Page 42 of Emmett

“Did you do something to yourself?”

“No,” he snaps.

“You’re lying to me,” I bark, shoving his shoulder. “What did you do?”

Why the fuck do I even care so much?

He looks almost as surprised as I feel.

“You’re Nash Montgomery,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “You wouldn’t get it.”

“Would you like to place money on that wager?” I ask him. “Try me – you’ll lose.”

Reaching for a bag of coffee grounds in a high cabinet, he tells me, “I go underwater sometimes and trick my body into thinking it’s drowning so I can reset, and then I come back up. My dad came over and saw me and he made me come home.”

“You hurt yourself.”

“It’s nothurtingmyself. It’s—” he stops himself, heaving a frustrated sigh. “Never mind.”

I watch as he carefully measures the grounds, adding water to the machine next, and I perch on one of the stools resting against the island with my arms crossed over my chest and arch in my brow. I’m not sure why it matters to me what he does or why he does it. I’m not sure why a part of me feels compelled to tell him about my own hardships.

“Why were you doing it?” I ask him.

“Because my mom ditched me twenty-five years ago,” he answers with a humorless chuckle.

At his words, my own family comes to mind; too many memories flooding in from all directions.

And then it hits me.

The man standing before me is not a broken toy at all. He’s a concentrated, tangled ball of agony and chaos, hidden beneath a carefully-crafted veneer of the person that hewantsto be. The perfect student, the perfect son, the cool guy withall the friends who never does anything but smile and have a good time.

That veneer was cracked, and now all of the painful ooze inside is seeping out, and he doesn’t know how to stop it; doesn’t want anyone to see it. The vulnerability scares him, so he drowns. He makes the outside match the inside.

His mask is just as important to him as mine is to me.

Why showmewhat’s underneath it?

“So,” he continues, “once that’s all handled, I’m good to go back.”

What? Oh, right. He mentioned something about graduation and his house.

“And when you go back?” I ask him. “What happens then?”

“You mean, about…this?” He responds, gesturing toward himself, “I don’t know. It’s not like I can tell anyone about it.”

“Not even your father?”

“No,” he shakes his head. “No, I’m not telling him. Ever. I can’t.”

He moves through the kitchen, reaching for a mug from one of the many cabinets to fill with coffee, combing his fingers through the damp hair which is not yet styled that keeps falling over his eyes.

He really is a very pretty boy.

“He’s known me one way my entire life,” he continues. “I can’t just change that on him.”

“You can’t change it onhim? Or on yourself?”

Studying me for a moment, he slides the filled mug in front of me and reaches for another. “Both.”