Page 55 of A Summer Thing

Chapter Thirty

Declan

I sit on my bed, watching Addy pack her things.

And I feel… numb.

We can’t handle the distance anymore, Dec. It’s killing us.

I’m trying to pay attention to her words, but they filter through the chaos going on in my brain and all I’m left with are pieces and fragments of what she’s saying.

Been so hard.

Make everything easier.

He’s it for me.

Miss home.

Hundred-acre fields.

Cicadas buzzing.

Annoying tornado sirens.

Mom and Dad.

Our house.

Home.

Her voice breaks on her last word, home, but selfishly, all I can focus on is my own panic, my own heart breaking more and more with each of its thundering booms that pulse through my body.

This has… not been my year.

And I can’t decide which is more infuriating.

The thought that I left my hardest days behind only to find myself thrown back into the depths of their murky waters again, or the fact that I’ve allowed the weight of it all to pull me deeper into the dark clutches of its bottomless well more than ever before.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Where to pinpoint the moment I messed things up entirely.

Was it when I made the terrible decision to reconnect with my mother when she reached out?

Was it the futile hope I grasped onto, only to have it yanked out of my hands and shattered at my feet?

Was it when my anti-anxiety meds ran out and I thought I could handle a few days off—that then turned into weeks that turned into months?

Was it when I started drinking more than usual to help numb my feelings and the constant noise going on inside my head?

I don’t know.

I don’t know; I don’t know; I don’t know.

My mother was a lot worse off than when I had last spoken to her two and a half years prior.

And while things seemed okay at first—hopeful, even—the tides quickly changed.

I realized I didn’t know her anymore; I didn’t even recognize her anymore.

When I didn’t reach out as much as she would have liked me to, she lashed out, and when I defended my reasons for being hesitant and slow to reconnect, she flipped.

She called me every name in the book, and she said the most hurtful things she could possibly think to say, and then she still expected an apology from me , in the end.

I tried to do the right thing. I tried to give her a chance to make things right.

But I wish I never had. For my sanity, and my future happiness, us being in each other’s lives just isn’t an option anymore.

And I think that sometimes, saying goodbye to someone in your life who is living and breathing and still here, feels like a death all of its own.

Something to be worked through, and recover from, and that is okay.

But what is not okay is the way I’ve allowed myself to sink so low because of it.

Not taking my meds. Drinking too much. Falling behind in my courses and barely passing. Pulling away and distancing myself from… everyone.

In a matter of months, I’ve lost sight of everything. Myself, mostly.

Is that why Addy is leaving?

Good.

She probably should.

I’m—

I’m tired. And I’m lost. And every time I manage to pick myself up, I’m kicked down again.

Every time I find it in me to take one step forward, I’m pushed back three.

With every sunrise that feels hopeful comes a sunset that feels unbearable, and some days I want to let myself drown beneath the weight of the mistakes I keep making but most days it feels like I already have.

Quinn wouldn’t want this for me.

The knowledge should be motivating, but it only makes me feel worse. And lately, it plays on repeat in my mind. In his voice, in Addy’s, and in Jude’s, too.

I wish I could say things changed for the better in that regard this year, but they haven’t.

I mean, we are still together. But I keep messing things up left and right.

And it feels far worse than when things were good with us, but diluted, or subdued, or on pause for months at a time.

It’s why I have always been afraid to hold any hope for us in the first place.

But in the end, I was too afraid to let him go.

Afraid to lose the peace, solitude, happiness, friendship, and love we found in each other.

I feel like I’ve wrecked that now, too.

I don’t know where to pick the pieces back up and start putting them together again.

I’m not sure he would want to anymore, and I wouldn’t even blame him.

Addy takes both of my arms and pulls them into hers, cradling them, hugging them against her chest. But it feels more like I’m being boxed in, trapped, and slowly suffocated.

“I’m transferring to OSU for the fall semester,” she says, “and… to finish out my degree. I’m so sorry, Dec.

I should have told you sooner—the minute I started seriously considering it, really.

But I wasn’t even sure it would work out, and in the end, well…

I didn’t want to upset you if I didn’t need to.

