Lola and the Boy Next Door

chapter twenty-six

The rational side of me knows that I need some kind of release. But I can’t cry anymore. I’m empty. I’m drained. And I can’t move.

Not that I’d want to.

Because that’s the thing about depression. When I feel it deeply, I don’t want to let it go. It becomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I want to nurture it, grow it, cultivate it. It’s mine. I want to check out with it, drift asleep wrapped in its arms and not wake up for a long, long time.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in bed this week.

When you’re asleep, no one asks you to do anything. No one expects anything of you. And you don’t have to face any of your troubles. So I’ve been dragging myself to school, and I’ve been dragging myself to work. And I’ve been sleeping.

Max is gone. And not just gone as in he’s not my boyfriend anymore, but gone as in he’s gone. I asked Lindsey to retrieve a textbook I’d left at his apartment, and his roommate said he left the city on Tuesday. Johnny wouldn’t say where Max went.

He finally ran away. Without me.

I wish it didn’t hurt to think about him. And I’m not upset because I want to be with him, I don’t, but he was so much to me for so long. He was my future. And now he’s nothing. I gave him everything, and now he’s nothing. He was my first, which means I’ll never be able to forget him, but I’ll fade from his memory. Soon I’ll just be another notch on his bedpost.

I didn’t know it was possible to simultaneously hate and ache for someone. I thought Max and I would be together forever. No one believed me. We were going to prove them wrong, but we were the ones who were wrong. Or maybe I’m the only one who was wrong. Did Max think of me as forever?

The question is too painful, either way, to consider.

My parents are worried, but they’ve been leaving me alone so that I can heal. As if it were possible to ever heal from heartbreak.

It’s around midnight—not quite Friday, not quite Saturday—and the moon is full again. Traditionally, farmers called the December full moon the Cold Moon or the Long Nights Moon. Both feel appropriate tonight. I opened my window to better absorb her coldness and longness, to use it feed it to my own, but it was a dumb mistake. I’m freezing. And I had another long shift at the theater, and I’m exhausted, and I can’t find the energy to shut it.

But I can’t sleep.

The silk fabric of my Marie Antoinette gown, draped across my sewing table, shimmers with a pale blue glow in the moonlight. It’s so close to completion. The winter formal is still a month and a half away, there was plenty of time.

It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not going.

And I don’t even care about not having a date. It’s the idea of showing up in something so ridiculous, that’s what hurts. Max was right. The dance is stupid. My classmates wouldn’t be impressed by my dress; they’d be merciless. I don’t know how long I’ve been staring at its folds when a yellow light flicks on outside my window.

“Lola?” A call through the night.

I close my eyes. I can’t speak.

“I know you’re in there. I’m coming over, okay?”

I stiffen as the CLUNK of his closet-bridge hits my window. He called out to me once more last weekend, but I pretended that I didn’t hear him. I listen to the creak of his weight against the bridge, and a moment later, he drops quietly onto my floor. “Lola?” Cricket is on his knees at the side of my bed. I feel it. “I’m here,” he whispers. “You can talk to me or not talk to me, but I’m here.”

I close my eyes tighter.

“St. Clair told me what happened. With Max.” Cricket waits for me to say something. When I don’t, he continues. “I’m—I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. I was angry. I told Cal about that night in your bedroom, and she went ballistic. She said she’d warned you to stay away from me, and we got into this huge fight. I was angry with her for talking behind my back, and I was angry with you for not telling me. Like . . . you didn’t think I could handle it.”

I cringe and curl into a ball. Why didn’t I tell him? Because I didn’t want him to realize that her accusations were true? Because I was afraid that he’d listen to her words over mine? I’m such a jerk. As fearful of Calliope as she is of me.

“But . . . this is coming out backward.” I hear him shift on his knees, agitated. “What I was trying to say—what I was getting at—is that I’ve been thinking a lot about everything, and I’m not actually angry with you at all. I’m angry with myself. I’m the one who keeps climbing in your window. I’m the one who can’t stay away. All of this weirdness is my fault.”

“Cricket. This is not your fault.” It comes out in a croak.

He’s silent. I open my eyes, and he’s watching me. I watch him back. “The moon is bright tonight,” he says at last.

“But it’s cold.” The tears have found me again. They fall.

Cricket reaches out and brushes my neck. He traces upward, along my jaw, and then my cheek. I close my eyes at the unbearable sensation of his thumb drying my tears. He presses down gently. I turn my head, and it becomes cradled in his hand. He holds the weight for several minutes.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that I talked with Calliope,” I whisper.

He pulls away, carefully, and I notice another star drawn on the back of his hand. “I’m only upset that she spoke with you in the first place. It wasn’t any of her business.”

“She was just worried about you.” As the words spill out, I realize that I believe them. “And she had every right to be worried. I’m not exactly a good person.”

“That’s not true,” he says. “Why would you say that?”

“I was a terrible girlfriend to Max.”

There’s a long pause. “Did you love him?” he asks quietly.

I swallow. “Yes.”

Cricket looks unhappy. “And do you still love him?” he asks. But before I can answer, he says in one great breath, “Forget it, I don’t want to know.” And suddenly Cricket Bell is inside my bed, and his torso is flattening against mine, and his pelvis is pressing against mine, and his lips are moving toward mine.

My senses are detonating. I’ve wanted him for so long.

And I need to wait a little longer.

I slide my hand between our mouths, just in time. His lips are soft against my palm. I slowly, slowly remove it. “No, I don’t love Max anymore. But I don’t want to give you this broken, empty me. I want you to have me when I’m full, when I can give something back to you. I don’t have much to give right now.”

Cricket’s limbs are still, but his chest is pounding hard against my own. “But you’ll want me someday? That feeling you once had for me . . . that hasn’t left either?”

Our hearts beat the same wild rhythm. They’re playing the same song.

“It never left,” I say.

Cricket stays through the night. And even though we don’t talk anymore, and even though we don’t do anything more than talk, it’s what I need. The calming presence of a body I trust. And when we fall asleep, we sleep heavily.

In fact, we sleep so heavily that we don’t see the sun rise.

We don’t hear the coffeepot brewing downstairs.

And we don’t hear Nathan until he’s right above us.