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Greyson snapped his head toward his best friend. “Noah, wait?—”

“I’m going to bed,” Noah announced before walking down the hall.

I watched his retreat with my mouth sealed and a shudder working through my body. When I couldn’t see Noah anymore, I turned back to the front door and pulled it open.

“True, you don’t have to go anywhere! Y’all both need to sleep on this shit and we can figure it out in the morning.”

“Can you walk me to my door?” I asked pointedly, stepping outside instead of listening to another protest from him.

Greyson didn’t have a choice but to grab his discarded coat and pull it back on, kissing his teeth.

“Red, I don’t know what the hell happened, but?—”

“Noah’s dad saw y’all kissing. He tried to corner Noah because he thought I didn’t know. And when Noah didn’t give him the reaction he wanted, he tried going low. That’s where I stepped in. I didn’t know he had a fucking allegiance to—you know what? It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

We both fell silent with the exception of my teeth chattering. And I was only fifty percent sure that had something to do with the snow still falling from the sky.

We were at my door before I could make sense of anything, so I turned to Greyson with a half-hearted wave.

“Goodnight, Grey.”

“True, please sleep with us tonight. Your cabin is going to be freezing.”

“I have space heaters and I know how to build a fire. Don’t worry about me.”

“True.”

I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at anything. Of all the emotions rolling through me, sadness had finally gained some ground and tears pricked my eyes. It was dark, it was snowing and I needed to get inside before I had icicles hanging off my lash extensions.

“You should go home,” I sniffed. “It’s cold out here.”

“True!” Greyson called through the screen door when I grabbed the knob to close the larger one.

“Good night, Greyson.”

Thirty minutes later, my face was cleaned, I was in my flannel pajamas and a fire crackled in the fireplace. My feet were tucked under me on the couch and I had my phone in my hand, waiting for a message from Noah to tell me everything was okay. But it never came. And when I fell asleep on the couch hours later, one question played on a loop at the front of my mind.

What the hell just happened?

When I couldn’t sit still in elementary school and finish my schoolwork like everybody else, my father called it attention seeking.

When I finally got tested for ADHD after my mom read a blog, he told me it didn’t matter because I should’ve been able to will my mind to push past it and perform at the level my sister had all throughout school.

When I spent more time memorizing the shapes of words than reading and comprehending them, my father took me to the eye doctor, convinced there was something wrong with my vision and that’s why I couldn’t read on grade level.

When the doctor told him my eyes were fine, he looked at me in the parking lot and told me to “cut it out.”

When I brought home Cs and sometimes Ds on my report card, he threatened to take away my video games.

When it happened in my freshman year of college, he threatened to take away my car, so I had no choice but to stay on campus and study.

When I told him I was studying and still getting the grades I got, he told me to stop lying and try harder.

Trying harder had me pulling all-nighters to win his approval.

Pulling all-nighters had me jumpy and anxious.

I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t get anything higher than Cs in prerequisites that everybody else flew through. It killed any motivation I had to stay in school.