisey, it felt different. Like the question could sit between us without demanding anything. I could say it was nothing particular but a heavy feeling, and she would just get it. Something that ripped my insides apart was how bright and special Maisey was, and yet her demons still carved out her insides. Between all the letters and the late nights meeting on our hill, she had let me see another side to her, one that felt sadness like a dark cloud looming over her. Maisey talked about it more easily after her depression diagnosis. She had a supportive mother and father who she could talk to and who reacted in a loving manner. But sometimes those thoughts got too big, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Once, I had found her on the paddock floor, hours before a race. Her knees squeezed to her chest and eyes screwed shut. It felt like someone had punched me right in the stomach, seeing her like that. That my Maisey, the brightest and kindest girl, could be weighed down by something. She had shared so much, opened her soul right up for me. Flashes of memories from our first conversation about it came back to from when I had nagged her over and over again to tell me what was wrong after a month of her seeming off.

“Maise, you know you can tell me anything right?”

“Yeah, I know.” The night bit at us through a breeze, leaves above us scattering down. The only lights were from the hotel below us and the farther away city lights. I waited for her response, trying to give her the space she so often lended me when things at home were bad but I couldn’t put them into words. We would just sit in silence, and something about that was rather comforting. Maisey shifted next to me, her head tilted up to the sky as she leaned back on her elbows.

“Sometimes, I don’t want to exist…” Maisey whispered into the night. The silence swallowed up her confession. The words carved something deep in my chest. Pain. “Like I want to zip myself up into something tiny and small and just… I don’t know, not be.”

I sat with the words for a while before I could mutter a response. I knew it was the wrong one, but all I could muster was, “It would be awfully boring without you, Maisey girl.”

She laughed in response and shoved my shoulder, the lightness coming back in fragments. But something in me shattered knowing that someone like Maisey could feel that way.

Maisey didn’t let anyone else see that side though, nothing but the bright smiles and her thoughtful nature. She was the first one to help anyone around her, bringing homemade biscuits to the track for the other drivers, making team-colored bracelets, sitting with me for hours in the middle of the night, pages and pages of handwritten words that I couldn’t always say out loud. It was almost like if she helped everyone enough, her own sadness would melt away. I had read a lot about depression since then and had tried to help her figure out how to talk to her parents about it. I sat with her when I could sneak away and tap her wrist to help her nervous system reset. She shared so freely now. I wanted to return that. But I never wanted to talk about anything with anyone, let alone feelings. But Maisey had this way of pulling it out of me with her silence and acceptance. I could tell her anything these days, after years of passed letters and written confessions of life being shitty.

I exhaled slowly. “Dad’s been worse lately.”

I felt her shift beside me, turning more fully toward me, her head resting on the side of her arm, but she didn’t interrupt. That was another thing she did. She listened like the things I said mattered.

“He was on me about my lap times after practice,” I said, voice flat. “Said I was lazy. Said if I wanted to embarrass the family name, I should just quit now and save everyone the trouble.” The words tasted bitter. I laughed once, sharp and humorless. “He said Seb never needed pushing.”

Maisey went very still. “That’s awful.”

I shrugged, because that was easier than admitting it hurt. “It’s just how he is.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

I looked over at her. Her face was tight with anger on my behalf, eyes bright and fierce. Something in my chest pulled.

“It’s fine,” I said, an easy rehearsed way to brush off the fact that my dad got worse and worse. I felt like he only loved me when I won a trophy and won him money. Everything was so transactional and conditional these days. More and more, I wanted to swap lives. Maybe if I never showed an interest in racing, it would all be different. But then I wouldn’t know Maisey, and maybe all this pain was worth having her be such a constant in my life.

“No, Theo.” Her voice softened but didn’t lose its edge. “It isn’t.”

For a second, I couldn’t breathe around the lump in my throat. Because she said it like it was obvious. Like maybe I did deserve better. No one had ever really said that before to me though. It was always a quiet thought in the back of my head, one that—if I thought about it too hard—would only make me angry. I didn’t want to feel that emotion, I didn’t want to show a single shred of anger, because then I would be just like him. You’re the worst parts of your parents and all. I swallowed hard and looked back up at the sky.