But I just got the approval this morning and, so, yeah… ”

The earth quickens beneath my feet, spinning faster, flipping itself on its head, until I’m not sure what is up and what is down. I feel nauseous. I want to throw up.

“You what?” I ask, and I don’t know when I started crying, but there are two rivers of tears running down my cheeks. “We were supposed to do this together.”

The light in her gaze dims.

“And why do you have to leave now, when next semester is three months away?”

“You could come. Spend the summer with me at home.” Her expression looks hopeful, but she knows I can’t.

“I can’t afford to, and you know that.”

“Mom and Dad would—”

“No.” I shake my head. “No.” I could never take more from them than they’ve already given me.

They already pay for my dorm with Addy, even when she’s gone in the summers, and they have groceries delivered weekly, and our meal plans on campus have been paid for by them, too, and it’s already more than I feel comfortable accepting when they’ve done so much for me by simply being there.

But now Addy is leaving.

She’s leaving me .

My bruised and battered heart falls into the pit of my stomach as it bottoms out.

I know it isn’t the right response. I know I should understand, and be supportive, I do. But my thoughts are running a direct path from my brain to my heart—being crushed beneath the weight of my disappointment—and my own sadness, my own frustration, my own anger, reaches a boiling point.

I wrench my arms away from her and spread them wide. “Together, Addy. That was the whole point! Living in the big city, sharing a dorm, experiencing it all— together! I applied here to be with you. And now you’re just going to leave, like it doesn’t fucking matter?”

Like I don’t matter.

My tears fall with such intensity I can’t see two feet in front of me. Addy is a blur of curly hair, and two hands reaching up to cover her face, her shoulders shaking as she starts to cry, too.

“It matters. So much. This is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” her voice wavers in the onslaught of her tears.

And I believe her. Deep down, I do. But it feels like she’s abandoning me, choosing someone else over me—the one person in the world I thought would never.

I tell her so, and then I storm out of our dorm room.

I burst out onto the sidewalk.

And crash straight into Jude.

______

Jude

I jumped on a flight as soon as Boss told me the news.

Great news, for him and Addy, but I know Declan. I know how much she’s been struggling these past few months, I know how much Addy means to her, and I know how much this is going to wreck her.

I make it to the door of her building just as she comes tumbling out of it, crashing into me.

Blue, sad, exhausted eyes meet mine.

“Jude? What the hell? You’re really here?” Her tone softens with her last statement, and I know I made the right call.

I swipe at her tears with my thumbs. “I’m here.”

“How did you—why—I don’t understand.” She shakes her head as more tears spill free.

“I heard about Addy moving, and I didn’t want you to be alone when she left. I knew how upset you’d be, and I—”

She shuts down immediately, and I watch it happen with a sinking feeling in my gut. She shutters herself, shutting me out. Something she’s been doing too often lately.

“Don’t do that, Little D. Don’t shut me out.”

“But I don’t want to do this right now,” her words splinter apart at the seams. She crosses her arms at her chest, turns on her heel, and walks away. “I can’t,” she cries.

I—of course—follow after her. “What do you mean you can’t?

We talk to each other, Declan. Always.” Well, up until the holidays, anyhow, when she slowly started closing herself off from the world.

She was there physically, taking my calls and answering my texts, entertaining my presence during our visits, but she hasn’t been fully present for a while now.

A fact that’s been sanding, scratching, abrading at old wounds.

The sidewalk is wet and slippery from a few busted sprinklers, and she’s walking too fast, not paying a lick of attention to her surroundings. I catch back up to her in a few quick strides, grasp her arm, and turn her on her heel to face me once more.

“Fucking talk to me, Dec,” I grit, begging her to let me in.

“There’s nothing to talk about!” she cries. We’ve reached an intersection at the edge of campus, and she jabs at the crosswalk button. “Addy is leaving, you’re halfway across the country, and I’m just so fucking… angry!”

“With me?” I ease my tone. I know this isn’t about me, not really, so I try not to take any offense. Try. But this push and pull between us lately, this uncertainty, this rush of conflicting emotions, it’s all reminiscent of my relationship with Brenna, and it’s been messing with my head.

And fuck me, for making the comparison, because Declan is nothing like Brenna was, but I’m so goddamn tired, too.

Something needs to bend, flex, shift, before it fucking breaks.