Best Kind of Broken

56 Levi

I tap my knuckles on the bathroom door. “Pix?” I hear her sniffle from within and my stomach drops. “Please let me in.”

She opens the door but only halfway, looking up at me through hastily dried eyes as she clutches her bedsheet to her chest. “Leaves, hey,” she says, like this is a perfectly normal conversation.

I pause. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” She sniffles again.

I lean into the bathroom, occupying her space so she can see me, really see me, when I say, “What’s wrong? Was it… was it last night?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “No. Last night was perfect.”

I scan her face, completely at a loss.

She looks at the floor and swallows before looking back up at me. “Remember when we were like eleven and twelve and you taught me how to fish? I thought fishing was disgusting, which it is, but you taught me how to bait a hook and cast a line and wait patiently for a bite? And we fished all afternoon but didn’t catch a single thing? But we didn’t care because we had fun all day joking about what it would be like to grow up and be famous and drive fancy cars and have butlers?”

I slowly nod.

She swallows again. “That’s what I need from you, forever. Friendship.”

“You have that.”

“Do I?” She shakes her head. “Because I thought I had that when I was eleven, but then I lost you after Charity died, and I… I can’t lose you again.”

“You’re not going to lose me.”

“But I could.”

“You won’t.”

“But I COULD.” She overenunciates the last word with defiance in her eyes.

I lean back. “So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying.” She inhales. “I’m saying that we need to be just friends. No complicated sex stuff or relationship stuff. It’s too risky. We could lose each other. We could lose everything we’ve just barely started to repair.” Her voice is incredibly steady despite the tear rolling down her face. She swipes it away.

A muscle flexes in my jaw. “You want to be just friends?”

She nods.

“Pix.” I lean back in, closer this time. “We stopped being just friends before Charity died.”

“Yeah, well.” She shrugs with a jerk. “Maybe if we had stayed just friends I wouldn’t have been trashed that night and I wouldn’t have told Charity to drive drunk and—”

“Bullshit,” I snap.

“I’m being serious.”

“You’re making excuses.”

She says, “For what?”

“Hell if I know. You’re standing there in a sheet covered in sex and blue paint, trying to tell me that we should be just friends?”

“Think about it! What if we jump into something and it all goes to hell, what then? No more friendship. No more us. No more… anything.” Her voice cracks. “I can’t DO that, Levi. I can’t.” She shakes her head. “Please don’t ask me to risk losing you again.”

“You’re not going to lose me—”

“Please?” she pleads as another tear falls.

I watch her in silence for a long time, half of me wanting to scream, the other half wanting to surrender completely and disappear forever.

“So you want to go back to being just friends.” I nod and take a step back, my jaw still tight. “Like last night never happened.”

I see pain flash in her eyes, but it’s gone just as fast.

“Yes,” she says quietly.

I blink, still baffled. But in the midst of all my bafflement and hurt and silent screaming, there’s a part of me that gets what she’s afraid of and shares in her fear.

“So can we do that?” she asks, waiting. “Can we be just friends?”

I take another step back and raise my hands in surrender.